Whether you’ve been running Facebook Ads for a long time or are only just starting advertising on the world’s leading social media network, the cost of running these ads will undoubtedly be a significant consideration.
With billions of users across the globe in every demographic, Facebook is arguably the best place for brands to spend their advertising dollars. To aid them in this endeavor, Facebook provides advertisers with powerful tools that enable them to fine-tune their campaigns to achieve the maximum return on ad spend.
The fact remains, though, that Facebook advertising costs have risen steadily over the past few years. As a result, there’s no denying that Facebook Ads have become expensive, which presents brands with a risk. If their ad campaigns aren’t successful, they could lose a significant chunk of money.
Even if their campaigns don’t completely flop, the money that brands have to put in for these campaigns may not be enough to justify the return on ad spend. That’s why there is much focus on reducing Facebook Ads costs. Of course, it’s easier said than done, but it’s not entirely impossible.
How are Facebook Ads costs calculated?
It’s important first to understand the factors that determine the cost of your Facebook ads. The social network relies on real-time auctions powered by its AI algorithms to determine the price of every impression or click.
It considers characteristics such as locations, interests, and even ad placements to reach the final cost. For example, brands will pay more for a campaign targeting users in the United States than for those in Thailand. The time of the year also has an impact on ad costs. During peak shopping seasons, the average CPMs jump by double digits.
Competition is another factor to keep in mind. Many different businesses are competing against each other for the same Facebook audience. This tends to drive up prices for everyone, as the auction model prioritizes those that pay top dollar.
Generally, the highest bidder wins the ad placement, but other factors also weigh on it. Relevance is one of them. Facebook wants to make sure that its users see relevant ads, so it tries to strike a balance.
Tips to reduce your Facebook Ads costs in 2022
1. Use the Campaign Budget Optimization feature
Campaign Budget Optimization is a feature that Facebook offers advertisers. When enabled, this allows Facebook’s ad algorithm to decide how the budget for your ad campaign is split. It distributes the funding across ad sets to get more results depending on your delivery optimization choices and bid strategy.
Once you’ve set the entire budget for the campaign, this feature will distribute it across the ad sets to favor those performing better than the others. It’s important to note that this feature is different from split testing.
Campaign budget optimization doesn’t choose a winning ad set to spend all the budget; instead, it simply allocates more or less funding based on how the different ad sets in the campaign are performing.
With Campaign Budget Optimization, you can run more ad sets while Facebook’s algorithm handles the spending based on how they’re spending, which can help prevent your budget from being burned on ad sets that aren’t doing well.
2. Use fresh ad creatives at least once every month
If the ad costs on your campaigns are rising, you can constantly refresh the ad creatives. The general wisdom is that this should be done at least once per month. That’s because Facebook’s ad algorithm favors new creatives over old, so it won’t spend as much money pushing it in news feeds.
Most marketers agree that swapping the creatives at least once per month is enough. However, the guidance on ads that run on a higher budget is that if the statistics indicate rising costs, it’s better to opt for new creatives even sooner.
Remember, this is only required if the stats show that the ad costs are rising. On the other hand, if the campaign delivers optimized conversions with fast delivery at low prices, then it’s best not to try and fix something that’s not broken.
3. Improve audience targeting
Targeting the right audience is crucial to the success of your Facebook ad campaigns. If you’ve locked it down, your campaign will not only hit the desired objectives but will also do that cost-effectively. Even if you’ve created a great ad with excellent copy, it will not achieve much unless the targeting is proper.
When selecting the audience, try to find one with a higher possibility of engaging with your ads instead of just looking at them. This may require you to test new audiences that may fit your brand. It’s also essential to use the ad targeting features to exclude sections of the audience that may not be relevant to reduce unwanted impressions.
The formula is quite simple. First, improve your audience targeting to achieve a higher CTR for more conversions. This will mean you’re paying less CPM and getting the best return on ad spending.
4. Don’t sleep on lookalike audiences
This is one of the most powerful tools that Facebook offers its advertisers. Facebook’s algorithm is excellent at finding new audiences quite similar to those who have already taken a particular action related to your business. For example, people may have visited your website or purchased a product.
The algorithm will use this data to find new audiences that are essentially a lookalike of the audience that has already engaged with your brand. The source audience can come from a custom audience you provide Facebook with, or you can also use the Facebook Pixel to collect data.
Since the source audience is already specific to the algorithm, which is precisely what it’s looking for. In addition, it doesn’t burn through as much of the budget as it would when trying to find an entirely new audience for you without any direction.
5. Capture leads with retargeting
Converting cold traffic or people who have never heard about your brand is extremely difficult. Brands in almost every industry struggle with this. Very rarely will someone buy a product after seeing just one ad for it online?
You can put ads in front of people who have already interacted or engaged with the brand through retargeting. Retargeting allows you to continue to capture their attention and, if so desired, even provide them with an incentive such as a special discount to get them to convert.
Retargeting tends to be light on the overall campaign budget compared to blasting the ad to a completely cold audience. However, it enables brands to improve their CTR and conversions if done correctly significantly.
It’s not impossible to reduce Facebook Ads cost
It may seem not easy at first, but diligently following these steps and other best practices, it’s entirely possible to reduce Facebook Ads costs in 2022. Even as competition increases and overall ad rates increase, there’s always room to optimize.
Brands shouldn’t lose faith in Facebook ads yet. It continues to provide brands with an incredible opportunity to reach new customers across the globe at a scale that few other social networks can match.
