Creative assets ready. Media budget booked. Online campaign started. Online campaign ended. Results in mailbox. Key metrics presented to management. Repeat…

More than often the routinely process of setting up a digital campaign has become a habit within marketing departments.  Especially when relying on an external agency for media buying parts, marketers tend to be less critical about the tactics behind their campaigns. But resting on your laurels won’t increase conversion rates. Are you your agency’s most docile client never asking for change?

When you are contemplating, your competition is acting. Result: your leads convert elsewhere. Sad.

Since conversion rates are highly contextual it is difficult to offer you a bullet proof industry benchmark. Therefore, what follows will not equip you with hard core figures but will provide some tips on how to challenge your agency and how to look at your social ads differently. Because honestly, you don’t need to be a digital expert to challenge the status quo.

Rule number one, always clarify the objectives of the campaign. For social media ads, don’t get disappointed about low conversion rates if the objective of your campaign was set on awareness. Surprisingly, client and agency are not always aligned on what the campaign aims for. The three objective pillars on Facebook are: Awareness, Consideration and Conversion. The metrics attached to each objective are different. For awareness this would be the number of impressions, while for conversion you would look at the number of clicks or a sale (amongst others). Hence, it is important to identify your objective first in order to interpret the resulting data reports correctly.

If you want to manage your performance analytics yourself ask your agency to grant you access to the Facebook Ads Manager linked to your account. This is an integrated interface that displays the data analytics and metrics of your Facebook campaigns.

Second, the agency needs to become an active partner in crafting your digital success. There is no such thing as repeating the same process over and over again. Since digital media is all about real-time situations and accurate targeting, your plan shouldn’t be carved in stone.

Recently, I experimented with a geo-targeted Facebook post to support a promo action that was limited in time and only available at one specific retailer. The post was not part of the yearly media plan, but the idea came up when discussing with the agency’s digital expert. The post only got promoted just before the action took place in store and only towards people within the brand’s target group and living nearby this retailer’s outlets. As a result, the engagement and conversion rates went through the roof.

Choosing the best format for your content is also important. For Facebook, carousels and canvas ads (only available on mobile) have proven to drive higher conversion rates, since they are more engaging and can be used in a creative manner to tell a story about your product. Adding creativity to your design always does the trick! Look at these two inspiring examples of good story telling: a canvas by American Express and a carrousel by KLM:

In addition, don’t put all your eggs in the same basket. Dual platform approaches can increase your conversion exponentially. Instagram is now a placement option integrated within Facebook that is easy to implement without investing extra money. If your audience is part of the Instagram users group (2,5 million in Belgium of which 85% are younger than 45 and 56% are female), ask your agency to tick the option to display your ad on Instagram too. KLM used both Instagram and Facebook  simultaneously to increase its reach. The target groups were defined on Facebook but the creative assets got displayed on Instagram as well to the users belonging to the same audience. Compared to using Facebook only, a combination of Facebook and Instagram reduced the CPM and increased the return on ad spend by 3,8 times.

Finally, consider your placement.  5,9 million of 6,7 million monthly active Belgian Facebook users access the platform via mobile. Therefore, budget should always be invested in mobile displays as well. However, watch out: despite mobile browsing for products has increased, Smart Insights estimates desktop conversion rates to be twice as high than mobile conversion rates.

Today 75% of brands are estimated to pay for promoted posts on Facebook. Within the staggering number of ads Facebook serves daily, make sure that yours stands out. Since digital advertising is an ever-changing field; moving fast has become a competitive advantage. Don’t just wait and see, adopt a proactive attitude and a learning mindset. After all, it all comes down to making your customer click on your ad faster than he would anywhere else.

If you are not sure on how to act, our digital consultants can help you to reconsider your digital spending and to write digital media plans increasing your conversion rate.

References:

Aegis 2018, Instagram, Smart Insights, Brandwatch