SSA #023: Three Quick Wins For Your Facebook Ads

Read Time: 3.5 minutes

I used to despair at how often things changed with Facebook Ads!

And sure, there are still a few minor features that change on a seemingly weekly (or at least monthly) basis with the platform.

But today, I’m going to share with you 3 of the biggest lessons I’ve learned about Facebook Ads over the previous 6-7 months; these are fundamental building blocks of Facebook Ads that are highly unlikely to change any time soon.

In fact, I’d argue these 3 lessons are going to become even more prevalent as time goes on.

When you begin to implement what I’m about to share with you in your own Facebook Ads, you should start to see a noticeable improvement in your results relatively quickly.

If you’re interested, I dive much deeper into these 3 lessons I’m about to share with you (and more besides) inside Jumpstart Facebook Ads for Authors.

Without further ado though, let’s dive into things…

Quick Win #1: Pay Attention To Engagement

Vanity metrics, such as likes, shares, and comments, often get a bad rap (even from me!). They’re definitely not the be all and end all, and you shouldn’t make it your goal to chase them.

However, they are a leading indicator as to which Facebook Ads are resonating with your readers, and which aren’t.

The screenshot above, for one of my wife's Facebook Ads, has 12,000 reactions, 3,200 comments, and 2,200 shares.

Yes, it took a few months to reach these numbers, but it's now one of our best-performing Ads, due to the vast amount of social proof, trust, and credibility that has been built because of that social proof.

The more engagement a Facebook Ad receives, the more budget Facebook will put behind that Ad.

Next time you identify a Facebook Ad with lots of engagement, analyze it and see if you can identify why it got so much engagement compared to other Ads that received little to no engagement.

All this engagement allows your Ads to garner more attention, reduce your costs (because Facebook sees your Ad as enhancing the experience of users on their platform), and very often, convert better into sales and page reads of your books.

Quick Win #2: Forget About Targeting

I haven’t used any Detailed Targeting options (i.e. targeting authors, genres, TV shows, films, etc.) with my Facebook Ads since 2022, and it’s changed the game for me.

The only targeting options I use are:

• Location
• Age
• Gender

I’m not targeting authors, books, genres, films, etc. None of that – as you can see from the screenshot below of my Facebook Ads targeting.

Why, you ask?

It's because Facebook Ads make their own audiences based on the content of your Ads – they do the targeting for you!

And by using Detailed Targeting, you’re throttling the algorithm and preventing it from working at its optimum.

You’re also making your Ads more expensive, and investing in a depreciating asset because Ads using Detailed Targeting generally decline in performance over time; the complete opposite is true with my Unrestricted Targeting strategy (also known as Broad Targeting). 

Each and every month, Facebook are turning off audiences left, right, and center!

The last thing you want is to invest $100’s, even $1,000’s into a Detailed Targeting audience, only for it to be removed one day, and be unable to use it any longer.

You will also find that Unrestricted Targeting is more stable, scalable, and cheaper. What's not to love?

Quick Win #3: Use Dynamic Creative

When you’re not focused on finding new audiences to test each week (which you shouldn’t be, as you’re destroying your results by doing so), the biggest lever you can pull with your Facebook Ads is your Ad creative (i.e. the Ads people see on their Facebook Feed).

However, gone are the days when you need to test your Facebook Ads one-by-one.

A severely underused tool in the Facebook Ads dashboard is Dynamic Creative, which does all the heavy lifting for you when it comes to testing your Ad creative.

With Dynamic Creative, you throw a few ideas at Facebook (my strategy involves 3 Images, 2 Headlines, 2 pieces of Primary Text) and Facebook will mix and match all possible combinations of the assets you provide it with.

You'll then be able to analyze the data to see the individual metrics (i.e. Cost Per Click, Click-Through Rate, Clicks, Spend, etc) of each asset, and allow you to identify your winners:

• Best-performing image
• Best-performing headline
• Best-performing primary text
• Etc…

Once you’ve found your winning assets, you can scale up the winning combination as an individual Ad (i.e. NOT a Dynamic Creative Ad).

This is an extremely powerful way of testing Facebook Ads that harnesses the true power of the Facebook Ads algorithm and machine learning, and helps you to save a LOT of time guessing which Ads are going to work – you let Facebook and its data tell you that.

Wrapping Up...

Facebook Ads are undoubtedly one of the best ways to drive readers to your books, but they take time to learn, refine and really get dialed in.

I've been running Facebook Ads for several years now, and I still learn something new every single week, no matter how small.

These little nuggets of information you discover that compound over time will help you achieve better results from your Facebook Ads.

And as I mentioned at the beginning of this newsletter, these 3 quick wins I've shared act as the fundamental building blocks of a successful Facebook Ads Strategy.

That's it for this week! I'll be back in touch with you next weekend for another edition of The Saturday Self-Published Author.

Thanks for reading. 

To Your Success
– Matt