Social media advertising is the most cost-effective way to reach a targeted group of consumers - with the right strategy, social advertising can win you new customers, generate top-of-the-funnel awareness, and re-engage consumers at a very high rate. However, things don’t always function as they should when it comes to social ads. Due to ad competition and other factors, your ads may not be delivering at the pace you need to drive results.
Social media ad delivery is a key issue during high-competition times, like the holidays or big events. Sometimes, no matter what you do, Facebook (or any other social media channel) simply won't show your ad frequently enough to users.
If you've experienced this, have no fear - here are four ways to optimize strategy, and maximize ad delivery.
1. Check Your Placements
Placements are the different areas that your ad will be served - for example, on Facebook you can choose within News Feed, in Instant Articles, in the right column, and Instagram as placements.
If you increase the number of placements your ad is being delivered to, you essentially are increasing the ad inventory for your campaign, which gives your ad more opportunities to be served. This is a great way to increase ad delivery, and increase results for your campaigns.
All social ad platforms have machine learning built in to optimize ad performance. The more placements you have, the more the platforms can optimize.
2. Increase Your Bid
Social media ads all go into an auction to determine which ad gets served at what price. If you increase your bid, your campaign can remain competitive in the ad auction, which can lead to your ads being served more frequently.
You always have the option to use automatic bidding on the platforms, which takes away the guesswork, however, if you're trying to keep a tight reign on your costs, you should always aim to start your bidding slightly higher than the average recommendation for the campaign objective.
If this is a little advanced for you, just remember that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat all love money, so the more you're willing to bid, the more likely it is your ads will be served.
3. Loosen Up Your Targeting
While it's always ideal to narrow your audience targeting as much as you possibly can, sometimes you can go too narrow, and competition for those limited audiences will either drive up your costs up or prohibit your ads from being served consistently.
To try to win more delivery, consider expanding your audience a bit, while keeping your targeting relevant to your goal.
4. Alter Your Creative
Sometimes your ads just aren’t that good. If your ad content isn't engaging, the social media channels will have a hard time serving them.
When you aren’t getting the ad delivery or results you want, try incorporating different ad creative into the mix. Sometimes this helps nudge the platforms with delivery, while also enabling you to see what creative performs best.
I'd recommend testing banners, videos, and GIFs, then, as the results come through, use more of what works best and less of what doesn’t.
Short, sweet, and to the point. If your social advertising campaigns aren’t performing how you would like, and perhaps aren’t getting the reach you were hoping, consider the above ad delivery optimization tips. A small tweak here or there can go a long way when it comes to generating results.