The timeless question… a question that has been asked since the dawn of time… since the cavemen began to sell apples from the tree.

Are my Facebook ads converting, and if they are, are they converting as well as they could be? And of course, the most important question, am I paying too much? These are questions that have been theorized since the Renaissance…

Luckily, there are a number of ways to improve your Facebook Ads to get more views, clicks, and more for your ad dollar. For a detailed overview of how to optimize your Facebook ad campaigns with best practices, continue reading this guide. Tips Leonardo Da Vinci didn’t have when he was selling Mona Lisa prints on his own Italian Shopify page.

1. Set Your KPI

Before you begin creating a game plan for your advertising campaign, you need to know your goal. What is it that you are trying to achieve with this campaign? Depending on your goal, your KPI (Key Performance Indicators) need to be carefully selected metrics that properly assess the success of your campaign’s performance.

Once you set your objective, make sure to choose from the list of options that Facebook asks you before you start creating your ad:

For e-commerce businesses, I recommend using “Website Conversions” as your goal. This will allow you to maximize every dollar of your campaign toward getting that extra sale and notify Facebook to run its all-powerful algorithm to get you those willing customers.

2. Use Different Bidding Strategies

Have you been noticing that your Cost Per Click (CPC) is creeping up higher than what you want to pay for? If you have a clear Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) threshold that you absolutely do not want to go over, you can actually prevent it from overspending with manual bidding, to keep your cost at bay. 

Under the budgeting section at the “Ad Set” level of campaign creation, you will see different options to select “Optimization for Ad Delivery” And “Bid Strategy”. Here, you can decide exactly what you want to optimize for and how much you are willing to spend for each action you set as a goal.

3. Test Everything and Anything

A/B testing is one of the most powerful optimization options out there. There is truly no other way to identify what your audience will respond to best without testing multiple versions of your Ad. It’s that old scientific method at work, run two slightly different things concurrently, and determine which one gets more action.
I recommend testing different variables of your ad. This includes an image, headlines, text, audience, and ad formats you choose. In each variation, try to make only one variable of the Ad different – so if you’re testing your Text, use a different one in each variation but leave Headline and image of the ad identical for both versions. That way, you will isolate the change and know for sure which ones are working for you and which aren’t.

Now It’s Your Turn 

Facebook ad optimization is not a sprint, but a marathon. It can take some extra time and it can even take a little extra money to experiment with different methods to understand what works best for your target audience. However, if done correctly it won’t just save you money in the short term– you will be able to increase your return on investment tremendously at scale in the long-run. For more insights on Facebook ads and optimization strategies, explore our dedicated blog posts.

Maybe Van Gogh wouldn’t have had to cut off his ear had he just set his KPI’s more deliberately and did a little A/B testing for Starry Night, but I suppose we’ll never know!