As Facebook continues to develop new ad types, selecting the right bidding strategy for each becomes even more critical. This slight adjustment in bidding strategy, whether bidding for Engagement, CPM, CPC etc. will have a huge impact on ad performance. So instead of defaulting to running a Promoted Post simply because it reaches a large number of people, it’s important to identify what the goals of an ad campaign are and act accordingly.

A lot of times people will run Promoted Posts for sale offers and simply bid on Post Engagement (it’s the default option), which will optimize ad delivery for people most likely to engage with the post. The only problem is that this doesn’t necessarily correlate with sales as it will optimize to display ads to users most likely to comment, like, share etc. Facebook reps describe these as “clicky” users, who are more likely to comment, like or share, but not necessarily hit your website and make a purchase.

 

Below are a few quick tips for your Facebook ad campaigns, depending on the goal of the ad:

Goal: Reach a large number of users and drive Impressions

Ad Type: Promoted Post

Bid Strategy: CPM or Daily Unique Reach/Reach & Frequency (if you’re concerned with delivery/frequency) to blast the ad out

 

Goal: Clicks to a Website

Ad Type: Website Clicks

Bid Strategy: CPC ­ optimized for Link Clicks

*Note: If the audience size isn’t that large you can bid on CPC and optimize for Impressions, but Link Clicks will be the most effective way of driving results if applicable.

 

”Engagement doesn’t necessarily correlate to sales anymore.”

• As with most things, take this with a grain of salt, but the underlying point here is that bidding on Post Engagement may not be the most effective way to drive sales. Think of it this way, if bidding on engagement you’re telling Facebook to bid on users most likely to like, comment and share where in the end what you ultimately want is people to go to the website and convert/make a purchase instead. So a Website Clicks campaign makes more sense for specific sales/offers.
  Using the Best Bid Strategy w/ Each Ad Objective
• A Promoted Post bidding on Post Engagement would be more effective bidding for CPM if your goal is brand awareness/getting the ad in front of as many people as possible, not necessarily bidding for users who will engage on the post itself.
• Promoted posts probably should not be used if the campaign goal is to get people to click through to the website, unless you are altering the bid strategy on that campaign to CPC (specifically Link Clicks)
• “90% of offline sales come from people who don’t interact with the ads (likes, comments etc.)”
• *Note: If you’re still using the old Facebook conversion tracking code, the best practice is to place the new Facebook pixel on the client website and give it 30 days to build data before switching from the old code to the new pixel.