Dave Guindon here … 

.. with 5 simple & effective ways to increase your
facebook ads CTR ( Click-through rates )

1. Use the news feed with the desktop placement option

If you’re aiming for a high CTR and maximum engagement, 
you’ll want to stick with News Feed ads on Desktop. 

This ad type allows for a large image and a long description, 
helping it stand out more to Facebook users. 

You can add other placements later, once you’ve optimized 
your campaign and achieved a positive ROI. 

They’re also more engaging, letting you rack up more 
conversions from small audiences that are easily exhausted 
using other ad types. 

All of Facebook’s ad placements have value, but optimizing for 
the sidebar or on mobile is much more of a challenge than 
optimizing for Desktop News Feed. 

Stick with the News Feed for now, and only consider expanding 
your campaign to other placements once it’s already profitable.

2. Speak directly to your target audience

Consider the following 2 sentences ..

"People feel better after they spend a week traveling the Mayan Riviera" 

"You will feel better after you spend a week traveling the Mayan Riviera" 

Of the two statements above, which stands out as more 
personal and engaging? 

The majority of people would answer that the second statement, 
which replaces “people” with “you,” feels more engaging, direct 
and relevant than the first statement. 

This is the difference between an ad that talks about something, 
and an ad that talks directly to a specific audience. 

Instead of visualizing someone else relaxing on the beach or 
enjoying the Mayan Riviera, you visualize yourself doing what 
the ad describes. 

"Our small business software helps you save time while growing
your business"

or ...

"11 million Americans have visual impairment that can be corrected
with glasses. Find out if your vision is affected."

The most effective ads, whether on Facebook or any other platform, 
speak directly to their target audience.

3. Make your image ads POP out from the news feed

The beauty of News Feed ads is they appear above and 
below people’s photos and status updates on Facebook. 

This makes them stand out much more than sidebar ads, which 
appear in a section of the page that’s reserved exclusively for 
advertising and notifications. 

Most advertisers squander this advantage by using bland images 
and generic stock photos, the majority of which are ignored by users. 

One of the fastest ways to improve your CTR is to switch from 
using generic stock photos to using images that look and feel 
natural.

Facebook users are largely immune to obvious, traditional 
advertising. Replace the typical stock photo with an eye-catching, 
“real” image and you’ll stand out from advertisers while getting 
more traffic from every 1,000 impressions.

4. Split test at least 5 ads and then refine the winners

The most important part of any Facebook Ads isn’t the headline 
or the copy -- it’s the image. 

A great image can double, triple or 10x your clickthrough rate, 
giving you cheaper traffic and more results from your target 
audience. 

Before you consider any ad campaign a success, it’s essential 
that you test a variety of different images to find the top performer. 

Start your campaign by A/B testing at least five different images. 
Choose images that are vastly different from each other at the 
beginning so that you gain an understanding of what your target 
audience responds to best. 

Once you find the winning image, start testing variations of your 
headline and ad copy to learn which combination is the most 
effective. 

Let each ad rack up at least 100 clicks to your website before 
you class it as a winner or loser to ensure your data is statistically 
significant. 

This approach weeds out the bad ads from your campaign and 
pushes forwards the best ones, helping you avoid spending 
money on ads that aren’t producing optimal results. 

Over time, through the process of testing and eliminating 
poor-performing ads, you’ll create a campaign that’s vastly 
more effective than your competitors, letting you generate 
more results, more leads and more sales at a lower average 
cost.

5. Build smaller highly-engaged retargeted audiences for SUPER high CTRs!

Another powerful way to increase CTRs is to create custom audiences
that have already seen your ads, and then create new ads specifically
for those "retargeted" audiences.

Unfortunately, when building retargeted audiences, there are many
people that spend less than 5 seconds on your landing page, or worse yet,
simply bounce right off.

Which means you are spending way too much money and losing out on 
higher conversions from those wasted clicks.

One way to "fix" this problem, is to only build retargeted audiences of those
who have spent more time on your landing page or better yet, viewed your
video ad more than 5 seconds!

This type of thing is very new, and luckily there are some cool
new products being released that help you build these exact type
of audiences.

One I absolutely love is called, Sprout Audience ...

See Sprout Audience here

Sprout Audience bridges the gap between FB ads, video and retargeting,
helping you drill down to 100% of the targeted traffic that actually converts!

Basically, it creates ultra-targeted audiences based on real user behavior,
meaning, you're only marketing to people that have expressed a certain
level of interest in your ads.

Watch the demo video to see how it works

( demo video located half-way down the page )

Hope that helps and thanks for reading .. talk soon,

Dave Guindon
BEng, MASc in Engineering
Software Developer/Webmaster
Online Marketing Entrepreneur

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