How relevant are you on Facebook? While it may or not matter to you personally, if you’re conducting an advertising campaign for your business, you should be paying attention to how your audience is responding to your campaign on Facebook. It turns out there’s a Facebook relevance score for that and the higher it is, the better.
Here’s how to outrank your competition and earn 10s every single time.
Facebook Relevance Score 101
The basic scoop on the Facebook relevance score is that it runs from 1-10, with 10 being awesome and one being “not so much.” If your score is low, Facebook can restrict the reach of your ad, effectively cutting your campaign off at the knees.
A low score can also run you more in cost per clicks (CPCs) and cost per actions (CPAS).
The Facebook relevance score was launched two years ago, but a surprising number of marketers don’t know the ins and outs of the system yet. The concept was that users would see more ads that fit their wants, needs, and priorities; the ads that were more “relevant” to their interests and likes would appear in their personalized newsfeed.
If you are the advertiser, Facebook measures your relevancy score in three ways:
- The click through rates on the ads and whether they’re mirroring the conversions you targeted.
- The feedback from viewers, which could include comments on videos, app installs, or other positive activity.
- Negative rankings when viewers click “I don’t want to see this.”
So, the highest bidding advertiser with the highest Facebook relevance score was the one most likely to show up in your feed.
You can check your Facebook Relevance Score on the Facebook Ads Manager dashboard. If you’re coming in with a score that is less than five, it’s time to revisit your ad strategy.
How Can The Facebook Relevance Score Help Your Business?
If your Facebook relevance score is high, you’re getting good ROI from your ad. This means:
- Your ad is hitting a wider audience.
- The ad is costing you less per click.
- It’s a helpful measurement for A/B testing.
- You can use it to optimize your PPC ad campaigns.
- It will help you figure out who your target audience really is.
This is all great news for the advertiser with a tight budget. Because of this handy measurement tool, we’ve found that running PPC on Facebook has a very high ROI.
Top Tips for Earning a High Facebook Relevance Score
If you’re able to snag a high relevance score, that means your target audience finds your ads compelling enough to probably click through and buy or at least take a peek at what you’re selling. There’s nothing wrong with that, right?
But if you’re on the struggle bus in terms of your Facebook relevance score, you’re problem is really simple – yet complex. Ultimately, you must target the right audience by offering the right product or service in an eye-catching ad that makes them want to engage.
Here are our best tips to help you improve your Facebook relevance score:
1. Know your audience
Targeting the right audience with the right stuff can be challenging. The Content Marketing Institute suggests the key is to create personas for your target audience. It’s a necessary step that shouldn’t be skipped, although it might be tempting.
The process explores the commonalities between buyers and uses them to create one generic persona of your perfect target. Creating a composite of your buyer includes a study in nine specific areas:
- Create the persona-specific goals and objectives for using your product or service.
- Define the personas pain points or problems and how your service can help solve it.
- Understand their job orientation and professional demeanor.
- Describe the target’s obstacles to buying.
- Write down what burning questions the prospect is asking.
- Define their content preferences, including what social media channels do they use and if they prefer video or written content.
- What keywords would your persona use?
- Sketch some engagement scenarios
- At the end of the process, create a day in the life of your persona, which is your attempt to walk a mile in their shoes.
If you can figure out all nine, you have a good shot at creating a better ad for your audience.
2. Segment your audience
Now that you know who your audience really is, you should segment your targets and the ads they receive. If you’re targeting a cold audience who knows nothing about your service, the chances are high that your Facebook relevance scores will be low.
Fortunately Facebook has several ways to segment your ad, including:
- Lookalike audiences help you segment by interests and demographics that are similar to your current Facebook followers.
- Custom Audiences meet specific criteria that you set. It lets you upload a hashed customer list and then Facebook matches your list to people on the site.
- Value-Based Lookalike Audiences lets you target prospects by mirroring the characteristics of your current customers.
By using Facebook ad segmentation you can further customize your ads and deliver the right message to the right audience.
3. Use remarketing
Advertising with people who already have a track record of engaging with your ad is a great way to boost your Facebook relevancy score. Try targeting people who have:
- Visited your Facebook page in the past.
- Have clicked on a CTA but haven’t completed the action.
- Have posted a message to your page.
- Or have shared one of your posts.
These are all great ways to push people a little further down the buying path. Remember, not everyone is going to buy or follow your CTA the first time they see your ad. People make decisions in different ways, and that’s why remarketing your ad to this audience is important.
4. Cut out the converters
Showing the same ad to people who have already engaged is boring and annoying. It will also kill your relevancy score. Do this one time too often and your customer may hit the “hide ad” button. This is why the Facebook Custom Audience segmentation tool is valuable; you can upload your list of converted leads and “exclude” them from your next campaign.
5. Optimize your audience
There’s a new Automated Audience Optimization tool on Facebook. The next time you add a post to your Facebook page, click the little target icon underneath your post. A pop-up window will let you gear the post toward the particular interests of your target audience. You can also establish who is allowed to see your posts, segmenting by language, age, or location. This tool will help you reach the most people interested in your post.
If your page has 5,000 likes, this feature is already turned on. If you’re under that number, click “settings” in the top right corner of your page. You can turn on Audience Optimization for Posts under the General tab.
6. A/B test is the best
Like with all of these tips, there are some key things to do and not to do when you’re A/B testing. For example:
- First, make sure you are closely paralleling your ad copy. Multiple and wide variations in ads will not allow you to pinpoint exactly what is working and what isn’t.
- Test elements that will have the biggest impact on your engagement rate.
- Test the layout in addition to ad copy length.
- Make sure you create two targeted market segments with no overlap. Don’t forget to “exclude” so your lists remain clean with no duplication between ads.
- Test with different targets: Custom Audiences, Lookalike Audiences, and so on.
- When evaluating multiple audience reactions, start with the CPC (cost per conversions) first.
7. Make sure the ad fits the audience
We’re back to thinking about your audience again – if we ever left. If you are targeting new or “cold” audiences, give them guides, blog articles, and eBooks; these are items that are free and require low commitment. If you’re targeting “warm” audiences; those that have liked your page or visited your website, then go for the close by giving them a sales-centric ad.
8. Figure out what you’re selling
What is your unique selling proposition and how will is resonate with your audience? What is it about what you’re selling that will make your audience want to click through? Hint: Use your keyword in the headline.
9. Create killer headlines
Speaking of headlines, once you figure out your unique selling proposition, determine what ad headline will nail the click through. Then, go back and think about it some more, but this time using the customer persona. If you were your own customer, what would get your attention?
10. Wash, rinse, repeat – but this time, with the ad copy
Next, write killer ad copy but again do it from the perspective of a customer. What’s going to resonate with them? Consider the needs, wants, and priorities of your target audience and always seek to solve one (or more) of the three with your product or service. How can what you offer change their life?
11. Make it a verb
By this we mean make your copy action-oriented. Intriguing, clean verbs make for good ad copy that compels action from the buyer. Words such as:
- Earn
- Gain
- Learn
- Read
- Start
- Save
- Discover
- Guarantee
- Results
- Free
- Increase
- Grow
- Fast
- Exclusive
- Unique
Make your copy between 90 and 150 characters and use practical, simple language. Try to create a sense of urgency in your ad copy. For example, put a time limit on the offer, “Offer ends October 31.” Or, “Today only!” Try offering free shipping or giving a discount if they place their order today.
12. CTA OMG
The call to action is possibly one of the hardest parts of the ad. We think this is in part, because there is so much advice on how to write a great CTA. Google it. (OMG.) The important thing to remember is that the CTA could also affect your Facebook relevance score – as if you weren’t already feeling the pressure.
To figure out your CTA ask yourself these questions:
- What would motivate my target viewer to click the button?
- What will they receive when they click the button?
13. Create a visually appealing ad
The image you have in your ad is very important; Consumer Acquisition says they’re about 75% of your ads total performance. The impact on your relevance score is obvious.
Follow these rules when picking your graphic:
- Skip the stock pictures and select high quality, authentic images relevant to your CTA.
- Select an engaging and interesting composition.
- Bright colors, with an uncluttered aesthetic will help keep your ad neat.
- Test your images like you test your copy. What will get your audiences attention?
- Consider using in-image ad copy – if your graphic is so compelling should you add your copy and/or the CTA right into the graphic?
14. Consider video
Video is hot. Would it make more sense to have a video ad instead of traditional ad copy? Short two or three-minute videos (no more or the viewership drops) might be exactly what you need to engage your viewers.
15. Location. Location. Location
One important thing to consider is if there is a geographic element tied to what you’re selling. If you’re a local bricks and mortar store, for example, you will want to focus on Facebook’s Local Awareness campaigns. As you’re selecting the type of ad to run (there are quite a few choices), select the Local Awareness Ad.
Local ads have one key feature for you to consider:
- There is a map pin to share your geographic relevance to your viewers. This lets them know right away how close your service is to where they live. You can add a directions link or give them the hours of operation for accessibility.
Next Steps for Facebook Relevance Score
Your Facebook relevance score matters but it isn’t the only benchmark to track. Staying on top of your ad’s performance, and tweaking it so it continues to pay for itself, is all part of a continuing process of SEO. Advertisers that take these 15 tips and continue to refine their approach over time will guarantee their spot in a competitive marketplace for the long haul.
