You Might Want To Reconsider Your Latest Facebook Ad Campaign. Here’s Why

If you had talked to me a year ago, you would have heard me raving about Facebook ads.

“It’s the most sophisticated targeting you can get at the lowest possible price!” I would have gushed.

And while the first part of that statement still holds—Facebook has some of the most insane targeting capabilities out there—the second part, at least for many businesses, is no longer true.

There are a lot of reasons I’ve cooled off to Facebook Ads for small businesses within the last year, but here are some of the main ones and the takeaways you need to know if you advertise on Facebook.

News Feed Changes

In January 2018, Facebook announced a change to its News Feed algorithm that prioritizes content from family and friends over content from brands. In layman’s terms, users will now see more posts from people they actually know and fewer posts from companies.

As a user, this is admittedly a nice change. After all, most of us joined Facebook to keep up with family and friends and not to watch a bunch of commercials. But as a marketer, I loathe this change. Facebook spent years hooking us on the platform and getting us to cough up money to advertise, and now it feels like they’re biting the hands that have fed them.

If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because Facebook has been decreasing the organic reach for brands for years. But up until this point, you could largely overcome this by putting some money behind your posts.

Not anymore—at least not as easily.

Mark Zuckerberg Facebook algorithm change

Mark Zuckerberg’s Jan. 11 post announcing the changes

Cost Of Ads Spikes

One metric used to measure the cost of a Facebook ad is CPM, the cost to achieve 1,000 impressions. According to data from AdStage, CPM on Facebook was up 122% in January and 77% in February—the highest year-over-year jumps in ad prices in 14 months.

I’ve seen it firsthand with my client accounts and my own ads. As an example, in a campaign where we previously paid about $0.20 per click, we’re now paying anywhere from $0.50 to $0.70 per click. When you scale that up, it equates to hundreds or thousands of dollars more per month to achieve the same results.

It makes sense; with less space in the News Feed for brand posts there’s more competition, which drives the costs higher.

And it should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been doing marketing for any number of years. It’s just part of the game: a new platform comes out, people jump on it. Advertisers follow suit until the market is saturated, the attention drops and the costs soar. Then it’s onto the next thing. We saw the same thing happen with email until email clients started using spam blockers and other means to control unwanted messages. It’s the way of the world.

It doesn’t make it suck any less, though.

What It Means For You

As an advertiser, the changes to Facebook’s algorithm have a few big implications.

1. Closely monitoring your campaigns is more important than ever

I’ll admit it: in the past, I’ve been guilty of “setting it and forgetting it” when it comes to Facebook ads. If I was consistently achieving more or less the same results, there was no need to check in on my ads on a daily basis.

This is a bad habit that, with the new algorithm change, could cost you a lot of money fast. Even a 5-10% increase in your CPC could cause a huge hit to your margins, and most cost spikes are more than a mere 5-10%.

More than ever, it’s important to monitor your ad campaigns closely for shifts to CPC, CPM, relevance score and other key metrics.

2. Active engagement wins out

With less space for brands in the News Feed, you’ve got to work even harder to stand out.

Part of the new algorithm favors what Facebook describes as active engagement, i.e. commenting and sharing of posts, rather than passive engagement like hovering over a post or simply clicking on it. Posts that receive more active engagement will be shown more widely in the News Feed.

This means as an advertiser you need to give users a reason to actively engage with your ads rather than just looking at them. Ask questions that elicit a response. Encourage your followers to promote you to their friends. Don’t be afraid to share controversial topics that will get followers talking.

3. Switch things up by testing a variety of content

There is still a lot to love about Facebook ads, and one of those things is the sheer variety of content types the platform supports for advertisers.

You can make an ad using an image, a video, a slideshow, or some combination of all of these. As reach for advertisers shrinks, it’s important to switch up your content not only to stay interesting, but to find out which format is the most cost effective.

If you usually run ads with only an image, try making a short video and testing it against your image campaigns. Try out the new Canvas ad format. Testing, tweaking and testing some more is the name of the game.

4. Look elsewhere

Say it with me: Facebook ads are not the be all, end all of advertising! There are many other lucrative places to spend your ad dollars, including:

Reddit
LinkedIn
Pinterest
Niche industry forums
Email newsletters
Good old Google Ads

And the list goes on.

Keep in mind that while some of these platforms will cost you more per click, they may result in a more quality website visitor. For example, LinkedIn CPCs tend to be significantly higher than Facebook, but the end user you’re reaching might be more professionally qualified or better suited to decide to do business with you than someone who clicks your ad from Facebook. Consider the lifetime value of the customer you’re attracting when weighing advertising costs.

If you’re discouraged by Facebook ads, keep your chin up; all of us advertisers are going through the same growing pains. If nothing else, it’s a great reminder not to put all your marketing eggs in one basket and to always, always be testing.