You log into your ad account one day and realize you spent a few hundred dollars on ads that got you two link clicks and one accidental lead form. Every business owner experiences this at some point. You created your ads using what you believed were good practices. You used strong product images, set a budget you felt was fair, and waited for results. Only to see your cost per acquisition rise and your return on ad spend keep eluding you.

By using Meta Ads Best Practices, you can understand how new machine learning algorithms learn from your ads and show them to consumers who may be interested in what you offer. Once you start thinking of your creative as your targeting, you can take full advantage of paid social advertising.

Why Do Businesses Use Meta Ads?

Companies use Meta campaigns for many reasons. From machine learning algorithms that can target your ideal consumer to a wide variety of ad inventory to choose from.

Facebook advertising is one of the best ways to show your products to new consumers. Whether you’re a small business or a company looking to expand your reach, you can benefit from using paid social channels. You cannot only reach new leads, but also retarget people who may have already shown interest in your brand.

Know Your Platforms

Use your Meta Advantage+ budget when building your campaign structure. By pooling your budget, you can scale your campaign and reach cheaper conversions.

Paid social advertising allows you to target your ideal customer at every stage of the funnel. You can build brand awareness with video content, target consumers with lead-generation forms, and retarget those who left items in their cart.

Know Your Targeting Options

Meta targeting has changed drastically over the past few years. Now you can use broad targeting and allow the machine learning algorithm to find your ideal customer.

In the past, media buyers would use layers of interest targeting to find their ideal consumer. Now you can let the algorithm do the work. By targeting your audience broadly, you allow Meta to learn from their consumers and show your ad to people who may be interested in purchasing from you.

Test Your Targeting

Are you targeting your audience too narrowly?

If your audience size is less than 500k for a nationwide offer, you may be raising your CPM’s.
If you target interest-based audiences and use Advantage+ audiences, your ad sets may compete with each other.

You can also use custom audiences to target those that may have already interacted with your brand. Upload your current customer list or target those that may have watched your videos on Instagram. When targeting your Instagram advertising campaigns, allow Advantage+ placements to find the cheapest conversions for your business.

How To Segment Your Audience

What Are Some Ways To Segment Your Audience?

Segmenting your audience is key when creating your campaign structure. Make sure you are targeting your cold audience separately from your retargeting audience.

When creating your campaign structure, don’t split your ad sets too much. If you have 5 different ad sets targeting similar interests, your ads will be competing against each other. Segment your account into prospecting and retargeting.

Segmenting Your Audience

Prospecting | Use broad targeting or broad lookalikes to find new customers that may be interested in your offer.
Engagement | Target those who have interacted with your social media pages, saved an ad or watched at least 50% of your video in the last 90 days.
Conversion | Target those who visited your website, added items to their cart, or are current leads who haven’t purchased yet.

Make sure to target those who have interacted with your brand recently. If someone visited your website 3 days ago, they will need a different message than someone who visited your blog 6 months ago. Target your offers based on how recently your audience has interacted with your brand.

Create Great Ad Creative

What Are Some Tips To Create Good Ad Creative?

When creating ad creative, make sure it grabs your consumer’s attention. You want to use good visuals that will stop someone from scrolling and show them what you have to offer.

Your creative is your targeting, so make sure your ads are eye-catching. When applying Meta advertising tips to your business, optimize your creative for mobile. Most of your consumers will be on their phones with the sound off. Make sure to use good overlays and dynamic captions. You also want to make sure your video is in a 9:18 ratio.

Using user-generated content can also help your ads perform better. You can use videos of customers unboxing your product or showing how it benefits them. Try to create as many variations of your creative as possible. You can test different hooks, such as before-and-after or what your product can do for your consumer.

Write Good Ad Copy

How Can You Write Good Ad Copy?

When writing ad copy, make sure you hit your consumers’ pain points. You also want to tell them how your product can solve their problem and end with a CTA.

Your headline and primary text should go hand in hand with your creative. Your primary text is your second hook. Make sure your consumer knows what you are trying to sell them in the first two lines of your ad copy.

Ad Copy Breakdown

Hook | Let your consumer know what problem you can solve for them.
Body | Tell them how your product can solve that problem and list some benefits.
Testimonials | Add a short quote from a customer who used your product.
CTA | Let your consumer know what they need to do next.

You can test different copy lengths when creating your ads. Short copy can work for e-commerce brands that are selling impulse buys. Longer copy can work for service-based businesses that need to build trust with their consumer.

Set The Right Budget

How Do I Know What Budget To Set?

When setting your budget, make sure you can reach your cost-per-acquisition goal. If your goal is to get a lead for $50, you will want to set your budget at $15/day.

Setting your budget too high will help your ad set exit the learning phase. Meta will need around 50 conversions per week to get your ad set out of the learning phase. Once you know your cost per acquisition, you can set your budget accordingly.

Bid Strategy

Highest Volume | Meta will try to get you the most conversions for your budget. Use this when you are testing your ads.
Cost Cap | Tell Meta to keep your cost per result at a certain amount. Use this if your product has a high profit margin.
Lowest Cost | Will allow Meta to find you the cheapest conversions. Use this if you want to scale your budget.

When scaling your budget, do it slowly. If you increase your budget too much, you will put your ad set back into the learning phase. Scale your budget vertically by increasing your daily budget and horizontally by creating new campaigns with your winning creative.

How Can I Test My Ads?

When testing your ads, test one variable at a time. You can test your creative, copy or headline to see what works best for your business.

If you change too many variables at once, you will not know what is working and what is not. When testing your creative, change only one thing at a time. This will let you see what your consumer responds to most.

How To Test Your Creative

Pick one variable you want to test. (ex: hook in your video)
Create 2-3 variations of that variable.
Run those creatives in a test campaign.
See which creative performs the best based on your goals.
Take that creative and run it in your scaling campaign.

What Metrics Should I Look At When Running Meta Ads?

Make sure you track conversions properly when running Meta ads. You can track many metrics, but focus on your bottom line.

Many people make the mistake of looking only at platform-reported metrics. With the new privacy updates, you may not be getting all of your conversions reported back to you. Make sure to use Meta’s Conversion API to track your results.

Metrics To Track

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)
Conversion Value
Number of Leads

Focus on your bottom-line metrics. If your ad has a lower click-through rate but converts at a higher rate than another ad, focus on that one.

What Are Some Mistakes People Make When Running Meta Ads?

People make many mistakes when running Meta campaigns. Here are a few you should avoid.

One mistake is changing your ad set options too soon. If you change your ad set options after a day of running ads, you don’t give the algorithm enough time to learn. Another mistake is not rotating your creative. If you show the same ads to your audience for too long, they will get fatigued, and your CPMs will increase. Make sure your creative matches what your consumer is expecting when they land on your website.

Work With Dallas SEO Dogs

Running Meta ads can be overwhelming when you’re running a business. With new updates and algorithm changes, it can be hard to stay on top of everything.

At Dallas SEO Dogs, we have been running digital marketing campaigns for the past 20 years. We will take the stress out of running your paid social campaigns and help you reach your goals. We will never withhold your ad spend and will give you honest reports on what is working for your business. Reach out to Dallas SEO Dogs today to learn more about how we can help your business grow.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much should I spend on Meta ads?

You want to spend enough to get at least 2-3 conversions a day. If your cost per conversion is $20, you will want to spend $40-$60 a day to get your ad set out of the learning phase.

How long does it take for my ads to optimize?

Your ad set will need about 50 conversions a week to exit the learning phase. Depending on your budget and goal, this can take anywhere from 3-7 days. Try not to make any changes during this time.

Why are my ad costs going up?

Your ad costs can go up for many reasons. You may be targeting your audience too narrowly or your audience may be fatigued from seeing your ads too many times. Try refreshing your creative and broadening your targeting.

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