13 Expert Tips To Optimize Facebook Ads For High ROI

The world’s most okayest Facebook Ads managers run ads with decent performance. 

But if you’re here, you want to optimize your ads to squeeze every lovin’ cent out of your ROAS. 

We want that for you, too, because we know you have business to build, a boss to impress, and key performance indicators (KPIs) to hit.

For most businesses, the ultimate Facebook ads goal is driving revenue via eCommerce sales or brick-and-mortar store visits. But that doesn't mean you should focus on these end goals in every campaign. Instead, you should focus on one of the most important (yet overlooked) areas of Facebook ad optimization: the flawless execution of an advertising funnel. 

When you launch an ad funnel accompanying your Facebook Ad campaign, you’ll be able to continually introduce new people to your business, get them interested in your products and services, and eventually make a sale. This means that by the time you're ready to make a sales pitch, your audience will be better prepared to buy—making your ads more successful.

Talk about Facebook Ad optimization… 

Creating a Facebook ad funnel also helps you keep your costs in check. Facebook advertising campaigns with lower-funnel objectives like sales and conversions tend to be more expensive to run; while campaigns with an upper-funnel campaign objective, like reach, tend to be much more affordable to run (depending on your offer, structure, and industry).

Investing time here is worth it—it creates impact. 

The data pull from your funnel feeds the next Facebook Ad optimization steps, and It maximizes your return on ad spend (ROAS). 

As you build yours, be sure to align your ad delivery with an optimization strategy tailored to your business goals—such as conversions or landing page views. 

Here's a simple overview of a Facebook advertising funnel:

• Awareness: First, introduce your business using the Brand Awareness or Reach campaign objective.
  • While tempting, be sure not to move too fast through this step, since it’s foundational to your successful ad campaign. 
• Consideration: Then create interest using the Traffic, Engagement, App Installs, Video Views, Messages, or Lead Generation campaign objectives
  • Swinging broad is best here, as it allows you to gather data for future ad performance tweaks.
• Conversion: Finally, make the sale using the Conversions, Catalog Sales, or Store Traffic objective.
  • Congratulations—you’ve succeeded on at least one of your advertising goals. Now, do it again and swing for higher ROAS to blow your business objectives out of the water.

No matter what funnel stage you're targeting, your campaign should feature custom content that you created just for the campaign. 

Right?

Not necessarily. 

Sure, it's important to create new content that aligns perfectly with the campaign objective. However, plenty of businesses find success in repurposing existing organic content—especially when it’s paired with the right bidding strategy.

Here's the thing: even if you've done a lot of audience research, you can't always predict which creatives or messages will resonate with your target audience. If you invest a lot of resources in producing creatives and captions just for ads, you end up wasting a lot of time and money for the less-than-effective ads.

To save time and money, consider using a creative that's already proven to work, spinning off ads based on that content and format. Trust us, it’s worth the time sifting through your ad library. Using content with high ad relevance improves targeting and engagement.

When Facebook delivers your ad, it automatically displays the organic engagement that the post generated. All that engagement serves as social proof—or evidence that others trust and engage with your business. As a result, your target audience may be more likely to engage with the one campaign, increasing reach and improving campaign results.

Once you've created a successful Facebook ad funnel, it’s tempting to keep running the same campaigns for the long run—especially if you expect to achieve the same level of results over time.

However, the longer you keep a Facebook campaign going, the more likely you are to encounter problems with ad fatigue. 

Over time, your audience changes—and so do their expectations for your ad campaign. If they’re seeing the same thing over and over from your ad account, it’s likely they’ll hide it from their newsfeed or ignore it altogether. 

To prevent ad fatigue and optimize ad delivery, keep each campaign's creative assets fresh. Introduce new photos, videos, and captions regularly to keep your target audience engaged; all while continuing to deliver your message effectively.

Remember: Each version doesn't necessarily have to be a completely new concept. Instead, you can make small changes to existing assets and produce iterations on running ads that already work well. For example, you might change the caption wording slightly, use a different background color for the image, or add text overlays to the video.

Your ideal customers likely share a lot of similar characteristics, such as demographics, interests, and online behaviors. But even if your target audience is a relatively niche group, they react differently to various ad creatives and placements. You won’t want to rely on just one ad to do all the heavy lifting for you—you’ll want to rely on the Facebook algorithm to identify what works best for individual Facebook users. Then, you can flex your digital marketing skills and deliver the optimal combination of elements, ideally in a way that fills the gaps your direct competitors leave.

Facebook's dynamic creative feature allows you to upload multiple versions of ad elements—including images, videos, headlines, descriptions—which it then uses to automatically display ads that’ll drive the results you want. 

Note that this feature is only able to create these tailored and sophisticated campaigns based on what resonated with your audience before, and whatever information you provide—so be sure to lean into whatever meaningful data you have to really perfect your campaign elements for your customer journey and subsequent business goals. 

Although the dynamic creative feature is great for optimizing Facebook ads, there is a possible downside: As of June 2024, it won’t apply to campaign objectives “Sales” or “App Promotion.” And it doesn’t work on ads translated into multiple languages, or ads about political figures.  

When you want to optimize your ads, it's easy to focus on the creative elements and placements your audience sees on Facebook. But it's important to remember that what happens after prospects click your ad has just as much of an impact on the results. (Talk about a full-funnel strategy). 

For example: Dealing with a lot of link clicks but surprisingly few conversions? It’s probably your landing page.  

Here are a few simple updates you can make to optimize your prospect’s next step:

Do the same business name and logo appear on your Facebook page and on the landing page? Do the brand colors and style carry over from the ad to the website? Creating a consistent experience makes it easier for customers to trust your brand.

Does the landing page highlight the same offer that prospects saw in the ad? Make sure your landing page has all the information that prospects expect, or you’ll end up with a bounce rate that's way higher than necessary.

Are your landing page visitors confused about what to do next? Make it easy for potential customers to get what they're seeking. Many find placing call-to-actions (CTA) above the fold increases conversions.

Google Tag Manager tracks user behavior and improves landing page performance. It’s compatible with both the Facebook pixel and Meta’s newer optimized conversion API (affectionately known as CAPI). To integrate this and set GTM to track separate campaigns, check out Meta’s development notes. 

When you want to optimize your Facebook ads, it's easy to assume that having more control over budget distribution is better. After all, you know your marketing goals. Shouldn't you know how best to spend your budget?

Although Facebook Ads does allow you to set budgets for each ad set, this approach isn't always the best option. With Advantage campaign budget, , you take a lot of guesswork out of the process and let the platform do the math for you.

Advantage Campaign Budget tells Facebook Ads to distribute your entire spend across all active ad sets for the best possible performance. 

It’s most effective for high-performing campaigns, as ad delivery optimization doesn’t skew entirely uniformly. It’s also a solid choice if you simply want to reduce the number of budgets you have to manually manage.

Rinse, repeat, maximize results, and solidify yourself as an expert.

It really can be that easy. 

By default, Facebook ad campaigns typically use Highest Volume (or the equivalent) bid strategies. If you want to get as many results as possible without controlling the cost, the default bid strategy works just fine.

But what if you could generate more value or increase your ROAS with another bid strategy? Testing out some of the other available bid strategies is a great way to optimize your Facebook ad results.

You can adjust bid strategies at the campaign level (options may vary based on your objective and eligibility):

• Cost cap: Set your desired cost per action while generating maximum results
• Bid cap: Control the amount you bid in every ad auction
• Minimum ROAS: Maximize the value you get for every conversion

For most campaign types, Facebook recommends using automatic placements—a setting that allows the platform to place ads wherever they're most likely to generate the best results. That means your ads display anywhere from the Facebook news feed to Instagram Stories to the Audience Network.

Choose a campaign to view and select Placement from the Breakdowns dropdown menu.

Then, sort by metrics like rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC), or cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) to see the most competitive options at a glance. 

Did any of the placements dramatically outperform others? If so, use this information to scale optimization effectively. 

Do some of your target audiences far outperform others? Only data will tell. Follow the same workflow outlined above to find and prioritize your best-performing segments.

In Ads Manager, choose a campaign and select a demographic metric like Age, Gender, or Region from the Breakdowns menu. Then, the results will be reviewed closely to find the segments with the lowest CPM, CPC, CTR, or other key metrics.

Note: Because of the iOS14 changes, this only works for campaigns that aim to get traffic or link clicks. It will not work for campaigns aimed at lead generation or purchases.

You can use your insights to adjust your current saved audiences or create new ones. You can also add select parameters to your lookalike audiences to get more control over who sees your Facebook campaigns.

Since detailed targeting is based on demographics and interests, they're ideal for targeting people who fit your company's customer profile. That makes them a good match for upper-funnel campaigns that focus on increasing awareness and expanding reach.

But as your campaign objectives move further down the funnel, detailed targeting audiences tend to be less of a good fit. Instead, it's much more effective to retarget people who have engaged with your content or shown interest in your business.

You can remarket by building custom audiences with data sources like your company's:

• Client lists from your eCommerce site or customer relationship management (CRM) tool
• Website, including people who have visited specific pages on your site
• Facebook page or Instagram account, including people who follow your business or who have engaged with your content
• Facebook shop, including people who have browsed or made a purchase

Using the Catalog Sales objective for your campaign, you can also access a built-in retargeting option at the ad set level. You can show ads to people who viewed products or added them to a shopping cart, and you can upsell or cross-sell to existing customers.

With a well-constructed Facebook ad funnel, you’ll continue to connect with new potential customers and introduce them to your business. But eventually, you’ll reach all of the most affordable people in your target audience—making your advertising costs increase.

If you’d like to deliver your ads to more people who are similar to your target audience, use Facebook Ads' lookalike option. With lookalikes, you can choose one of your custom audiences as a source and let Facebook automatically find people who share the same characteristics.

Use source audiences that align with the funnel stage you want to target for best results. For a bottom-of-the-funnel objective like Catalog Sales, you might use a custom audience based on your current or most valuable clients.

Keep in mind you can always fine-tune your lookalike audiences using Advantage lookalike. It’s automatically enabled for duplicated, new, or draft campaigns already using lookalike audiences. 

The consideration here is that targeting options are limited for minors. So, if you’re working to reach a younger demographic, this method will not be as effective. 

The more conversions your ads generate, the larger your pool of existing customers will likely become. Sometimes, you may want to upsell and cross-sell to existing customers, or remarket to them when it's time to stock up again.

In other cases, however, serving ads to existing customers wastes your ad budget—which would otherwise be going toward the “right” audience members. 

Thankfully, it’s possible to exclude the audience segments that don't provide sufficient value. And you can do it in just a few clicks. 

All you have to do is create an ad set, or go to an existing ad set. Then, click through to Audience Controls. There, you’ll select Show More Options and enter your excluded audiences in the proper on-screen text box. Then, save and run your ad as normal. Congratulations: You’re now using your ad budget more effectively. 

At its core, event optimization optimizes your delivery based on an app or web event. You choose which event you’re going with by considering your business goals and KPIs. As you make your choice, note that you’ll want to optimize for events deeper in the funnel—like conversions. 

The  Experiments tool is one of the best ways to dial in a campaign. A/B test entire ad campaigns, or narrow your inputs down to different ad sets to see what works best for your audience.

For best results, use the Facebook Experiments tool to set up ad sets that are identical aside from one difference—such as optimization events, target audience, placement, creative, or ad types. Then, choose the key metric to determine the winner—such as cost per result or CPC. This formula allows you to get the best data possible, putting you one step closer to your desired action: profiting from your ads. 

A major part of Facebook ad optimization is figuring out how to get the results you want reliably. Once you've accomplished that step, it's often a good time to scale your campaigns. With Ads Manager's automated rules, it’s easy to ensure you don't miss a key opportunity to scale.

To set up automated rules, go to your Ads manager and check the box next to the asset you want the rule to apply to. Then, go to the More dropdown and click on Create a New Rule. You’ll then be directed to a dialog box where you’ll build it out, laying the foundation for your desired action and an (extremely) successful ad campaign. The last step? Add a trusted subscriber to get notifications about your rule, and click Create. 

We think it’s about time you made your Ads account work for you—and automatic rules are one of the best ways to do that. 

You have over a dozen ways to improve your campaigns and get better results. The difference is in the small details. Start testing each one of these tips for incremental changes per idea. Collectively, you'll see a huge difference (and a lot more return).

If you’re looking for extra support, you’re in the right place. Connect with Klientboost: The “secret weapon”  Facebook Ads agency that’s taken the guesswork out of paid social since 2015.

Advantage campaign budget (formerly Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO)) allows you to automate your spend to get the best results possible. It works best in three primary situations: You have multiple ad sets that you can allow flexible spending on, you want to minimize manual budget management (we don’t blame you), and you want to maximize your value—wherever possible.

Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) is best for those looking to scale campaigns using personalized variations of an asset. It pulls from data you submit in the Ads Manager unless you have Optimize Creative for Each Person toggled “on.” In this case, Facebook will take more liberty with optimization, going beyond the media and ad components submitted. 

Remember: The platform needs enough variation in creative assets to effectively optimize while maintaining consistency in your brand messaging and visual identity, so make your submissions strategic and aligned with this recommendation. 

Creative fatigue happens faster than most advertisers realize, possibly setting in any time an ad has been seen multiple times with no change or refreshment. Since around 19% of ad impressions have seen the asset 5+ times in a 30 day period. It’s more of a risk than pros might realize as well—especially for remarketing audiences.

Thankfully, the Ads Manager is smart enough to flag the risk of fatigue ahead of time, helping you react proactively instead of reactively. 

Note that the solution to this fatigue isn't just making new ads—it's implementing a systematic creative testing schedule. That’s why we recommend you create variations of your best-performing ads by adjusting one element at a time (image, headline, or copy) while maintaining the core message that's already working.