Whether you’ve just launched a brand new Facebook account, or you’ve been working on a three-year account with plateauing performance, you might be noticing something concerning: you’re not getting as many conversions as you should.
You’ve done all the hard work already – you’ve created your copy, perfected your targeting, and set up your conversion tracking to a tee. Here’s what you’re missing: enough data.
More importantly, the value to your data.
How Many Conversions Are Needed to Optimize Campaigns?
Before you say “increase audience size”, think about this.
In order to work at its maximum potential, the algorithm needs to have at least 10 conversion actions a day in order to efficiently learn and figure out how to optimize your campaigns.
Anything less than that and Facebook’s algorithm begins to flounder. It starts negatively impacting your ads’ delivery and fails to meet your campaign goals. You begin seeing a noticeable decline in performance.
Here’s the problem: you’re starving the algorithm.
You’re not giving Facebook enough data points, i.e. conversion actions, to make informed decisions. Without it, Facebook won’t be able to fully optimize your goals.
Your solution? Leverage the social element.
Leverage Your Customer Touchpoints
Instead of only tracking purchases, track specific touchpoints on the website that will allow Facebook to get a better idea of who your customer is.
After all, Facebook is a social platform first, right? It needs to know who you want to convert and their behavior – not just your end goal: X number of purchases.
Whether you’re working with eCommerce or lead gen, the strategy is simple and works across the board: test more micro-level conversions.
Here are some types of conversions you can test:
- Add to Cart
- Clicks on specific pages
- Initiate checkout
- Subscribe
View the full list of events you can track on Facebook here.
Test Your Micro-Level Conversions
Two to three purchases a day isn’t going to allow Facebook to learn fast enough to turn it around.
Testing micro-level conversions will expand the algorithm’s knowledge base so it knows how to capture more of the conversions you really care about. And improve your performance.
To observe the impact micro-conversions will have on your campaign optimization, try running an A/B test against your existing campaign.
Duplicate your campaign, select a micro-conversion that you feel will have a strong impact on your campaign goal, and evaluate performance after 2 weeks.
A/B Test: ‘Purchase’ and ‘Add to Cart’ Conversion Events
Broadening your collection of conversion events and digital touchpoints can feed a stronger, smarter algorithm.
We’ve seen great results by using this simple but powerful strategy with a number of our clients.
E-Commerce Client – Shoe Insoles: Case Study
- We did this experiment and saw a 15% increase in “Add to Cart” actions that resulted in a 10% increase in sales under the same ad budget.
E-Commerce Client: Laptops & Computers: Case Study
- We did this experiment and saw a 57% increase in sales with our “Add to Cart” actions and a 56% improvement in cost per purchase under the same ad budget.
