When running ads on Facebook, you obviously want to know how your campaigns are doing – and you want to push for the best results possible.

Even though ROI (Return on Investment, e.g. dollar in VS dollar out) is the most important metric, it often takes time before you have enough data.

That’s why many people focus on their CTR (Click Through Rate) of their ads, first. It’s the easiest way to compare your ads once you’ve gathered some initial data.

And it’s not just relevant for you, Facebook uses it as well. The CTR of your ads plays a major role in the relevance score of Facebook Ads, which can help bring your cost down tremendously.

Study shows that the average CTR on Facebook Ads is below 1%, which shows there’s lots of room for improvement.

So how do you get the highest CTR possible?

Check out our free targeting training here.

We’ve developed a 4-step Framework to help you improve the CTR of your Facebook Ads. 

This guide will explain depth about what you need to do in each step to gain a better CTR.

Step 1 – Select the right audience for your ad

This is the first and foremost the important step of all.

You need to target the right set of audience for your ad.

If you are targeting Apple Juice to Orange Lovers, do you expect high click through rate? Obviously not!

Though you might get some traction but this is not you want to achieve and neither did the targeted audience.

So you need to put the first step right by selecting the right audience for your ad.

The audience targeting starts from;

A – Geographic Location – Select the geographic location. For example, if your ad is targeted for people living in Phoenix, Arizona US – you don’t need to target the whole Arizona settlers.

B – Age and Gender – Some products might be suitable for all age groups but not all of them. Make sure you select your age group and the gender right.

C – Detailed Targeting – Facebook’s detailed targeting enables you to drill down and find your niches from hundreds of categories segmented by demographics, behaviors, and interests. Use these targeting capabilities effectively to filter out an ideal audience for you than just to target generically.

To see the magic of detailed targeting, we created a post that explained 25 unique facebook’s ads targeting ideas.

D – Placement – Facebook gives multiple options when it comes to placing your ad. If your ad requires visually more space to understand / be effective, it’s better to target your ad in Newsfeeds and desktop devices only.

With over 2 billion Facebook users, you need to be very specific people of how you set your audience targeting. The more targeted audience you have the better your chances of getting clicks and engagement on your ads.

Step 2 – Improve the look and feel of your ad

Once you have set your audience targeting right, you can expect that Facebook shows your ad to only super-targeted audience.

But bringing the right audience is the first part of the process. You will need an impressive ad copy and design to make those people click on your ads.

To increase the chances of people noticing and clicking on your ad, you need to focus on;

A – Headline – Your headline must be the “magnet” of your ad. In most cases, people will read the headline of the ad first before moving onto other elements.

B – Body Text – There are multiple places to add content within the body of a Facebook Ad. Use that space effectively and content that makes sense.

C – Image – The image in a Facebook Ad holds 80% of the space. Effective content or not, your image certainly speaks louder than words. Use an image that brings value to your viewers.

D – CTA – Your CTA button must be spot on. If you need someone to subscribe or sign up for your product, it’s usually best to match that with your CTA-button.

E – Type of Ad – If you are in e-commerce, Facebook Carousel Ads will work better over the standard ad as you will be able to showcase multiple images of your product. Moreover, you can also use Video Ads to show your ad visually and use the Lead Ads  if you need to capture leads. The key here is to set your objective right in par with what you are trying to achieve and what type of product you have.

Step 3 – Create a solid offer behind your Ad

The success of your Facebook Ad doesn’t lie just in the right audience and killer Ad copy.

There is more to it.

If you don’t have a solid offer or reason behind your ad, you might not be able to get more traction – even if plenty of people are seeing it.

To get the audience interested in your product, you must have something that will make your audience want to explore or get their hands on.

And all that depends on the objective of your ad.

A – Lead Generation

Make a strong case why someone should signup for your services or lead magnets. Below you’ll see an example from Smartly, in which they clearly state the end-benefit of signing up, along with a clear CTA inside the ad image.

B – Page Likes

Perhaps one of the simplest and most common objective with Facebook advertisers is to increase fans for their page. If you want your page likes to increase, clearly mention that in your ad copy and also the reason why one should.

Jasper’s Market pointed out what will you get if you like/ follow their page.

D – Sales

Are you going directly for the sale? See how Oco not only build awareness about their product, but also gives a discount offer to sweeten the deal (to increase conversions).

In case you’ve got multiple products (for example for your e-commerce business), it might be a good idea to list multiple of your products in a single ad using a Carousel Ad, just like NetDecor is doing below.

Step 4 – A/B Test everything above

A/B Testing or Split Testing is the final building block of improving your CTR and conversions. You need to proactively monitor your ads performance and stats to optimize and improve your CTR.

As a rule of thumb, you should split test everything above including;

A – Audience – Monitor the performance that you are achieving from your set audience. Tweak and optimize where necessary.

B – Ad Copy – From Ad image, text to CTA split test everything to see which gives the best result.

C – Ad Offer – Maybe everything is setup perfectly but you aren’t getting the clicks you were expecting. Other than the ad targeting and copy, try testing between different offers / products behind your ad.

You’ll find 23 Facebook Ads Split Tests you should run here.

Conclusion

Facebook Ads CTR is one of the most talked about performance metric. The higher your CTR the better your ad is performing ( at least in grabbing your audience’s attention and leading them to your offer / landing page etc)

The above recommendations and framework were designed to help you increase engagement and click-throughs on your Facebook Ads. They will serve as a stepping stone and guideline for you in improving the performance of your ads.

What CTR are you getting on your ads and how are you improving it?