Facebook marketing campaigns are more complicated than advertised. The plug-and-play interface in Facebook ads manager, which is designed to work without user intervention, makes running ads a quick and simple task, but understanding why or why not your ads are performing well is what makes or breaks a campaign. When it comes to running a successful marketing campaign, there are a few key metrics that you need to keep a close eye on. One of those metrics is relevance score.
Your first question may be, what is a relevance score? It’s a good question, as relevance score is not as common a metric as reach or cost-per-click. Relevance score is a rating from 1 to 10 that estimates how well your target audience is responding to your ad. These scores are calculated based on the positive or negative feedback your ads receive from the audience you are targeting in your campaign. The more positive feedback, the higher the relevance score. Seems simple enough right? Wrong! Relevance score is easily defined, but not very easily fixed if your score is low. Fixing a low relevance score is another issue which we will revisit a bit later.
Your next question may now be, why does my relevance score matter? Understanding relevance score can actually help advertisers in a number of ways such as:
- It can lower the cost of reaching your target audience. The higher your relevance score, the less it will cost to be delivered. Facebook’s ad delivery system is designed to show the right content to the right people, so ads with a high relevance score are recognized by the Facebook as a positive signal.
- It can help advertisers when A/B testing ads. When setting up A/B testing for your ads. which is a comparison of two different ads, the relevance score will allow you to tell which version of the ad is responding best with the audience. Testing different combinations of image and copy with different audiences will give you different relevance scores. The ad with the best score is the one you should be moving forward with.
- It can also be an indicator of when an ad should be optimized. When you start to notice a dip in your relevance score, you may want to start optimizing your campaign as the decline of your score is a good indicator that the creative, or the target audience needs to be tweaked.
This leads us back to the most important issue, how do you fix a low relevance score? The good news is, fixing a low score is not a lengthy process, and improvements can be seen in just a few days. Some actions you can take to improve your score are:
- Testing new creative and copy. It is possible that the supporting copy or headlines you are using are not resonating with the target audience. Try using different calls-to-action or more engaging supporting copy to try and raise your relevance score. If that does not work, you should check on the ad creative, which is the ad campaign as a whole. Do your images stand out? Do they invoke a thought or feeling in your audience? Evaluate your creative strategy and try something to new to help try and boost your relevance score.
- Tweak your target audience. If you make changes to your copy and creative with no luck in boosting your score, you may need to revert back to the roots of the campaign and tweak your audience. Make sure the audience you are targeting is not too specific or too broad. You may be reaching people who fit a similar demographic of who you wish to target but are not at all interested in the product or service you are targeting at them. This will result in negative feedback to your ad and a low relevance score.
Now that relevance score has been defined and understood, you can see why it has become such an important metric when measuring the success of a Facebook marketing campaign. If you are seeing low relevance scores, try and make the necessary changes mentioned to help boost those scores. If you are having any other troubles with your social media advertising efforts, don’t hesitate turning to the professionals for help. Efferent Media would love to take a look at your campaigns and help take your business to the next level.
The next important step is placing yourself within your community. It is the role of a community manager to direct the tone and voice of your community. The tone should certainly reflect your company’s goals and values, but does not necessarily need to hold the tone of a corporate website. It is ok to let loose and have fun. You want your community to feel like they have a personal relationship with you and that they’re talking to a real person who understands their needs and concerns, not a robot. Relating to your community on a personal level will ensure long term success.
By always keeping a close eye on your competition, you’ll be better able to provide more resources to your community. To ensure you’re offering services that are unique, be sure to look at what you offer compared to what your competitors are offering. Watching your competitor’s communities can also be very beneficial in regard to finding new ideas for your own business. By paying attention to the things a competitor’s community says is not working for them, you will be able to stay a step ahead and implement a stronger community on your end.
