These past couple of months we’ve seen big fluctuations in Facebook Ads Campaigns performance. In some cases results have dropped as much as 60%, withous any changes in audience, budget or creative. Conversion rates sunk for retail businesses, meanwhile product prices kept increasing.
But there is no surprise!
The surge of ecommerce and online spending
The pandemic caused a surge in the online advertising industry as more and more businesses moved their marketing efforts in social media. According to Forbes, online spending increased over 77% procent in May 2020, with 82.5 bilion dollars spent only in the US.
Ecommerce wesites saw an increase in traffic surpassing even last year’s winter holiday season. The global user count almost reached 22 bilion visits in June 2020 alone, according to Statista.
More supply ≠ more demand
Businesses “fled” to the online, seeking financial shelter, but only some customers followed. Most people from pandemic affected countries stopped spending as much and some became unemployed. So although we saw an increase in supply, there wasn`t an equal increase in demand.
Yes, Facebook monthly active users count went up by 200 million in 2020, but not all of them we`re online shopping.
More and more advertisers
Facebook runs ads in an auction environment. This means that the price is directly related to supply and demand. The advertisers count on Facebook went ub by 1 million worldwide in the second quarter of 2020, reports Statista.
Thus, users started seeing more and more ads. This means that advertisers have more and more competitors bidding for the same audience.
Not only that, but more competition meant users started seeing the same ads more and more often, as unexperienced businesses and advertisers promoted their products for the first time online.
Facebook Ads competing with UGC
Another factor we need to take into consideration is that ads started competing for attention with an increasing volume of User Generated Content on Facebook.
According to HotSuite, in June of 2020 worlwide users were spending 2H 22M on social media each day. Also over 350 million photos are uploaded every day and over 1 million links are shared every 20 minutes on Facebook.
So advertisers have to not only compete with each other but with an increasing quantity of UGC from people staying at home or exepriencing new things for the first time, because of the pandemic.
What should you do
The obvious change you have to make in order to stand out in a more competitive enviroment is to provide a unique product. How does that translate to social media marketing in Facebook? Here are some pointers.
Increase budget and CPC cap
An increase in overall budget might get you more exposure. But in order to gain a higher CTR rate you might want to use manual bidding and increase the Bip cap.
Narrowing your audience
Narrow your targeting based on age and location. Setup multiple ads for your audience. Scale those who prove to get the highest CTR / Engagement Rate.
Ads that stand out
Create ads that stand out from the competition. Use professional product photography, video presentations, custom graphics, clever text and anything else that helps the users notice your ad among the newsfeed clutter.
Check your landing page experience
If you landing page gets an 11/100 on the Page Speed Test, you might find that your ads will fatique often. Improve the information you display on the product page, the loading time and simplify the checkout procedure.
Be prompt with customer support
Acording to Bazaarvoice, the number of questions submited by online shoppers to brands have increased by an average of 50% this summer compared to 2019. Be sure to answer as soon as you can to al the inquiries and complaints.
How was you experience?
I would love to find out how your marketing experience has changed over the past months in the comments. Good luck!
Marele Diminutiv 