When you’re focusing on conversion optimization there are many common questions. What should I optimize for? When should I optimize? If I optimize for conversions will it still work with a small budget? In this episode, we cover each of these and more to get you the best conversion optimization strategy.
What should I optimize for?
What you optimize for depends on what your goal is for the campaign. Not every Facebook campaign is being created to lead to a sale. Depending on where you are in the customer journey, your campaign goals may be different.
Top of Funnel
An example of this are campaigns at the top of your marketing funnel. In this case, we are targeting cold audiences that most likely don’t know us. One of the best ways to attract that audience and add value is through video ads.
Our primary goal is to get video views to build retargeting audiences based on watch time. To do this, we optimize for video views, or page post engagement.
Optimizing for video views optimizes for 10 second views. If your video is good, you will get longer view time, but Facebook is optimizing for 10 seconds.
Optimizing for Page Post Engagement optimizes for any engagement on the post. This has the benefit of usually also getting more likes, comments, and shares. This extra engagement then also leads to more organic reach for the post.
Instead of video, we may promote a blog post. In that case, our retargeting audience get built from page visits. To get the most page visits, we would then optimize for Traffic as Landing Page Views.
Middle of Funnel
As people move on to the next stage of the funnel, our conversion optimization goal changes. In the middle of the funnel, we are starting to optimize for conversions. Conversions can be either Facebook Standard Events or Custom Conversions.
Facebook Standard Events are Facebook Pixel events to identify conversions. The three events we use most often are Lead, Add To Cart and Purchase.
If the visitor opts in, the campaign will optimize for conversions and we’ll optimize for Lead Events.
We also sell lower cost products, sometimes referred to as “tripwire” offers. These offers create an irresistible offer to create that first transactional experience.
In this case, the event may be Add To Cart or Purchase. Most times, we are implementing code on the button to fire an Add To Cart Event. Then, a Purchase Event also fires on the thank you page post-purchase.
Bottom of Funnel
At the bottom of funnel, we use the same Add To Cart and Purchase events on higher cost products.
When retargeting deeper in our funnel we optimize for Reach instead of Conversions. This allows us to add frequency caps to the ads.
There is new functionality currently rolling out for Reach and Frequency which will be covered in more detail in a future episode.
How many conversions do I need?
When your campaign first starts, each adset will be in “learning mode”. Based on Facebook documentation, they expect at least 50 conversions for each adset in 7 days. With the new CBO (Campaign Budget Optimization) campaigns, we are seeing less needed.
eCommerce Conversion Optimization
For our eCommerce clients using Shopify and WooCommerce, we optimize for Add To Cart. In our testing, we found using Add To Cart instead of Purchase, our Average Order Value is usually higher.
One of the keys to optimizing for Add To Cart is also retargeting to combat cart abandonment. We also set up cart abandonment email sequences to bring people back to complete the checkout process.
Recommending related products throughout the checkout process will help increase the Average Order Value.