Introduction

When your Facebook ad is not being served to as many users as you’d hoped, consider three main factors: reach, bids and creative. Each can be the reason for lack of traffic. Below are five suggestions to optimize Facebook campaigns and increase volume.

Campaign Structure

Ad sets within a given campaign share a budget. One tip to increase volume is to decrease the number of ad sets competing for dollars.

If two or more ad sets within a campaign target the same users, those ad sets will be in a constant battle to outbid each other for impressions, clicks, etc. To avoid this issue, ensure that each ad set targets a distinct set of users.

Budget

One of the most common causes of low volume is an inadequate budget. Consider allocating more dollars to your campaign in order to encourage diffusion.

Bidding

If your campaign is not getting the volume you desire, try increasing your bid. Best practice is to bid at least 50% higher than recommended at the outset of your campaign and optimizing down from there.

Another thing to consider is your bid type. If campaign volume is low using an oCPM bid type optimized for conversions, consider optimizing for clicks at the outset to increase traffic. If CTR is high, switch to CPC or oCPM (optimized for link click) bids.

Targeting

A target that is too narrow or non-specific can throttle volume. If your target contains fewer than 100,000 users, consider increasing target size. If your target contains more than one million users, consider narrowing and refining your targeting parameters.

If you are targeting using interests, refine your keywords by performance. You can use Interests reporting capability of the Marin Social platform to determine which keywords resonate best with your audience. Interest Clusters tab in the Marin Social platform can help you brainstorm additional keywords to include – input your existing interest keywords then click Suggest More.

Creative

Irrelevant or stale creative can cause Facebook not to diffuse your ads. Check the relevance score (keep in mind this is not always an indicator of success) to see how your ad is being received by users. If your ad has been running for more than two weeks, consider swapping out new creative to freshen the ad.