Conversion Optimization for Facebook: 6 Hacks to Try Today

Didn’t think you can practice conversion optimization for Facebook? Well, we’ll show you how with six easy tricks.

A common misconception with conversion rate optimization (CRO) is that it’s only applicable to websites. So it may not automatically occur to you that CRO principles are actually applicable on social platforms like Facebook.

This is an old way of thinking. One that confines social media in the notion that it is only for staying in touch with peers. And where social media management functions solely as an advertising and brand building channel.

While those functions are still true, especially for giants like Facebook, they are also more sophisticated now. These days, seasoned digital marketing agency like us see social media as a platform for shopping – sparking a trend called social commerce.

READ ALSO: Guide to What is Social Commerce and Tips for Small Businesses

The social commerce wave making it critical to optimize

Currently, billions of people are active on social platforms. And, if social commerce trend reports are any indication of a new browsing and consumption behavior, a whopping 52% of those users are likely to make a purchase.

Moreover, in Asia, where the trend sprung, social commerce is keeping up with ecommerce as a preferred shopping platform. It has even overtook traditional retail (35%) in preference, with 78% of the repsondents giving nods to social commerce.

The numbers, without a doubt, point to one thing: Businesses will benefit from optimizing conversions on social media platforms. And, if anything, neglecting to make a shift now could cost you business growth.

If you’re looking to increase your conversions now, then let’s get you started on optimizing on the biggest one, to date: Facebook.

Hacks to improve your Facebook conversion rates

Conversion rate optimization isn’t easy if you look at the grand scheme of things. But thankfully, for beginners, you can simplify its concepts to gain an incremental improvement in your conversions.

ADDITIONAL READING: 7 Essential Elements of Conversion Rate Digital Marketing

As you get the hang of using data analytics and testing campaigns later on, you can then scale up. For now, here are a few simple steps you can take:

1. Create striking and engaging visual content.
2. Engage your audience realtime via live streams.
3. Always have a clear and compelling call-to-action.
4. Direct your audiences to your websites.
5. A/B test your campaigns.
6. Invest in Facebook Ads. 

1. Create striking and engaging visual content.

People are visual creatures. That’s the main reason why visual content works so well on social media platforms. Visuals are both an easy and effective way to immediately help your audience understand what your product or service is all about – leading them one step closer to purchasing.

There are a number of ways you can engage your audiences through Facebook posts such as those you put up on your page’s feed, or as ephemeral content. Then, there is the format, where you have options such as videos, styled product shots, carousel photos – and the list goes on!

But with the matter of how to create this visual content, remember these simple best practices for designing visual content:

• Be consistent with your branding. People are easily thrown off when they sense that something doesn’t fit your brand image. Make sure that every visual element and copy in your graphics fit the identity of your brand that your audiences have come to know.
• Allow your audience to help you with your content. Simply put, try to include your audiences in your brand story and bank on user-generated content. Apart from an engaging exercise with your audience, user-generated content is also a great way to establish your credibility to your users’ unique audiences.
• Let data drive your visual content. Balancing creativity with data is a tough but necessary task if you really want to succeed in digital. Once your visual content is produced, make sure to test and gather data on which ones work best through an A/B test – which we will go more in-depth with later – before you serve them to your audience.

2. Engage your audience realtime via live streams.

Video streaming and live selling are on-trend mainly for the reason that it’s proven to be effective in increasing conversions on Facebook or other platforms.

Arguably, live selling is the new way of commerce, especially with how the pandemic significantly reduced our access to shopping centers. Customers don’t have the same experience of touching, feeling, or trying out a product themselves now, and live selling functions to bridge that gap.

Apart from that, the numbers speak for the case of video selling’s effectiveness, too. In recent video marketing statistics, it was found that a whopping 79% of users were actually convinced to buy a product after they watched a video about it.

3. Always have a clear and compelling call-to-action.

A call-to-action (CTA) is non-negotiable when it comes to marketing online, especially on social media. This is because, on top of striking visuals, the CTA provides the follow-through. Meaning, it will guide your audiences on exactly what to do now that you have their attention.

Social media copywriting varies from other regular copywriting in that it mainly seeks to create a social connection between your brand and audience. It balances communication about your brand and services with simply just being relatable to your audiences.

But whatever story you’re telling on social media, always make sure to close it with a sensible and compelling CTA, or else put to waste your and your audience’s time.

Let’s take a look at this sponsored post from Lotus Activewear. Right off the bat, you can see what the product is, what the sale is about, and the value proposition of the brand. It even has a link to their ecommerce website in the caption. But you’ll notice that there was no CTA on the graphic, and only incorporated it as a button feature.

While that works well enough, this can be improved by adding the CTA in the caption, or perhaps the visual content. Introducing a CTA before the reader gets to the button below will also make more sense with the urgency that “until stocks last” is trying to communicate.

Photo courtesy of Lotus Activewear on Facebook.

Additionally, you will only have a few seconds to deliver your spiel to your online audiences online. Make sure to cut to the chase and deliver your offer before it’s too late and they scroll past your ad.

4. Direct your audiences to your websites and landing pages.

This is something that was done by our previous example. The link to the ecommerce website was in the caption, plus it was integrated into the CTA button as the landing page.

How does this increase your Facebook conversions? Well, you can’t transact on a Facebook post, so while your ads may be reaching a million people, they can’t make a direct purchase. You will still need to lead them to your website or other landing pages. If not, they’ll just end up scrolling past your content and you just lost a golden opportunity to convert.

Here’s another example to further drill in the point. Local pawning company Palawan Pawnshop consistently informs its customers about its online remittance services.

They continually get this done by regularly creating posts that demonstrate the product or service, accompanied with engaging social media copies, topped off with a CTA and a link to the relevant landing pages. Below, you can find it in both the caption and the visual content, itself.

Photo courtesy of Palawan Pawnshop – Palawan Express Pera Padala on Facebook.

5. A/B test your campaigns

You’ll want to make sure that your visual content is backed by data. Specifically, we mean that you should take the time to have your creatives go through a few rounds of A/B testing before you serve them to your audiences.

This is so you can ensure not just effectiveness in increasing your Facebook conversions, but also in reducing costs, especially for campaigns that stretch on for at least or over a month. You can see how this is done, below.

Figure 4.1. Facebook’s data showing the average Reach and Average Engagement for a specific content format. As you can see, visual content like videos and photos outperform links in this case. Photo courtesy of Facebook.

While that’s enough data to go on in terms of determining what formats work best with your audiences, a thorough A/B test for Facebook Ads optimization will help you develop crisper insights. Through this method, you can compare two different executions for a specific campaign, and see what messaging, presentation concept or even CTA works better for your audiences.

Figure 4.2. This A/B split test above is an example of how you compare ad sets on Facebook. This test aims to find out which of them will reach more people for a given budget. Screenshot taken by Propelrr.

A caveat to note: A/B testing can take up both time and money if you’re not clear on your goals and objectives. To avoid wasting resources, make sure to be discerning of what content you’ll really need to subject to A/B split tests and for which specific campaigns.

Ideally, these should be done for high-ticket campaigns – such that require a high conversion rate, or those that will run for a considerable amount of time.

6. Invest in Facebook Ads

Now that you’ve crafted the graphics, the CTAs, ensured there are links, and done the A/B tests to make sure that your material is top-notch, what else can you do to increase your Facebook conversions? Invest in paid ads to widen your reach.

Online marketing is just as much of a numbers game as it is offline. In marketing on Facebook, investing in Facebook Ads tremendously helps in increasing your reach; and increased reach means higher chances of audience conversions.

Through a paid boost ad, you can double or even triple the reach of your campaigns, compared to just relying on your organic reach. On top of that, you can also enjoy the benefit of widening your audience base.

Through boosted content, you can tap audiences that you’ve never reached before. Additionally – and if your content is compelling enough – you’ll get amplified reach when audiences share your content. If you serve audiences with highly engaging and shareable content, who knows? You might end up going viral for the right reasons.

Key takeaways

Although it can get perplexing at times, increasing your Facebook conversions isn’t rocket science. Sure, not every post isn’t going to win you that conversion, but don’t be too quick to dismiss the effectiveness of your efforts without first making sure you’ve exhausted all your options. Apart from these tips, you should also remember that:

• Marketing to people. From the name itself, social media is a platform for interacting with people. While it’s okay to go a bit hard-sell every now and then, always keep in mind that you’re talking to people who have their unique interests and concerns. Master marketing to and connecting with people, and you’ll win those conversions, easily.
• Experiment and establish yourself in your niche. When you target everyone, you reach no one, is something we like to say in Propelrr. This is because when you go broad, you lose focus on you and your audiences’ goals and purpose; then, your messaging becomes scattered and confusing. Determining and establishing your foothold in a specific niche will help ensure more quality audiences that are willing to support your brand.
• Don’t forget your fundamentals. Tools, techniques, and best practices on digital marketing will change, and they will do so in the blink of an eye. Don’t doubt that and don’t make the even worse mistake of not adapting.

In need of something more in-depth or advanced to help increase your Facebook conversions? We’d love to help you out. Just drop the Propelrr team a line over on our Facebook, X, or LinkedIn accounts, and let’s talk.

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