Does your firm run ads on Facebook? Are you thinking about getting into Facebook ads? Then you’ll want to know about a major shakeup to one of Facebook’s key metrics: Relevance.
Relevance has been a long-standing Facebook metric. Here’s how it used to work. Facebook crunched the numbers on how well people liked your ad, then assigned each ad a Relevance Score of 1 to 10 (1 being not relevant to your audience, 10 being highly relevant to your audience).
This was important because it allowed you to see, at a glance, how your audience was responding to your ads. Low relevance scores? Your ads may not be speaking to your audience well enough. High relevance scores? Something you’re saying is really clicking with people.
At least in theory. In practice, most people don’t ever connect to ads for a lawyer, so most lawyer campaigns saw low relevance scores. Here’s the good news: Facebook is splitting up Relevance into 3 different categories in an attempt to make it more useful.
No one really knows just how useful it will be. In other words, don’t rely too heavily on the new metrics, but do make sure you keep an eye on your ads’ new Relevance scores.
The three new scores are Quality Ranking, Engagement Rate Ranking, and Conversion Rate Ranking. All three of the new Rankings will display as the following:
• Above Average
• Average
• Below Average (Bottom 35% of ads)
• Below Average (Bottom 20% of ads)
• Below Average (Bottom 10% of ads)
Above Average: are ads above the 55th percentile in performance. Average: are between the 35th and 55th percentile.
Your ads’ Rankings are compared to other ads competing for a similar audience, not necessarily to other lawyers’ ads. It’s important to remember, though, that on social media, your biggest competition isn’t other lawyers: it’s all the more interesting and compelling content that distracts users from engaging with your content (i.e., cute cat videos). If your firm is running ads, here’s what these new scores mean: you can now measure the quality of your ads against other ads being delivered to the same audience. In particular, if you see consistently low Quality Rankings, there are several issues you should look into:
* Are you delivering your ads too often (check Frequency), thus annoying the people who are getting them?
* Are your ads making statements that are too provocative, causing people to hide or report them?
* Is your landing page well-coordinated with the ads? Ads that take users to a landing page that’s different from what they expect will likely get hit on the Quality Ranking.
* Are there mistakes in your ad copy or obvious flaws in your ad images?
Don’t jump the gun on your Quality Rankings: if you see consistently low rankings on all your ads over time, though, that likely means there’s a disconnect between what you think the ads are doing and what your audience thinks of the ads.
The other score we think will be useful for lawyers is Conversion Rate Ranking. It’s likely that scores will be low for lawyer ads (which don’t convert as well as many industries).
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Where Conversion Rate Ranking really shines, though, is if you’re running a Facebook ads campaign targeted at a low-level conversion, such as a free e-book download. With low-level conversions that you get hundreds of in a month, Facebook should have enough data to accurately gauge your conversion rates against other ads.
So what should you do if you’re seeing Below Average Conversion Rate Rankings? Check for some of the following:
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* Are your calls-to-action (CTAs) clear? Do they provide a good value proposition to the audience?
* Is it clear to users what they are getting by providing their information?
* Is it clear to users what you will do with the information they provide you?
* Is the title of the resource you are offering people compelling and interesting?
These new rankings are still being rolled out, so don’t expect wonders. If you’re considering whether or not to even run Facebook ads, these metrics likely won’t be a huge game-changer. They are, however, a new tool in your toolbox that can help you improve your ads. Succeeding at Facebook advertising is oft en a matter of tweaking and testing lots of different things, and Facebook just made it even easier to see what’s going on with your ads.
