8 Unusual Facebook Ad Hacks to Boost ROAS

If you're a B2B business investing in Facebook Ads and running out of ideas for increasing your ROAS - you're not alone.
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Facebook Ads require dedicated time testing and fine-tuning your targeting, creative, and content, along with measuring performance to find what's most effective at converting and giving a high return on your ad investments.
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To help you in your quest to launch profitable Facebook Ads that convert, you'll find our favorite 8 hacks below for increasing CTR and conversions, and ultimately yielding a high ROAS.
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Tip #1: Indulge in Storytelling

At the heart of any good marketing and brand, is a good story. One that connects with its audience and has a theme with a beginning, middle, and end.
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💡 Russ Ruffino, founder of Clients on Demand, makes $500,000 a month with his consulting business 🙌 so he's clearly an expert in his field. In one of his Facebook Ads below, he tells the story of how he helps clients see a 10x ROAS.

Another feature of this ad is its untraditional long-form content. This may go against what you've heard in keeping ad copy short and concise, given people's limited attention spans today.
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But if you have a compelling story and value-add that piques people's interest, it could really help you stand out against the typical B2B ad copy people tend to see in News Feed.
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On top of that, some people may be used to tuning out ads they see in News Feed, so it could work in your favor to create content that blends in and appears more like a regular post people are used to seeing from their friends.
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🔥 Pro-tip
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• A/B test different content types, lengths, and messaging to see what results in the highest CTR, conversions, and ROAS.
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Tip #2: Use Emojis 😍
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There's over 60M emojis used on Facebook everyday 😲. And on Instagram, an in-depth study by AgoraPulse saw 2.9% more interaction on posts with emojis 💪. AdEspresso also ran Facebook Ad tests with an SMB who got a 241% increase in CTR from a headline with an emoji.
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Emojis are widespread these days with regular communication 💬, as a simple smiley can more easily convey emotion or visually capture a concept better than text 😇, and make your content more relatable. How and when you use them depends on your brand voice and tone, so avoid going wild with emojis if they won't resonate with your target audience.
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💡 Promo keeps it simple with just a few emojis to add some extra emphasis on their benefits and how they help customers creating engaging video ads.
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🔥 Pro-tips
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• If you couldn't tell already 😜, we're huge emoji fans! If you need an easy way to type in a keyword or search by category to find that perfect emoji, try Emojipedia.
• To pull up your emoji keyboard on your computer, this shortcut works in Facebook Ads Manager and most text fields:
  🍎 For Macs: Press CTRL + CMD + Space
  ⌗ For Windows: Hold the Windows key and press either the period (.) or semicolon (;) key
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Tip #3: Optimize For Devices & Placements

The ongoing growth in mobile traffic and usage is here to stay. So naturally, you should also optimize your ads (and website) for mobile too 📲. Facebook lets you easily customize your ads by devices (mobile or desktop) and placements, including: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network.
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💡 By default, Facebook will opt your ads into Automatic Placements. It's worth trying this out initially to see which devices and placements result in the highest conversions and ROAS.
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From there, we recommend tailoring your ads by device types (mobile vs. desktop) and the placements that convert best. This takes a bit more work, but can also result in much higher ROI.
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🔥 Pro-tips
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• Devices: Run separate ad campaigns for Mobile placements vs. Desktop placements, and test different ad lengths and creatives.
• Placements: Create different ads for Facebook vs. Instagram, as the ad formatting and creative will look very different on Facebook News Feed vs. Instagram Feed or Instagram Stories (even though Facebook can automatically run your ads across both).
• Test Instagram Stories: This has been a new and effective placement we've seen for driving visitors and signups.
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Tip #4: Optimize For Different Conversions

A common issue we've heard and experienced first-hand at PixelMe, is low to no ad delivery when optimizing for bottom of the funnel conversions early on e.g. purchase or subscribe.
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When you're first getting started, while we recommend optimizing your ads for conversions, it's a good idea to consider how many people are regularly taking those actions on your site.

For example, let's say you optimize for conversions like purchase or subscribe right out of the gate, but don't have a huge volume of events for them just yet. It'll be hard for Facebook to know who to show your ads to, since they don't have a large enough data sample of people who've purchased or subscribed to work from. This will then result in low to poor ad delivery.
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Instead, you can try optimizing your ads for events further up the funnel that you know happen more frequently. E.g. signup, complete registration, add to cart, or even view content.
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🔥 Pro-tips
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• Once you have at least 500 monthly conversions for the events you care about, try updating your conversion optimization again. Read more in Facebook's FAQ.
• Note: optimizing for conversion events are typically more expensive than other ad objectives like Traffic (website clicks). So depending on who you're targeting, if it's a Custom Audience of warmed leads, try creating ads with the Traffic objective instead. You'll still be able to track conversions from the ads, while getting in front of people with cheaper CPCs.

Tip #5: Link Retargeting

When it comes to conversions, the best ads in the world won't convert unless they're targeted to the right audiences.
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Link retargeting is one effective way to zone in on people who already showed interest in your content. It's a newer technology that lets you embed an ad pixel to any link, and retarget anyone who clicked on them.
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This is particularly beneficial for links you share to 3rd party sites, such as Medium, YouTube, or PR articles, where you typically wouldn't be able to retarget them as you can't place pixels on sites you don't own.
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💡 JotForm uses our PixelMe Audience Builder to find new customers by automatically building Custom Audiences of people who clicked on their links. Here's an example of how they shorten links to 3rd party articles they're featured in and promote them on Facebook:
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In the words of JotForm's Marketing Operations leader, Erman Ergun:
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“We used to target people on social media by using the audience options on each platform. However, it felt like we were shooting in the dark sometimes, since the CPC was so high and the audience was possibly wrong. After using PixelMe, we started to build our own link retargeting audiences and used them in our ad campaigns. This helped us grow our volume of clicks and visitors, and decreased our CPC costs tremendously.

🔥 Pro-tips
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• Sign up for a free account to try our Audience Builder 🎉.
• Learn 5 ways businesses create link retargeting ads that convert.
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Tip # 6: Offer Free Tools

Nothing works quite like a great freebie. It's a common tactic used by E-commerce companies to incentivize new customers and drive sales, and can be used with some creativity by B2Bs too.
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We're not necessarily talking here about free tools in the form of content, such as e-books, whitepapers, and guides - though we do recommend testing them if you have a long sales cycle.
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Creating simple but free tools that help save potential customers time, money and/or address key painpoints, and promoting them in ads can be a major win for your ROAS and LTV.
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💡 WordStream pivoted from free trials and demos of their services, to a free Google Ads Performance Grade tool. It was a key need for their target audience, as it provides an audit on how a business compares to others with similar budgets. This led them to tremendous conversion gains early on.

🔥 Pro-tips
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• Providing tools for free can mean a heavy initial loss in resources and investments. So we'd recommend brainstorming a few ways to validate any ideas on simple tools with customers first, before getting to building.
• Try testing other unique offers or freebies that can be easier to create, as simple as branded giving away stickers, pens, and USB chargers. They can be used as a hook in ad contests, to the first 10 people who signup for a webinar, as a "surprise" for people who signup for your newsletter, etc.

Tip #7: Promote Engaging Ads & Posts

Social proof is one of the most powerful ways to show new customers why they should also join others like them.
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Success stories are one form of social proof 📚, and one of the most frequent questions we get from new and existing customers. So promoting customer quotes, stats, and stories you've published is one great way to increase conversions.
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Similarly, when people see an ad that already has a ton of engagement (likes, comments, shares), they're more inclined to pay attention and see why so many others have interacted with it. This is also advantageous for your business, as Facebook is more likely to increase distribution when there's high engagement.
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A good hack is to find some winning organic Facebook Page posts or Facebook Ads. Then, when you're setting up your campaign, rather than duplicating an ad (which removes all its previous engagement), choose from an existing post. This preserves all the great engagement you previously had, and sets up your ad for success.
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💡 Here's an example of a Facebook Ad for our Smart Attribution product with strong early traction.
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🔥 Pro-tips
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• Let's say you want to keep the existing engagement from an ad, but show the ad to different target audiences.
• Go to Business Manager to setup a new Campaign and Ad Set.
• When you create an Ad, select the second tab for "Use Existing Post" at the top.

• Under Creative, click on "Change Post" and search for your winning Facebook Ad (or Page post).

• You can then filter by your Ads posts (or Page posts) as well as search by keywords or their post ID.

• Note: you can also directly enter in the Post ID under the "Change Post" button. To find this from an organic Page post, simply click on the date and timestamp from the top of any Page post. Then copy the ID from the URL in the part after /posts. For example, the ID is bolded on this Page post: https://www.facebook.com/PixelMeInc/posts/691107701312637
• And voilà! You'll be up and running with a new ad that already has a lot of existing engagement.

Tip #8: View Competitor's Facebook Ads

The Facebook Ad library launched at the end of March, and is an amazing tool that shows all active ads from any advertiser.
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We use it regularly to get inspiration from leading businesses and others in our industry on different ad creatives, content, and marketing campaigns.
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💡 Here's an example in the Facebook Ad library for Intercom.

If the business is running ads globally, you can even filter by country to see how they run ads in different locations. And you can easily click on the ad itself or its CTA button to see where it takes people.
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🔥 Pro-tips
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• Visit the Facebook Ad library and enter in the name of a competitor or brand, then select them from the drop-down to view all their active ads.
• Get our list of top free Facebook Ads tools.
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Bonus Tip #9: Measure ROI with PixelMe 🤩

Do you know your Facebook Ads ROI? And how effective they are compared with other marketing platforms? Having this data can be your north star for where to spend your time and how to optimize your budgets 💫.

💡 Our new Smart Attribution tool gives you a 360 view of what's working. You can:
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• Measure ROI across ads platforms (Facebook & Google) and non-paid channels.
• Identify all your visitor touchpoints that led to conversions.
• Understand how your Facebook Ads fit into your customer journeys, from discovering your business to converting. Compare first touch, multi-touch, and last touch attribution models.

🔥 Pro-tips
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• Sign up for a free account to join our Smart Attribution beta 🚀
• Learn how our Smart Attribution solution works & request a free demo

Wrapping up
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So there you have some of our favorite Facebook Ad hacks, including ones we use at PixelMe to increase CTR, conversions, and ROAS.
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These are just a handful of ways to launch high converting campaigns, so as with all things in marketing, keep testing to see what's best at getting you the results you need.
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Hopefully you now have some new creative ideas brewing for tactics that can scale your ad campaigns, which aren't the typical cookie-cutter ones you've already heard 🍪💥.
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Want to track your Facebook Ads ROI? Sign up for a free 7-day PixelMe trial 🎉. Or send us a message from the chat feature in the bottom right-hand corner 💬. We'd love to help! 💌

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