There is a Facebook Ads metric that can make a huge difference in how your ads will perform. It is the relevance score of an ad. Before we dive into how you can improve your Facebook Ads relevance score let’s look at what it is and why Facebook introduced it back in the day.
Relevance score defined
Relevance score is a metric measure of engagement level and quality of ads on Facebook. It is vital in that it determines how frequently Facebook users will view your ad and also determines the cost per click (CPC) of the ad. It is how Facebook decides whether an ad is great or junk.
Relevance score is one of the most critical yet often overlooked metrics for Facebook ads. It is calculated based on implicit and actual engagement that Facebook expects the ad to receive. The score is refreshed as people engage with the ad (comments and likes) and click the link (or not).
When Facebook users do not mind the relevance of an ad to them, then the marketer does not get anything for having an ad viewed by someone out of the target audience.
The metric itself is simple: a score of 1-10—10 indicating that your target Facebook users find your advertisement super relevant to their needs and interests.
Ads are usually taken to be highly relevant or useful to the audience if they hit a score of 7 out of 10.
What Facebook Ads relevance score is NOT
Note the wording. Relevance score, not quality score.
The scope of this metric is not to evaluate how good your image or ad copy is. Facebook’s main goal here is to give you a good idea if your ad’s demographic target is holding your message directly related to them and thus engaging with your ad.
How to locate the relevance score of your Facebook Ads
First go to your Ads Manager or Business Manager. Click on a campaign and then an ad set. Now you will be able to see the different ads.
Here’s an example of what you might expect to see:
If you don’t see the relevance score column, then click the “+” symbol on the last column and then “Customize Columns.”
The next screen you will be taken to will look like this:
Here you have the ability to choose the columns you want to appear and also add relevance score to your Facebook Ads dashboard. Don’t forget to hit the Apply button for the changes to take effect.
Benefits of a high relevance score
Over the recent years, advertising through social media has grown to be a big deal. This also led to a number of companies taking the same trend to market themselves and catch new potential clients.
However, some consumers became unhappy about being bombarded by certain Facebook ads. Facebook decided to create a standard score known as the relevance score. They introduced it back in 2015. The purpose of this metric is to make both users and advertisers happy.
With a high relevance score, the cost per click for an ad is reduced. By having high relevance scores, you know that you are hitting the target audience making your online marketing better and efficient.
Low relevance scores will damage your returns on investment which is very bad especially for a small business.
How to increase Facebook Ads relevance score
To get more views on an ad, here are some tips that will help you to improve Facebook Ads relevance score.
1. Understand your audience properly
To deliver your message properly, you will need them well. It is vital to understand an audience as well as knowing your product.
You could make use of the Facebook’s saved audience, custom audience or lookalike audience. By so doing you will reach your message to both the existing audience and to the new audience base. To do so, you deserve information on some things about your potential client or customer including:
- Their preferences.
- Social class and status.
- Phrases and keywords that could arouse their reaction.
With you have figured out the ideal audience, it will be easier to reach the message to your targeted group and in turn raise your relevance scores.
The takeaway here is to design campaigns based on buyer personas. Here’s how to do it.
Having a hard time to define your ideal audience? Click the image below to be taken to a free Scriptly trial. With Scriptly’s Customer Avatars feature you’ll be able to define the exact personas you want to target.
2. Be specific with your audience
Upon knowing the audience you are aiming for should now even be more specific with whom you want to get the ad.
Companies collect user data for them to use it for more personalized advert targeting. Try to use the available information to find out and determine who views or interacts with your posts most. Such people are key to help you get a good relevance score.
An example is that in case someone likes your sports T-shirt, there is a good chance that he or she will react excitedly to an ad on sports shoes.
By making your target more specific, you get better relevance scores.
Use Facebook’s Audience Insights to get a good grasp of what your ideal persona’s interests look like on the world’s largest social media platform.
This built-in tool will help you learn your customers better and also create new Facebook audiences that are more relevant to you.
You can also utilize Facebook pixel to create custom audiences from people who have already visited your site. Then, you can use these custom audiences to create lookalike audiences—a way for Facebook to name augmented audiences that are similar to your web visitors. Here’s more information on custom and lookalike audiences.
3. Make use of split testing (also known as the A/B test)
Most of the Facebook users are known to scroll down the news feed on their phones til they see something that will capture their eyes. Mostly it is an image that users check after scrolling the rest of the feeds.
Therefore by making use of attractive images to lure your targeted audience, your chances of having a higher relevance score will improve. However, you should consider taking the A/B test before making the ads.
The test is crucial since you do not want the target audience hitting the “Hide Ad” button which will ruin your return on investment.
A/B testing involves taking two audiences and showing the same ad to them or taking two different ads and showing them to the same audience. From there you can take into note the comments and reactions of the audience towards a certain ad. You will also find out which ad will perform better when posted on Facebook.
By deciding which image to go with, you minimize the rate of the targeted audience disliking your ad or post.
4. Make use of Call To Action (CTA) buttons
Call to Action buttons are used by online marketers to lure the user(s) to take an action. To ensure your CTAs are the clearest possible is by being relevant to the target audience.
For instance, in an eCommerce ad there can be a CTA reading,” Shop now” or for a job providing company, it could read, ”Apply Now”.To make a good relevance score, you will need to analyze your CTAs.
If the CTA is creating ease of the users understanding your Ads’ objectives, then know you have a good relevance score.
Here are the options you have when creating a Facebook ad.
5. Make use of video ads
For ages, images have been appealing but right now videos are gaining popularity in advertisements mostly online.
Some marketers using video content are making better conversions. By using the newly introduced video view feature on Facebook, you can manage to have your ad viewed by users who are likely to react excitedly to it.
You also will get to know at what point in the ad do the people begin too loose interest, hence you can rectify before it is late. Using video ads will raise relevance score but however, you need to do it right.
6. You need to add a sense of urgency in your ad
Most Facebook users will either convert between the first twenty minutes of viewing the ad or will not convert at all. Hardly will someone see an ad, leave it without taking action, and then come back later in the day and try to follow up on the peoples’ previous thoughts. As long as people keep posting stuff then, any user, upon logging into his or her Facebook will check on the current posts.
The main aid of adding a sense of urgency is to have as many people convert on viewing the ad post. There are several ways of having people take action on an ad but the usual one is offering a discount or a limited time coupon.
Offering a discount and adding a statement reading “Discount Ends Midnight” or, “Discount For The First Twenty”, will get the users who can afford to rush to convert. Make it short and simple and having hit the right audience will yield great results.
7. Optimize your landing page
You need to keep congruence along the path as the user enters your sales funnel and follows through.
When users see your ad and click, they establish some expectations of what they are about to see on the landing page that follows the click. If your landing page headline is NOT a continuation of the advertising message, the user experience is disrupted and the visitor is more likely to abandon the page.
The more consistent an ad image and copy are with your landing page headline, images and copy the more likely you are to increase your Facebook Ads relevance score.
See more landing page tips that will help you build high-conversion pages and add to your relevance score.
You may also want to try Scriptly’s Page Builder module which allows you to create optimized landing pages that are already proven to convert. What’s more, with Scriptly you get pages that practically write themselves.
Get better ads for less
As we explained, achieving a high relevance score will help you pay a lower CPC, thus get your message in front of the right buyers at a lower total cost.
Because Facebook ads are becoming more competitive, you need to make your marketing as cost effective as possible. When multiple ads (that you and your competitors are running) are targeted to the same Facebook audience, a high relevance score will help your ads stand out from the competition.
Also, when you are testing different ad variations and want to choose a winning ad to scale, you should be looking for ads with a 9/10 or 10/10 relevance score. They will be more cost effective and easier to scale.