How increasing advertising spend is leading to improved results on Facebook during COVID-19
Tags: Facebook Marketing, Advertising, Facebook Ads, Facebook, Advertisement

Photo by Tim Bennett on Unsplash

As we look at the current situation the world is facing today, it’s no surprise that COVID-19 has impacted many industries. A majority of the industries have been hindered in their performance and delivery, but with social media advertising, many opportunities have been introduced and companies can increase not only their brand awareness but ad performance and delivery.

Our Advertising Specialists at Optimize Social Media looked into the widespread performance of ads and how these unprecedented circumstances have affected them.

Let’s start with the statistics.

As we know, there are more users online at this time. Since the pandemic outbreak, AppAnnie reports that the average weekly time spent in apps worldwide has increased by 20%. With a market increase of 20%, this presents opportunities to increase the number of users who see your ad within your target market and maximize your brand awareness. The more people who see an ad means the more engagement and recall your content and brand receive.

Though there’s an increase in online usage, there seems to be a decrease in digital spending. Digital ad spend is down 33% as many businesses have either adjusted their budgets in response to COVID-19 or completely stopped their campaigns for the first half of 2020. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, there are far fewer advertisers in the online market since the pandemic hit. This means that there is much more space for advertisements and costs to advertise have decreased.

Facebook in specific has reported that 89% of their advertisers have taken action regarding their budget as a response and 45% have either adjusted the media type they are using or shifted their budget among multiple media types.

For the first time in company history, the global cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) has dropped below $2. Not only does this mean an advertising budget ought to spend better now, but you can also reach a much bigger audience with a lower cost per result.

For example, if an ad had a budget of $150 last quarter and received 30,000 impressions, that would mean it spent $5 per 1,000 impressions. In theory, because of current algorithm trends, an increase in space for ads, and lower average CPRs, that same ad would have the potential for 60,000 impressions with the same $150 budget, spending half the CPR amount as before, resulting in potential ad delivery and performance.

With fewer advertisers in the market, more advertising placements, and an increase in online usage, the statistics show that business owners can excel by committing to advertising during this time and build brand exposure while spending the same amount as before or sometimes, even less. It’s now more important than ever to pay attention to key metrics and focus on your KPIs, tailoring your content to what your market needs. Because of how much society has shifted within the last few months, it’s important to look at performance by day, week, month and quarter to compare performance on ads in the past to now.

5 key metrics to focus on that are indicators of good ad performance:

CPR (cost per result) : how much spent per optimized result (impressions, reach, landing page views, EARL, etc.)

: how much spent per optimized result (impressions, reach, landing page views, EARL, etc.) CPC (cost per link click) : how much spent per click on the link in an ad

how much spent per click on the link in an ad Ad Relevance : how relevant an ad is compared to similar competing ads, based on user engagement after 500 impressions

: how relevant an ad is compared to similar competing ads, based on user engagement after 500 impressions Reach : how many people an ad has reached within its target market

: how many people an ad has reached within its target market Impressions: the number of times an ad was seen by a target market

Facebook Ads Manager allows users to customize metric columns, making it easy to view the most important ones right away.

So how do I react as a business owner to the advertising possibilities that have opened up?

It’s important to understand that given current circumstances, some strategy and campaign adjustments will be necessary. Just last week, Facebook offered four strategies to adapt your ad measurement during these times: simplify your strategy, reevaluate, use multiple images to run split-testing and consider the impact.

During a time like this, a target market wants to be seen, heard, and understood. Therefore, it’s crucially important to understand the loyal audience you have and the audience you’re continuously trying to reach. Simplifying and re-testing your campaign strategy and messages you’re delivering can make it easier for performance and allow your business to reach and connect with more users. This can lead to more website traffic, more page traffic, more calls to your store, etc.

Another step to take during this time is to focus on your engagement. Capitalizing on engagement can not only boost morale on your page, posts and advertisements, but it can help businesses understand who their audience is because we can almost guarantee that mindsets and needs differ from before. Engaging is another way to organically enhance the effectiveness of your content.

While understanding and engaging with your audience, it’s also valuable to focus on your message. While staying true to your business, services, and past messages, it’s important to be aware of the matter at hand and address it appropriately, per your market and industry. Maintaining the same tone in all of your messages is key.

With advertisement mediums in the midst of changing, staying up-to-date on strategies and more is pivotal. Learn more about COVID-19 content strategy and how to thrive as a business during the pandemic on our OSM Blog now.

Optimize Social Media provides social media & reputation solutions that evolve with our clients. As social media experts we manage Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yelp, YouTube and Instagram accounts for our clients daily. We help the modern business owner implement a specialized social media strategy so they can make more money in real life. Enjoy our blog.