Best practice for Facebook Challenge Ad Creatives (and the common pitfalls to avoid!)
For thousands of people, Facebook Challenges offer a fantastic deal: quick, simple sign-up, flexible participation, huge communities, and lots of support. But for non-profits, they only deliver a great return on investment (ROI) if they recruit the right people. This process must start with the ads.
Facebook Challenges have run on a large scale for over three years now. Some charities still see year-on-year success with the same ad formula. However, others must adapt to recruit the best possible fundraisers and avoid that dreaded ad fatigue.
Here are my top five tips for creating scroll-stopping Facebook ads. These tips will help your organization reach those untapped Challenge participants out there (yes, they really are out there!). I’ll also cover some common pitfalls to avoid.
Tip 1: Focus on the Challenge, but Highlight Motivations
The Core Message: Clarity and Conciseness
The first rule with any social media advertising is to be clear and concise. People need to know exactly what the Challenge is, when it’s happening, and the incentive for joining. This information will fill a large part of your ad text.
Balancing Motivation and Mission
This clarity shouldn’t be the copy’s sole focus. People join the Challenge for various reasons, and you can appeal to these different motivations in your ads. Therefore, use short, concise messaging to also highlight your non-profit’s cause, mission, and impact.
Also, tell people about the community they will join in the Challenge Facebook Group. Create copy with different messaging themes. This helps you appeal to a wider audience and balance gaining high volume with gaining dedicated fundraisers.
We recommend having a few text variants, focusing on different motivations and secondary asks. For instance, run one set of ads focused on the Challenge and the Group. Run another set focused on the Challenge and the Incentive. Finally, run a third set focused on the Challenge and the Cause.
A Warning About Freebies
It is tempting to promise a prominent freebie. However, be wary of focusing too much on this incentive. You may acquire many leads, but they are more likely to be inactive fundraisers—or worse, the dreaded t-shirt bandits!
Some ads can still promote the ‘team’ incentive, but you should avoid using the word ‘free’ in your promotion.
Tip 2: Give Different Messages a Fair Chance in the Auction
If you loop Facebook ads into the same ad set, they will compete automatically. One ad will get the vast majority of the budget. Sometimes, the ad with the largest number of leads at the lowest cost wins. Crucially, the lowest cost sign-up doesn’t always equal the best fundraiser!
Tests have traced individual ad leads to fundraiser activation. These tests show that incentive-focused creatives often have a very low cost-per-lead. Conversely, they can also have a very high cost-per-active fundraiser. Ads focused on both the cause and the Challenge, meanwhile, can yield higher rates of fundraiser activation and ROI.
Thus, consider separating your ads on different messaging themes into different ad sets. This allows each message to receive a fair budget share.
Tip 3: Learn and Adapt as You Go
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) Beyond CPL
Throughout your Challenge acquisition stage, you must monitor metrics beyond the simple cost-per-lead (CPL). Specifically, look at the cost-per-active fundraiser, the percentage of registration to active fundraiser, and the daily volume of leads to the Facebook Group. These KPIs tell you if you are on track. They also help you spot where to adjust your creatives.
Budget Shifts Based on Quality
Featuring the incentive in ads can be a good lead magnet; it helps you get the volume you need. However, if you have many incentive sign-ups but a below-target percentage of active fundraisers, consider shifting budget. Move away from incentive-focused ads and allocate more money to ads with different messaging.
Your results can help you decide where to scale up and scale down your budget. For professionals, use a VLOOKUP to match your Facebook Lead Report to your Fundraiser export from CSV. Then, you will know exactly how each ad truly performs.
Tip 4: Avoid Launching Too Many Ads at Once
Respecting the Learning Phase
Two years ago, Facebook announced they would limit the number of ads a Facebook Page could run simultaneously. They warned of the negative effects of running too many ads:
“We discovered that four in ten running ads fail to exit the learning phase, and many of these ads come from advertisers running too many ads at the same time.”
The learning phase occurs when ads gain enough required actions (leads, donations, etc.) to build a profile of a more focused target audience. Experts often consider that 50 conversions (50 Lead Form submissions in the Challenge case) are needed to exit the learning phase. Ads also need continuous data feedback to keep learning and optimizing. If your budget is spread too thin across too many ads, they never get enough data to continue optimizing. If your ads fail to exit the learning phase or take more than a day to do so, your budget per ad is probably too low.
Optimize with Dynamic Creative
Consider cutting back on the number of very similar ad image variants. Alternatively, try Dynamic Creative Ads. Dynamic Creative lets you upload multiple media (images, videos, etc.) and text options. It then mixes and matches them to serve the perfect combination per target. Instead of having four different but very similar incentive-focused image ads, you can loop them into one Dynamic Creative Ad. You can then have a different Dynamic Ad for each motivation theme.
Releasing Content in Waves
Releasing content in waves is also a great way to maintain campaign momentum. If you have too many variants, hold some back. Release them later, adapting them based on the results you monitor closely. Facebook wants new content. Because there are more and more advertisers, your ads only get a short window before others push them out. Years ago, I once had an ad run uninterrupted with excellent results for five months. Today, I’m happy with a two-week run.
Tip 5: Try New Things!
Sometimes the tried-and-tested ad still works best. Therefore, we still recommend producing unbranded, simple, not-too-polished, Challenge-focused creative.
However, that doesn’t mean you can’t test, learn, and think outside the box. A cancer charity recently had a 15-second video as their top creative. Separately, an animal welfare charity featured a cat prominently on their walking Challenge, tapping into the online cat obsession. Sometimes what works might just surprise you.
Avoid the Trap: Don’t Be Fooled by Your “Best Performing” Ads
Defining True Performance
When you advertise your Facebook Challenge, you must ask yourself: who will your ads appeal to most?
We see some charities get more excited by their Facebook Challenge ad results than by their fundraising performance. A low cost-per-lead is only good if it brings in high quality fundraisers. Often, Challenges fail because they ended up recruiting the wrong audience!
So, how do you know if your “best-performing” Facebook Challenge ads are actually giving you the worst results?
Calculate Your True Cost
Follow these simple steps to find out:
- Take the total media spend on your ads.
- Divide total media spend firstly by the total number of fundraisers. Then, divide it by the total number of fundraisers with at least one donation (depending on how up-to-date your income reporting is).
- Project your performance if your recruitment continues at the same rate.
Next Steps When Performance is Low
If you discover your cost-per-fundraiser/active fundraiser is too high or you are not getting the volume you need, here is what to do next:
Rule out other factors: Test your calls-to-action to make sure they are clear and the links work.
Apply creative corrections: This depends on your results. Remember that raising the age targeting and removing Instagram as a placement helps to refine your audience.
Review ads for quality/quantity: Are there any ads bringing in a better quality of lead? Use a VLOOKUP to compare leads to fundraisers to be really sure.
Move budget: Put more budget where you think the lead quality is better. Alternatively, ensure each Ad Set has a decent budget (more than they need). Use bid caps and a Campaign Spending Limit to stop them getting out of control.
Start afresh: Duplicate the best quality ads into new Ad Sets with their own budget. (Use new Campaigns if you have Campaign Budget Optimization on). Also, keep it fresh by adding new creative based on lessons learned.
Final Note on Optimization
Remember, if you make significant edits to individual Ad Sets or ads, they will re-enter the learning phase. This may slow progress. Therefore, it is always better to separate creative and audiences into individual Ad Sets with their own budget. That way, you can switch them on and off, or duplicate and replicate to build on success.
If you choose to use Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO), it gives the majority of the budget to just one Ad Set. This is either the one with the biggest audience, or, if the audiences are the same size, the one with the lowest initial CPL. It will continue to favor this Ad Set even when you add new ones. CBO might make monitoring ads a bit easier, but it could prioritize your budget to the more ‘click bait’, lower quality ads.
📅 Book a GivePanel Demo
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Related Resources
Quiz: Is your non-profit the right fit for a Facebook Challenge?
Find the quiz and guidance here: https://givepanel.com/blog/is-your-nonprofit-the-right-fit-for-a-facebook-challenge-quiz/
Is optimizing Facebook Ads for lowest cost per lead giving you the best Fundraisers?
Read the full analysis here: https://givepanel.com/blog/is-optimizing-facebook-ads-for-lowest-cost-per-lead-giving-you-the-best-fundraisers/
Facebook Business Manager Best Practice: How to stay compliant when running Facebook fundraising campaigns
Check compliance best practices here: https://givepanel.com/blog/facebook-business-manager-best-practice/