In 2019, the CPM on Facebook (cost per thousand impressions) was pegged at just $5.12, on average.
Today, though, the CPM on Facebook is north of eight dollars on average – and the cost is climbing higher and higher all the time.
The wild west days of Facebook being a whole lot less expensive to advertise on than Google are pretty much gone for good.
Savvy and strategic marketers are always on the hunt for ways to lower their CPM, and Josh Henry-Hicks from MuteSix is one of them.
A talented marketer but also a very strategic thinker about how to maximize resources to produce the most profit possible online, Josh share some of the most effective ways to lower your CPM numbers on Facebook below.
Use this inside information to drop your costs, boost the effectiveness of your ads, and pocket more money from sales as profits along the way.
How to Run Facebook Ads Without Spending a Small Fortune
Right out of the gate, it’s important to know that you’ll want to implement as many of these tactics as possible to find the ones that fit your market and your campaigns best.
In the world of online advertising there’s no such thing as a “one-size-fits-all” kind of approach.
You really need to sort of take a shotgun style strategy to success online, spraying and praying to find something that hits before laser focusing on that element before pivoting elsewhere to rinse and repeat process.
Here are some places to get started when you want to reduce your CPM costs on Facebook!
Laser Target Your Audience
The reason most responsible for skyrocketing CPM costs that Josh has found with MuteSix clients is a lack of laser targeting audiences and niches.
One of the biggest ways that the internet has changed advertising forever is the ability to laser target a specific group of people, a specific customer profile, and then deliver carefully crafted advertisements picture-perfect for them and them alone.
This allows for mass marketing that feels really intimate, marketing that can scale but still feel like it is being delivered to one person in specific.
If you aren’t laser targeting your audience right now the odds are pretty good you’re wasting a lot of money on non-buyers and (truthfully) people that have little to no interest in whatever it is you have to offer.
Tighten that ship up and you’ll be able to bring your CPM numbers down significantly.
Try to Zoom Out a Little, Too
Of course, Josh has also had some real success “opening things up” a little bit and creating larger audiences through the Facebook Ads marketplace.
This works simply because of the rules of supply and demand. The more narrow your niche and the more focused your campaigns, the more in demand that ad space is going to be (particularly in competitive markets) – and that skyrockets CPM.
Dial things out a little bit – broadening your audience without losing core elements that make your offer attractive to specific people – and you can drop CPM pretty quickly.
Even just broadening your audience from 1 million potential prospects to 2 million potential prospects can have a huge impact right away.
Generate a “Lookalike” Audience
Custom “look-alike” audiences on Facebook have been a game changer, not just for targeting (and retargeting) specific advertising campaigns but also for lowering CPM numbers.
The idea here is to create audiences similar to the kinds of audiences you’ve already found success with.
After all, if a specific group of people that share certain interests are buying your products like crazy the odds are pretty good that people similar to them are going to be interested, too.
Don’t be surprised if your click through rates, conversion rates, and profit numbers shoot through the roof as your CPM become a lot more affordable at the same.
Boost Your Relevancy Score
Anyone that has had any success with Facebook advertising knows the importance of the Relevancy Score (RS).
More and more information is leaking out, though, that Facebook takes the Relevancy Score more seriously than anybody could have imagined. It turns out that Facebook may actually reward advertisers with high RS, pushing their ads out to more people at a lower price point – dropping CPM along the way.
Everything you can do to improve your Relevancy Score will have a measurable impact on your CPM numbers. Get that score up and you’ll also have the added benefit of creating more relevant and higher converting ads, too.
Talk about a win-win kind of situation!
Always Split Test Your Ads
One of the first things that every marketer is taught is to track, optimize, and test EVERYTHING.
One of the first things that almost every marketer forgets to do, though, is abide by those three cornerstone success elements.
It’s almost criminal, in fact.
MuteSix recognizes the importance of tracking key metrics, measuring advertising campaigns against one another, and then optimizing the winners before rolling out new creative, new copy, and new offers to unseat the “king of the ring”.
You absolutely, positively MUST be split testing your ads on Facebook if you’re going to drop your CPM.
On top of lower advertising costs, with multiple creative’s rocking and rolling you’ll be able to better understand your market, find out what really makes them tick, and (more often than not), discover really surprising and nonintuitive approaches to ad campaigns that work like gangbusters.
Play with Your Offers
Don’t just split test your advertising creative, your copy, or your audiences on Facebook, either.
You also want to play with your offers.
Cook up different ways to bundle or package your products and services. Emphasize different parts of your offer with each new ad variation. Tinker with price and method of payment, too.
You might be able to come up with some interesting combinations that “unlock the vault”, so to speak. And as soon as you hit on a better converting offer you’re going to see your CPM numbers get back in line with what you expected, rather than the skyrocketing costs a lot of marketers are noticing today.
