Facebook Ads 101: What is your Relevance Score and why does it matter?

Like it or hate it, if your audience is online, they are probably on Facebook.

And let’s face it, pretty much everyone is on Facebook these days, even my 95 year old grandfather had an account to keep in touch with his growing family.

Because your audience is on Facebook, it’s a great place to get your brand in front of them.

But Facebook is far more than an advertising platform. It’s an engagement platform.

Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg spoke about Facebook’s goals to build communities. Online communities where people are actively engaged, not just sitting back and consuming information.

This is important, hold this thought and read on.

What is a relevance score?

If you’ve tried your hand at doing Facebook Ads you will have noticed that one of the stats your ad has is a relevance score.

It is a number from 1 to 10 that is given once your ad has been shown to more than 500 people.

Facebook calculates how much attention these people are giving your ad (likes, comments, link clicks, video views, etc), and gives you a score which equates to how relevant your ad is to them.

The more relevant your ad is, the higher score you will get. Anything above 8 is considered really good, if you can get 10 you have hit the nail on the head!

Why does a relevance score matter?

Remember two minutes ago I mentioned Facebook’s goal of building communities? They know that if they want us all to keep using Facebook we need to enjoy our experience on their platform.

Enjoyment stems from being engaged with people we like and consuming content we are interested in.

This includes being exposed to ads that we are interested in.

Of course this also serves the advertiser because you want to maximise your ROI from your campaign and that means getting it in front of the right people who are interested in your services.

Therefore, Facebook prioritises ads with higher relevance scores.

The more relevant your ad is, the better position it will be given in the news feed and a lower cost per impression will be charged.

How do I improve my relevance score?

1. Audience targetting.
Facebook offers you an insane amount of targetting information so you can drill right down and find your ideal customer.

Spend some time building your audience to define who you want to reach with your ad and you will be rewarded. Always select a targetted audience, never use a generic Facebook audience.

2. Deliver the right type of advert to the audience at the right stage of the sales process.
Whoa! This is starting to sound technical. But not really — just be aware of the sales process and where your selected target audience are at. If they are cold (don’t know you), it’s pointless to serve them a sales conversion advert because you need to build trust with them first.

But if you are retargetting previous website visitors or people who like your page, then a conversion advert will work.

However, be wary of overselling on Facebook. Most of Facebook’s users say they don’t like being sold to when they’re in their social zone so you’d be better off using your ad to entice them over to your website and do the selling there.

3. Craft your messaging to engage your audience.
Yes obviously you need to get them engaged so they act on your ad. Rather than talk about yourself/your company, talk to them about their problems. Use carefully crafted messages to draw them in, get them to read your ad.

Ask a question and get people to answer you in the comments, or entice them to click on that button. Every time someone clicks on ‘hide adverts’ or reports your account, your relevance score will be impacted, not to mention your whole account!

4. Create a seamless journey for your audience.
Did you know that Facebook’s technology assesses your landing page or sign up form and judges it for how relevant it is to your advert?

They also check things like page loading times. These elements influence how they score your ad for relevance and how much priority they give it in the feed.

5. Follow Facebook’s advertising policies
Play the game by their rules and they will reward you. This means avoiding hard sell ads, click bait, and even putting text in all caps.

Certain words are big no-nos, so are the old-school marketing banners with text overlaying images, so be savvy and read up on Facebook’s advertising guidelines before spending any money.

The guidelines are actually there to help you create a good experience for your audience so you are successful with your ads. (Yes, Facebook does want you to succeed so you can keep paying them to place more ads!).

6. Learn how to run ads the Facebook way
If you’re new to Facebook ads I highly recommend doing a short online course to learn about how to build your audience and structure your ads so you don’t waste money on campaigns that return no results.

Learn more about using Facebook for marketing on my blog:

How to understand the Facebook algorithm and use it to your advantage