Saul Medeiors Affiliate Marketing: Facebook’s Relevancy Score: What You Need to Know

If you run paid advertisements on Facebook or are thinking about doing so, then you may have read about the various statistics that are measured, which show the performance of your campaigns. One particularly important statistic to note is the relevance score.

In this blog, paid search specialists Hallam Internet discuss what a Facebook relevance score is, how it works, and how you can improve yours.

What is a Facebook Relevancy Score?

Essentially, Facebook’s relevancy score is an assessment of the performance of your Facebook ad. It’s influenced by the positive and negative actions that viewers have carried out. Therefore, it’s a good indicator as to how your ad has been perceived by its target audience.

A higher relevancy score means it’s received a more significant number of positive reactions which in turn, will make your ads cheaper.

You want your score to be as high as possible.

How Do Facebook Relevancy Scores Work?

A relevance score will only be calculated once it’s received at least 500 impressions. The maximum value is 10, and you’ll notice that this figure continually changes while your ad is live. The reason for this is that every time an interaction takes place—whether it’s positive or negative—the score will update to reflect that.

Why Does Your Relevance Score Matter?

Think of it as Facebook’s version of Google AdWords’ quality score. To quote Facebook:

“Put simply, the higher an ad’s relevance score is, the less it will cost to deliver.”

A lower cost is a definite benefit, but there are additional advantages to have a high relevance score.

It Reflects Your Content’s Engagement Levels

Engagement plays a huge part in whether or not your Facebook ads are determined a success.

Engagement for Facebook has a broad definition. It can be defined as a click on your ad, doing an action and ultimately, converting—how you define conversion, is up to you.

If viewers aren’t engaging with your ad, then Facebook will view your ad as poor quality, and mark your relevancy score down.

Engagement It Enables You to Determine Your Ad’s Success

Once your live campaign has had over 500 impressions, you’ll be assigned a relevancy score. You can then see if your ad is successful. If it’s not deemed successful in your eyes, you can look further into it and either make changes to the audience targeted or the ad itself.

Monitor Your Message over Time

The fact that you can keep tabs on the success of your live advertisement is hugely beneficial, as it will allow you to make changes which you can continue to monitor.

See in real time whether the changes you made to your advert or audience have worked. If they have, your relevance score will increase. If not? Continue to refine your ad.

Reach More People with Your Budget

We’ve already established that if you have a high relevancy score, your ads will be cheaper. That means your budget can stretch further and you can reach more people than you would if you had a lower score. You always want to aim for as low a cost-per-click (CPC) as possible. CPC can vary drastically depending on your goals.

Get a Greater Insight Into Your Ads When Testing

If you have multiple ads running at any one time, then having individual relevancy scores can be a great way to see which of your ads has been best received by your target audience. It’s a quick and easy way to determine which of your ads should continue to run in the long term.

Positive and Negative Actions that Affect Your Relevance Score

Positive Actions

To increase your relevancy score, you need to increase the likelihood that your ad receives the action that you are looking for.

The campaign goals you initially set will determine which actions will be assessed. For instance, if you created a campaign to specifically generate conversions, then the most significant factor that will affect your relevancy score is the number of conversions your ad generated, and what the overall conversion rate is.

Alternatively, if you set up your ad with the aim of getting viewers to watch a video, then the score will be heavily influenced by how many times your video is played.

Negative Actions

One significant detrimental impact on your relevance score is the number of times your Facebook ad is hidden or reported by viewers. Regardless of what your campaign’s goal is, these two actions will always be classed as negative.

Another negative action that’s monitored is a lack of clicks. The influence of this will depend on how you set up your campaign goal. If your goal is impressions rather than clicks, then the damage will be less impactful.

What Is Classified as a “Good” Facebook Relevance Score?

Facebook suggests that an advertiser should aim for a minimum relevancy score of 7/10—although an 8 or higher is preferable.

How to Improve Your Facebook Relevance Score

There are several ways in which you can increase your relevancy score, although ultimately, the more engaging your ads are, the higher your score will be. Here are four fundamental ways in which you can increase your score.

Define Your Target Audience

We know that for a high relevance score, your ad needs to be engaging. You can create a highly engaging ad by ensuring that you are reaching the audience that will engage with it—aka your target audience. The better you define and target your audience, the more specific your ads can be, which in theory will make them more engaging.

When you create your campaign, you can create and save multiple audiences to match your customer personas. As well as targeting age, gender, and location, you can drill down into the demographics and target users with specific interests.

Audience Definition Develop Unique and Exciting Ad Content

Don’t just think you can hit the publish button on your ad, then sit back and relax. To improve your relevancy score, you need to continually monitor it (because it’s ever-changing) so you can drive higher results.

A diverse range of images and content on your ads makes them more relevant to the user; and the fresher your content, the better your results will be. That means you should test the copy and images—don’t be afraid to change it because ultimately, you’re trying to increase your relevancy score.

Determine Your Marketing Objective

Facebook will encourage you to choose a marketing objective when you create your ad. Objectives fall into three categories: awareness, consideration, and conversion.

Once you have decided on your marketing objective, you’re able to target your advertisement and insert suitable call-to-actions (CTA).

CTA

A great CTA is crucial to your advertisements’ success, as it will increase the chance of your goal being achieved. Remember—the higher your conversion rate, the higher your relevance score.

A/B Split Testing Your Ads

You should always test your copy and images when conducting Facebook ads. Pictures can play a more important role, just because they are what will initially catch a user’s attention and help to determine whether or not they engage.

Therefore, testing a variety of images can help to improve your relevancy score, as you can determine which one(s) your audience react to best.

Remember That Your Bids Are Still Important

Ultimately, your relevancy score is not the only factor that determines how well your advertisements are placed. Much like AdWords, your bid and daily budget are also important. If you have a high relevancy score and a very low bid, you won’t necessarily beat a competing advert if their relevancy score is just as high, but their budget is higher. The key to a high relevance score is user engagement. While developing and testing your ads can be time-consuming, it will be gratifying as you discover the cheapest, most efficient ads, which will benefit your brand in the long-run. User engagement is critical when it comes to gaining a high relevancy score for your Facebook ads. Developing and testing the best ads for your audience can be time-consuming, but also very rewarding.

Have you implemented Facebook’s relevancy score into your digital marketing plan yet? How has it changed your digital marketing ROI? I’d love to hear about what you’ve done in the comments!

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