What is CPC in Facebook ads

Have you wondered how to reduce your Facebook advertising costs and improve return on investment? Your instincts are right: lowering cost per click (CPC) translates into more clicks and sales, with the same budget.

SEMgage experts often must explain that making Facebook Ad CPC more cost effective, “it depends on a lot of different factors.” There is no ONE, definitive answer. We’ve had some clients’ campaigns reach more than 1000 people on Facebook for just $7!

It really doesn’t matter how big your business is, you should always be looking for new optimization opportunities on how to reduce your Facebook Ad costs and improve return on investment.

In this post, we’ll give you 5 most useful, concrete tips to lower your Facebook Ads CPC so that you can wring the most from your advertising budget.

How to sell online

Tips from

experts for small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.

Please enter a valid email address

What Is Cost Per Click on Facebook?

Cost per click, or CPC, is a metric that demonstrates how much, on average, each link click costs you. CPC allows you to analyze your Facebook ad efficiency and performance.

So, how is CPC determined? Facebook Ad CPC is calculated as the total amount spent divided by link clicks.

If you’re wondering, “What is the average CPC on Facebook?”, the answer is it depends on your industry. According to Wordstream, financial advertisers have the highest ad costs on Facebook: the average CPC is $3.77.

As for the apparel, the average cost per click on Facebook for this industry is $0.45. Those are the cheapest clicks on Facebook ads. The average cost per click on Facebook across all industries is $1.72.

Now, let’s find out how to lower cost per click on Facebook.

1. Understand Your Relevance Score

First things first, try to understand what a Relevance Score is because it directly affects Facebook Ad CPC.

The Relevance Score is the magic number that varies from 1 to 10 letting you know how relevant an ad is to its target audience. A Relevance Score of 1 is very bad; it means that your ads are not relevant to your audience. Facebook will only continue showing it if you pay more. On the other hand, a Relevance Score of 8 or higher means that your ad perfectly matches the audience you target.

The components of the Relevance Score are fully based on expected positive and negative feedback. The more positive interactions you expect an ad to get, the higher the score will be.

The Relevance Score will be assigned only after your ad has been served more than 500 times. In case you have a low budget, it may take a while before you see the score.

How to check your Relevance Score?

It’s very easy. Open your Ads Manager, select a campaign and then select an ad set. In the “Ads” tab you will see the list of ads you launched, each of which will have its own Relevance Score.

Here are a few things to consider if you want to improve your Relevance Score (and eventually, lower Facebook Ad CPC):

• Be very specific with your targeting; try to narrow your target audience.
• Think about how your image and message will match with your audience’s preferences.
• Always refresh your ads.
• Try showing different ads to the same audience, always test everything.
• Avoid using offensive and misleading content.

2. Ensure You Are Targeting a More Specific Audience

Getting as specific as you can with your target audience is one of the most important and useful tips for lowering Facebook ad CPC.

Running campaigns with specific and narrow targeting gives you a recognizable advantage: you know exactly whom you are targeting. This clarity should lead you to create special offers and ads that your audience will be interested in.

Moreover, by reducing your target audience you can significantly decrease the competition from other brands that target the same people. In this bidding war, you have to only bid on people you really want to reach.

3. Focus on Increasing CTR

In order to lower your CPC, start focusing on click-through-rate (CTR). Increasing CTR increases the Relevance Score because Facebook recognizes that your audience is responding to your offer. It’s a match!

Wonder how to lower CPC on Facebook? Use these tips to increase your Facebook Ads CTR first:

• Use a fascinating headline in your ads. The text of Facebook Ads is one of the first things that a potential customer notices, so try to be very direct and compelling with your ad copy.
• Make your image stand out in the News Feed. Choose high-quality images of your product or associated with your business. Use bright and contrasting colors. Include people showing positive emotions while using your product.
• Use the right call-to-action buttons. As the research shows, using a CTA button improves CTR on Facebook by over 80%, so try to select the call-to-action which correlates with what you want your viewers to do.

4. Look for Audience Overlap

A huge problem with running Facebook Ads campaigns is overlapping audience issues when you promote different ad sets to the same audience. The larger the overlap, the worse your campaigns will perform, and the higher CPC you will get competing with yourself. More alarming, the higher Facebook Ad CPC you will get competing with yourself.

Don’t waste your money fighting for the attention of the same audience: use Facebook Audience Overlap tool to check if audiences are overlapping significantly — and, if they are, mutually exclude those audiences to avoid bidding against yourself.

Check for audience overlap with these steps:

1. Open the Ads Manager.
2. Click the Tools drop-down menu and choose “Audiences”.
3. After that, click the “Actions” tab and choose “Show Audience Overlap”.

You can select multiple audiences to compare and see the percentage of overlapping users between these audiences.

5. Don’t Neglect Conversion Tracking & Utilize Retargeting

Did you know that having Facebook conversion tracking set up accurately will help you lower the CPC of your ad campaigns?

Conversion tracking isn’t just about measuring your return on investment, in reality it helps you increase the revenue you generate from your Facebook Ads — the primary goal of any advertiser. So if you want to know how to lower CPC on Facebook Ads , don’t ignore conversion tracking.

Facebook makes conversion tracking incredibly simple with Facebook Pixel. Once installed, the Facebook Pixel acts the same way that Google Analytics code does — it goes to all of your pages and helps you track anything you want in addition to being able to create any audience you want.

These two remarketing audiences have proven the most effective:

• Customer File Audience: You can upload a list of your customer emails that Facebook will match to accounts for you to remarket to.
• Website Traffic Audience: You can create a remarketing audience based on previous websites visits.

Just an interesting fact for you to know — Facebook Remarketing Ads generate 3 times more engagement than regular Facebook Ads. If you have Ecwid’s Facebook Store, the new Pixel integration allows you to set up the Facebook pixel without coding and target right prospects and advertise to previous site visitors.

Work on Lowering Your Facebook Ad CPC

Now that you know how to reduce CPC on Facebook ads, start implementing these useful tips today. You’ll see how much your Facebook Ads costs change tomorrow.

There are a lot of factors that can affect Facebook Ads costs, including your audience targeting, bidding strategies, conversion tracking, and Relevance Score. Knowing how to improve them arms you with essential tools that will help to preserve your advertising budget.

Do you want to learn more about advertising on Facebook?

• How to Advertise a Business on Facebook for Beginners
• What Is Facebook Pixel and How to Use It?
• 5 Ways To Lower Your Facebook Ads CPC
• A Foolproof Way to Make Your Facebook Ads More Effective

What is a good CPC on a Facebook ad?

How is Facebook CPC calculated?

What's the average CPC for Facebook ads?

What is a good CPC?