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Facebook Relevance Score: What It Means and How To Improve It

When businesses advertise on Facebook, their ad is graded with a Facebook Ad Relevance Score. This Facebook metric analyzes how well your ad performs for your target audience compared to competitors. The more relevant your advertisement is, the more users will engage with it and, hopefully, convert into customers.

Facebook relevance scores are graded on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the least relevant and 10 being the most relevant. Unfortunately, understanding your Facebook relevance score and how to improve it is not entirely clear to many advertisers. We’ll break down the Facebook relevance score, why it matters, and steps you can take to improve your ad’s relevance score on Facebook.

What Is a Facebook Relevance Score?

Most advertising platforms have a metric to determine how well an ad performs. On Facebook, this metric is called a relevance score.

A Facebook relevance score tells advertisers how well their ad resonates with their target audience. This score reveals the level of quality and engagement Facebook expects your ad to receive.

Note that it is based on what Facebook expects, not on the actual performance of your ad. This can be helpful, as you can test an advertisement’s relevance score first to see how Facebook grades it, and make edits or changes when necessary. You can also test based on different target audiences, or you can track how an ad performs over time if the relevance score changes.

Why Does Relevance Score Matter?

Facebook relevance scores are important, not only to tell you how well your ad resonates, but also because it can affect the cost of your ad. An ad with a high relevance score will be cheaper, as it will have a lower cost per click. Ads with a high relevance score also tend to have a better click through rate, meaning they are more likely to receive clicks that lead customers to your website.

According to Facebook:

“Relevance score is a reflection of ad performance, not an input to ad performance. In other words, a higher relevance score is associated with improved performance, but does not itself drive the improvement in performance”

This means the score itself does not determine your ad’s performance, it simply judges its performance or its improvement from past advertisements from the same account.

Relevance scores matter because they determine how well your ad performs for your target audience, and reaching customers is, after all, the point of advertising.

Facebook relevance score also affects the price of your ad; if you have a higher relevance score, it will cost less to put that ad in front of your target audience. Facebook rewards good, relevant ads with cheaper costs per click. Facebook wants to show its users ads that pertain to them, so the better and more relevant your ad is, the more likely it is that they’ll be willing to place your ad on their platform for a lower cost.

What Is A Good Facebook Relevance Score?

Since the relevance score is on a scale of 1-10, the best score is obviously 10. A score of 1 is bad, meaning that your ad is not very relevant to your target audience and received little engagement. Aim for a score from 7-10. Ads with scores of 4 or less tend to generate very little in terms of clicks and customer leads.

How Facebook Relevance Score Is Calculated

Once your ad has been served 500 times, Facebook determines its relevance score. The score is determined by Facebook’s expected feedback, both positive and negative. Positive feedback depends on the objective of your ad (views, clicks, conversions), while negative feedback is based on how often Facebook expects users to hide or report the ad.

Expected and actual feedback, target audience, ad relevance and freshness, and campaign objective all factor into your ad’s Facebook relevance score.

How To Find Your Facebook Ad Relevance Score

If you’ve run or tested an ad on Facebook, follow these steps to check your relevance score.

      1. Open your Facebook business manager page.
      2. Click the menu at the top left to switch to “Ads Manager”.
      3. Click the “Ads” Tab.
      4. Scroll right to see metrics for each ad, including relevance score. If relevance score is not included in these metrics, click “Columns” > “Customize Columns” and check the box next to “Relevance Score” to put it on your dashboard.

ad relevance score facebook

How To Improve Your Relevance Score

If your ad has a low relevance score, you should make some adjustments to improve its relevance and, in turn, the efficacy of your advertisements. Facebook is ambiguous about exactly how to improve relevance score, but we’ve collected some tried and true tips that have worked for other advertisers.

Refine Your Targeting

Maybe your ad is beautiful, with great copy and and a perfect image. If your target audience is not accurate, your relevance score will still be low. Refine your target audience to appeal to the absolute best and most specific demographic that is most likely to engage with your ad.

If your reach is too broad, get more specific. Facebook has a tool to show how defined your audience is, so aim for the green area right in the middle. If your ad is shown to too wide a range of users, its score will likely be lower because some of those people simply aren’t interested.  You can target certain demographics, interests, and behaviors online.

When you consider your targeting, you should also think about how well your ad speaks to that targeted group. Maybe your target audience is correct, but your content does not match the interests of that group. Make sure that your ad is appealing to those you’re choosing to target.

You can also segment difference audiences for different ads, and create custom audiences with each new ad. Another tactic is to target users who have engaged with one of your ads previously. However you choose to tinker with your target audience, always keep in mind who your ad appeals to and how to best reach users who will engage.

Create Great, Eye-Catching Ads

Once your targeting is optimized, you should consider the ad itself. Is it eye-catching? Is the headline intriguing? Is the content interesting enough to click on?

The image on your ad is particularly important here. Imagine you’re scrolling through your Facebook feed, skimming posts and stopping for some. You most likely won’t stop on an advertisement from an unfamiliar account unless the picture grabs your attention. The photo on your ad should be relevant to the content and attention grabbing enough to make users pause and read.

facebook relevance score

The copy of your ad should also be appealing so that users click to read, view, or perform whatever action you’re aiming for. Optimize your headline to draw in the most users, and be sure that whatever copy is immediately readable is intriguing as well. Give readers a cliffhanger, or ask a question that they’ll want the answer to so that they click on your ad and keep reading.

Refresh Your Ads

Let’s say an ad on Facebook that once had a relevance score of 10 has dropped to a 7. The ad was clearly high quality and relevant enough for a high score and good engagement before, so what happened?

Facebook judges the freshness when determining relevance as well. Users are unlikely to click or engage with ads they’ve seen before (or over and over again) so Facebook will lower your ad’s relevance if it’s been pushed for too long. Change up your ad to keep Facebook and its users interested and engaged. Keep an eye on how your relevance score changes over time, and add new content when necessary.

Make The Right Offer

The offer made in your ad should be determined, in part, by what segment of your audience you are targeting. If you’re familiar with the marketing funnel, you already know that you should consider what part of the funnel your audience fits into.

For an audience that has never heard of your products or services before (top of the funnel), you should offer information and try to get them to learn more about your business. Trying to convert them into customers right away may not be successful in the introduction stage.

If you’re retargeting users who are more familiar with your business, use ads that push for conversion, whether that means purchasing your products or services or getting them to sign up for something. Use retargeting lists to bring back customers who have engaged with your ads before but failed to convert.

facebook ads

Include a Call To Action

So you’ve got a user’s attention, now what? Be sure to include a clear, concise call to action to tell the user what to do next. Use actionable verbs like “Click here”, “Read”, “Learn”, “Try”, “Get”, “Save” or any action word that pertains to your ad. If your audience is mildly interested, tell them what to do next and they’ll be more likely to do what your ad was aiming for.

Experiment with different calls to action to see which ones are the most effective. You can also try to create a sense of urgency, either by including time-sensitive copy or making an offer that expires within a certain time frame.

relevance score on facebook

Create Location-Specific Ads

If your business operates in a specific location, this may seem obvious. Even for broader ads, however, targeting by location can increase engagement and lead to a higher relevance score. Create location-specific ads, even if the location is the only thing that is different, to find a more niche target audience in each locale.

Including a clickable map image of your business’ location is also effective at bringing in more customers and improving your relevance on Facebook.

Written by Erin

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