How to Improve Your Facebook Relevance Score

Half of the world’s population is now online, out of which 3.179 billion are active social media users. Facebook users now account for an impressive 28% of the global population, and it’s therefore important to pay attention to how to improve your Facebook relevance score to give your ads the edge.

So, what does this mean for advertisers?

As the marketing industry continues to shift its focus towards digital ads, the competition has been increasing and reaching customers through digital ads has become increasingly expensive. Not only that, we’re just getting better at creating and using digital advertising space. As a solution, ad platforms like Facebook and Google have come up with a metric for measuring the quality of ads. Simply put, the better the Relevance Score is, the lower the cost and the more people get to see your ads.

If we were to live in a perfect world, Relevancy Score would be highly transparent, telling advertisers what they are doing wrong and how they can actively increase their score. However, here, in the real world, the Relevance Score can be a highly confusing metric to wrap your head around

In order to properly understand how to make the Relevance Score work for you and not against you, you must first understand how it works and why it is important.

So How is Relevancy Score calculated on Facebook?

The metric itself is simple: a score of 1 to 10 is assigned as the measurement.‘1’ means that your target audience doesn’t find your ad relevant at all and 10 means that they love your ad and feel it improves their experience of the platform.So, if you ever want to tell how your ad is perceived by your chosen audience just throw a glance at your Relevance Score.

Pay attention to the wording Facebook uses for this metric. While Google’s is a Quality Score (meaning it rates everything from ad copy to landing page quality), Facebook cares most about relevance. Simply put, you can have the best ad copy and creative in history, if you are advertising men’s hair gel and you target women your Relevance Score will be low

According to Facebook, the Relevance Score is calculated by taking several ad quality and relevance factors into account. This allows them to tell you how relevant your ads are to your chosen audience in comparison to other ads targeting the same audience.

Positive factors (these may vary based on campaign objectives)

1. Clicks
2. App installs
3. Video views
4. Likes/comments
5. Conversions

Negative Factors

1. Someone reports the ad
2. Someone clicks on “I don’t want to see this ad”

You can only see the Relevance Score once the ad has gathered 500 impressions.

Why is the Relevance Score important?

1. It allows you to understand whether an ad will be a winner or a loser. As we previously mentioned, the Relevance Score is a blend of multiple metrics. By looking at it you can quickly figure out whether your ad will bring you the desired results.
2. It can lower the cost of your ad. The higher an ad’s relevance score is, the less it will cost to be delivered. The reason why this happens is that Facebook’s delivery system is designed to show the most suitable content for their users and the higher the relevance score is the cheaper it will be to reach them.
3. It can help optimise the campaign. A dip in the relevance score while the campaign is running can tell you whether you should adjust your creatives or audiences.

Keep in mind that the relevance score is not the only factor Facebook considers when delivering your campaigns. If you remember, in our last blog we talked about Facebook being a huge auction. Thus, as with any auction, how much you bid matters. Basically, having a high relevance score doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily win if the bid is lower than that of your competition. If you are not sure how to best optimise your bid and budget have a read here

What is influencing your Relevance Score?

We’ve mentioned it before, but it’s important to stress this matter as many marketers make the mistake of thinking the relevance score is a standalone metric. It is calculated from multiple metrics and factors.The Relevance Score doesn’t influence other metrics, such as Clicks and Click-Through-Rate (CTR). It’s exactly the opposite. If a Facebook Ad has a great CTR and is targeting the right audience, it will result in a lower CPC and a higher Relevance Score.

1. Campaign Objective: this is probably the most important factor when it comes to influencing the Relevance Score. This is because the goal that is set initially will determine which actions will be assessed for relevancy. For example, if the Campaign Objective is set as Conversions, the metric that will most influence the Relevance Score is the overall number of conversions and conversion rate.
2. CTR: this is common sense if you think about it. An ad that would be irrelevant would not get a lot of clicks and vice-versa.
3. Likes/Comments/Video Views/Shares: these are basic engagement metrics. Like the CTR, if people are liking, commenting on or viewing the video, Facebook will score your ad as being relevant.
4. Hiding or Reporting an Ad: these actions will impact the ad Relative Score negatively, and rightfully so. If people don’t want to see an ad it should be a big indicator that you have to change your target audience.

We’ve gone through what the relevance score is and how it works, now it’s time to see how to get that perfect score and low CPC.

Top Tips for Improving Facebook Relevance Score

Granular Targeting

It’s in the name! For the ads to be relevant, the right audience must be targeted. Furthermore, the broader the audience is the higher the chances are that the relevance score will be low.
So, according to Facebook the more focused your targeting, the better your relevance score is. This is better explained through an example:

Take us, Filed. We offer marketing automation software powered by AI. If we were to target a broad audience, let’s say both males and females aged 20 to 60 based in the UK, there is a high chance that the Relevance Score would be very low. But, if we were to target the audience based on their interests, like working in Digital Marketing, PPC or Advertising, the chances of having a good relevance score are much higher

Lower the Ad Frequency

Have you ever been annoyed by seeing the same ad so many times that you went that extra mile to click “I don’t want to see this ad”? If so, then you already understand why it’s very important to keep your ad’s frequency under control.

You can ensure that your Relevance Score won’t be affected by people seeing your ad too many times by rotating your ads regularly

Furthermore, another way to keep your ad frequency low is excluding people who have already converted or taken the desired action using Custom Audiences.

Run Your Ads at Strategic Times of the Day

The product you are advertising will be more relevant at certain times of the day than others. Determining which is the best time to run your ads at depends on your target audience. The aforementioned example would have a good strategic schedule between 6am and 9am, 12pm-2pm and after 5pm when people leave work.  But, if you own a restaurant that does deliveries, your ad would be most relevant at dinner time or on weekends.

Final Thoughts

The Relevance Score influences how much you pay for your ads and how many times Facebook will show them to your target audience. While understanding it is important as it has real benefits for marketers, it’s important to look at the whole picture. Yes, the Relevance Score is an important metric for your Facebook Ad’s performance, however, it is not the primary one. Facebook is still an Auction, and as we said before, the most important factor in an auction is how much you are bidding. Before we leave you, remember, the selected campaign objective also has a great impact on your Relevance Score – so keep this in mind when planning campaigns against your business objectives.

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