When it comes to advertising on Facebook or Instagram or using ads, the best advice anyone can give you is to be patient. The key to successful advertising is building a great foundation and, over time, look for easy to optimize your efforts. With that being said, here are some simple, but important things you can do to save money on advertising while still maintaining high quality ads.

Be Reasonable 

The average cost per click (CPC) is $1.72. Within the finance and insurance industries, it’s $3.77 but within the retail, apparel, hospitality and travel industries the average CPC is $0.75. Keep that in mind when determining whether or not your ad is successful.

Update or Delete As Necessary 

If the ad isn’t working, look into why it’s not working and if you can make adjustments (change in demographics and targeting) do that. If it’s just a bad ad albeit the graphics or overall messaging, delete it all together. Facebook gives ads a Relevance Score to determine and rank how good an ad is. Any score between two and five should be updated or deleted. This score means they are showing your ad to a lot of people who are not interested in engaging or purchasing. To save money on your advertising, you should delete the ad and start over.

Focus on the Goal 

The whole point of advertising is conversion: to get customers to buy in. If you have an ad that has a higher CPC, but it yields you better suited and higher quality customers, keep it. Promoting only one specific post at a time helps drive audiences to a specific place and keeps down the cost of graphic design. People like to join in the conversation, not start it. The most effective advertising is simple.

Also, keep your images fresh and your content high quality so that you will always have something to promote. It keeps your frequency (how often people are seeing the ad) low and allows your advertising to grow with you and with your business.