The Triple-Threat: How the Rule of Three Significantly Reduces Facebook and Instagram Advertising Costs

Aristotle suggested it first: “omne trium perfectum” – Latin for “Three is Perfect.” We marketers refined it to create stickier slogans – “Just Do It,” and more persuasive messaging – “Skin care that hydrates, clears, and brightens.” Good things come in threes. Applying the rule of three to Facebook and Instagram by prioritizing quality, relevancy, and locality leads to both an increase in the effectiveness and a significant reduction in the cost of advertising. When we place emphasis on these three critical factors, we develop ads that are engaging, targeted, and personalized for the audience. In addition, they enable us to stretch our marketing dollars.

Defining the Three Critical Factors

Quality

Quality refers to the overall standard of the ad’s content. We can see how the standard brand-level awareness ad covers this with brand-quality media and messaging.

Relevancy

Relevancy involves targeting the ad to the right audience based on their interests, demographics, and behaviors. Many brands run national ads to geo-targeted or DMA audiences, erroneously believing it achieves locality. However, even at these targeting levels, the call-to-action remains unspecific, and messaging revolves around driving brand awareness, not helping the audience take the next step of their journey to purchase.

Locality

Therefore, to achieve true locality, ads must be launched from your local partners’ Facebook Business Pages. This strategy enables brands to utilize brand creative within highly targeted ads that speak to the unique needs and preferences of local customers with specific calls-to-action that drive traffic to local businesses. In effect, adding locality to campaigns supercharges the quality and relevancy of your advertising, dramatically driving down advertising costs.

 Below, we can see how this strategy works for both branded, like franchises, and independent locations.

Show Me the Savings

So, what does “dramatically driving down your advertising costs” look like? In an analysis of campaigns launched through the Tiger Pistol platform in Q1 2023 (1/2023-3/2023), Tiger Pistol’s triple-threat (Quality + Relevance + Locality) ads saved marketers an average of 77% on the cost of reach campaigns (measured in CPM) and saved 32% on the cost of traffic campaigns (measured in CPC).

 

What about your industry? Available comparison data from Q4 2022 for traffic ads validates Tiger Pistol’s Rule of Three. Adding locality decreased the cost of advertising by more than 25% nearly across the board, by nearly 50% for automotive, travel and hospitality (including QSR), and healthcare, and by more than half for fitness, home improvement, FinServ, beauty, and consumer products/services.

Why are Tiger Pistol’s clients achieving this efficiency with their local campaigns? According to Meta,

“People prefer to see ads that are relevant to them. And when businesses show their ads to relevant audiences, they see better business outcomes. That’s why we consider how relevant each ad is to a person before delivering an ad to that person. Ads that are more relevant cost less and see more results. This leads to better experiences for people and businesses alike.”

Ultimately, Facebook preferred ads run through Tiger Pistol. In addition, these results occurred during the holiday advertising high season, breaking through the noise and gifting these advertisers a discount. Now is the time to evaluate how local social advertising can fit into your holiday marketing strategy and everyday marketing plan 

Aristotle said, “Three is perfect,” and by now you should agree. For the perfect Facebook and Instagram ad, nothing beats the trifecta of quality, relevance, and locality.