By David Neuman
Facebook PPC advertisements offer one of the most targeted advertising platforms out there. With Facebook ads, you have the ability to target users by age, location (city, state, country), gender, interests / activities, their birthday, education level, workplace, among numerous other demographics. It’s easy to see the appeal of Facebook advertising, but if you fail to set proper expectations you will be disappointed. Below are some useful tips that all Facebook advertisers should follow:
- Pick a Relevant URL / Landing Page: Driving people to your website through Facebook is only half the battle. Whatever your goals are (be it sales, repeat visits, or form fills), you need to direct the Facebook user to the proper landing page to maximize results. This might require some testing to truly perfect.
- Ad Content is Key: Don’t rely on just the fact that you’ll be reaching a very targeted audience. These users need a reason to click on your ad. To increase conversion rates, make sure to be as specific as possible (i.e. if you are offering a sale, list the item(s) and how much the sale is within the content of the advertisement).
- Check Facebook Reach Estimates: Prior to launching your advertisement, Facebook will let you know approximately how many individuals you will be reaching based on the target audience you have selected. You might think “the more targeted the better”, but if you’re only reaching 100 users is it really worth the trouble?
- Don’t Neglect People Who Leave out Profile Data: Some Facebook users (just as a personal preference) will not list all data about themselves (location, gender, age, etc.). However, these individuals still might represent the target audience that you are trying to reach. If you’re not seeing the response rate that you anticipated by targeting a specicific demographic, try running an advertisement to all Facebook members. You can try targeting individuals within the content of your advertisement. For example, if you are offering a discount to seniors ages 60 and older, your ad content could say “If you a 60 and older, click here to receive 20% off product X”.
- Assess if Facebook is Really Worth it: Facebook clicks usually average between $0.75 and $1.25 per click. If you are selling a product that runs for $5.00, you’ll most likely need to sell one product for every six clicks to turn a profit. That would be a very high converstion rate and highly unlikely. However, you need to take in account repeat business. If 40% of first time buyers buy from you again, then the ROI might be there (even though you can’t directly measure it completely). It is really important to assess goals as it relates to Facebook advertisements to see if it’s a good fit prior to implementing.
- Ignore CTR data: I’ve heard people state that they don’t use Facebook advertisements because they get a horrible CTR. Facebook advertisements typically produce a CTR of either 0.02% or 0.03%, but this to me is a meaningless metric. Keep in mind that people aren’t actively seeking out your advertisements. Most people on Facebook ignore (or don’t even see) advertisements that are displayed. You are likely to get hundreds of thousands of impressions per day, but only 100 or so clicks. If you’re running on a CPC structure you are only paying per click (not impression) anyway.
- Run a CPC not CPM ad: Piggy backing on my previous bullet point, do not run your ads as a CPM. Very rarely do I ever see this option turn out cheaper than running it as a CPC advertisement. As statead earlier, most people who are exposed to the ad will not actually view it. If you are running your advertisement as a CPM, you will have to pay for those impressions. In certain circumstances a CPM model works better than CPC, but when applied to Facebook always go with the CPC option.
- Keep testing: It might take four or five (maybe more) runs to perfect your advertisement. The last thing you want to do is run an advertisement and then quit running Facebook ads because it underperfomed your first two days (a lot of companies will do this).
Tags: facebook, pay per click, social media
