Over the last couple of months we have been testing out some ads on Facebook and overall, we have been pretty happy with the results. I think Facebook has some work todo before they become a major player in the PPC world but what they have put together is a great start. Facebook has something very unique that Google, Yahoo and most other PPC search engines can’t offer and that’s targeting by very specific demographics.
Getting Started
With over 200,000,000 active members, there is no question that Facebook has an impressive reach. To get started with the standard Facebook PPC ad campaign, point your browser to the Advertising page. They give you a decent amount of information and tips to get started but there is still a lot that is a mystery. They give you some basic guidelines for what they expect in an ad and what you can target. We recommend that you take the time to read through their suggestions since the approval process can be a bit fuzzy even if you know what you are doing. The ad consists of a 25 character text headline, a 110 x 80 image and 135 characters of text below the image to describe your service or product and give them an incentive to click. Put some thought into how you want to present your ad before you get started and come up with several variations so you can test, test test.
Ad Targeting
The great thing about advertising on Facebook is the impressive targeting you can do to reach exactly who you want to reach. When users of Facebook setup a profile, they are supplying info that most marketing firms would pay a pretty penny for like their age, marital status, location, interests, language spoken and gender. Sure, Google let’s you get pretty specific on location, just like Facbook does but with Facebook Advertising you can tell there system that you only want your ad to show to engaged women, between the ages of 25 and 39, living in Berk County Pennsylvania with knitting as one of their interests. It’s pretty powerful. It even tells you as you select options to target, exactly how many active Facebook members fit your criteria. If the number is too small, it may not be worth your time or you may need to adjust your criteria to be more inclusive.
Creating Your Ad
Once you get the general concept down and you know what you want to advertise, it’s time to actually create your advertisement. When you create your ad, make sure you keep in mind who you are putting this ad in front of. I don’t mean the specific targeting methods I mentioned above, I mean that you should think about the site and what the people who go to the site are doing there. They are going to Facebook with a purpose, they are going to see what is on their wall, to post a comment, to play a game or edit their own profile, etc.. They aren’t going there to look for your ad, you need to make sure your ad grabs their attention and is targeted to their demographics and interest. 100×80 isn’t a lot of space to do that so you have to make sure you make the most of the image you post. Don’t try to build brand awareness with your Facebook ad, grab their attention and get them to read what you have posted. More importantly, get them to read the ad and click through to your site.
When they click through, make sure you are sending them to the most relevant page for what you are advertising. For instance, in our web design ad, we wouldn’t send them to the home page, we want them to land right on our web design page. You can even take it a step further and create a custom landing page just for Facebook users. Be creative.
Facebook manually reviews every ad before they approve it. I have heard complaints from quite a few people that the approval process takes too long and that they are completely arbitrary as to what they will approve. Thankfully, our experience has been different, all of our ads have been approved in just a few hours and we haven’t had any ads that were denied.
Test Your Ads
The most important thing about creating ads for Facebook is that you need to test. This is where most people fail, they create an image, create a headline, write the ad, post it with the criteria they think makes most sense and then sit back to watch what happens. If the first try doesn’t work, more often than not, they stop. I am amazed at how many people not only stop after that first try but end up being very vocal about how it doesn’t work. Your first ad may not work, you may not know the magic formula, you have to test until you find the right combination of text, image, demographics and landing page.
Go into it with 3 - 5 different ads and test, test, test until you find out what works best. Make sure you are only testing one thing at a time so you know is working best. So, maybe your first 5 ads should have the same image, ad text, demographics and landing page but a different headline. Run them for a few days, see which headline works best and then test something else. If you test everything all at once, you won’t know what is working and what isn’t.
Budgeting
Facebook let’s you determine the maximum you want to pay per click and how much you want to spend each day. They suggest a range for the ppc amount but the don’t do a very good job of telling you what you should expect for the bid, what the other advertisers are bidding at, and what would happen if you go higher or lower than the expected range. It’s one of the areas they really need to improve on and you really need to include in your testing. Make sure you select a rate that makes sense to you and a budget that isn’t going to drain your resources. You can hope to make money right off the bat from your ad but you should go into it expecting to loose and know you have to test and tweak until you find something that works. If it’s profitable right away, great, then you just need to make it more profitable, but if it’s not, at least you didn’t select a budget that is beyond what you can afford to lose as you test your ads.
In conclusion, we recommend Facebook as an excellent way to advertise but do it smart, take your time and test. We find that Facebook advertising works exceptionally well for local or regional advertising.