As most marketers know, Facebook provides a highly comprehensive advertising platform that targets its 500 million+ total users. One of the main benefits of advertising on Facebook compared to other advertising networks is the fact that you can target individuals by a variety of different demographics (based on users’ profile data) including age, gender, interests, and location. As with all marketing strategies, there are certain guidelines that should be followed when advertising on Facebook in order to maximize your campaign’s success.
1. Don’t Place Emphasis on Your CTR (Click Through Metric) – Facebook advertisements provide a variety of different metrics to measure your campaign’s performance including impressions, clicks, cost per click, and click through rate (CTR). While maintaining a high CTR can be extremely important for some media buy strategies, it does little to measure the overall success of your Facebook campaign. When an individual logs into Facebook, they are usually there to implement some sort of predetermined action item whether it’s answering a notification, checking someone’s profile, chatting with their friends, etc. The fact that these users are logging into Facebook for a specific reason, means that they tend to ignore other areas of the website, including advertisements. Even though these users will count as an impression, they will not technically view the advertisement. Basically, an impression on Facebook less often equates to a view when compared to other websites. Instead of focusing on CTR, focus on meaningful metrics such as conversions, traffic, and total number of clicks.
2. Consider Advertising Your Facebook Page Instead of Your Website – Facebook released a recent case study indicating that advertisers will more likely achieve success from an advertisement that promotes a fan page than an external website. While this study might sound self-serving on Facebook’s part, there is definitely merit to Facebook’s conclusions. A conversion for a fan page advertisement is simply a “like” while an external website might require that individual to purchase a product or fill out a form; significantly more demanding types of conversions. A user will also “trust” an advertisement more that will land them on a Facebook page than one that will redirect them to an unfamiliar URL. Additionally, there is substantial benefit in growing your fan base. Think of a fan page like an e-mail database of newsletter subscribers. These are all individuals who have opted into connecting with your brand because of some interest that they have related to your business. The more an advertiser can grow this list, the more individuals they can reach when posting a Facebook status, launching a contest, etc.
3. Get Creative With Your Targeting – As mentioned, Facebook offers highly comprehensive targeting options within its advertising platform. However, what happens if you want to target mothers, users with a high income, or CEOs? These are all targeting options that do not appear within Facebook’s advertising platform, but it doesn’t mean that you cannot reach these individuals. Using the mother example, since a user does not indicate whether or not they are a mother on their profile, try targeting them by their likes and interests. Target users who list interests and likes such as “I love my son, I love my daughter, my child, my children, etc.” This will help to increase conversions for your advertisements if your business only caters to mothers.
4. Take Advantage of the Body Copy – In order to increase the quality of your clicks (and conversions) make sure to structure your advertisements to accurately describe what you are promoting. If you are a loan provider that provides loans of $5,000 and higher, for example, make sure to include this information within your advertisement to avoid obtaining clicks from users seeking a lower loan amount. This is especially important if you are running a CPC (cost per click) campaign versus a CPM (cost per thousand impressions).
5. Test Different Ad Variations – Testing is an important part of any advertising campaign and Facebook is no different. In order to hone in on what type of campaign would perform best, test different advertisements, images, titles, and target markets. This information will provide you with the data to maximize your ROI on future campaigns.
6. Resizing Your Image – A blurry or distorted image can limit your success when advertising on Facebook. When uploading an image, Facebook will automatically resize the picture to a size of 110×80. Keep this in mind when using images for your Facebook campaign.
7. Offer a Coupon Code or Other Incentive – If a user clicks on your advertisement and proceeds to verbally tell three other people to visit your website, there is no way to tie their visits back to your Facebook promotion. By promoting a custom coupon code via your Facebook advertisements, however, you’ll be able to better measure these types of verbal communications that are often difficult to track. Try creating a custom landing page for your Facebook campaign and include an easy to remember coupon code (i.e. facebook10 for 10% off). If you are promoting a Facebook page, a custom tab can be created using the Static FBML application.
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