kiggd
Junior Member
- Apr 28, 2012
- 116
- 44
So I've been doing a lot of Facebook ad campaigns past couple of years. Wanted to share with BHW stuff I've learned over this time period.
It takes time
You'll see a lot of people post that Facebook ads "never work" or are "too expensive." With Facebook ads it's a numbers game.
From my personal experience, there are three typical phases of Facebook Ad marketing.
1. Spend money on a few ads
2. Look at results
3. Find conversion rate (BY CLICKS).
4. cost per acquiring a customer < money made from customer, then you win. Else go back to step 1.
A few important notes before I get into specific tactics:
Conversion rates from Facebook visitors are different than conversion rates from other websites
To experienced marketers, this is obvious, but to someone new it is elusive.
For example. If you run an Adwords/Bing campaign (for search) you'll notice that the conversion rate is often higher than for Facebook.
Why? Simply put - the MINDSET of the person at the time of viewing the ad. Think about search engine marketing... Someone searching on the web for "external hard drives" are searching most likely because they are looking to purchase
What about people on Facebook? I want you to stop and imagine a man on his computer visiting Facebook... And that man sees Facebook ads on the left and right of the page.
From my experience, I find three types of Facebook marketers.
The dumb Facebook marketer: "Will the man click?"
The good Facebook marketer: "Who is the man who clicks?"
The WISE Facebook marketer: "What is the INTENTION of the man who clicks"
Facebook Ads are fundamentally different. In setting up a Facebook ad, you are able to specify the exact characteristics and interests of your target audience. You can tell Facebook to show your ad ONLY to 28 year old females interested in hang gliding. You can tell Facebook to target ONLY people who are 65 year old men who like gambling in Las Vegas. You can tell Facebook to target almost everything...
That's right... almost everything.
There's one thing you can't target... Someone who is INTENDING to purchase hang gliding equipment. Or someone INTENDING to purchase ebooks on gambling.
So now, the specifics tips
General:
1. Monitor. Use analytics like Woopra or GoSquared (include Google Analytics, but honestly it's a piece of shit for looking at individuals).
2. Since people are often NOT in a buying mood when they see your ad, you will usually see a higher rate of non-purchasing conversions like newsletter/email signups, twitter or pinterest followers. You'll also find people in "browse" mode. The key thing to try and achieve is the acquisition for later purchase. Meaning collect emails, twitter/pinterest follower, or Facebook fan now​ and then capitalize on them later when they are in a purchasing mood like *ahem* holiday season.
3. Other people might differ on this opinion, but I would never do CPM, only CPC. I've ran tests where I had a high click through rate on an ad for a long period of time, switched to CPM for a bit and the the CTR rate magically tumbled... Not sure what algorithms Facebook does to determine what pages your ads are placed on but from my experience it's not worth it.
Bidding Tips
1. Facebook loves to give you it's "bid range suggestion." My most important rule of thumb is to not worry too much about bids in the beginning of a campaign. Bids are more important later on when your average CPC begins to lower (more on how you have that happen later).
2. Whenever you change an ad, no matter how small of a change, you risk the chance of losing your bid rate. So be sure if you change your ad in any way that you reset your bid to whatever you started with. This is a piece of shit thing that Facebook does which catches me often when I'm tweaking ads.
3. If your CTR is low, and you are targeting in your opinion the people who matter, then consider changing WHERE you target. Targeting U.S. and UK is expensive. Targeting India, Russia, Egypt, and other countries is way cheaper You often hear about people getting 1-2 cents per click - how'd they do that? Almost always from targeting internationally. Keep in mind that if you DO target international that your ads will usually be shown to the country that has the lowest CPC... Which means non-english speaking countries... Which means... yup... TRANSLATING your website.
Click Through Rate
1. In my experience, the single most important thing. Yes, we all know it's CPC not CPM, so you only pay when someone clicks. However, one thing that I've found is that the higher the CTR, (generally, but not always) the lower the CPC. Facebook rewards a ads that do very well. The lower the CPC, the more clicks you'll get.
2. What is a good CTR? In my experience anything above .1% is considered very good. Anything above .15% is considered excellent.
3. If your ads are getting less than .05% CTR, change who you're targeting (or countries, see above)
The Ad Itself/Targeting
1. Picture is incredibly important. Think about how important app store/google play icons are in mobile app stores. People will read the text secondary.
2. Always include an action command in the text. "Buy" "Visit" "Check out" are all obvious ones. They perform better.
3. DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT include a URL on the ad itself. A lot of times people think
"Oh I'll just include the URL in the ad, a certain amount of people will see the URL and just visit it/google it without clicking... Meaning that I'll get the visitor for free" Not true. You are paying for that no click in opportunity cost of raising your CTR. Remember, the higher the CTR the lower the CPC (generally).
Okay that's enough for now. There are lot more things I'd like to say but I'll save it for another post. Hope you got something from this!
Cheers
It takes time
You'll see a lot of people post that Facebook ads "never work" or are "too expensive." With Facebook ads it's a numbers game.
From my personal experience, there are three typical phases of Facebook Ad marketing.
1. Spend money on a few ads
2. Look at results
3. Find conversion rate (BY CLICKS).
4. cost per acquiring a customer < money made from customer, then you win. Else go back to step 1.
A few important notes before I get into specific tactics:
Conversion rates from Facebook visitors are different than conversion rates from other websites
To experienced marketers, this is obvious, but to someone new it is elusive.
For example. If you run an Adwords/Bing campaign (for search) you'll notice that the conversion rate is often higher than for Facebook.
Why? Simply put - the MINDSET of the person at the time of viewing the ad. Think about search engine marketing... Someone searching on the web for "external hard drives" are searching most likely because they are looking to purchase
What about people on Facebook? I want you to stop and imagine a man on his computer visiting Facebook... And that man sees Facebook ads on the left and right of the page.
From my experience, I find three types of Facebook marketers.
The dumb Facebook marketer: "Will the man click?"
The good Facebook marketer: "Who is the man who clicks?"
The WISE Facebook marketer: "What is the INTENTION of the man who clicks"
Facebook Ads are fundamentally different. In setting up a Facebook ad, you are able to specify the exact characteristics and interests of your target audience. You can tell Facebook to show your ad ONLY to 28 year old females interested in hang gliding. You can tell Facebook to target ONLY people who are 65 year old men who like gambling in Las Vegas. You can tell Facebook to target almost everything...
That's right... almost everything.
There's one thing you can't target... Someone who is INTENDING to purchase hang gliding equipment. Or someone INTENDING to purchase ebooks on gambling.
So now, the specifics tips
General:
1. Monitor. Use analytics like Woopra or GoSquared (include Google Analytics, but honestly it's a piece of shit for looking at individuals).
2. Since people are often NOT in a buying mood when they see your ad, you will usually see a higher rate of non-purchasing conversions like newsletter/email signups, twitter or pinterest followers. You'll also find people in "browse" mode. The key thing to try and achieve is the acquisition for later purchase. Meaning collect emails, twitter/pinterest follower, or Facebook fan now​ and then capitalize on them later when they are in a purchasing mood like *ahem* holiday season.
3. Other people might differ on this opinion, but I would never do CPM, only CPC. I've ran tests where I had a high click through rate on an ad for a long period of time, switched to CPM for a bit and the the CTR rate magically tumbled... Not sure what algorithms Facebook does to determine what pages your ads are placed on but from my experience it's not worth it.
Bidding Tips
1. Facebook loves to give you it's "bid range suggestion." My most important rule of thumb is to not worry too much about bids in the beginning of a campaign. Bids are more important later on when your average CPC begins to lower (more on how you have that happen later).
2. Whenever you change an ad, no matter how small of a change, you risk the chance of losing your bid rate. So be sure if you change your ad in any way that you reset your bid to whatever you started with. This is a piece of shit thing that Facebook does which catches me often when I'm tweaking ads.
3. If your CTR is low, and you are targeting in your opinion the people who matter, then consider changing WHERE you target. Targeting U.S. and UK is expensive. Targeting India, Russia, Egypt, and other countries is way cheaper You often hear about people getting 1-2 cents per click - how'd they do that? Almost always from targeting internationally. Keep in mind that if you DO target international that your ads will usually be shown to the country that has the lowest CPC... Which means non-english speaking countries... Which means... yup... TRANSLATING your website.
Click Through Rate
1. In my experience, the single most important thing. Yes, we all know it's CPC not CPM, so you only pay when someone clicks. However, one thing that I've found is that the higher the CTR, (generally, but not always) the lower the CPC. Facebook rewards a ads that do very well. The lower the CPC, the more clicks you'll get.
2. What is a good CTR? In my experience anything above .1% is considered very good. Anything above .15% is considered excellent.
3. If your ads are getting less than .05% CTR, change who you're targeting (or countries, see above)
The Ad Itself/Targeting
1. Picture is incredibly important. Think about how important app store/google play icons are in mobile app stores. People will read the text secondary.
2. Always include an action command in the text. "Buy" "Visit" "Check out" are all obvious ones. They perform better.
3. DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT include a URL on the ad itself. A lot of times people think
"Oh I'll just include the URL in the ad, a certain amount of people will see the URL and just visit it/google it without clicking... Meaning that I'll get the visitor for free" Not true. You are paying for that no click in opportunity cost of raising your CTR. Remember, the higher the CTR the lower the CPC (generally).
Okay that's enough for now. There are lot more things I'd like to say but I'll save it for another post. Hope you got something from this!
Cheers
