“Facebook ads don’t work!”
I’ve heard this over and over. And to be honest, this was my experience up to a few months ago. But then I really got serious about Facebook ads. Keep reading and I’ll share some of the secrets that have helped me obtain up to 600% ROI on some of my campaigns.
#1 – Ignore everything you know about Adwords:
For those of us who come from a search marketing background, ignore everything you know about traditional pay per click. With Adwords, it’s not uncommon to create an ad and leave it on autopilot for years, all while returning excellent results. Not so with Facebook. Once your target demographic has seen your ad over and over, the click through rate will fall, and your cost per click will rise, therefore destroying your ROI. To be successful with Facebook ads, be prepared for a successful ad to have a lifecycle of as little as one week. Then move on to the next big idea.
#2 – Stand out or Stand Down
It’s extremely critical that your ad image be striking. I’ve spoken with many companies whose first Facebook ad consist of nothing but their brand logo. For most business, this is a horrible strategy. In fact, my most successful ads completely ignore the company that’s advertising and instead focus intently on one particlar product that people are passionate about. Pay close attention to the Facebook ads on your own profile. Which ones grab your attention and why?
#3 – Plan to Fail
You will fail with Facebooks ads, a lot. After months of learning what works and what doesn’t, still only 1 out of 4 of my ads actually works. The rest are quickly tested and discarded. Don’t get discouraged with early results. Just learn the lesson, and move on.
#4 – Target Passionate People
When you examine your product or service line, what are the things people get most passionate about? Passionate people click ads that speak to them. They also gladly hand over money for products they believe in. The best ads feature remarkable products and services that target passionate people. The worst thing you can do is write a generic ad trying to please everyone. It will undoubtedly fail.
#5 – Bid High, then Low
Facebook always shows you a suggested bid range when you create an ad. Initially, this is where I made the biggest mistake. I would create an excellent ad, but my bidding strategy didn’t allow for decent ROI. If I’m spending .50 a click, and my conversion rate is half a percent, I can’t make money. However, with that exact same conversion rate, I can make money if I’m paying .07 a click. Here’s the problem though, if you bid too low initially, Facebook won’t bother showing your ad.
My strategy is always to bid within the suggested range initially, let my ad get approved, run it for a few hours. If I’m trending with a good click through rate, I will begin lowering my bid until I reach the desired threshold. However, for this strategy to work, you must have a good ad. In my experience, this is any ad with a click thru rate of at least .15% or above. Anything less than this, Facebook will simply stop showing your ads, or charge you a ridiculous click price.
#6 – Go Crazy with “Likes and Interests” Keywords
Facebook uses users’ “Likes” to determine who sees your ad. This is where you need to go crazy. In my experience, it seems the Facebook ad algorithm is biased against small targets. In other words, if after typing in your keywords you’re only targeting 1,000 people, you will probably being paying an astronomically high cost per click, which virtually guarantees poor ROI on your campaign. So how do you go about finding hoards of targeted keywords?
First, I like to visit to profiles of people who already “like” my page. Ask yourself, how can I target customer similar to this person? What other likes, dislikes do they show on their profile? Once you’ve found a good group of keywords, I like to employ a little know tactic using Facebook’s auto suggest. In the “Like & Interest” box, type your primary keyword, then a space, then the letter A. Facebook will generate a list of keywords containing your keyword and anything with the letter A. Continue throughout the alphabet to finds hundreds of keyword combinations.
Conclusion
Facebook ads represent an undiscovered frontier in internet marketing. SEO, Adwords, and traditional banner ads are ubiquitous and ultra-competitive, whereas many companies have yet to dip their toes in the water of Facebook marketing. For me, this means less competition and better ROI. I’m currently getting twice the return on Facebook ads compared to Adwords campaigns that have been optimized for years.