Facebook Advertising  //  Facebook Ad

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Building a profitable Facebook Ads campaign is very different to other types of pay per click advertising networks because instead of targeting keywords that people are searching for it works by targeting display ads (a combination of text and an image) to users based on their interests and demographics.

Facebook offers astonishing targeting options including the ability to target ads by city, age, gender, interests, language, education, and even employer.

How many people are on Facebook?

There are at the time of writing more than 500 million active Facebook users each month so there is no shortage of people to target. In the UK alone approximately half of the population (adults and children) are already registered with Facebook and those numbers are growing daily.

How do Facebook ads differ?

As well as the targeting options the Facebook ad is also different to other advertising platforms that you may have tried such as Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing or Bing.

There is a title, image, and description shown in a facebook ad – and underneath the ad it often will say that a friend likes the ad. That is a unique trait to facebook ads and works really well for social proof in your advertisement. If someone’s friend has clicked they like the ad then it makes it even more appealing and increases click through rate.

How to construct the best Facebook ad

I recommend writing a very strong headline that should ideally be written as a question. There are only 25 characters available for the headline which is not very many letters at all so you must be careful to make the best use of the space available.

Facebook ads must achieve a clickthrough rate of at least 0.1% in order to get the cheapest cost per click and the headline is the first element you can use to get a good click-through rate. The headline should strongly appeal to your target audience – based on their likes, demographic information, educational background, or employer.

The next element is the picture. This arguably is the most important factor for increasing click through rate. You should really choose a picture that includes a person. The more flesh shown the higher your click-through rate will be. Photos of women tend to work better than men – unless you are aiming the advertisement at women and the site is a dating site in which case a photo of a man would probably perform better.

Images of products in action do well too. Spend some time finding the best image and hire a professional photographer if you need to get the precise image that you need. You can test different images by duplicating your facebook ads and changing the images. Keep the one that results in the highest click through rate.

The image size for facebook ads should be 110 px by 80 px. You should use image editing software to resize your image before uploading it to Facebook to ensure that it is those precise dimensions otherwise you will not be using the available space.

Finally the body text of your ad should be written to explain the benefits of the user clicking your ad and encourage them to take the desired action when they reach your landing page. Keep this as brief as possible and do not be tempted to use all the available characters here unless you need to.

Bidding and budgeting your Facebook ads

The bidding and budgeting is very similar to other pay per click networks. All prices are currently in US dollars. I would recommend a daily budget of $20 to start with (approximately £15 per day). This will enable you to test your ads and find the ones that perform best – remembering you need to achieve a minimum clickthrough rate of 0.1% to get those nice low costs per click.

Your maximum cost per click (CPC) should be set I recommend at 2 cents above the minimum recommended amount by Facebook which will vary according to the targeting options that you have selected when creating your ad.

The more people in your target group generally the higher the recommended minimum cost per click will be. Say for example you are targeting the entire UK the cost per click will be higher than if you were targeting a town such as Nottingham or Derby. This is simply because there are more companies competing for the same audience profiles.

It pays to be really specific with your targeting. If you are selling a dog grooming service in Sheffield you can target people who live in Sheffield, who are aged 25 to 55 (people under 25 are not as likely to be able to afford dog grooming), and target people who are interested in dogs. The cost per click should be relatively low and if your landing page performs well then the cost per aquisition (new customer) should be reasonable.

How to get nearly free Facebook ads

One little known secret to getting Facebook ads at a greatly reduced cost is to buy Facebook advertising coupons from market places online such as the Digital Point Forum. Here people sell Facebook advertising coupons worth $50 or $100 at about a tenth of the face value. This is a great way to try out Facebook ads with less risk involved.

Conclusion

Facebook advertising in my opinion offers far greater targeting possibilities than Google ads. The approval process can be rather unpredictable as Facebook policies are very vague and open to interpretation but if ads are rejected you can easily re-submit them and chances are they will be approved the next time. Facebook is growing at a tremendous rate and the opportunity to target people by interest, age group, and so on is fantastic.

Facebook ads are excellent for local businesses with good profit margins including estate agents, dentists, contractors, therapists, mortgage brokers, and insurance agents.

Need help with your Facebook ads?

If you want to be sure of success with your Facebook ads I offer the following service levels:

Bronze – £167 per month – 3 ads

Gold – £299 per month – 5 ads

Platinum – £497 per month – 10 ads

Included in the price is a full consultancy service whereby I design the ads, target your customers, and set the budgeting.

If you would like to know more please call my office on +44 115 9400 899 or use the contact us form.