Facebook is becoming an outstanding way to drive massive amounts of traffic for extremely low CPC or CPM. I would not say that I am an expert in Facebook Ads, but I have run a number of campaigns and have gone through a number of FB Ad training courses.

Based on my experience and what I have learned, here are the main points I have gathered.

Targeting Options

One of the main benefits of using Facebook Ads compared to Google Adwords are the targeting options. Take advantage of being able to refine your ads by Age, Demographics, Likes/Dislikes, Employer, Sex, etc… Try using a service like Quantcast.com to help you find what type of demographic a website appeals to and use that in your Facebook targeting.

Bidding Strategy

Unlike Google Adwords, Facebook gives you the option of either Cost Per Click or Click Per 1000 Impressions (CPM). There are a few bidding strategies that you should be aware of to maximize your ROI.

1. Start with CPC: By starting with a cost-per-click model, you can continue to refine your campaign and ONLY pay when someone clicks on your ad. If you started with a CPM model, you would be paying every 1000 impressions, regardless of how effective or how many clicks you receive.

2. Switch to CPM: After you have spend time refining your campaigns (adjusting bids, ad copy, images) and you are getting a high CPC, you should then switch it over to CPM. This way your spend will go way down and your traffic will stay high.

3. Crank Up Your Spend: Once you have a campaign dialed in and you are making money, its time to crank up your ad spend. If you can make $2 for every $1 you spend, there is no reasons that you should increase your spend way up to maximize profits!

Ad Copy

REMEMBER: The most important aspect of your Facebook ads are the images. The image has about 75% bearing on whether or not the user clicks on your ad. Make sure you test multiple ad images as well as different types of images. This can include Stock vs Amateur images, Female vs Male, different ages, etc….

In terms of your headline, asking questions always seem to do very well. Asking a relevant question, spikes peoples interests and gets their attention. In the body if you can tell them that you have a solution to their problem; these types of ads seem to do very well.




Landing Page Concepts

It is important to realize that even though you can drive a lot of traffic via Facebook Ads, that doesn’t mean that people are ready to buy. Generally when people are on Facebook, they are not there to shop.

When you create your landing page, MOST of the time, you will see better results if you send them to a lead generation page that is a free offer. If you try to directly sell them something, your results will suffer. If you entice the user to give an email address with a contest, offer or free piece of content, you can follow up with them with an email marketing campaign later.



Analyze, Refine….Analyze, Refine

Saving the best for last is analyzing your campaigns. After you have been running your ad campaigns for a little while and have some data, you want to analyze that data to see how you can further target your campaign.

Things to Analyze:

CTR
Clicks by Age Bucket
Clicks by Demographic
Ads by Purchase/Leads
Summary of Likes/Dislikes by Purchase/Lead
Also make sure you are not only testing ad images, but AD COPY. Start with images, then use the winning few images and start testing ad copy.