Quick Tips for Facebook Advertising

Facebook is a great advertising tool for a number of reasons. Regardless of the controversy surrounding how Facebook plans to use the personal information the social network collects, it’s still used by millions and millions of people around the world. At the end of the day, the ease of setting up a campaign and the targeting options available make Facebook a great place to advertise online.

• Don’t trust the estimated cost per click rate until your campaign is live – it’s almost always higher than advertised. Some will say that your new ad entering the marketplace forces the cost per click rates up, which is true to a degree, but I’m consistently seeing cost per click price increases of more than 20%. Make sure you factor this in to you campaign expectations.
• You don’t have to accept the cost per click you’re being charged – a little trick that works for me from time to time is to change your targeting ever so slightly. For example, instead of targeting people 40+ years of age, target people 39+ years of age. I’ve personally seen cost per click rates drop 10 cents by using that exact technique.
• Create as many ad variations as you can think of, and then create some more! Facebook advertising is half advertising, half market research. Create different ads for different products, use a variety of photos and think outside the box! You never know what you might learn, and the most successful ads may not be what you would expect.
• As a follow up to the last point, use what you learn with Facebook advertising in other marketing efforts. Or even use Facebook to research a specific demographic if you’re looking at a bigger advertising buy elsewhere. What type of message/imagery should you use in that new magazine that reaches a demographic of 45+ green thumbs? Why not target the same general audience with Facebook and run 10 ads with different flower imagery, different headlines, different angles to your pitch. It may not be a completely perfect comparison, but it’s far better than guessing!

I can’t give away free tactics without following it up with my own sales pitch, so my 5th tip is simply send me an email and I’ll take care of everything for you!