Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Facebook PPC Ads that Kill



Facebook’s pay-per-click (PPC) is still considered fairly new. Nonetheless, we’ve been playing in it long enough to put together some best practices for marketing on Facebook. These tips will help you get an edge over the competition in Facebook’s advertising platform:

  1. A picture is worth a thousand words – Although Facebook ads allow for a small image, it is very easy to blend in with all the visual stimulation happening on a person’s page. We recommend using bold, bright colors to help your ad stand out. Red or orange is good – stay away from blue or white, which are Facebook’s colors and acts like camouflage.  You can also add a bright border to your image to make it pop out from the screen. Always keep the image (and the ad itself) to a singular focus. Trying to fit too much into one ad will definitely limit your ROI; besides, you can simply create another ad with different information. 
  2. Get to the point – As any marketing professional knows, your ad copy should be geared toward your target audience. Since these ads are so brief, focus on benefits and include a call to action – the stronger, the better! We’ve also found that mentioning the company name works quite well. Remember, you only have 90 characters for body copy, but sometimes less is more so try writing only 40-70 characters and test your ads.
  3. Hit a bulls eye – Targeting your ads is obviously important, but this feature is continuously changing on Facebook, so we suggest you learn about all the different targeting options and stay up-to-date (hint: we often post updates on this blog.) We also recommend that you turn on the “show social activity” feature, even if your ad goes to an external link. We call this “passive word of mouth” and you can see how it shows up in the example below. 
 Do you have any other tips for creating a successful advertising campaign on Facebook? Please share your ideas in the comments section below.