Tag: Facebook Advertising

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Facebook Advertising Options

Along with the new changes that Facebook announced to the timeline for business pages on February 29th, was an announcement that advertising options would change as well allowing more pages to use advertising options that had only been open to really big advertisers. So far I have only seen a few changes in my advertising control panel.

For most business page owners, you will see the same advertising options that I see for my own business page, and this is due to fan base size. I see the option to do Facebook pay per click advertising or sponsored story advertising. The additional new option that I see in my account is that I can actually select a specific update to promote as an ad. The new created ad then allows others to like my ad or to share the ad. Liking the ad will show the ad and information on all their Facebook friends profiles as will sharing the ad. This is an important new viral way to get your message out.

I have not yet seen advertising on my personal wall or timeline, but Facebook tells us that it IS coming. At this time it appears that you can still do regular pay per click advertising and use an external URL for the landing page which is good news. New options now also allow you to select a specific tab in your Facebook business profile such as your resume, links page, notes tab, etc. as the landing page for your ad as well.

Facebook advertising is still a good value at this point, but my feeling is that you may get more value by actually advertising in the Google Display network than from Facebook at this point.

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Special Insights Into Using Facebook Advertising

We’ve started to do quite a bit more Facebook advertising management for clients. Here are a few insights that I wanted to share with you about our experience so far for clients.

  • Even if you choose to spend more than Facebook recommends per click, Facebook will not preferentially serve your ad program more to give you more impressions.
  • Change your ad creative every week. I recommend only two ad creatives running at a time per typical business account that is spending around $1,500 per month in clicks. Even if you put more creatives in the account, you will find that Facebook simply will not serve them.
  • There are limited places for ad placement on Facebook pages. Just this last week I saw that now Facebook is serving more than three or four ads in the sidebar. There is pent up demand and limited ad real estate. Just because you have a big spend budget does not mean that Facebook will be able to serve your ads to spend it. In fact we have found that clients whose 30 day ad spend budget is $2,000 do not even get near that spend using the Facebook pay per click ads.
  • It appears that Facebook is now tracking the CTR of ads in some accounts and will pause a creative or tag it to not show based on click through rates.
  • We are seeing strong website referrals in Google Analytics from Facebook for clients that are advertising there and pointing the ad to their website.
  • We have not had any clients be able to state unequivocally that Facebook is really driving strong leads or sale conversions at this point. Although we typically drive Facebook users to special landing pages with special Facebook lead forms, we are not having clients tell us that lots of sales are being generated from the advertising on Facebook.

If you would like to try advertising on Facebook for your business, I think you will be surprised to see how low our account management fess are. Please visit our Facebook advertising management page for more information and pricing.

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How to Track the Success of Facebook Advertising

Without conversion tracking tools provided by Facebook, it is hard to justify spending advertising dollars on Facebook ads. However, with a little bit of creativity you can gage how Facebook ads are working for you. Here are a few suggestions you may want to try out as you test pay per click advertising on Facebook.

  1. If you sell products, do a unique coupon code for Facebook and put it in your ads. You’ll be able to see in your store control panel how many times that coupon code was redeemed. Check your sales against your Facebook ad spend to see if continuing to advertise on Facebook makes sense for you.
  2. If you sell services not products, send your Facebook ad clickers to a special landing page, embed in the page a contact form with a subject line that says “Lead from Facebook.” This way you’ll know for sure that the when you get that form that the lead was generated by a Facebook click.
  3. Create a special gift pack to sell in your store that you only advertise on Facebook. This way if you cannot do a coupon code, you can at least get an idea if your investment in Facebook advertising is generating a return.

If you are advertising on Facebook using pay per click advertising, you do need to watch your Google Analytics account to check to see if you can identify a volume of traffic from Facebook. If you see a spike and you are advertising, it makes sense to assume that Facebook is generating these additional exposures.

Many business owners want to advertise on Facebook, especially in the upcoming holiday season, but without true conversion tracking tools we can only hope and guess that Facebook is the “right” place to be. Find out more about our Facebook ad services.

If not knowing if a pay per click service is working for you is too problematic for you, consider using our Google AdWords services. With Google AdWords conversion tracking, we can KNOW what sales have been generated by clicks and can even measure phone calls. Find out more about our Google AdWords services.