Matt Lawson is the vice president of marketing at Marin Software, the largest paid search management provider.
Facebook advertising holds tremendous promise for marketers looking to reach targeted audiences online. Nowhere else do people willingly share such specific information about themselves – enabling marketers to target ads and evaluate performance based on details about consumers such as their age, interests, employers, location and even friends and relationships.
Facebook advertising, however, is still relatively new, and advertisers are only beginning to experiment with Facebook ads. Even digital marketing experts, familiar with advanced targeting techniques in paid search and display advertising, are just now figuring out how to effectively run advertising programs on Facebook.
To get your ads noticed by Facebook users, you’ll need to tailor your ads to work within the Facebook experience. Facebook users spend an inordinate amount of time –- more than any other website — on the social network. They interact with friends, share information and connect with their favorite causes; however, despite all their actions, people aren’t searching for products or services. That’s why carefully selecting images, modifying calls-to-action and subtly changing messaging to reach Facebook users is important for success in this channel.
Here are a few insider tricks you can use to take your Facebook targeting and ad performance to the next level.
1. Remember the User Experience
Many marketers dive right into Facebook ads expecting to drive traffic from Facebook directly to their site, just as in paid search. While this may work for some, tailoring the experience to Facebook users typically delivers better results. Using Custom Pages or Applications on Facebook to capture traffic allows you to keep users within Facebook for a consistent browsing experience, resulting in lower bounce rates. Custom Pages, as part of your Facebook Page, make it easy for consumers to “Like” your product or brand. For every user who Likes your page, you can remarket to them over time with status updates about deals or upcoming events.
Facebook Apps, on the other hand, provide the marketer with more control over the user experience, as well as the ability to gather detailed demographic data from user profiles. If converting traffic outside of Facebook is a requirement for you, consider tailoring your landing pages to social users. This could include writing different ad copy, the inclusion of Like and sharing buttons on your site and presenting user-generated content such as videos or reviews, as opposed to product information, for Facebook users arriving at your landing page.
2. Use Root Analysis to Expand Targeting
Facebook users can list any terms they want to define their likes and interests, so in order to target a full audience of potential customers, you may have to do some investigating for those terms and phrases that go beyond your general keyword search. For example, using the targeting parameter “camping,” your ad will not reach users who have listed “camping in the mountains” or “tent camping” on their profile.
Root analysis is a useful way to discover people’s likes and interests on Facebook to expand your audience and drive more conversions. Simply start with a root word and expand your targeting to include related interests. You can do this by typing the root word into Facebook’s “Likes & Interests” targeting settings and then typing a single letter to find related terms. Using the camping example, entering “camping i” results in a list that includes “camping in California” and “I love camping.” Adding these unique terms to your targeting criteria expands your audience, helping to discover additional valuable consumers and improve ROI.
3. Segment Your Ads
With 500 million users on Facebook, there are probably plenty of consumers that you want to reach with your ads. However, not all Facebook users are created equal. Breaking out your audiences to understand the value of each segment, and then adjusting your bids accordingly, will help you optimize your Facebook budget.
Dividing audiences by age, location, and gender should help you find the segments most likely to convert, making each segment more valuable to you. As you measure the performance variance between your segmented advertisements, you can adjust your bids to improve the overall ROI for your Facebook ad campaigns.
4. Prevent Ad Blindness
People use Facebook to interact with friends, share their photos and play games, not to look for products and services. Your ads need to grab their attention. Facebook users are inundated with content and typically scan images and text quickly, but there are tricks to modify creative to minimize ad blindness and increase click-through rates. The most successful ads include colorful, engaging images — and of course, a compelling and relevant offer. Adding borders to your photos in colors like orange or yellow, which contrast with the blue and white Facebook interface, is a simple way to pull the user’s eyes in your ad’s direction.
Make sure to test early and often here, as the results will surprise you. The most-clicked ads are not necessarily the most aesthetically pleasing; they are often the ones that stand out on the page. Also, because ads can be served to the same users multiple times, it doesn’t take long for users to completely tune out repeat ads, so you have to keep your approach creative and fresh. Rotating images and headline copy as performance drops over time can help boost click-through rates.
Conclusion
By using the tips above to target and optimize your advertisements, you should have a head start in Facebook marketing. More importantly, by building competencies in this new channel, you can build sustainable advantage over the competition through superior targeting and optimization.
Taking a wait-and-see approach may be the safe route, but now is the time to begin. The Facebook advertiser base is still relatively small in comparison to the Facebook audience. As a result, costs-per-click rates remain lower than paid search and other channels. As advertisers continue to shift dollars to Facebook, costs will rise, and advertisers that have managed to build a fan base early will be better positioned to reap dividends from their investment.
What tips can you offer? What has worked with your own advertising experience on Facebook? Do you also zone out uninspired ads? Let us know in the comments below.
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