B2B Marketing Promotions

Facebook advertising has been hailed as the “Adwords Destroyer” and is crowned as as the Next Big Thing in Internet Marketing.

Consequently a gazillion and one brand new “gurus” have sprung up out of the ether, each claiming to have the One True Secret to successful Facebook advertising.

Although Advertising on Facebook is nothing fundamentally “new” at all. It’s just a new way of doing an old thing, and all the fuss is simply gurus jumping on a convenient bandwagon.

But the fundamental truth is… effective Facebook Advertising is all about the Return On Investment, your ROI. That’s it. All the rest is just hype and mummery.

It also means fretting about the “cost” of Facebook advertising is as waste of time unless you know how much money it’s bringing in. And if it’s costing you less than you’re making in sales as a result, then it’s worth doing.

And that’s about as difficult as it gets — you don’t need a guru to tell you all that, right?

So, here are three simple tips to make sure you’re going to get the best results you can get from your Facebook advertising:

First… target the right group. Don’t be seduced by the idea of getting your ad in front of large numbers of people. Remember, it’s not about getting the greatest munber of clicks you possibly can — it’s about maximising your ROI. What you need are clicks from highly qualified people, not just clicks per se. If you’re a local store and you sell locally (say, you’re a landscape gardener) then target your local area as closely as you can; if you specialise in selling bridal wear, target women who are getting married, and so on.

Secondly… test, test and then test some more.

Don’t just throw up an ad and expect it to be successful first time. Be content to get A result — it doesn’t even matter how good or bad it is. Because the idea is to write TWO ads and see which one does best. Then, write another ad and test it against the best of the first two; then write a fourth one and test it against the best of the first ones, and so on. In this way you can very quickly and easily increase your Click Through Rate and reduce your Cost Per Click (one test I did saw the CTR increase by 236% and my CPC decrease by 14.1%).

And thirdly… convert!

Getting clicks is only the first half of the process. To make it profitable, you have to convert clicks to buyers! So you have to put the effort in on your landing pages AS WELL AS watch your conversion rates like a hawk. And this is what makes your CPC almost incidental — if you know a website visitor is worth an average $20, then forking out $10 to get a click isn’t “costing” you anything.

The fact is, advertising on Facebook is tremendous, yet like any form of advertising you not only have to know what you’re doing, but you also have to understand a very basic marketing truth about your ROI, which applies to ALL forms of advertising and marketing, from the humblest flyer to the most complex online pay-per-click advertising campaign.