The Basics of Facebook Advertising: Getting Started Part 2 of 2

Previous: The Basics of Facebook Advertising: Getting Started Part 1 of 2
Now that you know the anatomy of creating a Facebook Advertisement campaign let’s focus on best practices of creating an ad. When talking about the image that displays within your ad we will refer to this as the design and when talking about the text and wording within your ad we will refer to this as the copy.
The performance of your ads could be surprisingly disappointing or unbelievably exciting. The true determining factor for whether your ads are performing well or not is relative to your market and your objectives. This can only be determined by benchmarking your initial campaign results then continuously analyze and test new design and copy. You may find that a .02% Click Through Rate (CTR) is good based on consistent monitoring and testing of your Facebook advertisement campaign.

Writing Engaging Call to Actions

Before writing your copy and content for your Facebook advertisement know what you want people to do when someone sees your ad. Generally you are trying to increase your community by getting people to ‘Like’ your page, immediately sell a specific product or service, or get people to submit information to you for later use. Answer, “What is the purpose of this Facebook advertisment?” before getting started.
Here are some tips for writing an effective call to action for your Facebook advertisment:

1. Know what you want people to do – Your Facebook ad is a step towards your overall goal. What is your ideal or final action you want the viewer of your ad to take? Buy? Sign up? Share?
2. Sell to the next step – People are not buying directly from your ad nor are they signing up for anything from seeing your ad. You have 135 characters to identify a need, state a problem, and offer the solution the viewer will receive from clicking on your ad.
3. Be specific versus generic – State exactly what you are offering (50% off, Buy One Get One Free, Latest White Paper, Topic of the Week), create urgnecy (Only until Nov 30th, This week, Today, Now), and state the action (Click Here, Click Like, See How Here, Enter to Win).

Here is an example from our personal high performing ad campaigns:
“50% OFF Platinum Packages only until Oct 31st Click Here to See the Deal” versus “Special offers on Platinum Packages on our Facebook page”

Eye Catching Designs

Keep it simple. Avoid using your logo. People like to see people. And people like to see people using your product or service. Here are two examples of some of our highest performing designs from campaigns we’ve managed.

Simple. To the point. And the design relates to the copy. Done. (to put this into perspective each campaign consisted of 6 different designs including our logo for us to gather data and come to these results – AND we are still testing to ensure these assumptions hold true)

Running Multiple Ads per Campaign

Within a campaign you have the option to run multiple ads. However, if you are testing to see which ad design and copy combination performs better you most likely will want to setup a new campaign for each combination targeting the same market. Reason being, Facebook’s advertisement system will allocate more of your daily budget to the ads that are performing best within a campaign. This type of system will not give you accurate data to compare performance of different versions of your ads within a market. This system is good for comparing significantly different ads for example 3 ads that each have a unique design and unique copy from one another.
NEXT: Advanced Facebook Advertising: Maximizing Return Part 1 of 2
Topics Covered: Making Sense of Your Data
 
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