How can I improve the performance of my Facebook advertising campaign?

Facebook Ads provide incredible reach to a targeted audience which can’t be matched by any other online (or offline) advertising system.

Unless you’ve been living quietly in a cupboard, you’ll already know there a lot of people using Facebook and they spend a lot of time there. Here are some very recent stats from Facebook itself.

There are over 300 million users, 57% female and 43% male and the fastest growing demographic is that of the 35+ age group.

If Facebook was a country it would be the world’s forth largest behind China, India and the US. It actually looks set to become the third largest as its ‘population’ is now only seven million behind that of the US!

But I digress.

Facebook Ad’s are more ‘pushy’ than Google AdWords and by this I mean, when someone performs a search on Google for, say, “sleeping bags”, relevant Google Ads appear to help you research or buy a sleeping bag.

AdWords are a classic “pull advertising” model.

Facebook Ads are pretty much the opposite. Users on Facebook generally aren’t specifically trying to solve a problem; your Facebook Ads appear in front of them whether they’re interested in what you have to offer or not. It’s ‘push advertising’, but up to a point.

Because you can target your Facebook ads to people by their interests (eg. “camping”) your Facebook Ad which offers deals on ‘sleeping bags’ may in fact be relevant to them at some point.

What’s more, using this “sleeping bag” example, Google’s keyword tool tells us that approximately 10,000 searches a month are conducted on Google.

Over at Facebook, there are over 87,000 people who have told us they like “camping” in their profile:

You can see there’s quite a bit of potential on Facebook!

So here are some tips to help you optimise your Facebook Ads so you can generate more online sales.

1. Create a compelling Ad with an image which graphically matches the landing page a person is sent to when they click on your Facebook Ad.

2. Like AdWords Ad’s, include a strong CTA (Call to Action), such as “mention this Ad for a free gift!” or “Offer ends soon!”

3. Create five Ads with different copy (split test your Ads) so you can see over time which is working best and make variations. The other reason is so that people don’t get bored seeing the same Ad from you all the time.

4. Try targeting different audiences, demographics, ages, locations, etc.

5. Use Google’s Campaign URL builder tool so you can track what people are doing on your website once they arrive from your Facebook Ad in Analytics.

6. Use Facebook’s interesting reporting tool to help you gain insights into users, their profiles and behaviours (note, this is aggregate data, you do not get access to any individual’s information). You can see in the screenshot below that for one of the campaigns we’re currently running, young women aged between 18-24 and 25-34 represent the highest “% of clickers” on our Ad.

We can use this data to create a new Facebook Ad specifically targeting this age group and sex with more customised content to try and lift click-throughs further.

Facebook Ads are still quite new, but really the fundamentals are all the same for all online advertising; be relevant, test your creatives/offers and keep an eye on reports and ROI!

For more Online Sales expert advice, click here.

Chris Thomas heads Reseo, a search engine optimisation company which specialises in creating and maintaining Google AdWords campaigns and Search Engine Optimisation campaigns for a range of corporate clients.