We often speak with business owners who are excited about the possibilities associated with pay per click advertising services like Facebook, a relatively new social advertising platform. What many of them find when they start running Facebook ads, however, is that duplicating the success they’ve had on other pay per click advertising services like Google AdWords – it’s a bit trickier than they expected. They know they have an audience and a message, but can’t seem to bring the two together.
If you’ve been struggling with getting your Facebook ads up and running at maximum efficiency, or have put off implementing them because you aren’t sure how to proceed, then we might have the answers you’re looking for. Today, we’re going to offer some quick tips you can use to carry your Google AdWords campaigns over into Facebook.
Not all of the concepts and practices will be the same, of course, but if you’ve found success on search engines than you should be able to advertise profitably on the world’s most popular social media site, too. Here are a few of the ways you can do it…
Turn Keywords Into Demographics
The biggest difference between pay per click advertising services on Google and promoting your company on Facebook has to do with the fact that search engines are built on keywords while social sites operate on demographics. In other words, you can’t necessarily locate your prospects at the perfect moment when they are looking for information about your business, but you can zero in on the perfect potential customer by knowing what they look like.
With that in mind, the first key to setting up an effective Facebook advertising count is to clearly identify the groups you want to reach. Think about where they live, what age range they fall into, and what kinds of job titles they might have. Try to find any criteria (such as page likes, interests, etc.) that would qualify or disqualify someone from seeing your marketing.
Translate Your Message Into Images
Although Google does allow image ads, most marketers are comfortable working with text-based offers that rely on search term matching. Obviously, you can’t do that on Facebook since no one is searching for anything – your potential customers are simply scrolling through their feeds to see what is new and entertaining.
In order to grab their attention, you have to turn your marketing message into an image-based ad that comprises a few words or less. That gives you less space to explain your offer, but makes it easier to pull in clicks and impressions through the use of stunning and vivid pictures. Anything with bright colors, human faces, or an interesting animal is almost always guaranteed to get noticed, so begin your ad campaigns with those elements when you can.
Reverse Engineer Your Cost Per Click
On Google, you’re generally going to pay for your ads based on the number of clicks they receive. Conversely, Facebook’s pay per click advertising services will bill you according to an estimated number of impressions that will depend a great deal on the target audience you’ve chosen.
That certainly makes it a little more difficult to find your cost-per-conversion in a meaningful way. At the same time, advertising costs on Facebook tend to be a lot lower when measured in terms of reach. Put those two details together, and you can see why it’s so important to work backwards to figure out how much you’re spending on each new sale or lead that is generated. It might require an extra step, but those are figures you need to have so you can plan and optimize your campaigns going forward.
Make Friends With Facebook’s Advertising Platform
Some marketers would say Google’s AdWords control panel and account snapshot features give you all the information you need at your fingertips; others would claim that it buries you in statistics and forces you to read between the lines to find the data you want. The difference is a matter of perspective and familiarity.
However you feel about Google’s pay per click advertising services interface, you’re likely to feel the opposite about Facebook. That’s because it’s designed to be more graphical and user-friendly. That makes it feel simple and streamlined to some, but lacking in real insights for others. Either way, you can’t manage any kind of online advertising without strong analytics, so it’s a good idea to make friends with Facebook’s display. Click through some of your reports and activities and you’ll discover that, before long, finding the stats and percentages you need will become second nature.
Compare and Contrast Your Campaigns
Ultimately, your goal in pay per click advertising – regardless of whether using a search engine or social media site – is to generate more in revenue than you are spending for exposure. While both sites can be extraordinarily valuable to virtually any marketer, it’s undoubtedly true that some companies find more success on Google than they do Facebook and vice versa.
Often, this has to do with their own style, preconceived notions, and ability to persevere. The point we’re trying to make is that you shouldn’t automatically assume the results you get from Facebook are going to be less than what you got from Google. Neither should you continue to pour money into social advertising if you aren’t generating the kind of positive ROI you would expect after a number of weeks or months. You’ll have to compare and contrast your approaches to see what works.
Are You Ready to Bring Your Google Advertising Campaigns to Facebook?
Facebook and Google might be very different interfaces, but the principles of running online ads remain constant no matter what site you’re working with. It’s all about identifying the right audience, putting a targeted message in front of them, and tweaking your campaigns until you get a predictable and positive response. Remember that, and you’ll always be moving your bottom line in the right direction.
So, put the advice we’ve given in this article to use and see what happens. You may just discover that you’re able to find an efficient source of new traffic that your competitors haven’t figured out yet.