Facebook Campaigns – News Feed vs. Traditional Ads
With the advent of Facebook’s Edgerank, businesses and organizations are finding that page likes are no longer enough in order to get their message in front of customers. So businesses with insufficient Edgerank are faced with a decision about paying for promoting their content. In order to “help” businesses in their decision to advertise,
Facebook has improved targeting methods and now enables ads to be placed within the newsfeed stream, making them much more effective. In response, automated tools such as Social Lead Freak, are becoming available to assist in fully leveraging Facebook’s new capabilities: especially in targeting custom audience in the news feed. Setting up an ad campaign is then a fairly straightforward process, using the following process:
- Niche selection – Careful selection of interests areas can be done within Facebook’s campaign setup tool, which facilitates the process and shows the number of Facebook users available. This is important, since development of a sales funnel might not be feasible if the number of potential customers is too small. For B2B services, targetting groups, or “liked pages” that have a membership or following of business owners within the selected niche will produce the best results. B2C services can be targetted by selecting “likes” from a major competitor’s page (especially one with notable customer service issues or bad reviews online).
- Ad and Campaign Setup – Images and ad copy are the most important. A specific landing page that is targetted to the selected niche is critical. According to Jamie Garside, a Facebook advertising specialist, better control is available using an off-Facebook landing page. A “pain-oriented” marketing message will produce the best results.
- Headline – “Run a XX Business?”
- Text – “Are You Losing Potential XXX Niche Enquiries Because of This?”
- Image – Should be closely related to the niche, and designed to draw eyeballs, e.g., some type of “pattern interrupt,” if possible. Google’s advanced search can be used to find images available for unrestricted commercial usage. Newsfeed ads must be run to a Fanpage and the images need to be at least 154 x 154 px.
- Bidding and Cost Management – Cost per click vs. impressions is recommended in order to control costs (especially for those new to Facebook ads). A $10 per day limit is recommended.
- Ads Approval – Landing pages should include contact information and a privacy policy for best results. Images used shouldn’t be at all controversial.
Jamie Garside who has been using these techniques before and after the most recent Facebook updates, finds that the new capabilities are making Facebook advertising much more feasible. News feed targeting, in particular seems especially effective, but requires the use of a tool such as Social Lead Freak (or some labor-intensive work) in order to “scrape” user IDs to use in the custom targeting feature of setting up a campaign.
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