Facebook social ads have become the new frontier of online advertising, merging interaction with social triggers. As an Online Marketer, I am always looking for new techniques to support greater performance of ads. I have been advertising quite a bit on Facebook lately, and imagery is one of the key reasons users look at ads. I have had several high performing ads on Facebook, capitalizing on a craze such as the iPad 2 launch, or on a competitor going out of business. What these ads had in common was very compelling imagery.
Facebook is the second most trafficked site on the web with over 600 million users. Its ability to hyper-target users based on likes and interests, and the affordability of a Facebook campaign over a Google Adwords campaign makes Facebook a pretty appetizing advertising medium. In a Guide to Facebook Ads, Facebook strongly recommends “including an image in your ad, as it helps your ad stand out. The ad system will automatically resize the image, and where your ad is shown. It’s best to upload horizontal images to ensure you’re maximizing the space available.” Facebook also notes that “a strong image should be eye-catching, relevant to your product or service, or inform users about what your ad is for.”
What makes an image eye catching, relevant, or informative? I have been collecting some of the best eye catching ads on Facebook for the past 2 months, and here is what I have found out.
Stroke is in, use of dark colors against Facebook’s white background, use of vibrant colors, use of white background on white background, and being interactive.
After finding the most common attributes amongst Facebook ads I made an ad that pulls from many of them. And the results were great. I used vibrant colors, stroke, white background on white background, and social interaction with the like button. And here’s the result: an ad that, in a matter of one day, has become my highest performing ad on Facebook to date.
On a day-by-day basis this ad keeps outperforming itself. If you look at the social interaction in the table above, it increased from 0.7% to 6.2% in 2 days. Once I had a high performing ad, I was able to keep lowering my maximum bid and ended up paying $0.80 per click when the suggested bid was $1.62-$2.71. I was saving $0.80 – $1.91 per click. High performing ads yield lower CPC, and double to triple the amount of traffic.
To sum things up compelling imagery will get your ad noticed, and I consider this 80% of the battle. Next is having ad copy that requires the user to take action. The easiest action to get out of Facebook users is a like. The user never has to leave the page they were on, and you captured them as a fan on Facebook. Once your ad is performing well, log onto Facebook at different times of the day and incrementally lower your max bid while still maintaining the steady flow of traffic/actions. My ad was averaging anywhere from 190-250 new fans a day with an average daily cost of $171 – $197.50.
UPDATE
Hyper-Targeting + Compelling imagery + action based ad copy = success.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Love the article! You mentioned Facebook’s ability to “hyper target” users, which I would also suggest including into your equation for success (Strategic Targeting + Compelling Imagery + Action-based Ad Copy = Success). Too many times, advertiser’s cast out their ads as a wide net into a enormous pool of people hoping to capture the attention of a few, but often resulting in low conversions. With just a little targeting, they could be achieving higher conversions by casting their ads into a more concentrated, smaller pool of more qualified people.
And I’d also suggest going beyond the “obvious” with your targeting. For example, Penny Auction sites often use Facebook to advertise to “penny auction” enthusiasts and players. They simply set up their targeting to include all folks who have “Liked” the fan pages of Beezid, Quibids, Wavee, BidCactus, etc. These are definitely folks that you’d consider to be a highly qualified audience. But you should also consider targeting other audiences, such as “online gamers, online gambling/casino players, etc”. This audience may be ripe for the picking since their profiles may include “likes gaming, are risk takers, enjoy competition, willing to spend money online, and potentially have some disposable/expendable income to play around with. All you would need to do is set up a new ad campaign to target some of the online casino/gambling sites on Facebook, use some compelling creative that may be more targeted to this audience, and add some clever action oriented ad copy. This would be a more strategic way to potentially capture a new untapped audience and new users to your penny auction site.
Thanks Alex…Good Stuff!
iPennyAuctions
You’re right. I see it all the time on Facebook new advertisers going after a broad market. Just because I like playstation 3 doesn’t mean I am going to buy one from you.