With hundreds of millions of people on Facebook every single day, it’s no wonder that more and more businesses are using this social media site to get the word out about their businesses.  But there are two things that usually stop people from including Facebook as part of their marketing arsenal:

  1. The cost, and
  2. The lack of return on investment

While the cost of Facebook advertising won’t change, you can definitely give your return on investment a real boost if you know what you’re doing.  Below are some of my best tips that I give to my clients who start up a Facebook advertising campaign so that they can increase their earnings and boost their transparency on the web.

Also, for more on generating more leads from Facebook, check out our FREE Ebook, “Mastering Facebook Marketing.”

Facebook PPC

We’ll first start by looking at the most standard form of Facebook advertising, the Facebook pay per click campaign. These are the ads that you see lining the right-hand side of your newsfeed page on Facebook.  If you want to get the most out of your pay per click campaign on Facebook, here’s what you’ve got to do:

  1. Know your target market!  Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that trying to sell to a wide and rather undefined marketplace will boost your sales – it will only cause your earning potential to plummet
  2. Test different ads constantly.  Make sure that you’ve got some good quality analytical software to back up your ad campaigns, and pay attention to the stats that Facebook provides as well.  You will want to test different images, text descriptions and headlines for ads to see which ones not only get clicked, but which ones cause visitors to perform particular actions (i.e. does “this” ad end in a purchase, or does “THAT” ad result in a purchase?)
  3. Make your call to action straight and to the point.  Tell people what you want them to do, and what it will achieve.
  4. Always have a fantastic landing page to complete the sale.  If your PPC ad goes to a landing page that is designed in just the right way to nab the interest of your potential leads, then you’re increasing your chance of turning that lead into a customer.
  5. Don’t give up.  It may take you a bit to get started, and you may even lose a bit of money in the beginning.  But be persistent and keep testing new ads.  Re-examine who your target market may be, or perhaps focus on a different target market from time to time.

TIP:  It’s also important to know about keywords when creating PPC campaigns.  HubSpot offers a great keyword tool, though it may be a good idea to hire on an SEO expert or inbound marketing firm to help you find the right tools and advise you on what makes for a good keyword and what doesn’t. 

Facebook Sponsored Stories

Sponsored stories are relatively new when it comes to Facebook advertising, but they are an effective way to get the word out about your company.  Sponsored Stories are essential posts that a business, organization or individual has paid to be highlighted in peoples’ newsfeeds.  Whenever a “friend” interacts with “Pages” on Facebook, you can see that they did so on their newsfeed (i.e. “Sarah Smith likes XYZ Business”).  Sponsored Stories act in the same way, but the difference is that a business or organization has paid to have those stories showed more prominently by either:

  • Displaying the story higher up in newsfeeds (where one’s natural line of vision falls), or
  • On the right-hand side of Facebook

There are a couple real benefits to Sponsored Stories on Facebook:

  • People can’t opt out of being featured in Sponsored Stories
  • Sponsored Stories appear in a more “natural” fashion on Facebook

This type of advertising isn’t blatant selling like Facebook PPC ads.  Oftentimes, the less people feel they are being “sold” to, the more likely they are to check out a link.   The only slight drawback is that Sponsored Stories can be a bit more difficult to analyze when it comes to how effective they are.

Have a Great Facebook Business Page

Last but not least, if you want to have a great advertising campaign on Facebook, make sure that you have a business page on Facebook and make sure that it’s up to par.  This means having all of your contact information available, posting regularly, and being interactive on your business account.  For more tips on how to build your Facebook business page, click here.

Key Takeaways:

Whether you choose to use PPC or Sponsored Stories on Facebook, one thing is for sure: you have to continually test the results.  Try to set up a time every week to analyze the results and change your campaigns as needed.

Need Help?

If you’re interested in generating more leads from Facebook, contact us today to schedule your free marketing analysis.