Facebook, Lead Generation, & PPC Advertising: 5 Principles to Make it Work
The early days of paid search marketing were filled with lots of volume and little competition. As a result, it was fairly easy to have paid search campaigns that drove a positive ROI. Since the early days, paid search has grown into an entire industry. There are now many tools that assist in finding thousands of keywords, generate misspellings and synonyms, actively manage your keyword bids, and measure the effectiveness of your landing pages. As these tools have come into the market, search marketing has become much more competitive and higher ROI’s are more difficult to obtain.
The saturation of search marketing makes finding new and effective methods of online marketing very desirable. How much marketing budget would you spend if you knew your customer acquisition costs would be 20-50% less than a traditional search engine?
Facebook is the second most popular website on the internet, after Google. The popular social network is home to over 350 million users who post over 55 million status updates each day, share more than 3.5 billion pieces of content each week, and publish over 2.5 billion photos each month. One criticism of Facebook is that it is a place to hang out, not to buy. Because Lead Gen companies try and capture potential customers further up in the buying cycle, Facebook can be a solid source of potential leads.
The purpose of this newsletter is to help you better understand if your product or service is relevant in the context of Facebook. The following are some of 360Partners best practice suggestions on how to manage Facebook campaigns
1. Understand that Facebook is different than Paid Search
Facebook advertising follows a pay-per-click approach, similar to advertising on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Advertisers are charged when a user clicks on a Facebook ad and visits your site. This direct marketing approach is very attractive. However, there are some major differences than a typical paid search advertisement. Because of the nature of the website, potential customers on Facebook aren’t actively seeking for your services. This results in a much lower click-through rate, and potentially lower conversion rates. A second difference is that in Facebook, keywords are not based on search queries but rather on information users list in their Facebook profiles, such as Activities, Favorite Books, TV Shows, Movies, etc. Facebook advertisers need to think through carefully the keywords they want to use and can’t just copy over a successful search campaign.
2. Understand your target audience
360Partners recommends having a clear understanding of who you are trying to reach. The search engines allow control of advertising to the basic demographics of your potential customers. What sets Facebook apart from these engines is the option to target based on psychographics. Psychographics refers to attributes relating to personality, values, and interests of a person. An important question to ask is this, “What Facebook groups would my target audience join?”
For example, suppose my business provides software for people whose passion is creating photo books and scrapbooks. 360Partners recommends targeting keywords would revolve around “Scrapbooking” and “photo booking.” In this case the ads would then only show to people who have identified themselves as having interests in these keywords.
3. Employ a variety of ad images
Users tend to use Facebook frequently. As such, they become accustomed to the same image quickly. There is potential for your target audience to reach image fatigue. Because of this, 360Partners recommends utilizing a variety of ad images and replacing these images frequently. It’s important to keep your images fresh, unique, and interesting. The chart below shows two campaigns inside of Facebook. It shows the number of clicks over the course of 7 days. At the beginning of the week, you’ll notice that clicks were fairly stale. On Wednesday of March 3, 360Partners swapped out the visual images. Immediately, the number of clicks increased. As a result, volume and amount of leads also increased.
4. Use people in your display images
One of the most interactive features of Facebook involves the 3 billion photos that are uploaded to the site each month. It’s called Facebook for a reason and users expect to see images of friends, profiles, etc. 360Partners best practice suggestion is to use images of people in Facebook ads. These images should sell your value proposition and invite them to learn more about your product or service.
For example, the scrapbooking business would do well to integrate their target audience into the ads. The scrapbooking business should also have the image tell a positive story by showing people enjoying a customized scrapbook. Such an image will sell the value proposition to potential customers.
5. Measure conversion towards performance goals
The key to success on Facebook or any other form of online marketing is to begin with the end in mind – Customers. Measuring performance is the easiest way to improve performance. Recently, Facebook released a beta conversion tracking script. 360Partners recommends installing these scripts and measuring performance as granular as possible, and using them to determine what actions you need to optimize your account.
Case Study
360Partners has a client in the highly competitive online education industry. This company is looking to recruit new students into one of their online education programs. The first step the acquisition of new students is identifying prospective students online and getting them to request an application. Pay per click search marketing had been their primary means of getting prospective students to request an application. The average cost per click for this client ranges between $3 - $7 with about 10-15% of the prospective students requesting an application. This results in a cost per application around $40.
360Partners started a heavily targeted Facebook campaign for this client. The average cost per click for these campaigns was around $1.00 and resulted in a cost per application of $12.80. For this client, advertising in Facebook is a great channel to deliver additional volume and value to their program.
Are you looking to grow your customer lead flow? Do you think Facebook might be a viable channel for you?
360Partners is actively involved in Facebook advertising. We recommend exploring the possibility of advertising your lead generation business to this channel. If you’d like a free consultation about how best to start with Facebook, we’d enjoy the opportunity to talk. Contact us today at searchmarketing@360partners.com for a free consult.
About the author: Mike Craig leads an account team at 360Partners. He and his team serve a variety of lead gen clients. Prior to 360Partners, Mike received his Masters of Advertising from the University of Texas-Austin. His emphasis was on new media, specifically Facebook. As part of his masters program, Mike wrote his thesis on the effects of brands portrayed in Facebook images. Mike can be reached at mike@360partners.com
