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Are you caught up with the most recent online marketing changes, updates and theories? Wishpond’s James Scherer, in this four-part series, will examine the most influential changes that have happened in the past six months, and how those changes affect you and your business on a daily basis.In this final installment, Scherer will discuss four strategies for getting a solid return on investment from Facebook Ads. In Part 1, Scherer looked at the rise of social media optimization. Part 2 covered Content Shock — what it is and why it matters. Part 3 examined what Facebook’s Edgerank changes mean for marketers.
Facebook Ads often get a bad rap, but they’ve been steadily improving. The average click-thru rate for Facebook Ads has jumped 275% since 2012. ROI has increased 152% in the past 18 months.
There are countless ways you can dive a little deeper into Facebook Advertising to find an ROI that works for your business. Learning the strategies below requires a bit more time and effort, but it can also open up a whole new platform for generating brand awareness, promoting your products, and even generating leads.
Here are four (somewhat advanced) strategies to get a workable ROI out of Facebook Ads:
1. Facebook Ads can be used for way more than just promotion of a sale. You can create an ad used to generate Facebook likes for your page (say, with a like-gated contest or promotion) and set the payment plan to Cost-Per-Like — meaning you pay based on how the ad performs for your brand. (Well-designed, optimized ads can have a CPL of only 30 cents!) That’s pretty cool given that Syncapse found that a Facebook like was worth, on average, $174 to brands.
2. They’re awesome for lead generation. You can target Facebook Ads so specifically that only people who have stated (in no uncertain terms) that they’re interested in your field or sector will see them and traffic through to a lead-generating landing page. My favorite way to generate leads with Facebook Ads is to promote an e-mail-gated ebook to people who have stated they are interested in that ebook’s subject. Target the ad as specifically as possible and then connect it to an optimized landing page, which discusses how the ebook can benefit its reader and provides an e-mail-gated download button.
3. Targeting by custom audience. Using this method, in which you import your business’ e-mail list into your Facebook Ad tool and find the corresponding Facebook user, means you can re-target those lapsed customers who haven’t bought from you in a few months, or reward your loyal customers with a Facebook-exclusive offer. Before you import your contact list, be sure you’ve segmented it intelligently based on your ad goals. Consider importing only your most recent merchants (past 6 months) and targeting them with an ad with copy such as “How are you liking [Your Business]? Click to get our exclusive 50% off coupon available only to loyal customers!â€
4. Targeting by lookalike audience. Available only with the Power Editor plugin, lookalike targeting finds Facebook users similar to your imported custom audience list. This means you can generate leads with all the characteristics of your existing customers – thereby dramatically increasing your ad click-through-rate. Lookalike audience targeting is effective not only based on a custom audience who have bought from you, but how about targeting Facebook users exactly like your custom audience of ebook subscribers? Your CTR can be awesome, but be aware you’ll need at least 10,000 people in your custom audience to find results!
James Scherer is a content marketer for Wishpond and author of the ebook The Complete Guide to Facebook Ads.Wishpond makes it easy to run Facebook Ads, create landing pages & contests, email automation campaigns & manage all of your business’ contacts.
