For several years it was Google ranked number one for affiliates wanting to buy quality traffic. The fastest and easiest way to make money using PPC ads was to load Google AdWords up with hundreds (or even thousands) of long tail keywords and then tweak things until they were just right. Today, however, social ads are quickly growing in prominence. Some networks like Facebook can offer exceptional ROI on your advertising budget, along with dozens of filters and search modifiers to pinpoint your exact audience. Listed below are some quick and easy tips that you can implement into your Facebook ad campaigns for great returns on your investment.
Segment by Gender – Testing has shown that gender-focused ads tend to perform better than those which are more generic. This isn’t universal, nor should your ads be perceived to show a gender-bias. But when you’re starting a new campaign, split the male and female demographics into separate campaigns or ad groups. You should do the same thing for age groups when applicable. Keep young users (18-25) separate from adult users (25-34) and create an additional group for middle aged users (35-50).
Use Images of People – Facebook is a social network and people are in a social mindset when viewing their newsfeed and clicking on potential ads. Use images of people instead of objects when promoting your offers. Especially when you are bidding really low on certain demographics where higher click through rates are very important. You should try using pictures of men when advertising to your female demographic and pictures of women when advertising to your male demographic. This has shown to have better conversion results in past testing.
Bid Low and Increase With Time – Facebook Ads allow you to bid as low as $0.01/click and then increase with time. Lower bids show up lower in newsfeed and less frequently. But, you can get around this easily by creating a larger audience, slowly increasing rates day-by-day (a penny or two at a time until you hit your budget), or using different images in split tests. Ideally, you should be able to get a 0.50%-1% click through rate on any ad campaign you run at less than $0.10/click. Especially if your demographics are larger than 100,000 people.
Point Internally When Possible – You can send people to an off-Facebook page if you want, but most users are on Facebook for a reason and will quickly close external pages when they open. To get around that, use a Facebook page with an embedded tab which keeps the user inside the social network. Services like Pagemodo and WooBox make this very easy to do for free.
Offer Dual Conversions to Increase Value – By embedding an opt-in form or contest on your Page, you double conversion opportunities. Even if you’re only promoting a contest, you will get tons of collateral likes on your page. In fact, Like conversions can be three or four times higher than the conversions for your core campaign. Make sure there is always two options here.
Facebook continues to expand in growth around the world and offers incredible opportunities if you use them smartly. While they won’t replace Google AdWords for every niche, they do work excellent for eCommerce sites, news organizations and several other niches. With that in mind, Facebook Ads should be part of almost every affiliate marketers social media marketing strategy moving forward.
