facebook advertising

Your Complete Guide To Facebook Advertising

Over the last 5 years, Facebook stock (Nasdaq: FB) increased from from $31.91 to $94.97 (using closing prices available on Yahoo! Finance). That’s an increase of 198%. During the same period, the overall Nasdaq composite increased 67%. Why did Facebook perform so well? How did Facebook outperform the broader Nasdaq, comprised of tech-centric companies? I’ll tell you how: Facebook advertising emerged as one of the most scalable and powerful digital marketing ecosystems around. Moreover, Facebook advertising forged the path for incredibly successful mobile advertising, a primary focus of digital marketers everywhere.

A few years ago, I wrote a post here on PPC Ian about How I Drove 3,156 Facebook Likes For $0.31 Each. Two weeks ago, I wrote a post about How I Drove 24,747 Facebook Likes For $0.04 Each. Over the years, I have evolved and improved as a marketer. That being said, my increased performance is also a function of the evolution of Facebook as an advertising platform. Facebook advertising works better than ever and savvy marketers are doubling down on their Facebook advertising investment.

Are you constantly evolving as a Facebook marketer? I know I am! Enter my good friends at 3Q Digital, the same digital marketing agency that hosted the incomparable 3Q Digital Growth Summit. In the must-read whitepaper of 2016, 3Q Digital’s Director of Social, Brad O’Brien, drops 19 pages of pure knowledge on Facebook Advertising. I’m thrilled to share 3Q Digital’s Complete Guide To Facebook Advertising.

Each weekend, I try to read a digital marketing eBook. I have found this strategy incredibly effective in my career, as someone who’s always learning. Below, I’d like to discuss the overall structure of this guide, as well as my favorite findings. First, the structure. Over the course of 19 pages, Brad O’Brien goes into depth on each of the following topics:

Tracking
Account Structure
Elements of Ad Sets
Acquisition Campaigns
Retention Campaigns
Ad Units

Second, my top findings. I took many insights away from 3Q Digital’s guide, with the following being my favorites.

Brad goes into depth on Facebook tracking changes happening later in 2016. Learn how you can set things up correctly, right now, so you avoid changes to your tracking later this year.
There are so many audience-targeting opportunities on Facebook, each with its own strategy. Learn all about custom audiences, website custom audiences, lookalike audiences, audiences by seasonality and customer LTV, and audiences based on interests, behaviors, and demographics. That’s a lot of audiences!
On page 11, Brad includes some incredibly helpful bidding strategy tables that I recommend printing out. With so many different bidding options available, Brad makes your strategic path easy with his decision tree.
On page 15, 3Q Digital includes some wonderful creative tips, a true must-read. At the end of the day, Facebook advertising is only as successful as your creative. I personally took a few creative ideas away from this page.

As always, 3Q Digital’s Complete Guide To Facebook Advertising is free. Download and read this guide today, and raise your Facebook advertising game to the next level. Thanks, Brad and 3Q Digital for the truly outstanding guide.

If you’re looking for a marketing agency to help with your digital marketing, I highly recommend 3Q Digital. They are Silicon Valley’s agency, and truly outstanding. They are also personal friends of mine of many years, and a team I am constantly learning from.

Images in this post © Yahoo! Finance and 3Q Digital

How I Drove 24,747 Facebook Likes At $0.04 Each

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 4 5

I recently ran a Facebook campaign for PPC Ian with the goal of expanding my audience of readers. What started out as a small test turned into a large campaign driving 24,747 incremental page likes for only $1,001.70 (or $0.04 per like). Today, I’m thrilled to share insights from my campaign and also screenshots from my Facebook Advertising account.

Facebook Advertising Insight 1: Always Test

My advertising budget for PPC Ian is really low. That said, I always try to dabble in campaigns of all sorts. It’s this moonlighting and experimenting on my personal blog that expands the knowledge and results I can drive as an overall marketer. If you have a day job in digital marketing, you absolutely need to be experimenting on your own as well. Think of it as an investment in yourself. This is money well spent!

Facebook Advertising Insight 2: Have An Adaptive Budget Philosophy

When I started this campaign, I had allocated a low budget. I don’t recall exactly, but it was probably no more than $10 or $20 per day, with the goal of running for a week. The same day I launched, I quickly noticed that my campaign was driving one of the best cost-per-likes I have experienced. I started raising budgets in increments, observing my cost-per-like carefully. I noticed that it did not increase, in fact it appeared to decrease! I had certainly crafted a scalable campaign, one worthy of investment. I adapted to the market conditions and doubled down on my investment.

Facebook Advertising Insight 3: Experiment With Non-Standard Audiences

I thought I knew my audience fairly well. PPC Ian is targeted towards digital marketing professionals. Most of my readers are US-based, typically in their 20s and 30s, building fast-paced careers.

When running this campaign, I expanded my target audience to include anyone over the age of 18, and also included a bunch of tech-savvy countries such as India. I was delightfully surprised to discover that the PPC Ian target audience is truly global, and can skew younger/male. I’m impressed that younger generations are building digital marketing careers internationally, as they are surely setting themselves up for success in life! I feel like I tapped into a truly responsive audience by challenging my tried-and-true marketing filters.

Insight 4: It’s All About Mobile

If you have been advertising in social media for a while, you probably already know this one. Social media is a truly personal, mobile experience. It seems to be even more so with the international professional. This campaign drove most of its success from mobile devices.

Insight 5: It’s OK To Take Pause

$1,001.70 is a big budget for me! This is my personal blog, after all. As you can see in the first screenshot (top of this blog post), I paused my campaign a few times. I actually reduced my daily budget to $1 and then paused to be extra safe I wouldn’t spend more money. I wanted to test my Facebook page to make sure my new fans were legit and responsive to my social media updates.

I was pleased to find that my new fans were very responsive, I was affordably building a new source of traffic to the PPC Ian brand. Upon un-pausing and raising my budgets, I watched my cost-per-like closely. I found that pausing my campaign did not hurt my results. I was able to continue with a similar cost-per-like and did not hurt my results by pausing. Lesson: Don’t be scared to take pause.

Insight 6: Pictures of Me Speaking Work Well

If you’ve been in digital marketing for a while, you know that creative is one of the most important elements of any successful campaign. I didn’t test multiple creative in this campaign, but I did at least discover a winning creative. I featured a picture of myself speaking publicly at Programmatic I/O, and encouraged those viewing my ad to contact me with any question. I’m always here to help. Based upon the success of this creative, I’m now rolling similar creative out to my PPC Ian retargeting campaigns.

Insight 7: Be Scrappy and Leverage Pockets of Downtime

I don’t have a ton of free time. That said, I live a no excuses lifestyle. I actually launched this campaign on my mobile smartphone while at a family get-together. I had a few minutes of downtime, and just went for it. Even if you’re not in front of your computer, always test. Leverage those small chunks of downtime to launch campaigns. There are no excuses if you have true dedication to digital marketing.

Insight 8: $0.04 Likes Are Possible At Scale

I used to think that $0.30 per like was reasonably good. This campaign certainly challenged my thinking. $0.04 is now going to be the golden benchmark to beat. The moral: Always optimize and challenge yourself for increased efficiency.

I hope these tips help and my sincere thank you to all of my new readers!

PPC Associates Must-Have 2013 Facebook Ads Guide

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jul 24 0

I’m a huge fan of PPC Associates Digital Marketing Agency. I’m personal friends with their co-founder and CEO, David Rodnitzky. I’m also great friends with their several other team members at PPC Associates including Hillary Read, their Director of Marketing. I truly appreciate their breadth of experience across all channels of digital marketing. I also truly appreciate the fact that they know how to market their own agency, the sign of a truly passionate marketing team. As just one example: PPC Associates runs one of the greatest digital marketing blogs on the Internet.

Today, I wanted to share with you the brand new PPC Associates 2013 Guide To Facebook Advertising. I thought it would make perfect sense given that Facebook just announced their second quarter earnings and beat estimates handsomely (thanks to digital marketing professionals like you and me). Right now is the time to advertise on Facebook, and PPC Associates is there to guide you every step of the way with their free tutorial.

I really like this guide, and here’s why:

It’s jam-packed with 24 pages of free insights.
It talks about all the possible objectives of advertising on Facebook. Facebook is a lot different than traditional search marketing. Perhaps you’re looking to drive brand awareness. Perhaps you’re looking to generate likes. Perhaps you’re looking to drive direct response conversions. PPC Associates covers all of these objectives, and discusses the different types of ads and how they relate to each objective.
PPC Associates goes into incredible detail to educate the reader about all types of Facebook ads. I’m talking about marketplace ads (marketplace standard ad, marketplace event ad, marketplace like ad, and marketplace application ad), sponsored stories (page likes, check-ins, and page posts), mobile advertisements (mobile sponsored stories, mobile promoted posts, mobile page posts, and mobile app install ads), premium ads (photo, video, question, status, event, link, app ad, video app ad, standard ad, and video standard ad), sponsored search results, and Facebook Exchange Ads (FBX). Wow, that was a looooong list! I wanted to list it all out, however, to show you the comprehensiveness of this great resource.
This guide also dives into a ton of other topics: targeting options, custom audiences, metrics, and more.
It’s written in a logical, easy-to-follow format. It’s a true reference that you can share with your entire team.

When it comes to digital marketing, I really enjoy learning from agencies. They get to see so much, across so many different verticals. PPC Associates’ amazing wealth of knowledge comes through in their guide and I highly recommend downloading your free copy.

Image in this post © PPCAssociates.com

Marin Software’s Free Guide To Facebook Ads

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment May 11 4

I’m a huge fan of Marin Software and have personally leveraged this amazing SEM platform to manage multi-million dollar campaigns. Not only does Marin have an amazing platform and team (including Matt Lawson who I interviewed here on PPC Ian), but they have been offering some seriously great whitepapers – for free! Last time, I reviewed Marin’s Optimization Beyond Bidding whitepaper. Today, I’m absolutely thrilled to review Marin’s brand new whitepaper: The Search Marketer’s Guide to Successful Facebook Ads.

Highlights From Marin’s Facebook Ads Whitepaper

There’s no doubt about it: Facebook Ads are taking off. Whether you’re an affiliate marketer or a corporate marketing professional, Facebook has become critical to the success of any marketing program. For this reason, I highly recommend downloading Marin’s free whitepaper. Here are some of my favorite highlights:

Marin’s whitepaper is free and super easy to download it. You can download right after filling out some really easy info (no email confirmation required).
Marin interviewed the largest Facebook advetisers around and compiled their tips and tricks into an easy to digest format.
You’ll learn how to leverage your existing fan base to build powerful paid campaigns.
You get to tap into an exclusive Razorfish case study, one of the top online marketing agencies around.
Marin shares a really neat root analysis concept, a creative and algorithmic way of generating new likes and interests.
In addition to tactical tips anyone can put to good use, Marin discusses some of the amazing Facebook features available in their application (with screenshots): Audience segmentation and creative rotation.

So there you have it! One of the can’t miss whitepapers of 2011. I highly recommend downloading The Search Marketer’s Guide to Successful Facebook Ads. I’m going to leave you with an awesome quote from Marin’s whitepaper: “Consumers exposed to a brand’s social media content are actually 50% more likely to click on paid search ads and 1.7 times more likely to purchase through search.”

Acquisio’s Free Facebook Advertising Webinar

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Mar 22 13

I have some truly helpful tips for you today about Facebook advertising. As you may know from my recent post about three ways to drive more Facebook fans, I’m really into Facebook right now. Facebook is hot and whether you’re looking to drive more “likes” to your fan page, capture leads, or even drive conversions, it’s truly the beginning stages of the game when it comes to Facebook (think AdWords 4-5 years ago). My recommendation: Learn as much as you possibly can about Facebook and run with it! To help you follow this advice, it’s with great excitement that I highlight Acquisio’s Pre-Recorded Facebook Advertising Webinar in today’s post!

53 Minutes of Free Facebook Advertising Tips

This webinar truly delivers. I honestly can’t believe it’s free. Presented by Merry Morud, expert Facebook advertiser from aimClear, this pre-recorded webinar delivers 53 minutes of helpful tips. The first two thirds of the presentation cover a very well thought out agenda with the final third covering questions from attendees. I learned throughout the entire presentation! The questions from the audience were stellar. Some of my favorite parts of the presentation:

Ad Fatigue: This is a real issue with Facebook advertising. Ads will quickly achieve millions upon millions of impressions. Their useful lifespan can quickly end with click through rates plummeting (and CPAs accelerating). I’ve personally experienced this issue first hand running large campaigns on Facebook and couldn’t agree more with Merry’s tips for overcoming ad fatigue. Many of Merry’s points are tips I have employed first hand, and the rest are tips I will be trying soon!
Workflow Efficiency Tips: Let’s face it, Facebook is a new platform and lacks the overall efficiency of AdWords. It can take quite a bit of time to get campaigns live and sometimes things can feel a bit “backwards” for new advertisers. Merry steps in and provides a number of workflow efficiency tips that will save you hours.
Make Your Images Pop: The image component of your Facebook ads are of paramount importance. I’m thrilled to have learned of a new, nifty tool that will help me make my images “pop” even more.

Interested in the overall agenda? Check out the image at the bottom of this post (and then click it to watch the pre-recorded webinar).

Acquisio Is On An Amazing Roll

Have you heard of Acquisio? They’re an amazing performance marketing platform that helps agencies save time (and money), optimize campaigns across search engines, derive insights (and beautiful client reports) from advanced reporting, optimize bids via highly sophisticated algorithms, and so much more. I’m a huge fan and recently interviewed Marc Poirier, CEO of Acquisio, here on PPC Ian. I even met up with Marc at SMX West a few weeks ago.

In addition to providing an amazing platform, Acquisio has been leading our industry in terms of their free educational materials. They teamed up with Search Marketing Now and sponsored this Facebook advertising webinar, after all. In addition to this particular webinar, I highly recommend checking out their two recent whitepapers: Choosing a PPC Management Pricing Model and Why Display Matters To Search Marketers. I reviewed both of these whitepapers here on PPC Ian and both are totally free, just like the webinar.

So, there you have it! I’d love to hear from you guys. Have you been advertising on Facebook? Is it working for you?