How to Optimize Facebook Advertisements for Maximum Effectiveness

Aug 31, 2010
Katrina Dayrit

The Art of Facebook Advertising - Morgan Finley

Internet marketers who advertise on Facebook can optimize their pay-per-click advertisements to yield high click-through rates from relevant users.

Testing different strategies with pay-per-click advertisements is a staple of any successful marketing campaign, and Facebook advertising is no different. It requires dedication and patience, but the most efficient route to optimizing an advertising campaign is to test different combinations of text and images.

There are a multitude of different strategies that internet marketing specialists use in their pay-per-click ad copy. However, there is no single trick that works across all products and industries. Generally, advertisers on this social networking site need to test a variety of advertisements and determine which garners the most responses among their target market.

Nevertheless, there are a few simple tips that can be employed in order to produce Facebook pay-per-click advertisements that yield optimum results.

Asking Questions on Pay-per-Click Advertisements

An effective method of writing compelling Facebook ad copy is to ask the reader a relevant question. A common sales technique is to phrase the question in such a way that an obvious answer points the reader in the direction of wanting to know more about what the advertiser has to offer. Very simple examples include "Would you like to make more money?" or "Are you tired of spending Friday nights alone?"

Phrasing advertisements in this manner will prompt the viewers to make an mental answer. "Yes, I would like to make more money" or "Yes, I would really like a date this weekend." The question engages them to the advertisement. The rest of the copy should focus on how the product or service can help them attain that goal.

Geotargeting Facebook Users

Geotargeting (sometimes referred to as geolocating) is a method by which internet marketing specialists can reach their target audiences based on their location, often determined by IP address. This allows for a multitude of possibilities when targeting Facebook pay-per-click advertisements for maximum effectiveness in terms of click-throughs and conversions.

First of all, geotargeting allows internet marketing specialists to advertise only to the markets that they can cater to with their products and services. Secondly, they can modify their copy to reflect the interests of specific location-based markets. Adding the location in the ad copy also tends to generate more interest among targeted users as they immediately know that they can avail of the product or service being advertised from where they are located.

Social Network Interest-Based Targeting

Facebook advertising has the ability to do something that no search engine-based pay-per-click advertising network can offer: interest-based targeting. Since users of this social networking site complete their profiles with interests and other data that can be used to determine psychographic information, internet marketing specialists advertising in this social network need not advertise to the general public or run campaigns based on keyword searches only.

Through this social networking website's interest-based targeting option, internet marketing specialists can target audiences based on interests personally declared through their profiles. For example, a sports shop might find value in targeting only users that have "basketball," "baseball," and other sports in their profiles. Doing so will lead to a more targeted campaign that leads to higher click-through rates.

It is important to keep in mind that optimizing Facebook pay-per-click advertisements cannot guarantee the success of the overall marketing campaign. Properly optimized advertisements would definitely yield higher click-through rates (CTRs). The rate at which traffic from such advertisements become converted to actual paying customers would depend on the effectiveness of landing page optimization strategies employed.