A powerful sports car is a very sexy thing.
It is a very capable machine, capable of some pretty impressive feats. A performance machine they say.
Facebook ads are very similar. Perhaps not as sexy, but still quite capable of doing some pretty amazing things.
Now take a second with me and picture a car.
Maybe a Lamborghini, Corvette, Porsche, or a Bugatti — picture your ideal sports car. If you don’t like sports cars, then use the yellow Ferrari above.
Now, picture that car in the hands of a 16 year old, inexperienced driver.
Got it?
Here, let me help you with a visual:
Facebook ads are a multi-billion dollar business. And yet, there are very few resources out there to help businesses get this tool right.
We are basically giving every 16 year old kid in the country, with enough money to fill up the gas tank, a new Ferrari to drive. And then when we see all these flipped over cars on the side of the highway, we are confused.
Facebook ads have more targeting options, more capabilities than any other ad product online. Or anywhere for that matter.
And yet, many of us log on to Facebook everyday to see a bunch of ads that mean very little to us.
The simple fact is, most businesses are not good at Facebook ads yet.
What Are Advertisers Doing Wrong?
What big questions you have.
Even GM, one of the largest advertisers in the world, had trouble getting Facebook ads right.
If we stick with the sports car analogy, imagine that Ferrari has as many knobs and switches and buttons as a 747 aircraft.
There are basically so many options with Facebook ads, it is difficult to know which features are the best for each business and their specific goal.
We produced the Facebook Advertising Report earlier this year. It gave us a lot of insights into how businesses are using ads.
Here are 3 tips from that report, on how to improve your Facebook ads.
1. Facebook is good at loyalty.
And Facebook is good at middle of the funnel marketing. In other words, Facebook is good at taking some type of existing relationship (existing customer, new sales lead) and making it better. Getting them closer to purchasing or purchasing again. And many businesses are not using it for that.
2. Using social proof.
One of the most underutilized features on Facebook is sending ads to the friends of your fans. When we see that our friends on Facebook have liked or engaged with an ad or brand page, we trust it more. We automatically give it our attention at a much higher rate. Nielsen even found that we retain these ads at a much higher rate.
And yet, the vast majority of advertisers are not even trying sponsored stories or using Facebook’s social proof options.
3. Facebook ads live for 3 days.
There has been lots of testing of Facebook ads over the last several years. And it consistently shows us that results, actions, clicks, engagement, etc all die off after 3 days. Facebook emphasized this point last week when they created the Facebook Promoted Posts feature that lets you pay to promote status updates to a larger percentage of fans. Guess how long these posts are promoted for? You guessed it, 3 days.
And yet, most advertisers keep ads up for much longer than 3 days. Some as long as 60 days.
It is clear that we have a lot to learn before we can start cornering in the sweet ride that is the Facebook ads product.
The Case For A Facebook Ad Conference
We want to help marketers get better at Facebook ads and starting on June 19th, we are holding the month-long Advanced Facebook Ad conference to do just that.
The conference will be entirely online. So you can attend from anywhere in the world. And all the sessions will be recorded and available to replay for 6 months.
We have planned 22 live sessions, 10 case studies, 4 live Q&As and a private networking group online. Here is a taste of the presentations that will be covered:
- Sponsored Stories Explained
- The Facebook Ad ROI Equation
- Creating Killer Facebook Ad Images
- Facebook Ad Split Testing for Success
- CASE STUDY: Doubletree
- CASE STUDY: Groupon
- CASE STUDY: HubSpot
- Facebook Ads in the Entertainment Industry
- Community Managers Should Use Facebook Ads
- And over a dozen others…
For Beginners Too
And if you are a beginner and have not used Facebook ads before, we have that covered too. We have put together 5 “Basics of Facebook Advertising” sessions that will catch you up very quickly. Plus you will have a great community of fellow advertisers to ask questions of and learn from.
Want to attend?