Facebook ads have a bad reputation. Clickthrough rates (typically around 0.04%) are tiny compared to some other advertising platforms. They’re hidden off to the side so many users hardly notice them, and multiple ads per page artificially reduces clickthrough rates (because you can only click on one of them).
As a result of these and other issues, it’s not hard to find negative reviews of Facebook ads:
- Facebook Ad Click-Through Rates Are Really Pitiful
- Case Study: Facebook Ads
- Five Reasons Why Facebook Ads Is a Bad Idea
Facebook ads definitely aren’t a comprehensive, works-for-everyone solution for online advertising, but instead of dismissing them because of their weaknesses, there’s something to be gained by understanding and taking advantage of their strengths.
Crappy Clickthrough Rates = Awesome Branding Vehicle
Honestly, I love the fact that Facebook ads have a crappy clickthrough rate. I consider it one of their strengths. It means that you only have to pay for the ad about 0.04% of the time!
If your campaign requires a clickthrough to be effective, it’s probably not a good candidate for Facebook advertising. However, if you can create an ad that’s effective in itself, then Facebook can be an amazing platform for getting that ad in front of the right people, repeatedly.
For example, we put together this bare-bones ad for our agency’s Facebook Page:
Nothing fancy there. No offer. No tease. No call to action.
It sucks as a clickthrough-oriented ad, but it’s been fantastic for branding. The bold block of color grabs people’s attention, and the short name is easy to remember even after just a glance. If that pops up a few times while you’re browsing Facebook, it’ll stick somewhere in your brain, and it’ll be familiar when you see or hear it again in other contexts.
A common conversation at local industry events these days:
Them: “What do you do, James?”
Me: “I work for a marketing agency called Forty.”
Them: “Oh, I’ve heard of you guys before! I see you on Facebook all the time….”
(…and because of the low clickthrough rate, that increased awareness of our brand to a highly-targeted audience only cost a few hundred dollars. Getting a comparable result in other media would likely cost quite a bit more than that.)
The obvious question here is, “Yeah, but how do you measure conversions?” If you’re the kind of marketer who focuses primarily on direct responses, conversion rates, and pushing people through the funnel, then Facebook Ads probably aren’t a great solution for you. It’s much better suited toward building awareness in brand-oriented campaigns.
Specificity is Hot
One of the great joys of Facebook Ads is the degree to which you can tightly target a very specific audience. Facebook is ultimately a directory of people, so it can provide targeting (and therefore a better use of your money) well beyond what you can get with context-sensitive advertising engines like Google Adwords.
This makes it possible to target very tight niches, making the best use of your marketing budget. Now you can start that Wisconsin Young Almost-Married Knitters Club you’ve always wanted to do!
Be the Mad Scientist
The interesting format of Facebook Ads (image + text), along with the high degree of targeting, gives you a great laboratory for creative advertising experiments.
For example, instead of promoting Forty’s home page or a targeted landing page with a generic marketing message, we decided to see what would happen if we just promoted the individual employees (with links to their own profile pages on the site) with something like this:
That campaign actually got clickthrough rates of up to 0.19%, which is quite a bit higher than average. And even though we sent them directly to an individual profile page rather than a sales-oriented page, users coming to our site from this campaign spent longer on the site, viewed more pages, and bounced less frequently, and converted at rates comparable to other traffic sources.
Got a crazy idea? Try it. There’s no way to tell what’ll work until you put it out there.
Your Mileage May Vary
Facebook Ads are one tool in the toolbox. They won’t work for every campaign, but they make work for yours. We’ve had some really great results with them recently, and I’d encourage you to check them out and experiment a bit (be creative!) to see what kinds of results they can get for you.
Going to go out on a limb here and say I’m not shocked that a picture of a pretty girl that KINDA looks like a personal ad is going to get a lot of clicks online, no matter what else is in the ad.
But aren’t the people you’re meeting that see Forty on Facebook already connected in some way to a friend of a friend? Sure, they recognize Forty, but does that make them buy?
Thanks for your comments, Tyler. To address your questions:
We ran those ads for everyone on our team, and even MY ugly mug got higher clickthrough rates than our previous campaigns.
And many of the people I mentioned talking to had no prior knowledge of Forty, prior to seeing the ads.
The ads alone don’t make them buy — they’re not intended to, since hiring a marketing agency isn’t really an impulse buy — but they’re another touching-point for the brand, which helps them remember us over other agencies out there.
I’ve been running FB ads for a client for three months and the results are really good. The impressions are out of this world – which is great for branding and name recognition. Granted not all those impressions are going to get seen but even if 10-12% get seen it can be awesome it you’re trying to build name recognition.
In our clients case we’re trying to build inquiries and visits to their website. For each campaign we have a separate micro-site/landing page – and our geographic target is fairly narrow. Even with a small budget we’re seeing some impressive hits to clients site and overall inquires are up significantly when you compare last year (with no FB ads) and this year (with FB ads).
Great post, I’ve actually been considering doing something similar – using it for targeted branding over actually trying to recruit business.
As I mentioned on FB – definitely saw your ads regularly (Had to resist the urge to click on them =p) – very nice saturation.
Is the only reason why there is a writeup on this is for SEO for 40? Just wondering. There seems to be more shout-outs than advice. Glad it’s ok to write about things not directly associated with the phx market, would have still been writing if I’d know that was the case. Is there a link to how said company is saving the world? I’d like to read about how, thanks. I’ve only had 40 pop up on friends facebook pages who were fans of 40.
Sara, a lot of people had requested information about the campaign when they saw it on Facebook, and I told them that I’d be doing a write-up to explain the details. No nefarious agenda here; just sharing our own experiences and experiments with the platform.