Messing with Facebook Social Ads

So like I mentioned in my video post, I have been playing around a lot with Facebook Social Ads lately. I initially got into Facebook Ads back in December after reading Nickycake’s Facebook Bible (must read for anyone who’s interested in trying out PPC on FB), copied his Silvertag ad verbatim, spent around $400 bucks, made $2000 and was completely floored by how easy and fast it was to get profitable campaigns up on Facebook.

After stepping away from Facebook for a couple months to work on AdGridwork and some of my other organic sites, the talk about people banking $x,xxx per day on spends of 1/4th that were enough to pull me back into the Facebook game. So over the past 2-3 weeks I’ve been busy submitting campaigns and have managed to get a handful of profitable campaigns up and running. Over that time, I’ve picked up a couple of cool tips on how to get your ads approved a lot easier as well as how to keep them from being saturated. This is by no means exhaustive and I’m by no means a Facebook pro (hit up Nickycakes or SlightlyShady for that), however I have managed to make some good money over the past few weeks so hopefully these will help out those who are struggling to make it work on FB.

Include the URL or brand of the company you are promoting in your ad copy.

I’ve found this is especially true when trying to promote dating or other popular type of ad. Most Facebook users will only read the title and image of the ad, so slipping something like ‘Chat for free on singlesnet.com’ should be enough to keep the interns happy without turning off the dudes looking to get laid.

Cloak to Facebook, get ANYTHING through

It’s pretty common knowledge on how to cloak to Facebook

if (stristr($_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"], “dev.facebook”)) $cloak = 1;

if (stristr($_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"], “devrs001.facebook.com”)) $cloak = 1;

if (stristr($_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"], “/intern/ads/review.php”))$cloak = 1;)

… however a lot of people still have trouble getting questionable ads through even by cloaking. Well, a great way to get your ad approved, and one that I’ve used to get poker, weapons and even pharma (weight loss mostly), into the system is by cloaking back to a Facebook page. Want to promote the new PurePlay offer from Incentaclick? Send the interns here: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=4357739465&ref=s. How about some good ol’ fashion weightloss offers? LA Weightloss provides a nice Facebook product page to send the drones to: http://www.facebook.com/pages/LA-Weight-Loss/8996815659?ref=s. While this isn’t foolproof, I’ve had great results in getting Ads through, even when incorporating images and ad copy that are clearly against their TOS.

Cloak the Adboard

Add this to your list of referrals to cloak against: http://www.facebook.com/ads/adboard/ . I’ve been tracking the referral urls and passing them as subids to my offers and have yet to get a single conversion from the Ad Board. Moreover, these guys are most likely your competitors or guys from the #cakes channel, so unless you want them knowing your offers, send them over to internetisseriousbusiness and be done with it. Facebook users don’t spend their time on the adboard looking for an ad to click.

I actually take this a step farther and log the ips of anyone that visits from the adboard … this way if they later see my ad in their profile and try and click through, I can still send them to the cloaked page.

Landing Pages > Direct Linking (sometimes)

My top running Facebook campaign is promoting the True.com offer with an average EPC of .75 and a daily CPC of .12 (the average CTR is 1.02 on FB). I attribute the high CTR to tight targeting and ad copy (targeting a group of 20,000 users), however the conversion rate (and EPC) has skyrocketed since adding an intermediary landing page rather than direct linking (while direct linking I had an EPC of around .40). Most of the dating ads on Facebook have a title such as ‘Hookup with Hot Chicks’ or ‘Meet Local Hotties,’ however, they’re direct linked to an offer asking for their personal info and a stock webcam photo. You can simply whip up a quick LP (i use a single, centered, hotlinked image) and reiterate your copy with a smoking hot girl and the basic color theme of the final page to presell them on the idea that they may actually get what the ad is pitching. This way, when they click continue or chat or hookup or whatever, and are asked for their personal info, they’re a little more inclined to go for it. I’m not saying this will work for all offers, however its been working great for me and takes an extra 10-20 minutes to implement.

CTR starts to dip on a profitable campaign, click PAUSE

I think a lot of people consider Facebook ads to be disposable: you shoot up a bunch of ads, cherry pick the ones with a good ctr, let them run for a week or so, and they’ll eventually sizzle out. This makes sense if you think about it. Theres only so many people who are being shown your particular ad, only a small group of them that will actually click on it, and only a handful of those that will turn to a conversion. If you have a profitable campaign that starts to wane, simply pause it for a week or so. In my experience, I’ve seen campaigns that start at 500% ROI dip to around 150-200% ROI after about a week. However, after pausing it for a few days and restarting it up again, I’ve seen the ROI shoot back up to around 400-500% and stay consistent for a few days before dropping down again. While you can always let your ad burn out and submit another one at a later date, I’d personally much rather keep an ad running that has proven to have a good ctr & conversion history. Get a few of these campaigns going and you’ve turned Facebook into a nice source of residual income, which is what we’re all after at the end of the day anyway. Who wants to sit in front of their computer trying to sneak Facebook Ads through all day when you can create some lasting campaigns and work to create more rather than rebuild the old ones that die out?

Anyways, those are just some of the things that have worked for me. Results and mileage may vary