Facebook PPC Management

Have you ever wanted to run Facebook ads but didn’t know where to start? We hear you. Facebook PPC management can be a daunting task. If you’ve been thinking about it, there’s a good chance you’ve taken the easy route and boosted a post. Boosting a post is easy, pretty cheap, and can get a lot of eyes on your post that otherwise wouldn’t see it. But it may not be the best way to draw traffic and attention to your business. Facebook ads are a lot different than Google or Bing ads and there are a lot of things to understand.

The main difference between running a Google ad campaign and a Facebook ad campaign is that with Google, you are, in most cases, targeting specific keyword searches. When someone searches for “my favorite keyword” then your site shows up in the ad space at the top, and you pay if someone clicks on it.

With Facebook, people aren’t searching for keywords, so the targeting is different. With Facebook ads, you aren’t marketing specifically to people who are looking for you. Instead, you have to target people who might be interested in what you have to offer, to make them aware that you or your product exist.

For example, you have a great product that would help contractors on the job site, but they don’t know your product exists. In this case, running Google Ads might not be super helpful, since people wouldn’t be searching for your product. BUT, with Facebook ads, you can create ads and target people whose profiles have indicated they work in construction, or who have liked construction related websites.

Facebook Ad Targeting

The most powerful tool in the Facebook ad arsenal is the ability to target a specific audience. You can target your ads on a variety of different options, such as location, gender, age, and language but you can also target users by behavior and interests. You can choose your audience based on the pages they like and interact with. And you can target any combination of these factors. See our previous blog post for more information on how to choose your target audience.

Facebook Ad Pricing

When it comes to Facebook ads, the truth is they are generally really cheap. You can get in a bidding war with your competitors in Google search for the best keywords, and spend hundreds of dollars for a handful of clicks and few, if any, conversions. You might see this and think, “Great! I’ll only do Facebook ads!” Not so fast….

Yes, they are much cheaper in general and you can get your ad in front of a lot of people fast. BUT, the people seeing those ads aren’t specifically looking for you. You are targeting your ads to get them in front of people who might have an interest in your service or product, but aren’t specifically looking for like when they do a Google search. This is more similar to TV or radio commercials, hitting a lot of people rather than targeting people who are literally looking for you.

A Google search is a problem that someone needs help with. Someone on Facebook might just be looking at cat pictures. You could conceivably get your ads in front of a larger audience, but that audience may not be as interested as someone who was targeted with a search query. At the end of the day, you may be spending the same amount of money and getting in front of a ton more people but the cost per conversion is likely going to be similar.

What is cost per conversion?

When you are running any kind of ad campaign, you’ve got your ad spend, which is how much money you spend on the ad clicks. Say you spend $100 on your ad campaigns in a month. That’s your ad spend. Let’s say that during that month, you got 4 conversions, meaning four people continued through to contact you or call you after seeing the ad. Then your cost per conversion is $25.

For Google, you might spend $100, get your ads in front of 100 people and get 4 conversions. On Facebook, you might spend $100 get your ads in front of 400 people, and get 4 conversions. The same ad spend, the same cost per conversion, but your ads are in front of more people.

There are benefits to getting your ad in front of more people though, if the cost per conversion remains the same. People who see your ads may remember your business, brand, or product and come back later, or mention it to someone else who is looking for what you offer.

Types of Facebook Ads

There are a lot of different ways to advertise on Facebook. Not only can you target various audiences, but you can create a ton of different ad formats. This is a lot different than what you typically can do in Google ads. Most Google ads are text ads (although you can expand that with video and image ads throughout the search network) and text ads have very specific line and character limitations.

With Facebook, your options are much wider. You have so many more options than just text.

• Image ads: These place your image and message in an ad. These are the easiest ads to set up, and the most common for that same reason.
• Video ads: Ever see those videos that play automatically (without sound) as you’re scrolling? That’s a video ad. You can get your video in front of people, but make sure it’s captioned!
• Slideshow ads: These ads allow you to create slideshows out of images and videos to tell a longer story than one image or video can tell.
• Carousel ads: These ads allow you to feature up to 10 images or videos in a single ad, and each image/video can have its own link.
• Collection ads: This format allows you to combine video, slideshow or image with product images taken from a catalog, which makes it a particularly good option for e-commerce.
• Instant Experience: This one sounds pretty cheesy, but what it is is a full-screen mobile ad that can use any of the above formats. The instant experience is only available on iOS and Android devices and is optimized for those screens.

Facebook Campaign Objectives

Not only are there a lot of different ad formats, but there are many different ad objectives that you need to understand when setting up your ad campaigns.

• Brand Awareness: If your goal is to get your ad in front of people who will remember it, this is your objective.
• Reach: If your goal is to get your ads in front of as many people as possible, reach is the objective for you.
• Lead Generation: Want to maximize your leads? Lead generation campaigns are the way to go.
• Increase Brand Consideration: The goal of this campaign objective is to get people thinking about your company/products and get them looking for more information on it.
• Get Product Conversions: Want to sell your products, this may be the right objective for you.
• Messages: This objective helps to drive people to messenger to start a conversation with you.
• Dynamic Ads: This objective is the same as remarketing, it serves up your ads to people who have already been on your website or app elsewhere on the Internet.

So why hire a company for Facebook PPC Management?

If the above information hasn’t convinced you yet that you need help, let me clarify it for you: Facebook ads are complicated. Not only do you have to know who your audience is, you have to know how to target them. You need to know not only how to create your ads and what formats work best, but how to choose what audience sees them, and when. Then you also need to know how to budget your ads as well.

Oh wait, there’s more! Those are actually THE EASY PARTS! Once you create a Facebook business account, you have to dive a lot deeper to figure out how it all works. You have to be pretty tech savvy to understand all the different moving parts. There are campaigns, ads, and ad sets. Know the difference between all those things? We do.

One of the bigger mistakes that people make is assuming that since they use Facebook, they understand how to harness Facebook advertising for their business. In our opinion, Facebook is one of the more complicated advertising systems to use and to understand.

Our team spends a lot of time learning the ins and outs of these different systems. We know how to create all different types of ads. We know how to target the right audience, and we know how to analyze the results to understand what’s working and what’s not.

People spend a lot of money on Facebook ads with poor results because they just don’t understand the tricks of the trade, the various options, or targeting. When you hire a company, you have to pay for not only the clicks on your ads, but you also have to pay a management fee. This may seem like it makes your ad campaign more expensive, but a good Facebook PPC management team can actually decrease your ad spend while increasing your reach, making it a more effective and efficient campaign.

It’s worthwhile to have skilled pros manage your Facebook PPC campaigns for you. Want more information? Learn what we offer and how we can help you with your campaigns.