5 Killer Tips for Facebook Ad Ownage

Posted on January 23rd, 2008 in Facebook, Promotion

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First, and foremost, if you’ve never read Nickycakes’ tutorial posts on getting into Facebook Ads, please take a moment to read them.  Part 1, Part 2. The info in those posts can, and will make you good money with Facebook Advertising if you follow the information presented.  Nickycakes gets asked about once a week if it’s still possible to make money with Facebook Ads, and the answer every time is YES.  It’s still an awesome system, easy for new people to get into it, and extremely profitable.  The potential is there to make hundreds of dollars a day, without a doubt.   It’s been quite a while since this site has had a facebook ad post, and it’s long past due, so here goes.

1. Spy on Other People’s Ads
   Many people’s biggest problem is finding something good to promote on facebook.  Seriously, every few days in the nickycakes irc channel, someone is scratching their head in bewilderment because they’re running an ad for car loans and nobody on facebook is clicking on it.  If it’s too tough to figure out what to promote to college kids on your own, the idiots at facebook have created an adboard which lets you view everyone else’s ads.  The Cakes has absolutely no clue why someone would do something so stupid, but they did.  Just refresh your normal facebook profile page until you see a facebook ad come up, and click the “More Ads” button.  There you go, a page full of ideas that are probably making other people money.
   Keep in mind, however, that you will only be shown ads targeted to your demographic, so you may want to create a few fake facebook accounts for different demographics to see what’s being promoted to females/males/old people/young people/single people/married people, etc.
2. Make Multiple Ads
   Many times, you will make a facebook ad that is getting decent traffic, but you’re not coming close to filling your daily budget because you’re not getting enough impressions.  There are two good options for getting over this hurdle.  First, you could do the obvious thing and raise your bid, which will in turn make facebook give you more impressions per day and end up filling your daily budget.  Second, and probably smarter, is keep your bid the same, and make a few more nearly identical ads.  Assuming your CTR is nearly the same on all the ads, you should be able to fill up your budget with 5 almost identical ads if your original ad was using 1/5th of your budget to begin with.
3. Use a Good Picture
   The picture you use for your ad will literally make or break you.  You NEED to find a good one for your ad to preform well.  When making the picture for your ad, always save it in 110×80px with as high resolution possible (Nickycakes uses 24bit .png).  Pick something eye-catching.  Something that definately does not blend in with the facebook site.  Using mostly black works well.  Anything with hot girls is good as long as it’s related to your ad, and targeted to guys.  Stacks of money, optical illusions, and expensive cars have all preformed well.  Again, refer to tip #1 if you’re struggling and check what other people are using to get ideas.
4. Run Your Ads At Night
   This one is pretty simple.  Ads just do better at night.  No idea why, but they do.  If you can afford to not get any clicks for the first half of the day, set your bid at 1 cent and wait until around 5pm EST or so and put your bid back to normal and watch the clicks fly.
5. Out of the Box Targeting
   A big mistake that many people make when starting with facebook ads is targeting everyone in the US market.  Facebook may not have as many targeting options as Nickycakes would like, but they have quite a few, and they’re pretty accurate.  The US market has a ton of people advertising on it, so try targeting Canada.  Most people don’t target by keyword, but doing so can convert to sales like crazy.  If you’re promoting some sort of health supplement, try thinking of keywords for people who work out and target them, or maybe vegetarians or vegans.  These targeting options, while they may give you a more narrow audience, and less traffic, will give you a great CTR which will make your clicks cost almost nothing, and will no doubt convert to sales much better.

The most important thing to remember when advertising on facebook is this:  It costs $0 to create an ad.  Make as many as you can until you find one that’s making you money.