Archive for category Internet
Six tips on how to run your Facebook ad campaigns
Posted by Johann in Internet, Making money on July 2nd, 2009
I’ve been running ads on Facebook for affiliate products for the past year now. I have found that if set up correctly Facebook can drive high quality, targeted traffic to my sites. Although the CTR (Clicktrough Rate) is really weak compared to Google AdWords (I rarely get a CTR rate higher than 0.5% on Facebook), the clicks are relatively cheap. So over the past year I’ve figured out what works and what doesn’t. I now follow these rules when I run ads on Facebook:
- Be persistent when submitting ads. Most ads I’ve submitted have been disapproved at least once. Sometimes because I’ve violated Facebook’s terms (they are very strict), sometimes because the people approving the ads are stupid. I’ve had ads disapproved which were identical to previously approved ads, the only difference being the bidding strategy.
- Create lots of ads, and keep only the ones which perform the best. I would generally create 5 to 10 different ads for the same item I’m advertising, and let them all run for a couple of days. Then once it’s clear what ads are performing the best (highest CTR, lowest CPC), I disable the ads performing poorly.
- Do not use CPC (Cost per Click) campaigns. It seems the Facebook ad algorithm is heavily optimized towards CPM (Cost per Mil, or cost per thousand impressions). I am unsure why this is, but I get far more impressions and can much easier reach my daily budget if I create CPM ads. It does not cost me more, as the resulting CPC is generally lower than if I set it manually.
- Ignore the suggested Facebook CPM and CPC bids. I am unable to come near my daily budget if I set the bids to what Facebook suggest. Again, I’m not sure exactly why this happens. The ad costs anyways ends up in the range Facebook suggests.
- Keep your ads fresh. This is probably the most important tip I can give. Don’t settle for one or two ads and keep them running for months. Keep creating new ads (almost on a weekly basis), and disable the ads which has a declining CTR. I’ve recently tripled the CTR of one of my campaigns, simply by keeping the text the same and changing only the picture. The campaign has been running for more than three months without me changing anything, and the CPC was gradually going up. Now it’s back to what it was when I started the campaign.
- This is general ad copywriting advice, and it applies to Facebook as well: have a clear call to action! I usually ask a question in the ad’s header, which I answer in the ad text. I clearly state in the ad text that the user must visit my site.
That’s about all there is to advertising with Facebook. The Facebook ad algorithm does seem a little primitive, and does not always perform as expected. Also, tt can be extremely frustrating if Facebook keeps disapproving your ads for no apparent reason. At least they recently added a function to contact the Facebook ads team. The only problem is that they usually take more than a week to get back to you.
Nevertheless, Facebook is an awesome way to advertise. Due to people filling in so much information in their profiles, you can target extremely small niches on the cheap. I personally prefer Facebook to Google Adwords because of this.
Jeremy Shoemaker’s internet marketing course
Posted by Johann in Internet, Making money on June 22nd, 2009
Jeremy from the site ShoeMoney.com has written a free internet marketing course, which I’ve been following for the past four weeks now. Jeremy is most famous for this photo:
I am usually very wary of people publishing stuff for free, but I’ve learned a great deal about affiliate marketing since I started following the course. And that’s after I thought I knew everything I needed to know about affiliate marketing. There are so many subtle tricks involved, and it’s great to see someone with as much experience as Jeremy sharing his knowledge.
Head over to ShoeMoneyX.com to register for this the course. You’ll receive your updates every week in your e-mail.
Hollywood planning yet another disaster movie
I guess I should have been expecting this. They’re making a movie based around the Mayan calendar which ends in 2012. Some people think that this means the world will end. I think it’s simply the end of a calendar, and it will just roll over to the beginning (such as our calendars reverting to January at the end of the year).
How to get Twitter followers, the right way
I’ve just seen yet another tweet proclaiming that by following some system or registering on some website you can get 1,000′s of new followers in a week. Although some of these sites may work, you’ll probably only get spammy followers, looking to bury you under a sea of DM’s. As I’ve blogged before, I created a Twitter account for one of my projects. Basically what happens is I collect news stories from most South African news sites into a Digg-like site. I then tweet all these headlines to a Twitter account. When I created the account I manually followed about 200 South Africans, just to get the ball rolling. I then signed the account up to TweetLater, and checked the setting to automatically follow any people following me. That was about two months ago, and the account now has more than 1,500 followers. People just naturally started following the account.
So what does this mean to the average Twitterer? Just post regular, value-adding content and the rest will happen automatically. In addition to this, you’ll find people who actually want to listen to what you have to say, not people just looking to increase their follower count. Actually, saying (typing?) it now makes it seem incredibly obvious. Remember people, there’s no such thing as a free lunch (or 1,000 genuine Twitter followers).
BMW “gets” social media
I’m very impressed with the way BMW has been using social media to create a buzz about their upcoming small SUV, the X1. Most notably, they used Facebook to create a page dedicated to the new car. It was an awesome idea to use Facebook to do this, as BMW is targeting the car at a younger audience, which is exactly the type of people who uses Facebook. They’ve got a lot of fans on the page, and in addition to that they’re only releasing partial or blurred images until the car is officially released. BMW also has a twitter account dedicated to marketing the X1.
BMW’s attempt at marketing through social media stands in stark contrast to Volkswagen’s miserable attempt at marketing the new Golf, about which I’ll blog in the near future. Nevertheless, it’s cool seeing big companies using social media to market their products.
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