image credit: Diana Garcia

In recent posts here on GigCoin we’ve been talking about a host of relevant topics for businesses regarding Facebook company pages: how to set one up, what you need to know about the new page layout and features, assessing whether a Facebook contest or sweepstakes is right for your business, and how to practice good etiquette on Facebook.

No discussion about Facebook for businesses would be complete without addressing the question of Facebook ads and whether going the route of placing one is within your best interests. We’ve also spoken to a number of business people about their experiences, and were completely blown away by their collective wisdom. You’ll hear from people who have run ad campaigns on Facebook and receive the benefits of their tried and proven tactics. 
So without further ado, let’s begin.

Getting Started with a Facebook Ad

If you are new to Facebook ads you might want to start the process by reading some of the guidelines posted on Facebook’s Help Center page where you can learn about how to get started with your ad; creating, designing and targeting, and campaign cost and budgeting.

Facebook Ad Basics: Titles, Body Text and Images

Facebook ads are relatively small and have specific requirements when it comes to title length, body and images. By keeping these specifications in mind it’ll help you create your ad:

• titles are limited to 25 characters
• body text is limited to 135 characters
• Facebook ads “require” images which need to be 110×80 pixels and less than 5 megabytes.

Here’s a link where you can see some sample Facebook ads . Some of our guests on this post have provided ones they’ve used  which we’ll include below.

How to Increase Your Facebook Ad Click Through Rate

In a post on Search Marketing Insider, Dennis Yu recommends 11 ways to increase your Facebook ad click through rate (CTR).

1. ask a question in the ad
2. write short ad copy
3. use a close-up face in your image
4. personalize the image
5. capitalize a coupe of words
6. use numbers and unusual characters
7. stimulate emotion
8. send users to your Facebook page
9. Follow through on the promise on the landing page
10. Dayparting (consider how time of day may affect the messaging)
11. Fan targeting

Targeting on Facebook

As you’ll hear from some of our business guests on this post, targeting is a big part of creating an ad on Facebook and in some cases the ability to zero in on specific targets was the deciding factor for them in terms of choosing Facebook ads over Google.  As you think about your ad, you’ll want to decide upfront who you are targeting e.g. by state, city, gender, age, keywords, workplaces, relationship and sexual persuasion

Establishing an Ad Budget

Naturally one of the first questions businesses will be curious about is cost and whether it’s affordable. The great thing about Facebook ads is that you can set a daily budget for how much you want to spend. If you’re new to ads you may want to spend some time reviewing the Glossary of Ad Terms, where amongst other things you’ll get help understanding the difference between CPC (Cost Per Click), CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) and CTR (Click-Through Rate).

John Jantsch writes in his post, 5 Steps to Success Facebook Advertising, “Most research I’ve read suggests that the CPC model is slightly more effective in terms of ROI…To start your campaign you must determine a bid per click and daily budget. You can set both of these numbers very low, but don’t expect much. Initially you are just testing so you’ll want to set your click bid somewhere around the Facebook suggested amount and a daily budget you can live with, something like $50 or more to start. You can always adjust these.” John also refers to the Facebook Ads Manager where you can find out more about how to manage your campaign and the daily budget.

The Facebook Ad: Businesses Share their Experiences and Lessons Learned

Q: How long did you run your Facebook Ad? What kind of results did you receive?

I ran a Facebook ad for 30 days, at $10/day maximum. This was my second attempt which pulled much better than the first. I tripled my fan base in two weeks.
Matt Gambino, Professional Speaker and Trainer, Facebook

We started running ads in May 2010. The ad is still running. It is part of several things we did to grow our Facebook following from 400 to 19,000 since May.
Chris Conn, MightyNest, Facebook

I ran the ad for approximately three months and garnered over 4,000 fans. I’ve had great success with using Facebook ads to promote my brand. In fact, here’s an article I wrote explaining how I did it.
Leslie Irish Evans, Peeling Mom Off the Ceiling, Facebook

My ad ran for a month. I received 144 clicks and 70 new likes.
Brian Basilico, B2B Interactive Marketing, Facebook

We use Facebook ads specifically to promote our free workshops. When people click the ad, it takes them to a landing page where they learn more about the workshop, and they can register online right away. When they register they’re also opting in to join our email newsletter list. That way, even if they don’t make it to the workshop, we still have permission to keep in touch with them.

 We spend a few hundred dollars a month, but these campaigns have been adding between 50 to 100 new prospective students to our email list every month, and it’s exposed us to a much wider audience than we would have been able to achieve without Facebook. And the great thing is if even one person enrolls in a program as a result of our workshop, we’ve broken even on what we spent on the ads!
Carmen Sognonvi, Urban Martial Arts, Facebook

We had a campaign running for The Olive Orchard for four months. During that time, we ran two types of ads. One directed people to The Olive Orchard’s website to make a purchase, and the other sent them to the Facebook page to become a fan. During the four months they ran, visitors who clicked on the ads that directed them to the website converted at 1.15%, while those who came from the Facebook page converted at 3.29%. During this time period, the Facebook page received 768 new “likes.”
Karen Schneider, Webbed Marketing, Facebook

Formic Media ran a Facebook ad for Rasmussen BMW for four months with a very minimal spend ($5 day) based on a limited client test budget. We increased “likes” by 438%, increased interactions/engagements by 238%, and increased Facebook referral traffic to the website by 2,216.67%.
Anna Hutson, Formic Media, Facebook

I’ve been using Facebook ads since opening my business. We’re a small coffee shop, and compared to other media, Facebook ads allows us to directly target the people we need to target. Any time I run an ad campaign, I get great response. I recently posted 5 ads, all with the same picture, and different text, then used our Facebook page to run a competition–the first member who could send me screenshots of all 5 ads won some goodies! People were coming into the store and updating me on how many they’ve received so far! Great thing about doing it that way is that you help to ensure the ads won’t go unnoticed!
Chris Dagger, Cakettes, Facebook

I’ve run some just for days, and others for several weeks. The results have been mixed…they have been successful in generating traffic, but the conversion rate for the traffic hasn’t been as high as I would have hoped, although that could be more the fault of my websites than anything related to Facebook. We’re still experimenting to see if we can increase the conversion rate and make it worth doing.
Joshua Steimle, DeclareMedia, Facebook

Our first ad ran from September 30, 2009 to June 30, 2010. We had 1,214,616 impressions and 364 clicks. We kept the minimum budget per day allowed, so we could have definitely reached more people if we’d spent more. Our second ad just started 5 days ago. We’re doing a CPC model this time, and I think it will work out just fine, perhaps even better. So far we’ve had 41,601 impressions and 8 clicks.
Kirsten Reeder, Sprout Shell, Facebook

We are currently running 11 Facebook ad campaigns. Our results have been good so far. We have been able to drive traffic to our Facebook pages and receive more likes, fans, email conversions and phone calls than we did prior to running the ads. We’ve also directed some of the ads to our client’s websites and have seen email conversions and phone calls.
Davis Baker, Forthea, Facebook

Q: What are the benefits of a Facebook Ad over a Google Ad?

Google AdWords and Facebook are very different. Google is about conversion (mostly), Facebook is about relationship (mostly). Our ads on Google are very different from our ads on Facebook. We figured this out early which is why we were able to build such a large audience so quickly.
Chris Conn, MightyNest, Facebook

I am running a Google ad this month, and am finding that Facebook pulled much better. The main benefit is the ability (requirement) to include a thumbnail. A picture is worth a thousand words.
Matt Gambino, Professional Speaker and Trainer, Facebook

I currently advertise on both Facebook and Google AdWords. While I’m not sure the Facebook ad is all that effective, I know that one advantage it has over AdWords is that it is viewed by people with pertinent interests. For example, one of my campaigns targets people who like both camping and chocolate. With Google, people have to go searching for their interest.
Steve Silberberg, FitPacking, Facebook

I also use Google AdWords. The benefits of Google ads are that your ads are showing up when someone is actually typing in keywords for your product. Subsequently, you know that your ads are showing up in front of real customers. Facebook ads just show up without anyone typing in keywords or actively searching for your products.
Mike Venetis, The Prep Room, Facebook

Facebook ads are better for driving people to your landing page and target a much more specific audience. Google ads tend to be more expensive but reap more tangible financial results!
Brian Basilico, B2B Interactive Marketing, Facebook

We usually run Google ads for the same free workshops we promote on Facebook and for some reason Google ads perform really poorly for us. I’m hesitant to say that Google doesn’t work as well, because it could just be that I haven’t figured out how to best leverage that channel, but based on the results we’ve seen, I’d much rather put more money toward Facebook ads than Google ads.
Carmen Sognonvi, Urban Martial Arts, Facebook

My conversion cost with Facebook is four times less than with AdWords. I liked using AdWords, and the conversion rate was similar to that of Facebook, but the cost per click in my target is much higher. Google’s ad review system is more consistent than Facebook and the ads don’t age as fast. (Aging is due to low click through rates when less impressions are allocated.
Lawrence Chernin, Brainiac Dating, Facebook

On Facebook you can target your audience by the information that they give in their profile. We most often target people by their age, gender, location and interests. When advertising on Google you can only display ads to a person who is currently looking at a web page that is of interest, and is also on the AdWords display network. This allows us to show our ads to a much more accurate target audience.
Karen Schneider, Webbed Marketing, Facebook

The benefits of using Facebook ads vs. Google ads is the ability to target people much more granularly by location, interests, age, education, connections, etc. Instead of targeting keywords and advertising based on user search intent, Facebook allows advertisers to focus on a very qualified, targeted audience, often at a much lower cost. Our Facebook CPC was also 22% lower than our AdWords CPC.  Additionally, selecting the option to target Facebook users whose friends are already a “fan” of your page, helps to reinforce the advertising message by utilizing a Facebook user’s connections. The ad will include that users’ friends name (with a thumbs up icon) in the ad, which can boost click throughs and the potential for a user to like a particular page, because their decision is being influenced by their friends’ interests and “likes.”
Anna Hutson, Formic Media, Facebook

The huge benefit of Facebook is the ability to target your ads to specific groups and types of people. Google AdWords allow you to target certain geographic areas, and there are some other ways to narrow who sees your ads, but its nothing compared to how you can target Facebook ads by age, interest, geography, sex, etc.
Joshua Steimle, DeclareMedia, Facebook

The main benefits Facebook has over Google is that it is highly targeted and it is 1/3 the cost—for now. Either Facebook will raise it’s CPC’s or Google will be forced to lower theirs.
Davis Baker, Forthea, Facebook

Q: Based on your experiences, how can a business get the maximum benefits from a Facebook ad campaign?

For us (and we believe this holds for others) Facebook is not about conversion. Instead, it’s about building a daily relationship with people and through that, your brand. Unlike typical brand advertising, it is very measurable. The best way to use Facebook is as a tool to build fans for your Facebook page. Then use your page every day to be helpful to your audience. Once you get that community going there are lots of options including driving conversion. By combining Facebook with our blog we are able to build community.  Facebook alone would not be as powerful.
Chris Conn, MightyNest, Facebook

For maximum effect, don’t be afraid to change things up. Also, use a headline that doesn’t give away the farm, but instead invokes some curiosity.
Matt Gambino, Professional Speaker and Trainer, Facebook

You have to have a good plan before you start. If you are just driving people to a Landing page or a website, you have to know what you expect from that and measure it.
Brian Basilico, B2B Interactive Marketing, Facebook

I think the key is that the ad should link to a specific landing page that’s either on your website or on a custom tab within your Facebook page. You should make some kind of appealing offer in exchange for their contact information. I see so many companies driving people to their homepage and that seems like a waste of ad dollars to me.
Carmen Sognonvi, Urban Martial Arts, Facebook

Target very carefully and track the conversions.
Lawrence Chernin, Brainiac Dating, Facebook

Facebook users are very interested in the photo that is used in the ad. Because they are not actively searching for something, the image needs to draw their aways away from the Facebook updates. Also after running for a month or two, an ad can become “stale.” The Facebook user tends to mentally block an ad after seeing it repeatedly and the click through rate tends to decrease over time. Changing the image has the biggest impact on making an ad “fresh” in the Facebook users’ mind.
Karen Schneider, Webbed Marketing, Facebook

Based on my experiences, a business can get the maximum benefits from a Facebook ad by utilizing all of Facebook’s targeting features to their advantage and testing different target audiences to see which one converts the best and drives the most traffic. Ad creative is important to test as well. Because Facebook requires that the ad headline must be the Page name of the business (so users know what content they are engaging with), it’s imperative to ensure that ad copy is compelling, succinct and includes a direct call to action or value proposition.
Anna Hutson, Formic Media, Facebook

The point is that if you’re not thinking about all your objectives and how they can be tied together, then you’re not extending your Facebook advertising dollars. Of course the same could be said for any other form of advertising as well. (You can also see an informative blog post he’s written about extending your Facebook Advertising Dollars.)
Joshua Steimle, DeclareMedia, Facebook

I think that to get the maximum benefit, you have to choose who you want to see your ad and make it something that your audience is likely to look at. Something that will catch their attention, but not in an annoying way. Also do tests to determine which payment strategy is best for your company, CPC or CPM.
Kirsten Reeder, Sprout Shell, Facebook

Don’t skip out on the research. Take advantage of the demographic data that is provided to you.
Davis Baker, Forthea, Facebook

You did your first ad and with your snappy title, your awesome graphic, and your delightful content you’ve generated a following.  You’ve got a few hundred “likes” going and people seem to dig it. What’s next? Buy some “word of mouth”! We’ve all heard that “word of mouth” advertising (i.e., friends telling friends about your product) is the best way to go. Personal recommendations carry extra cachet in the marketing world. Can you count on your new page guests to tell their friends about you? Probably not. But you can do the following:  design a new Facebook ad that targets friends of people who already like your page. You genius, you! You now are targeting your same demographic, but this time when the ad appears on the page it will tell your prospective guests about their friends who are already there! Making this one little fix sent my number of “likes” into the hundreds-a-day category.
Leslie Irish Evans, Peeling Mom Off the Ceiling, Facebook

Have you run an ad campaign on Facebook? Or, if you’re considering one, what tactics do you intend to use? Share your experiences and comments in the space below.