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(Newbie/Intermediate Guide) Complete Guide To Facebook Ads (40)

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How To Get Your First Facebook Campaign Up!
Facebook Ads and How To Use Demographic Targeting To Make Top ROI

First Off: If you've never used Facebook Ads before, spend a quick 15 min looking over the Official Facebook Ads Guide.
http://www.facebook.com/adsmarketing/

Facebook Advertising URL:
http://www.facebook.com/advertising/

A lot of things with Facebook Ads can be easily figured out, so I'm going to discuss some of the major factors that will determine whether your able to turn a profit from a campaign.
These factors are:
1. Images
2. Likes & Interests
3. Country

The majority of what i'm discussing relates to increasing your Click Through Rate (CTR). You ALWAYS want to increase your CTR, because when you increase your CTR your Cost Per Click (CPC) goes down.

CTR means the amount of people that click your ad per every 1000 times your ad is shown. Clicks [divided by] Impressions [times] 100 = Your CTR
- If your ad is show 50,000 times and you get 60 clicks:
60 / 50,000 x 100 = 0.12 CTR

Example:
If your CTR is 0.1, Your CPC will likely cost you $0.50
That means you get: 200 Clicks for every $100 you spend

VS

If your CTR is 0.5, Your CPC will likely cost you $0.04
2500 Clicks for every $100 you spend

One Campaign will make you TONS of money, and the other campaign you'll lose money, which is why you always want to be increasing your CTR.

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The 3 main factors to a successful campaign.

1. Images
Your images are you primary way to increase your CTR. You will never know what images work best, so always gather up 50+ images when testing a campaign (I've personally used over 500 images for campaigns, the more images you use, the higher CTR your likely to find). You want your images to all be different so you can really gauge at what works.

After your first test, take whatever images work well, and make/get more images based off the images yielding the highest CTR.

Some Image Tricks:
- Add thick and thin borders
- Place images backwards or upside-down
- Use peoples faces (celeb/recognized faces = high CTR)

Where To Get "Fresh" Images.
Fresh images are images that people don't see everyday, let me show you my top 3 resources.
- My Favorite: http://www.deviantart.com (This is like striking gold for finding unique images in your affiliate niche)
- http://www.gettyimage.com
- http://www.flickr.com/
Then you have Google & Bing images as well.

2. Likes & Interests
Using this field when creating Facebook Ads is KEY. It allows your to narrow your targeting down very selectively which is how you can triple or quadruple your CTR. This field is where you can target people who like The Food Network or NBA star Kobe Bryant.

Think of it this way: If your a "fan" of Kobe Bryant on Facebook, your much more likely to click a "Kobe Bryant Ad" over a "Free Health Coupons Ad". But you ask: What affiliate offer can i promote using Kobe Bryant? Well that's the beauty of affiliate marketing, you can relate Kobe to almost anything you want. Just find an offer and be creative.

or

You can promote Cooking/Food Offers to people who "like" "The Food Network", "Sushi", or Famous Chefs.

The ideas are endless when using Likes & Interest, just be creative!

3. Country
The country you choose to promote your product in can greatly affect your CTR, CPC and conversion rate. Traffic in the United States is obviously way more expensive then traffic in Mexico. So sometimes it makes sense to promote international affiliate offers. This is where your research comes in. Make sure you get your ads translated!

My secret tip for the best translation is:
http://www.onehourtranslation.com - They're amazing, you can get anything translated in hours, it's cheap and very effective.

Hope you guys enjoyed my Facebook Ads tutorial! Go get started!

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Thanks for this guide. Could you say something about how you setup (structure) your campaigns when you start off, after selecting the offer you'd want to promote?
- How many images do you start with on avg.?
- How many campaigns do you setup for that offer?
- Do you put all "likes" into one campaign, or do you create one campaign for each?
Things like that

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Hey stocks,

Well for everything you said, it's all personal preference and completely depends on the campaign your running, which is why i didnt include any of that above.
I can give you a general outline:
- I usually start with 20-50 images, 1 title and 1 body. I'll test that then expand from there.
- Usually start with 1 campaign, will test it, and then will add to that campaign, or start a new one with a new 'angle'. I've explained what i mean by 'angles' in a lot of my other threads.
- Organizing 'likes' is again completely dependent on your campaign. I'll try to explain with 2 examples.

Example 1. If your advertising a Kobe Bryant email submit:
You'll want your likes to be 'kobe bryant, kobe bryant fans, and then you could also add, 100 other basketball players as well as 'nba, basketball, and1, NCAA' etc... but then your campaign would be more broad.

Example 2. If your advertising a NBA2011 Video Game email submit:
You'll for sure want your keywords to be everything related to basketball 'nba, basketball, and1, NCAA, kobe, lebron james, etc..'

So it completely depends on the campaign your running on whether or not your should have all your keywords in 1 campaign. Your campaign should all be related tightly though. So that might help.. the 'tighter' your campaign the better your CTR + conversion rates will be. What i mean by tight is, having your keywords, Ad picture + copy, landing page, and offer relate directly to one another. You don't want to be advertising a kobe email submit, with lebron james in the lander and a general NBA logo as your ad picture.

Hope my rambling made sense. Let me know if you need anything clarified.

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At what CTR are you pausing/deleting an ad? I am aware that there isn't a guide or something like that out there but ther must be a number who it's not worth to run an ad anymore...

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The CTR i pause/delete an ad on depends on the click price i'm getting and if that price is yielding me a profitable conversion rate.

- An auto insurance campaign may yield a 0.2% CTR, 14 cents clicks and be profitable. So i'll keep my ad even though it's CTR is 0.2%

- A browser game campaign may yield a 0.4% CTR, and 5 cent clicks and not be profitable. So i'll ditch that ad even though it's CTR is 0.4%.

Make sense, i can give you rough numbers if you tell me the niche. Otherwise it's impossible.

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Great, your ramblings makes perfect sense

Let's build on your Example 1:
Do you mess with other targeting options like for example gender and age from the start, or do you dig into those targeting options later if you see some conversions but the campaign is far from being profitable yet? I know this also "depends", but just trying to get how you should test properly on FB.

So in summary this is how I would do it: Start with 20-50 images and find some high CTR images for low CPC. If I see some conversions it might make sense to segment it further (split test between gender, different age etc.) to see if I can identify what kind of people converts. Does that make any sense?

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^^^

Yeah it definitely depends on the situation. I 99% of the time choose gender and age from the beginning. So if were using example 1 I would choose males/18-28. You have to research to find your target market. In this case it's a bit easier because i know my target market. If the campaign was profitable, then i would start a few more camapigns, targetting females/18-28, then males/29-32, males/33-35, etc..

Yep, this is how you do it. The only thing I'd switch is what i mentioned above; targeting age and sex from the beginning. Either use your instincts, but it's best to research to find out your main demographics.

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stackman: when testing, how many ads do you usually run at the same time (within a campaign)?

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I'm new to fb advertising so thanks for this post. One question: Should I use suggested bid or change it ?

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I'm curious what your bidding strategy is like. CPC, CPM, hybrid of both... how do you choose, and what is your path to selecting one or the other? What do you bid relative to suggested bid, and do you adjust your bids over time?

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michaelhimself
Usually 50 - 100 to start. Almost always gets narrowed down to 5 - 10

Private
Good question, you can always go about 20% less than the suggestion bid! Even when starting off with new ads.

Kyle
Right now I'm bidding a lot of CPC. I used to bid CPM only, but once Facebook changed their algorithm, i did some in depth tests and found that CPC 95% of the time yields almost double the CTR that CPM bidding does. Still though CPM bidding gets me cheaper clicks most of the time (about 25% cheaper). So i ran a campaign to test conversion rates of CPC vs CPM, and CPC won by a bit. When you bid CPM on Facebook these days, your ads are usually near the bottom/below the fold and come from apps. The quality isn't there with CPM bidding.

In the end i favour CPC these days because:
- Easier to test with (lose less $$)
- CTR last longer, and click prices are way more steady (less campaign watching)
- 15% higher conversion rate (only did 1 test)

I wrote this article a few months ago, and this pretty much is the long detailed version of what I'm talking about above.
http://www.johnchow.com/qualityctr-d...ng-case-study/

- I bid roughly 20% lower then the suggested bid, and always receive traffic just fine.
- I always adjust bids overtime. I adjust based on the CTR and suggested bid. Usually for few days i get to lower the bid constantly, then the ad plateau's and bids stand still for a week, and i have to raise my bids to continue getting traffic. I raise for a week at max, then pause those ads and rotate in a new batch. A week or so later i'll resume the paused ads. Pretty much if i have a campaign that last more then 3 weeks it's a continued process of pausing and resuming ads so the same ads aren't constantly running.

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Yeah you mentioned that you have 50-100 ads in one campaign - but do you run (=set them to "Active") ALL of these 50-100 ads at the same time? Or do you run i.e. 10, pause them - then another 10, and so on?

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When i first launch my campaign i set them ALL to active. This is to narrow down my ads. I see which have the CTR I'm looking for and delete/pause the rest.

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How much money do you typically spend testing one campaign with this many ads and how long(days) do you usually spend testing. I know each and every camp will vary depending on bids, niche, volume...ect, but do you have "rules of thumb" you try to go buy going into a new untested camp?

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I usually spend 7-10x the payout of the offer.
If i'm testing a mobile campaign with a $10 payout on the offer. I'll spend $70 - $100 testing the campaign.

- If i only have 1 idea for this campaign I'll spend 10x the offer payout if it looks/feels promising.
- If i have multiple ideas/angles to take with the campaign and the 1st one isn't looking good i'll pull it out at 5-8x the payout.

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I see, wow. My CTR was going down from 1.xxx to 0.0xx pretty damn fast. So you consider a CTR of 0.XX okay?

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Have you got any rule of thumb as to how many impressions you need for your decisions to be based on statistical significant data?

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With small target markets is very normal for CTR to drop fast. If your only advertising to 100,000 people, then banner blindness kicks in quickly!

You sure your CTR was 1.xxx? That's quite high and will get you 1-3cent clicks forsure!
0.xx CTR is a VERY broad range. 0.1 CTR isn't good, while 0.5 CTR is great!


I've gotten quite accustomed to just "feeling it out".
- You want 50 - 100 clicks (if you havn't hit that many clicks, then pull the ad at 100,000 impressions)

That make sense?

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Makes sense, thanks

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^^
Sorry forgot to mention thats when bidding CPC! but i only recommend bidding CPC especially when starting off a new campaign!

Also one more thing. Just to save you money, if an ad has 0.001 CTR, don't let it rack up 100 clicks, it's not going to come back from the dead. Just move on, and get some new ads up.

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Jordan, for a newbie in FB advertising, whats your suggestion on the market size ? 100k any rule of thumbs ?




I've gotten quite accustomed to just "feeling it out".
- You want 50 - 100 clicks (if you havn't hit that many clicks, then pull the ad at 100,000 impressions)

That make sense?[/QUOTE]

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Jordan, when will the campaign set to active after approval ? I remember you said set to pause to prevent wasting any money.

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@hd2010

Honestly, there's no set number. Whatever number you can achieve a high CTR with is the right number. Usually smaller numbers means better targeting which in turn will equal a higher CTR!

Set it to active whenever your ready to start advertising, you only pause whatever ads have a really low CTR.

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for the low CTR ad, why not delete the ad, any reason to pause the ad than delete the ad off ?

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Nope, deleting is completely fine if you for sure never want to use it again.

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In the future it may be harder to get that ad through. I've had ads paused that I know now would never make it through approval if I attempted to resubmit it.

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I've searched the forum and a lot of information regarding Facebook seems to be on how to achieve a high CTR and how to lower your CPC as a consequence.

Stackman, could you elaborate on what kind of tracking you are using for your Facebook campaigns (eg Tracking202), and what exactly you are tracking? Do you track every single ad you create (including conversion rate, split test LP, etc), or are you mainly concerned with achieving a CTR that you know will make you a profit overall?

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Great guide so far! Awesome for beginners and even intermediates... Would also love if you could touch up on T202, or other tracking software for Facebook. Thanks!

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Here is how I used to track using 202.

I would append the ad id and some notes at the end of the url '...t202kw=25-40_M_HotSlut1_AdCopy1'

However, there is a NEW powerful feature in the new Prosper that people somehow are not taking FULL advantage of.

You can now append 4 subid's to your tracking link in addition to KW. Why is this HUGE?

Well imagine this you're testing 4 images 2 ad copies and 3 demos. If you use the KW way of tracking you will have over 24 'kw' variables. This is great to see the winning ad, but what if you just simply wanted to see which image performed best, and wanted to aggregate the data among the different variations. Basically its pivot tables.

The new link will look like this:

t202id=1371&c1=HotSlut1&c2=AdCopy2&c3=Demo3&t202kw =DatingUS

After you get some data you can go back to Overview > Group Overview

There you can break down just by image which will roll up all the data for the 4 images. You can also expand that out and combine any of the other variables. This is massive for finding synergies among your ads that you would have completely missed in the past.

If you don't quite get what I'm showing then maybe someone else can take screen captures or recording.

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I have modified P202 to be able to import facebook cvs reports and update the correct CPCs.

This mod can be used to upload costs from all the cpv networks.

It's still in beta , but you can give it a go here :

http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...d-CPV-Networks

If you have trouble getting it up post in that thread and I'll help you.

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Thanks to both of you! Will definitely check out that script and Russian, your explanation was spot on and makes total sense.

Going to go get latest version of 202 now and install it on my VPS.

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I followed your advice and downloaded and installed P202 on my VPS. It's amazing and I'm in the process of setting up my first campaign.

I created an Excel spreadsheet and labeled every ad title, ad copy, and ad image as it's own specific ID so I could make a cID for everything...

I am just confused on one thing... (and I am sorry if this is a stupid question, this is my first "go" at paid traffic & Facebook)

I get that I will be able to see the cID breakdown on the Group Overview page on P202, but how will I know what converts? Those cIDs will not show up in my EWA account, correct?

With a subID (using your example) you could do: 25-40_M_HotSlut1_AdCopy1 ... and then in your EWA account you would see that on the SubID break-down page.

But if you used the cID (again, using your example) you would do this: t202id=1371&c1=HotSlut1&c2=AdCopy2&c3=Demo3&t202kw =DatingUS

So wouldn't you just see "DatingUS" in the subID breakout reporting on EWA? I am a little confused here.

I appreciate your help! If I can understand the tracking aspect of all of this then I think I will be golden! I am so excited to put up my first campaign I just want to make sure I have the tracking down first.

Thanks!

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I am not going to go through how SUBID tracking works as this is basic info that can be found in 202 forums, wickedfire, tons of blogs, etc.

Does anyone else want to explain how to use 202... probably desserves its own thread.

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Thanks for the great responses guys.
Still would be interested to know what stackman is using and what he is tracking :-) (ie conversion rate of every single ad)?

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Again I realized this is an old post but since I am new here, what about the dating niche paying $3-5 per lead stackman? What are the "rough numbers" for them?

Cheers
Ryan

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thank you for the guides.

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Guys....is this all still relevant for 2014? I'm mostly interested in the math aspect, specific to facebook. Things like:

- how to determine bid price based on the offer payout
- how to determine budget for a campaign
- target ctr
- when to pause ads, after some data on impressions and ctr has been collected
- when to kill a LP
- when to kill an offer

I've read, and understand, the general math guidelines in the step-by-step guide (http://stmforum.com/forum/forumdispl...)......I'm just looking for information specific to Facebook.

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^^ Im also interested so make that two

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+2 on that

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stackcash, some of those questions don't have FB-specific answers, and the others have been covered in detail in previous threads. Put in the hard yards and read them. Spend a week reading last year's threads (each one). Then test, because that's where the $$ is. 2014 is no different except you'll have more troubles getting more than 1 nipple approved in dating ad images.

Most of the gold in STM is in threads of the past, when many affiliates were seemingly spilling their secret sauce all over our collective chins.

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