Dating on Facebook: Banproofing, Clickbaiting and Staying Alive (19)
Dating on Facebook: Banproofing, Clickbaiting and Staying Alive
There seems to be a lot of concern, quite rightly, over which dating ads are likely to land your Facebook Account in the gutter. "My Facebook account was banned" seems to be a trending phrase across the blogs and forums.
I've been advertising on Facebook for several years now and my original account is still in tact, despite a warning to 'remove all offending ads or face suspension'. I'm not sure whether that's down to blind luck, or because there's some method in my madness, but I thought I'd share some tips for profiting with dating on Facebook, and staying alive in the process.
Take them with a pinch of salt.
I could be banished in to Facebook history by the time you read them.
Advertising to females is less risky.
I've long been an advocate of avoiding male dating altogether on Facebook. There are two reasons for this.
Firstly, male dating is super competitive. Given the male-dominated nature of affiliate marketing, most new affiliates are likely to be guys who find it easier to write ads for other guys. This creates a bottleneck, and a whole lot of banner blindness.
Secondly, and more importantly, for your ads to compete with weary male eyeballs, you're going to have to involve yourself in a dogfight over who can show the most skin and get away with it. I'm not saying that females don't respond to ripped chests and half-naked bodies too, but it's very tough to compete in the male dating niche where such visual ads are fundamental to success.
If a large number of dating affiliates are still getting banned, then I guess that means there's a large queue of dating affiliates that are next in line to be axed. This is your competition. Do you really want to be trying to out-CTR a group of affiliates who are happier than you are to put their account on the line?
My solution for this is to avoid male dating like the plague. It's a dogfight, and in my opinion, soon to be a no-win battle.
I prefer to stick to advertising to the female 30+ crowd. Not only do these offers provide great payouts, but they are seen as the quality leads that most companies wants. Once again though, the real benefit is that your ads don't have to be as visually risque. You can create excellent ads targeted at female over 30s by using emotional hooks rather than washboard abs. I've found this to be critical in keeping my account alive.
There was a thread posted yesterday asking why ads aimed at females draw a horrible CTR. I haven't seen the actual ads being used so it's difficult to comment. But my guess would be a combination of too much sleaze, and not enough emotional hooks. The best ads for older women are those that combine the aura of a classy sincere man, with a hint of physical attraction, and a great emotional hook.
I think I drew this example in one of my Premium Posts, but instead of a headline like "Want to Date This Fireman?", I would use something like "Lifesaving Hunks Looking For 1 Faithful Lady". I'd use an image of a fireman cradling a baby, or looking like he's just put his life on the line, and appeal to female emotions beyond a ridiculous smug looking twat who happens to be wearing a fireman's hat and not much else.
NOTE: This is probably more effective on the landing page than the ad itself. Facebook doesn't seem to like specific niche angles linking through to a generic non-specific pages. The sentiment remains though.
NOTE NOTE: If you're going to use 'uniform' gimmicks like soldiers, firemen, doctors and whatever - the effect is lost if the women suspects that he isn't actually one of those professionals, but rather a dipshit posing in a cheap plastic fancy dress outfit for Halloween. Unfortunately that's why most stock sites are so bad.
Tattoos and confident smiles are clickporn for women.
The 'confident but not arrogant smile' is one of the best visual weapons for dating ads on Facebook. It's clickporn for women. And once again, it's a weapon that isn't likely to get you banned for offending imagery.
I don't want to out ads so I won't be posting examples, but here's a nice formula to follow:
Confident smile + piercing eye contact + passive non-aggressive body language + interesting or quirky background = Winning image.
You can score some great CTRs just by sourcing images with the right facial expressions. Of course, you'll find it much more difficult to do so if you're targeting guys. Which is another reason why I don't bother. Why get involved in the dogfight?
Tattoos and piercings are also great CTR boosters. You have to be careful with your choice of tattoos, lest they be deemed too offensive by the virginal Facebook approvals team in their Disney stupor. Arm tattoos are a nice middle ground.
Just don't get carried away by going all Prince Albert on your creatives:
Ain't no fireman's hat gonna save the A-Train....
Choose your offers wisely.
I've heard all kinds of horror stories lately. Affiliates getting banned for promoting Cupid? What's our shady world coming to?
I'm not savvy to the internal 'list of banned offers', but I suspect that if you are advertising to the female 30+ crowd, you're going to be pushing safer offers than most.
Something that I'm quite particular about is how I use the actual ad text to address Facebook rather than the people who will be seeing my ads.
After the image and the headline, the ad copy is much lower down the pecking order in terms of factors that are going to affect your ad's performance. So instead of pissing off Facebook with risque ad copy, why not use the opportunity to make a statement of legitimacy instead?
I like to use the ad copy to make it clear that the dating service is for finding romance, true love, soul mates and life partners. I make it as inoffensive as possible knowing that while it isn't likely to skyrocket my CTR, there's a good chance that Facebook will read it and deem me to be a 'safer' advertiser than those who get carried away with their ad copy and dig their own graves for the sake of an additional 0.002 CTR.
Appeal to emotional hooks and aim to be inoffensive with your ad copy. It might just keep you alive on the platform.
Run more than dating.
Okay, I'm giving away quite a lot of my own Premium content here. But let's just say a little charity can go a long way.
If you were Facebook looking at a list of undesirable accounts that you wished to cull, which would you be determined to keep? The advertiser who publishes dating ads, but also has a small budget for philanthropic interests? Or the affiliates pushing dating offer after dating offer?
If you're making good money from your dating campaigns, I recommend you surround those winning campaigns with inoffensive and philanthropic campaigns that Facebook is going to think twice about deleting for fear of a backlash. "I was rallying public donations for disaster victims when Facebook banned me without a warning..."
I can imagine The Sun calling them a bag of dicks already.
This is the action I took when I received my first and final warning, and many months later my (albeit somewhat neutered) campaigns are still sitting there, possibly guarded my 'philanthropic interests'...
I'm not saying you have to spend huge amounts of money on non-profit ventures. I make sure I keep a lot of campaigns for internal Facebook pages too, since they love them so much.
Bottom line, if you're making a lot of money from the CPA world, you should probably reinvest some of it in to hiding your CPA footprint. There are many ways to do that on Facebook, and I think it will be extremely important going forward in the future.
great stuff --more in depth than your premium post actually. would you run a risque headline attention grabbing headling with a "safe" body copy? or are you relying solely on high CTR images and your campaign angle to boost CTR?
Thanks Finch. This is why I love this forum. Everytime I log in I get the creative juices flowing!
Great post!
full. blown. beast. mode! Nice post Finch!
just read this on the perfect time..thanks.
Fantastic nuggets of gold here Finch!
This is pure gold!
This gives me new hope for ever advertising on Facebook again. They slapped me good the first time.
Originally Posted by jmgraff
Awesome information. Ya, You got me because I always promotes CPA offers to Man and never thought of promoting to females. Great Tip for maintaining account with FB.
Awesome post! As soon as I get a hold of a new debit card (old one is blacklisted by FB) I will be back on Facebook!
Originally Posted by luscioust
Originally Posted by codeface
I like to use the headline to ask direct questions that tie in to the emotional hook behind the ad.
Great post Finch... Plenty of information out here 
Good stuff! However I still can´t get high CTR for females in NL and BE 
Being based in Amsterdam, you should have plenty of local insights in to the Dutch women, no?!
If you can't get a national campaign profitable, it's a good idea to step back and target individual cities (although you'll likely need to create lots of landing pages with this route). By targeting the city, you should be able to make the ads more relevant. Local landmarks, local trends and etc.
That said, I haven't run traffic to the Netherlands for some time now. Last offer I tested was the Lexa site, but it never really hit it off.
Originally Posted by Finch
I have been busy with fb ads for the past month targeting 30+ males, I have made a few landing pages and got them translated for different countries, and started promoting be2 and Neu.de (which is owned by Lexa). I started off by using my LP straight away, and targeting males, got a good ctr for the ad. But LP ctr kinda sucks and conversions too, all negative roi.
Should I start first by direct linking to see if offer converts in those specific countries, then build an LP? Also should I just scrap targeting males and focus on females as your suggest, and are they better converters once they reach the offer?
Already went -40$ today by targeting males in Germany, Switzerland and France.
Creating good ctr facebook ads doesn't seem to be the problem, but more the LP. I have added "3 rules" and benefits of joining like guarenteed contact etc.. I thought it looked great but I gues not.
It has also been suggested to me by someone on the forum who recently started making nice profit with dating on FB and ditched be2 all together, by finding local offers that are popular in those specific countries. However I am having little success in finding those, and if i do they are red on mywot.
Only european ones I can find are, Meetic (which also owns Lexa and Neu), edates and edarling.
Also came across FB apps like GirlsDateForFree, Are You Interested and Cupid. But I have no idea if they are allowed on FB advertising, neither do I want to risk trying since FB already gave me a ban warning.
Should I stick to be2, also I read that about 2-3 weeks ago be2 conversion dropped?
Cheers!
Philip
hey finch,
its a real nice read.
i am following your advice by promoting offers to 30+ women. However in most of my offers i am losing $30 on $100 spend. My angle i know works but with such demography of 30+ women i have the ctr of about 0.04% . also very few women go from lp to offer..... But any women who crosses LP hurdle do sign up.
i know i am asking questions whose answers are their in forum but if you have any insights.....please do let me know
thx,
amit
Originally Posted by philwilrgm
Be2 has been unstable lately. The best thing you can do is test a bunch of different offers from a bunch of different networks, and then stick with the winner. To save yourself some time, you might want to direct-link. But once you've found your winner, build an LP for it. It will usually be more profitable.
Originally Posted by amit
It sounds like your LP is doing a good job of selling the offer to a specific demographic, but that it may be alienating the wider audience.
This sometimes happens when you pick a niche angle and write a ton of copy selling a specific benefit. It converts some of the users 100%, but everybody else runs a mile.
You can fix it by:
1. Narrowing your targeting and attempting to reach the particular user that is liking the message.
2. Broadening your ad copy and appealing to users who are clicking and then leaving.
In both cases, it sounds like you need to work on reeling the users in. Make sure your headline is a showstopper. Hit them with a good hook and then remove any unnecessary copy that isn't hard-selling the product. This should help feed the users from LP to offer.
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