Wow! We've had a big series about Facebook and the amazing marketing opportunities the social-networking site offers. This Auctiva series has covered:
In this final article in the series, we'll discuss pricing your campaigns and how to read your reports.
Campaigns and pricing
You've created a great, enticing ad. You've located your target audience. Now it's time to choose your cost.
After choosing your currency, make sure you give your campaign a clear, memorable name. Only you will see this, but as you run multiple campaigns this will make them easy to differentiate.
Next choose a daily budget for your campaign. The minimum spending cost is only a $1 a day! I recommend keeping your daily budgets lower in the beginning while you learn this type of marketing.
Schedule your ad to run starting now, or on specific days. When I'm beginning a new campaign, I usually opt to run it on specific dates and times. This allows me to do quite a bit of testing before just letting the ad run.
You can pay as little as 1 cent each time a person clicks on your Facebook ads
You have a choice between CPM (cost per mille, or thousand), or CPC (cost per click). I prefer CPC so I can clearly read my reports for performance. CPM always feels like I'm throwing a wide net and hoping to catch a potential buyer.
When choosing CPC, you will be asked to also choose a maximum bid amount that you are willing to pay per click. The minimum is 1 cent, but Facebook will also recommend a range of what other current ads similar to yours are bidding. You may pay less than your maximum bid, but you will never pay more.
OK, that sounds way more confusing than it really is. Let's break it down:
- You can pay as little as 1 cent each time a person clicks on your Facebook ads and you will only pay up to your maximum each day. If your maximum for that day is $1 and your maximum bid is 1 cent, then your estimated click is 100.
- Facebook is going to recommend a competitive bidding strategy range. Instead of 1 cent, it might recommend 49 cents to 63 cents, or $1.29 to $1.50. The other day I was bidding on a campaign and the recommendation was 6 cents to 9 cents. It simply depends on your competition for the specific niche you have chosen as well as time of day/day of week. You don't have to pick an amount in that range, you can choose anything you want. Facebook is simply trying to help you be competitive. (Google does something similar for its ads).
- If you bid, say, 63 cents, and everyone else bids 49 cents, then you will pay less than your 63 cents on average (another good reason to listen to Facebook's bidding recommendations).
Click "Continue." Check to make sure your ad looks good and all of your bidding information is correct, and click "place order."
When you start your first campaign, I recommend watching it pretty closely
Reports
There are three different reports you will want to pay attention to, to calculate your return on investment (ROI):
- The Facebook Ad Manager
- Your eBay Stores report
- Your Google Analytics report (if you are sending traffic to an outside Web site)
Your eBay Store and Google Analytics reports will allow you to track clickthroughs into the specific Web page you are sending buyers to. Then you can follow the reports to see if the person viewed other pages on your site, the length of their visit and if they made a purchase.
Your Facebook Ad Manager shows your previous ads, active ads and ads set to start in the future. It will also provide powerful in-depth reports allowing you to track online activity. Your Ad Manager includes an editing feature as well.
Personally, I find it difficult to locate the Ad Manager page. The simplest way is to log in and go to www.facebook.com/ads/manage.
When you start your first campaign, I recommend watching it pretty closely. Your reports will show you the following information:
- Your budget per day (you chose this amount when you created your campaign)
- Clicks: the number of clicks your ad has received
- Impressions: how many times your ad has shown up on someone's Facebook page. This will show up on your report even if you have chosen to be charged via the CPC method.
- CTR%: This is your clickthrough rate. CTR is figured by dividing the number of clicks on your ad by the number of times your ad is shown on the site.
- Average CPC: This is your Cost Per Click, and is figured by dividing your total clicks for that ad by cost for that ad.
- Spent: This is how much you have spent so far that day.
The recommended bidding range for CPC may change during the time you have set for your ad. If it drops drastically, I would recommend going into your Ad Manager and editing your amount. If it rises drastically, you can edit for a higher amount. If you choose to stay at your current bid amount, you may not receive as many clicks at that price point. You can also suspend/end your ad if you would like.
You can track so much of your buyers' behaviors with these reports, it's worth it just to see these numbers
I was amazed the first time I saw the reports available on Facebook. You can track so much of your buyers' behaviors with these reports, it's worth it just to see these numbers. In your reports you have access to:
- Advertising Performance. This report provides information about the impressions and CTRs.
- Responder Demographics. This report includes information about who is clicking on your ads. This will include things like age bracket, gender, country and state (if in the U.S.).
- Responder Profiles. This includes the interests of the people clicking on your ads (e.g., TV shows, music, books, etc.).
For each of these three reports, you can choose additional variables like ad, campaign, account, date range and more. The output of these reports can be in a Web page or Excel format.
Now, we'd be here for the next three days if I tried to explain all of the opportunities and information your Ad Manager and reports have for you. Instead, Facebook has made it easy by providing you a secure PDF with all of that information included. You can download it here.
I recommend you just get in there and try it. Set aside $20 to $30 one week and test the waters. If you would like to check out others who have already successfully navigated Facebook ads, and are using them to rapidly increase their business, head over to this site.
You can also become a fan of the Facebook Marketing Solutions page and the Facebook Ads page.
And don't forget to let me know about your new Facebook Fan Page so I can become a fan of yours!