5 Things You Need To Know About Facebook Ads

Advertising online is nothing new. You can sell/buy ad space on websites and there are search based ads like Google and Yahoo which have been around for quite a while now. Facebook ads (as with Facebook itself) are the general newcomers to this game and offer a unique advertising opportunity to market your business if used properly.

There are many advantages to using Facebook ads and a few things you need to forget if you’re moving from search based ads.

1. Facebook ads are not Google ads
This is a very important thing to remember because not only does it alter your ad writing but also your entire campaign strategy as well. When you may have targeted people searching for “photography” in Google, you would now target people who like photography. The difference is subtle but still important.

You must also remember that people on Facebook like to stay on Facebook. They aren’t necessarily interested in the website you are advertising. On Google, that’s exactly what they are looking for. If they are on Facebook, that’s probably where they want to stay and moving them is much more difficult.

2. The time difference
If you opened your Facebook account back when you were in college, chances are your tastes have changed some. When targeting people on Facebook, you target them over their lifetime. If they liked something years ago, you can advertise to that preference but that doesn’t mean there is any sense of urgency to click on your ad. In search based advertising, there is a more immediate need for information to satisfy their query.

3. More money doesn’t mean more clicks
You can pump up your budget all you want but that doesn’t mean it will translate to more clicks (or more effective ads). On Facebook, you have to focus on the ad itself: the image and the copy. This will have more bearing on your ad’s performance than on simply increasing the budget. Increasing the budget and changing the bids may work on Google but it is less effective on Facebook.

4. The image matters

In search advertising, there is no image associated with your headline. All you get is the headline, the text, and a link. On Facebook you have the opportunity to entice people further by adding a nice graphic to the ad. Facebook ads were created with the intention of making them blend in with the content and the more you can make your image look like part of Facebook, the better off you’ll be.

5. Ask a question

When you go to a search engine, you are asking a question. Your search ad should attempt to answer that question rather than ask another question. On Facebook, you have to create the need to answer a question and you do this by asking a question in the headline of your ad. Headlines give you the