What I Learned Spending $3 Million on Facebook Ads

$3 Million on Facebook Ads

The whole Facebook advertising world can be very confusing.

Focus on that interest, re-target this demographic, make sure to exclude certain people… good lord, where do you even begin?

Over the years, I’ve spent over $3,000,000 buying Facebook ads (see below) — and, before I was fired at Facebook, I helped build their ad system.

Bottom-line: I’ve tried anything and everything with Facebook advertising. And now, I’m going to share EXACTLY how you can spend on Facebook ads and get a great ROI for your business.

There are so many advanced tactics, strategies, and tips you can read about Facebook Ads. And I’m going to show you some of them — with a catch.

The truth is, it’s CRITICAL you understand the fundamentals of Facebook ads before you worry about split testing, CPC optimization, or other advanced strategies.

Often times, even “expert” advertisers mess up the simple fundamentals. Then, their mistakes drive up the cost they spend on ads, lower profitability, and cause headaches.

Because we want to build a strong foundation, in this post you’ll learn:

• The lessons I learned from spending millions on online advertising
• How to setup your first Facebook ad
• The exact methods I use to target audiences on Facebook
• What makes an ad click-worthy (plus my secrets for creating great CTAs)
• The insanely simple method for working the ROI of your ads
• And more…

But before we get started, 6 things to consider before you start with Facebook ads...

Over the years, I’ve learned a ton about Facebook online advertising:

• Helping build the Facebook Ads platform from the ground up
• Spending $3,000,000+ on Facebook ads
• Using every tactic, strategy, and trick in the Facebook advertising handbook to make my ads as effective and profitable as possible

Facebook ads are certainly an amazing platform to grow your business, but that doesn’t mean you should jump in head-first.

Here are a few caveats to consider before diving into Facebook ads (or online advertising in general):

1. Be patient. In my experience, it can take anywhere from 1 day to 6 months to get your online advertising profitable
2. Not every advertising channel will work for everyone. I’ve spent $100,000+ on Google advertising and only made back $25,000. Damn. Not every advertising channel will work for every business
3. When you do find a channel that’s profitable, spend as much as you can while you can. When I was advertising on a third-party newsletter, I spent $750 a week and made $1,500 within 2 weeks. That’s an awesome ROI. I didn’t sponsor more than twice a month since I didn’t want to annoy their readers. But then, a friend yelled at me to do more. I moved to four times a month and the ROI stayed the same. I realized there’s a lot of noise online so it’s okay to advertise hard
4. Advertising decays. Over time you need to refresh your advertising, even if it’s working, to prevent it from going stale. At AppSumo we had a full-time person just refreshing our ads a few times a day with relevant numbers, topics, and news
5. Profit is all that matters. Ignore people who claim they get some really high click through rates (also known as CTR, or the % of people that actually click their ad). CTR is a vanity metric, and what matters most is ROI. If you are not making money, stop
6. Look for free marketing opportunities first. I personally encourage people NOT to spend on ads until they’ve exhausted other marketing activities. It’s too easy to spend a lot on ads without great results.

7. Step-by-step instructions: How to spend your first $100 on Facebook in 10 simple steps

   When you first start out with Facebook ads, it’s best to dip your toes in with a fairly small budget and gradually ramp up as you find your sweet spot.
   This was my approach when I first started out. I didn’t spend $3,000,000 on Facebook ads right away. I started with just $100 in my first month.
   My budget scaled alongside my learnings and results. The more I learned, the better results I saw, and the more budget I’d invest. In month two, I spent $400. Eventually, I ramped up to $100,000+ budget per month.
   Below I’ll walk you through 11 steps to get going with Facebook ads (and how to spend your first $100).

   Step 1: Head to Facebook Ads Manager

   Open up Facebook Ads Manager to get started with creating your ads.
   Once Facebook Ads Manager loads, you’ll be able to get started building your first ads.

   Step 2: Choose your objective

   What do you want your ads to do? Drive traffic, build brand awareness, increase conversions? You’ll need to choose an objective. Facebook offers 11 options split across three key objectives:
   
   • Awareness: Objectives that generate interest in your product or service
   • Consideration: Objectives that get people to start thinking about your business, or look for more information about your business
   • Conversion: Objectives that encourage people interested in your business to purchase or use your product or service
   Choose Traffic (under "Consideration") first. You can do website conversion, but I’d wait. Remember, our goal is to keep your first $100 as simple as possible and get a ROI.
   With only $100 to spend, you’ll struggle to generate enough brand awareness to drive returns. And conversion-focused ads won’t prove cost-effective either.
   You also need to give your campaign a name. Choose something easy and memorable so you can easily identify it in the future.
   
   Facebook recently added the ability to split test ads, which enables you to test advert sets against each other to understand which ads give you the best results. But for your first $100, don’t worry about split testing. Keep it simple.
   Note: Do not buy likes. I hate when people brag about how many likes their fan page has. Likes don’t mean much, because Facebook controls communication with your customer(this is why “Boosted” posts have become such a money-driver for Facebook).
   When you write Facebook posts you have almost no say on how many people it will reach. It makes sense to create a free fan page and promote it — but don’t spend money towards it in the beginning.

   Step 3: Choose your audience

   Once your objective is set, you choose the audience you’d like to target with your advert.
   
   One of the most important things to look out for on this page is the audience size gauge.
   You want to aim specific, not broad.
   Somewhere in the middle of the green section of the dial below is the sweet spot.
   
   When I first started advertising AppSumo and Monthly1K, I tried to target audiences with less than 10,000 people.
   The more specific your target group, the more likely you are to have a higher CTR. Plus, the more likely you’ll convert a clicking user to email subscriber (or buying customer) down the line.
   One “red herring” to watch for is cost per click (CPC). Anyone who brags about paying an insanely low CPC is likely getting a horrible ROI. The key is balance.
   How to define your target audience
   Facebook provides a ton of options to customize your audience, including:
   • Location
   • Age
   • Gender
   • Languages
   • Interests
   • Behaviors
   • Connections
   Choosing the right audience is essential for a successful Facebook ads campaigns. You need laser-focused targeting.
   For the age and gender category, look at the demographics of your top customers or the people you have email addresses for and target those age groups. The narrower the BETTER. For the Monthly1K course, we targeted 25-40 year-olds who are in the United States.
   The other categories, Languages and Connections, I encourage you to leave alone in the beginning.
   (Yes, I know the haters out there will want to optimize everything, but I’m trying to streamline the process so you can start investing in ads and learning immediately. Remember, 80% is better than 100% at first — we just want to get you to an ROI.)
   For countries: Focus on ONE state / country to begin with. Bonus points if you’re able to focus on a city. Remember, target less than 10,000 people total. If your audience is broad, go more narrow geographically.
   One of the most powerful targeting options available is ‘Interests’, this enables you to advertise to people within your target demographics based on their interests (activity on Facebook, Pages they like, and closely related topics).
   When trying to figure out your first interest group to target I recommend a few options:
   1. Take your 10 best customers and search their email address / name on Facebook
   
   Then go to their Likes by clicking ‘More’ on their profile and selecting ‘Likes’:
   
   Now, create a spreadsheet and list out all the Likes of each of your top 10 customers on Facebook. Focus only on the most relevant Likes to your business. For example:
   
   The goal is to find easy and effective ways you can target new customers. Look for 1-3 similar Likes across your top customers to get started.
   2. Find your competitor's customer interests
   Go to a competitor's Facebook Page and look at the people who like it. Click on their profiles and add them into your spreadsheet to find their common interests.
   We did this the AppSumo competitor MacHeist a couple years ago as we were starting to grow AppSumo.
   
   3. Target a direct competitor
   Find an angle that makes your business unique and then use that angle to advertise directly to your competitors customers.
   Simply search for your competitor’s name in the interests box and you can target people who Like your competitor on Facebook, or match your other targeting criteria.
   
   Caveat: DO NOT let Facebook recommend broad interest categories. Facebook’s goal is to get your money. They want to show your ads to whomever is most likely to click. But it’s your job to ensure your ads are targeting people who are valuable to you or your business.

   Step 4: Choose your placements

   Once you’ve selected the audience for your advert, you’ll see the option to choose the placement (aka where it’ll show on Facebook). You have two options:
   • Automatic placements: Facebook automatically puts your ads where it feels they’ll work best
   • Edit placements: You choose where you’d like to reach people
   Even for beginners, I recommend you select ‘Edit placements’ so you can select exactly where you’d like your ad to be shown within Facebook’s network.
   
   You’ll see a list of the available placement options for your ad. With your first ad, I recommend you only target Facebook users in the News Feed.
   Why just the News Feed?
   1. Audience Network can be a little difficult to configure for a beginner. It’s best to get started with Facebook Ads directly on Facebook... rather than Facebook Ads that appear on other channels
   2. Instagram ads are a whole different kettle of fish
   3. I’ve found right-hand column ads are effective for retargeting, but with the CTR so low it’s not worth it when you’re starting
   
   Mobile vs Desktop
   Mobile ads could make sense for your business, but it depends greatly on your service. If your landing page is fully optimized for mobile, it can be worth targeting Facebook users across all devices. But if your product is a web-app, then mobile feed ads might convert significantly lower than desktop ads.
   Mobile social ads now drive more impressions and clicks than desktop, but desktop still has a slight edge when it comes to conversions. Consider creating a separate ad set with just mobile targeted ads. I’ve seen promising results doing this.
   So, if you’re fully confident your site is killer on mobile, select “All Devices”. If not, select “Desktop only”.

   Step 5: Set your budget

   Start small. Set your daily budget at $3.33 (this’ll ensure you don’t spend more than $100 a month).
   On Facebook, the average cost per click (CPC) is about $0.35 globally and about $0.28 in the U.S. (source)
   Here are a couple of things to keep in mind when thinking about your bid amount:
   • If you try to bid too low, your ads may not get the exposure they need, and you won’t reach your goals
   • Don’t worry about bidding a high amount. You’ll still end up paying the lowest amount possible in the auction to get your ads delivered
   Aim for $0.75 a click. (Don’t worry if that seems high, it’s only 4.4 clicks). The point is to get some clicks to your ad going and then you can lower the amount.
   A few notes for you to benchmark your performance with:
   • On most paying products we’ve advertised, the conversion from click to paying customer is about 0.1-0.2%
   • Conversion rate to collecting an email has been around 20%
   Again, remember it can vary wildly based on your industry. But, this should give you a rough north star to aim for.

   Step 6: Create your Ad

   This is where you create your advert. Generally, I have a couple of pieces of advice when it comes to creating winning ads:
   1. Keep the images simple, ideally of yourself or something not boring. Look at this boring advertisement below. Yawn! Such a neat idea for a product. But boring execution, with an image blending in with so many other images we see online
   
   2. Try to create an ad that uses natural text versus something that seems like an advertisement. Imagine what you naturally write / post on Facebook compared something that seems like a paid placement.
   Here’s an example from AppSumo of one of our high-performing “natural” ads:
   
   And if you want to know what this looks like in real life, see how to make EPIC Facebook Ads which get you tons of clicks and conversions.

   Step 7: Choose the format

   For News Feed ads, Facebook offers six different formats. Let me simplify it for you: Choose Single Image.
   Single Image ads in the desktop News Feed tend to have a higher engagement rate than right column ads. Plus, with single image ads' similarities to organic News Feed posts, users are familiar with interacting with this type of post.
   

   Step 8: Choose your image(s)

   Facebook single image ads enable you to upload and test six variations of images. With only $100 budget, six variations is a little too complex. Start with one or two images max.
   For single image ads, Facebook recommends the following:
   • Recommended image size: 1200 x 628 pixels
   • Image ratio: 1.91:1
   • To maximize advert delivery, use an image that contains little or no overlaid text
   Don’t: Whatever you do, don’t use any of Facebook’s stock images. Stock images are the best way to ruin a great ad. Don’t use low-quality images either and definitely avoid stealing images from Google.
   Images of people work incredibly well. Preferably their faces. And try to use a bit of contrast, too. That’ll make your image stand out. You could use images of your team or your customers (with their permission, of course).
   If you have a designer on your team, get them to whip up your ad. If you don’t have a designer, tools like Canva — or Googling "royalty free images" make it incredibly simple to design beautiful looking images in no time.

   Step 9: Add your copy

   Once you’ve added an image or two to your ad, you have to create the supporting copy.
   The first step is to choose the Facebook Page that will represent your business in the ad (all single image News Feed ads are promoted by Facebook Pages).
   Then you need to choose your destination. This’ll be your website or the landing page you’d like to drive traffic too.
   Pro tip: Create consistency. If someone clicks your ad, something in your image or copy has grabbed their attention. After clicking, they should land on a webpage that reinforces the message you shared in your ad.
   There are now four key pieces of copy you need to include with your advert:
   1. Headline: Add a brief headline to tell people what your ad is about. I like to give something away free with the headline (see "Free Growth Hacker Tips" in the example below). You only have 25 characters to use here. Be wise
   2. Text: The text appears about the advert and is similar to a status on normal Facebook posts
   3. Call to Action (CTA): Facebook has a range of button call-to-actions you can use within your ad. Choose “Learn More”
   4. News Feed Link Description: This appears below the Headline. Use this space to add additional text to emphasize why people should visit your website and to reinforce your CTA
   Here’s an example:
   
   4 tips for creating incredible ads
   As a quick recap, here are four tips to help your ads stand out and drive clicks:
   1. Choose images that stand out
   Remember, on Facebook you’re not just competing with other ads for attention, you’re up against wedding photos, cat videos, #blessed posts, and other content posted by friends and family.
   If you want people to click on your ads, they have to stand out. I tend to use images on a bright background or anything with a bit of contrast to stand out from the blandness of the News Feed.
   2. Use Calls-to-Actions
   Including a Call-to-Action within your Facebook Ads is a great way to let the user know what to expect on the other side of the ad.
   CTAs might not directly increase your clicks or make your ad more pleasing to the eye, but it’s a great tactic to improve your conversions and decrease your cost per conversion.
   I love to use the "Headline" part of Facebook Ads to include the CTA.
   3. Add social proof
   There are a couple of reasons that might put someone off clicking your ad:
   1. Scared of losing money
   2. Worried about making the wrong choice
   How can you overcome these two challenges?
   Use social proof to show the reader why they should care.
   The ‘Text’ section of your Facebook ad is a great place to include some social proof around your product or service. For example, you could: mention how many businesses use your product, include a testimonial from a customer, talk about your experience.
   The goal with social proof is to alleviate any worries someone may have about your product and give them a reason to car.
   4. Use the “Learn More” button
   Through a bunch of testing, we found the “Learn More” button converted better than other buttons or not having a button at all.
   These findings were also backed up by AdEspresso who found that the “Learn More” CTA returned a 22.5% higher click-through rate than “Sign Up” (source).
   

   Step 10: Measure your ROI

   Now you’ve gotten started. Congrats… but the real thing is profit. So how do you track your ROI and make your money back?
   To start, do stupid ghetto math. Here’s how I do it with advertising OkDork:
   I spend around $3.35 / email per sign up.
   On some emails I will proudly mention Sumo (free tool for getting more email subscribers).
   Each new customer makes us around $515 after refunds. So I do back of the envelope math as follows:
   Product Profit = $515
   Email Cost = $3.35
   $515 / $3.35 = 153
   So if 1 out of 153 people via new email signups buy Sumo then buying ads is profitable.
   For your business the numbers might be a little different, but a similar formula will help you work out your ROI.

   Get my 10 steps to a perfect Facebook ad

   ---

   Facebook offers incredible value to advertisers. Throughout this post you might have noticed a couple of key takeaways about creating successful ads:
   1. Design eye-catching ads that grab attention and generate clicks
   2. Laser-focused targeting to ensure your ads are reaching the right people
   Good luck advertising. Leave a comment and share your questions or experiences with Facebook ads.
8. 
   
   

Top 10 Tips for to be a Successful Affiliate Marketer

With new blogs and websites coming up everyday, it is slowly becoming difficult for one to make their blog or website stand out from the rest. So making money through this is a challenge not everyone can take. But in this era where the internet is the boss, there is one way you can increase your popularity as well as make more money. How? By resorting to Affiliate Marketing of course.
No need to seem lost. This is just an extravagant term for the process of promoting certain services or certain products on your blog or website. Once someone buys the product or service because of your promotion, you get paid.
Sounds interesting right? So now that your interest as been awakened, here are the top ten Affiliate marketing tips that will turn you into a master affiliate marketer!

•Traffic Should Be High
The most important step for this would be to ensure high traffic on your blog or website. You should focus on increasing the traffic through crisp content. The better your content, the higher the traffic.

•There Should Be TrustThere should be a sense of trust between you and your audience. Only when your audience trusts you, will they listen to what you have to say about something. If there is no trust, you cannot expect any sale of the promoted product.

•Choose Products You Would Go For
Select products with care. Make sure you promote only those products that you would yourself choose. This makes it easier for you to explain to your audience, the product’s authenticity and efficiency.

•Go For Problem-Solving Products
Promote products that solve a problem. This appeals to people more. Everybody wishes for an easy life. So they would always jump at the chance of making life a little less difficult.

•Choose Products Wisely
When you choose to engage in Affiliate Marketing, don’t jump at anything or everything. Don’t be greedy. There might be lots of products or services you want to promote, but choose the ones that stand out as best in comparison to each other. Concentrating on the important ones is the key to success here.

•Relevance is of Great ImportanceYou might be writing blogs only of a certain genre or your website might be about just one sphere. Make sure that the product you promote has connections with your blog or website. This helps the audience to connect better, thereby ensuring its sale.

•Understand your Audience
You should know your audience well. For example if your website or blog attracts women mostly then you could promote cosmetics, clothes or bags for women. This will ensure a hike in sales.

•Timing is Important
Promote products at the right time. Don’t promote winter clothes during summer. Make sure you promote them just before the onset of winter. This will give the audience what they want, when they want it and make it convenient for both you and them.

•Promote in Posts Too
Don’t limit the promotion to outside your blogs. Make product reviews or include the promotion within a blog that has a close relation to the product you are promoting.

•Avoid Overcrowding
Don’t promote too many products together. That will just confuse your audience who are the probable consumers for the product or service you are promoting. Focus on just one or two promotions at a time so that the audience gets time to think and contemplate clearly.
But if you are not sure about the ability to successfully carry out the job of an affiliate marketer, you can always resort to the excellent digital marketing courses offered by some institutes in Hyderabad. This will give you the confidence necessary for this purpose.
So now that you have the top ten Affiliate marketing tips, put them to use as soon as possible. Help someone else by helping yourself. It is a win-win situation all the way!

How To Earn Money Using Advanced Google AdSense

Google AdSense is your key to earning good money with a little effort. It is a good way for small and big websites to earn some shared revenue. It will place advertisement in your website, those that are pertaining to the content of your website, for those who are the visitors of your site. Whenever a visitor sees your ad, or clicks on it, you are paid some amount of money in return. There are some strategies you can follow to earn more with google Ads.

1. Create an Ad:

Firstly you’ve to have an account with AdSense. Log into it and choose to create an advertisement. You can then assign any name to your ad. Next you will have to choose the ad size that will be displayed. You will have to customize your ad, like more text or more image based, etc. You can create a custom channel which will help you to keep a track of the ads on your page and more ads will be placed in your website. You can further add styles and formats like borders or colors to the ad on your page. You can then, either save the ad you’ve created t you can avail the HTML code for that specific ad.

2. Ad campaign:

One good way to attract more ad and people to click on it is to design your web content in a way that will make users want to click on the ad. Say, your content is about art, then you must avail ads that are related like paint implements, art exhibition tickets. Know your target audience and get ads according to what you feel they’ll want to check out. You can go to your AdS account and set what type of ads you want, or what way the ad should be placed, grouping of the ads and the like. It makes everything easier to control. You can then check which ads are getting more clicked and then set AdS to put that kind of campaigns on your website. You can also set the placement, if ads should be at the top or beside the content it is related to. Some people place ads within the text of the website so that visitors don’t have to hunt the page. Google AdSense lets you completely customize everything. You can check Google’s advice on ad placement. Learn about AdSense to know how they work.

3. Learn more:
It’s important you learn more about the ways to fetch money. Know how much money you’re going to make for the ads on your page. That will help you decide on the number of ads. You should advertise your blog amongst others to get maximum traffic. For every thousand views you get around, 0.5 to 5$. It’s very less if you have only a 100 visitors. Your revenue will entirely depend on the number of clicks, and you cannot click your own ad, you’ll be closed down. Keep checking the performance on your site constantly.

It is important that your content is good enough to attract users. You can get excellent training in digital marketing at some great institutions in Hyderabad. Their courses in digital marketing will help you increase revenue through AdSense to a great degree.

Earn Money with Facebook Ads

Facebook has been a revolutionary platform which has changed the very course of modern communication. In India, Facebook made its appearance during 2007-2008. It spread like wildfire and in a very small period of time, almost everyone was on Facebook. The amount of traffic it has achieved in such a short period of time is truly amazing.
Facebook provides its users an opportunity to communicate in several methods, be it via text messages, Pictures, Status, comments, video call, phone call and several other unique methods like stickers and emoticons. So, putting you your business on Facebook is an excellent way to boost your traffic. There are certain communities which have unique choices of content and their choices can be essential for businesses to understand the requirements of a potential consumer.

There are several ways to earn money through Facebook ads. Facebook provides the benefit of advertising businesses to their target audiences. This provides businesses a closer insight into their target audience’s requirement and mentality. You can start your marketing plans right now and join the Facebook Ad Campaign.

Benefits of joining the Facebook Ad Campaign:

1.Currently, the most popular social media platform is Facebook.
2.Facebook has more global reach than Television.
3.The methodology the particular site uses to interact with users is more friendly and filled with multiple options.
4.Advertising on Facebook fits right there in the budget.
5.You have the opportunity to hand select your target audience and even influence them.
6.Your Business site can be linked to the advertisements on Facebook.
7.As it is a relatively new medium of communication, people are joining in on a daily basis and the traffic is humongous.
8.There is a very easy method to set up your Facebook ad by yourself.
9.You can control the way a consumer perceives your advert.
10.You can easily keep track of your campaign’s performance.
11.The reaction of the consumers to your advertisements can be noted.
12.As this is very affordable and even test run can be done for actually releasing the ad online.
13.There are multiple formats, which are provided by Facebook, for you to choose from on how you want your business to be run on Facebook.

How to set up a Facebook Ad Campaign:

On the top right portion of a Facebook page, there is a drop-down menu which consists of the option of “Create Adverts”. Click on the option and you will be redirected to Facebook’ Advert manager. Once you’re there you can specify details like the nature of your business, budget, target audience, age group of audience and the pattern of placing ads on pages.
After you are redirected to the Advert Manager page, it’s very easy henceforth. If you have a plan on how you want to your advertisements to be displayed on the page, you can specify them on the page. If you do not have a plan initially, you can use the guidelines to make a plan on how to manage your business on Facebook. Provide information on your business, your audience, and your plan to display the ads, the location of the business and age group. After you’re done providing your details of you Facebook ad format, you’ll be provided with an automated budget. You can choose to proceed or make changes accordingly. The campaign is very flexible in nature and can be changed during the campaign. There are options for you to pay on a daily basis or a lifetime.

After you’re done setting up your campaign, you can link your business’s Facebook or Instagram account so that people can have a more detailed idea of what your business is willing to offer to the consumers.

The cost of Facebook Ads:

Facebook has a wide variety of options set out for businesses trying to create an ad campaign. Payment can be made on a per day basis. Then, you have to pay based on the traffic through your ad on a daily basis. You can also opt of paying for your campaign for a lifetime, which is as long as Facebook’s Adverts services are rendered.
Both options are reasonable but it all depends on how far you want your ad to reach. The cost of this campaign depends on the radius of your business.

How to Earn from Facebook Application Ads:

Facebook acts as a middle man between consumer and your business. Facebook redirects the traffic to your business site, Facebook or Instagram page. You can take courses from institutes like Digital Floats, a premier institute that provides training in digital marketing in Hyderabad and can help in providing the right kind of guidance required to learn about Facebook ads.
But it all leads up to the quality and presentation of your products or services. Your website’s outlay, quality of presentation, content, description of products, images, audio, and videos are some things that you need to utilize to attract customers to your site and convince them to buy your product.
Facebook is not a direct source of income. Facebook acts as a third party which increases the pool of potential customers by providing you with a global reach. Advertisements have often been extremely beneficial for businesses who work on their pages on a daily basis. Updating statuses and posting different promotional offers regularly attract a lot of potential customers.
You get a chance to directly interact with your audience and learn what they want from your services and how it can be improved. Suppose you have a site which provides deals on tourism packages. You need to come up with a Facebook page where new interesting deals are uploaded so that people can avail such offers. Promotion of your products can be done in several ways and Facebook adverts can help you reach your customers.
Important tactics to keep in mind While creating your Facebook ad:

1.Attractive images which are self-explanatory:

Attach pictures of your business environment which will attract customers and show them how things are done. Attach images which will make a customer hooked to that image for a while. Eye-catchy and attractive elements in your site can help attract traffic a lot.

2.Attach quality content:

When a viewer looks at your advertisement images and pauses for a while to check it out, provide some brief content describing the product and the offers related to it. Brief and beneficial content provides the user’s information on what meaning to derive from a picture. Interested users will click and be redirected to your site.

3.Judge the effectiveness of your campaign using split tests:

The concept of a split test is that, while advertising your site using an image and some content, you use different pairs of these two. At first, you use Image X with Content X. Then you use Image X with content Y and then Image Y with content X and so on so forth. This allows you to understand what kind of combination the people are looking for. You can join institutes like Digital Floats, a premier institute that provides training in digital marketing in Hyderabad and can help in providing the right kind of guidance required to learn about Facebook ads.

4.Gather Contact methods of your leads:

Leads are potential customers who click on your advertisement. Once they do so, you can contact them via email, contact number or messages. Capturing leads and adding them to your database helps you keep track of interested clients. It also helps you prevent from repeatedly contacting the same customers with the same content over and over. This helps you maintain your client list.
Conclusion
Facebook has a global reach and can help you spread your business anywhere and to any group of people you want. The flexibility and interesting approach towards businesses and customers are very intriguing. You can develop your own Facebook ad format and deal with your target audience as you wish.
For businesses, it is an excellent way to earn money through Facebook ads

How To Earn Money From Facebook Ads

Facebook- What’s on your mind?

Created in 2004, it hit India in 2007-08, I remember I made my facebook account in 2009, under peer pressure. Facebook today is the most popular social networking site which was initially developed to connect with the school and college friends. With the transformation over the years, it now offers to let you run your business on it. Along with running your business on Facebook, you can also run an advertisement campaign on the same platform. However, there’s still a lot of confusion about how to earn money from Facebook Ads.

The quality that sets apart Facebook from other social networking site is that it gives you a personal touch, a home like feeling because you are communicating with an audience whom you have personally selected with an understanding of their psychology. The Facebook Ads let you communicate with the lookalike audiences as well. The lookalike audiences are similar to your selection of audience.  Also, over the years, Facebook’s layout has turned even better with additional features like emojis, video calling, Messenger, Instagram app, and Messenger calls. All these features are added with an approach to ease the communication.

Hasn’t the initiative of Facebook to introduce a business feature made commencing an online business so easy? An entrepreneur who has just started a business and wants his knowns to be his initial customers, may simply begin with circulating the information on messenger groups or via status uploads and shares. The idea of promoting a business via Facebook Ads is especially attractive to any business at present because a major population of the world is on Facebook. Thus, by simply selecting your target audience on Facebook, you can specify what category of people will see your Facebook Ad.

How to create a Facebook Ad?

Facebook is campaigning very well for its online business and Facebook Ads feature, there are several tutorials on how can you set up your own ad campaign on Facebook. Follow these simple steps to get started with your Facebook Ad campaign.

1. Click on the extreme right, drop down menu denoted by an arrow

This is the same menu from where you log out. In the third division of the drop down menu, there is an option – ‘create adverts’. Click on this menu and you will be redirected to Facebook’s Adverts Manager, a menu where you can specify the objective of the campaign, the audience, the budget, the costing, age group of the audience, placement of the ads, etc.

After you have landed on the Facebook Adverts Manager, next everything will be a piece of cake for you, if you already have a specified format of how you want to conduct your Facebook Ad campaign. As you proceed with providing the required information regarding the target audience, the location, the age group, the format of the advertisement, you will be shown an automated budget. The basic budget is flexible and can be altered by you even in the middle of the campaign. You have two given options to select your budget either by selecting a budget on the daily basis or setting a budget for the lifetime (the total duration of the campaign- you can edit this).

On setting the information required for getting started with your campaign, you are already halfway through. Next, you can either link the campaign to the Facebook page of your brand or you can simply connect it to your Instagram profile if you are already operating your business through an Instagram business account.

The cost of a Facebook Ad?

The cost of a Facebook Ad is variable and flexible according to your budget. You can customize the per day budget according to your total budget. Also, the cost can be paid for a lifetime of the campaign i. e the entire duration of the Facebook Ad campaign. However, an important fact that must be noted here is that your per day budget or your lifetime budget is directly proportional to the reach of your Ad. The per day expenditure is the average amount spent according to the site usage by your target audience.

How to earn money from Facebook Ads?

The Facebook Ad lets you redirect your potential customers to your website, Instagram profile, business page, etc. The traffic that is now been redirected to any of these pages is your lead. The Facebook Ads have helped to generate leads, now the conversion further depends on the quality of the display of your website, content, product description, images, videos, etc.

You need to understand that Facebook Ads are not a direct source of income. They are an indirect source of income. You can earn money through Facebook Ads by having leads generated but clearly, their conversion depends on how influential your product ad is.  The Facebook Ads work better for your business when they are been run on a daily basis. The daily visibility works wonders in fixing the product/service in the target consumer’s mind. Regular posting of promotional posts and Facebook Ads work hand in hand and help you increase your Return on Investment (ROI)

Since the Facebook Ad is an indirect medium of earning money, you first need to invest a small amount in the Ad campaign to go live and only then you will start earning out of it. The money you spend on an ad to be run for a single day is flexible and can be decided by you according to your own budget. What professionals and marketers forget is that there is a lot more efforts required than just investing the money. The ad must be designed and crafted in a way that any potential customer is easily converted into a client within no time.

For instance– The new unit of Quikr.com- AtHomeDiva, dealing in female grooming, ran its introductory offer ad on Facebook to attract and inform the target consumers about their services in the most attractive and effective way possible. Many of my friends and family members availed their service and were more than happy with the products used by them, the charges and service provided by the beauticians.

The ad featuring the introductory offer spellbound the consumers by offering 5-6 popular services for just 500 INR each. The services included Rica wax (full arms and legs), O3+ cleanup and facial, manicure and pedicure, etc. Women went crazy over this offer. I can quote this statement, being a woman myself and comparing the actual price to the introductory price. It’s just the half.

For a period of time, I saw the ad daily. Then it stopped for sometime, then the ad was visible again. This is because Facebook customizes the reach itself to cater to a variety of audiences each day, then follows them again. It’s a pattern. The ad campaign has a lifetime which can be set by the one running the Facebook Ad. Just like the budget, the lifetime of the campaign is also flexible. You can repeat the same ad after its lifetime is over.

Key tactics to keep in mind while crafting your own Facebook Ad

1. The Image must be self- explanatory and attractive

Supposedly you generate a Facebook Ad for a clothing brand, the image that will be displayed in the ad must be alluring enough to capture the user’s attention and force them to stop scrolling and pay attention to your ad. When the user stops to give a glance to your ad, only then there are any chances at all of your ad generating customers for your brand.

Now, here you must note one important point that the user will not stop for the texts.  It’s the image that will be noticed first and based on that a user may or may not stop. If the image is attractive, the user will stop to look and now read the texts. This is a natural Human psychology that we are first attracted by the images and react differently to different colors unconsciously.

2. Content of the Facebook Ad

The second most important component of a Facebook Ad is its content. If you have placed an attractive image on the ad, the user for once will stop but will not respond if he/she does not find useful content in the ad. Thus, it must be made a priority to publish a quality content in the ad. A good content is the one that communicates the idea briefly and leaves the user inquisitive to follow the ad link. If the user has clicked on the ad and has now reached the landing page, you are already halfway through.

3. You can use the Split test concept for the campaign, to judge its effectiveness

Ad campaigns can be simply tested by running more than one campaign at a time and crafting them differently. Hypothetically, in a given campaign you use an X image and an  X content, in the next campaign you again use the X image but this time you use the Y content, in another campaign you again use the Y content but with a Z image this time. This is called the split test concept. This will give you visible results as to which content and picture is gaining maximum traffic. And accordingly, you can run that campaign for a longer duration or re- publish in the case of ad campaign performed well.

4. Collect the contact details of your lead- Capture your leads

All the people who click on your Facebook Ad are your leads. The leads are useful only when their contact information is been retrieved by you. The contact detail can be anything from the Email address to the phone Number. If you have not implemented a responsive layout and fail to get the details, you will have to spend multiple times to reach the same people. If you play clever and get the details of the leads in the first time itself, you will have the database of all your leads. Capturing leads is indeed a smart move and will save you a lot of money.

Maintaining a lead database enables you to contact them over the email or simply via a text on the phone. The former customers can also be contacted this way and informed about the latest offers.  This is one the most common marketing practices.

5. Keep a track of the CTR

CTR stands for Click Through Rate. The higher the CTR, the cheaper the cost per click. CTR is used to monitor the performance of the campaign and this step must not be skipped. Most advertisers and marketers do not pay enough attention to this number. However, it must be noted that this number is especially important in determining the ROI of your Facebook Ad campaign and to tell you exactly how well your campaign is functioning. Also, if there is a need to alter the components of the ad.

You can redirect the traffic to your own Facebook business or fan page. This will be beneficial as the likes of your page will be increased and they can be further redirected to your app or website.

How often should you post Ads on Facebook?

This is one of the most commonly asked questions about Facebook Ad. The fact is that the Facebook Ads have a starting and the ending date, i.e. it has a lifetime. In this lifetime, the ad is posted daily to reach different users according to the selected audience by you. During the campaign, the ads are published daily, however, the users it is shown to may vary. Also, the width of the reach is determined by the investment you have made in the ad.

The Facebook uses the following metrics to help you assess the performance of the Facebook Ad campaign.

Impressions:

The impressions of an ad campaign, denote the total number of times an ad was displayed.

Reach:

The reach of a Facebook ad campaign denotes the number of Unique users to whom the ad reached.

frequency:

According to Facebook, the frequency is calculated by dividing the total impressions by the number of reaches.

How wide is the reach of a Facebook ad?

The reach of a Facebook Ad is totally dependent on the amount of money spent on each day of the ad. The reach of an ad is directly proportional to the investment made on it. Facebook has a set reach for every figure you quote as your daily budget. You can check this in the Adverts Manager of your Facebook page. The concept is simple- the higher the investment, the higher the reach. Further, the leads and conversions can be counted accordingly.

A recent survey conducted by Facebook observed the behavior of about 537 people during the premiere of the popular TV show. It was observed that during the television commercials, people switched to Facebook. With this survey, Facebook draws the attention of the advertisers to take note of which medium is more popular. The survey successfully declares that Facebook has a greater reach than television and claim that advertisements work much better when the television and Facebook are combined to hit the target audience.

The survey lays stress on the fact that mobiles must not be confused as mini television just like the television was not a visual radio and radio was not an audible newspaper. Mobile is the new media and has a reach greater than that of the television, especially in terms of advertisements. The users are no more interested in viewing the long ads and refuse to spend as much time on ads as they previously did, in the golden years of the television media. The new generation and the new media demands for an ad format that is quick and crisp. The entertainment element must prevail in the ad. The autoplay feature on Facebook communicates the message to a much wider audience because about 70% of the Facebook profiles have this feature enabled until they opt out of it. Thus, willingly or unwillingly the video is played and a majority of people tend to get engrossed in the video once it starts playing, even the irrelevant ones.

Benefits of placing Ads on Facebook

1. Facebook is the most popular social platform at present.
2. Facebook Ads have a higher reach than TV
3. Follows an interactive format.
4. The campaign is cost-effective.
5. You can select and customize your target audience.
6. The business can be run on the same platform with an access to a business page.
7. It is the new media and people have a much higher craze about it.
8. An easily accessible medium- you can set up a Facebook Ad yourself.
9. Easy to fix the brand image in the consumer’s mind by running the ad campaign over and over again.
10. Keep a track of the campaign’s performance, all by yourself.
11. An immediate reaction of the consumer can be noted.
12. Due to low cost, a split test campaign can also be run.
13. You can select the most suitable Facebook Ad format that suits your business the most.

To conclude

In this Blog, we have discussed: how to set up a Facebook Ad campaign, how to earn money  from a Facebook Ad, the metrics to measure the performance of a Facebook Ad and the key tactics to help you craft your own ad campaign that helps you reach and convert the target consumers into your clients.

Facebook is evolving every day to give its users the best experience while they stay connected to the people around them and the people they’ve left behind in schools and colleges. I hope now you are all set to go live with your Facebook Ad campaign.