Now that we talked about landing pages for your Facebook ads, I wanted to show you how to build a Facebook fan page.  Remember, people have profiles and friends.  Businesses have pages and fans.  In addition to using a fan page as a landing page (as we discussed in my last post), a fan page is important to make it easy for users to find you and as a viral marketing tool.  Your fan’s friends will see that their friends are following you, and hopefully they will follow you too.

Facebook, for some reason, makes it hard to find the add fan page area.  Goto the bottom of any Facebook page and you will see a button that says Advertising, see below….

After clicking that, the screen below will pop up, and you will need to click the button that says Pages.

Finally, we are getting close.  The page below is an index page that offers some advice areas and the big green button for Create a Page.

After clicking the green button, the screen below pops up.  You are now actually creating a fan page.  The first question asks you to select a category, from many choices.  If you have a restaurant, select local.  If you are a consultant, select public figure.  After that, you select the name of the group, and you are done.  From there, the fan page will be displayed and be ready for you to add content…….

Great Facebooking!

The final, and by far the most , important piece of advertising on Facebook is what we will call the landing page.  Creating an ad is easy and not nearly as important as where the ad points to.  On Google, the ads point to you website, driving traffic directly to the site that sells your good or service.  This wont work on Facebook.

The most important consideration for advertising on Facebook is to remember why people are on the site.  When people are on Google, they are shopping. When they are on Facebook, they are there to check on their friends.  They are not there to shop.  Nor does Facebook take it kindly when marketers interfere with their users’ online experience.  Meaning, we must advertise different on Facebook.  And the primary implication of this is no ads that go directly a sales page.

The landing page is the web-place where your Facebook ad will send users. Remember a couple posts ago when we talked about designing a good ad? Remember how we talked about asking a question in the top title bar?  A good ad asks a question that entices users to click your ad.  Something like, “Want to lose 25 pounds by Christmas?”  And then a resolution statement, “Click here to learn how.”  The “click here” should lead to a landing page that answers the question asked in the title bar.  But, this page does not sell, does not push, does not try to be aggressive.

The best landing page is therefore a sandwich page, something between the ad and the ultimate sales page.  Click here for an answer to the question, a sandwich page that answers the question and offers a discount or a special offer, and then a link to your normal sales page.  The sandwich page should give value, but not slow the sales process.  It should be short, answer the question, offer some content, perhaps have an opt-in box where users can add their email, may include a short video, maybe will send them to a blog, and then sends them to a sales pitch.  The sandwich page can be internal to Facebook, as a fan page, or external to Facebook.  Internal pages are more trusted by users, but you lose some control.  External pages offer more flexibility, but may scare users when they see they have left Facebook.

After clicking on an ad that asks, “Do you want to be the next apprentice?”, you land on the page above.  It is good.  It offers the answer the question and allows you to click on a sales page.

We cannot over-estimate the importance of a good landing page.  Click on lots of ads and study the landing pages before you design your own.

More to come……..

Now that we have an ad ready to run, its time to target who will see the ad. This is all -important, because, as you know, showing your ad to the wrong people is a waste of time and money. Facebook does a great job of helping you refine your target audience.  The screenshot below shows the many ways we can drive down and make our target list even more specific.  Let’s look at them one by one:

• Location – They even allow you to advertise to users in one city or region.  Imagine being a restaurant and offering a birthday discount to people in Chicago only.
• Age – Pretty clear how to use it, but remember 35% of Facebook users are now over 35 years old.  The fastest growing segment is females over 65.  You may target users over 55 for insurance.
• Birthday – Again, pretty clear, and I love the example above of getting a discount on your birthday.
• Sex – An offer for males only for hair replacement?
• Keywords – Probably our best and most important tool.  In the example below, I typed in entrepreneur and now will run an ad just to people that may want to buy a small business magazine.  You can enter a book name, a movie, a singer, a Facebook group, anything, and use that to get the most specific viewer group possible.  Think searching for readers of “Rich dad, poor dad” would give a good target audience of people interested in inheritance planning?
• Education – Advertise to recent grads, history majors, business students, etc. Or just people that went to Harvard for Harvard ties….
• Workplace – Hear that XYZ company is having layoffs?  Target them for resume help!  Or simply offer all Ford employees a discount on tires, just to make them feel special.
• Relationship – Run an ad for just engaged girls in Atlanta as a caterer.
• Interested in – Not going to comment!
• Languages – Just target French speakers for language training…..

And, then after choosing as small a group as possible, you get an estimate of the number of targeted users that will see your ad.  So cool.  The idea is to reduce the number to a small, super-targeted group and then tailor an ad for just them.  As a general rule, getting below 50,000 might be too small for a general campaign.  But, if you are trying to target men in Florida that like surfing, the number may get even smaller, reducing your costs and giving you an incredibly targeted audience!

Next up, budgets and bidding!

As we continue with our series on Facebook advertising, today we start to dig in a little more with ad creation.  Facebook ad creation is different from GoogleAds and there are some super-important differences and rules we must be aware of. You can access Facebook ads from several places in the site. On almost every Facebook page, there are ads on the far right, and its says “create an ad” in a couple places around the other ads.  Or, you can just click here which takes you to the page you see below….

On this page, you will see four fields that you must enter.  First, simply, your destination URL.  This is the address for your webpage. Importantly, this address can be inside or outside of Facebook.  The link could go outside Facebook and to a normal, real webpage. Or, the link can stay inside Facebook and go to a Facebook landing page.  More about this later.

Second, it asks for a 25 character Title.  We will recommend a question as your Title.  For example, if you are selling time share condos, you may ask, “Tired of Paying Hotel Prices?”   Or if you are selling fruit baskets, “Looking for a great gift?”

Third is the body text, 135 characters long, and your main opportunity to tell your story.  Extensive research has shown that the best body text makes a promise.  Being very honest, make a promise that if you click on the ad, you will receive a specific item.  Back to our time share example, the text may read, “Click here to learn about great ways to save on vacations!”  Or for the fruit, “People love fruit baskets. Click to see how much we can save you.”  Very direct.  Very forward and honest.  And most importantly, when the users click, they must immediately receive an answer that fulfills that promise.

Finally, you are prompted to import an image.  The image is the MOST important part of your ad and will determine your success rate.  Provocative, compelling, interesting, and exciting pictures are needed.  But they must be honest pictures, that relate to the topic.  Words are allowed in the picture, but only very carefully.  Use a key phrase or target words, but do not try to trick Facebook by using a trademark here. You will get caught.  Most importantly, the picture must capture interest and tell a story.  A great picture tells a 1000 word story.   Smiling faces work better too.

Some big No-No’s:  All capitals in the text are not allowed.  No incorrect spelling, grammar, or slang is allowed. No incomplete thoughts.  No “dot, dot, dot stuff.”  No fake discounts.  No irrelevant images. Nothing offensive or insulting to users.  You can’t say “Hey dummy!”  No abbreviations at all.

And finally, tweak the ad after 2 days if you aren’t getting at least a 2% click through rate…..

Next, targeting your ads for success…….

Below, is a screenshot from my Facebook page.  There is an ad on the far right, in the red box.  The ad is for “Cities I’ve Visited” – some sort of app that let’s you mark the cities you have visited and share that with your friends.  I was on a normal, spy on my friend page when this ad came up.  I was not searching for such an app, it just popped up.

Which brings us to our lesson of the day.  Facebook is display marketing, not search advertising.  Display ads just show up in a magazine.  You buy a fashion magazine, and surprise, there are ads for makeup and dresses and girl’s products.  Buy a car magazine, and the publishers choose to DISPLAY ads they think you will be interested in, like radar detectors, wheels, new cars, and steering wheels.  Display ads try to appear in a context that the publisher thinks will make sense.  GoogleAds, on the other hand, appear when you SEARCH for a certain topic.  I type in radar detectors, and lo and behold, a bunch of radar ads appear.  In many respects, this seems more precise and better suited to advertising.  Display ads appear when you do not want them, like in the middle of a TV show, or when you are checking on your friends on Facebook.

I am willing to go back to old school display ads if I can get cheaper, more targeted, more effective ads. That is what Facebook allows.  And Facebook is a lot pickier and stricter than Google.  Facebook is very protective of its users and tries to shield them from over-commercialization.

But, they have to start making some money, so they are allowing ads these days.  The ad above in red has two features that are unique to Facebook.  See the green box?  Inside it says “Like” and if you click, you get more information about the ad, on what we will call the landing page.  For us advertisers, we hope users will like our ad and click.  On the other hand, see the blue box in the uppermost corner?  A small X.  Click there and a dreaded “Tell us what you think” box appears.  Here the user is allowed to vote on your ad and tell Facebook why they dislike the ad.  Get a lot of those and Facebook will remove your ad and maybe even kill your account!

Next post will be how to create ads that work!