Are Facebook Ads Worth the Money?

If you’re having trouble attracting visitors to your web page, paid advertisements might seem like the logical next step.  Instead of spending hours and hours using traditional SEO to try to bump your site up the natural SERPs in order to get visitors to your page, the thought of simply being able to pay a few dollars for guaranteed clicks might sound pretty attractive.

However, jumping into a program like Facebook ads without fully understanding how it works and what types of web advertising campaigns it’s best suited for is, at best, a lost opportunity – and, at worst, a huge waste of money!  If you’re thinking about advertising with Facebook Ads, be sure to check out the following information first.

What are Facebook Ads?

Basically, there are two types of Facebook Ads – Premium ads and Marketplace ads.  Another type of Facebook ad exists that allows you to feature sponsored ads in your customers’ News Feeds, but as these ads are typically only used by more advanced advertisers with enormous budgets, we’ll focus on the standard sidebar ads for now.

Within the Facebook Premium sidebar ads group, there are six distinct types of ads that can be run:

• Like Ads – Like ads allow the people who view your ads to “Like” your brand through the advertisement, resulting in both a “Like” for your brand’s Facebook and a share in the viewer’s News Feed (which can lead to additional exposure and social proof).
• Poll Ads – Poll ads include a voting feature within the ad that enables viewers to share their thoughts and opinions on your ad content or brand.  As with the like ads, the poll option that each viewer selects appears on his News Feed, increasing the eyeballs on your brand’s name.
• Event Ads – Event ads are typically used by major corporations to advertise things like band tours, movie releases and other big promotions.  Viewers of these ads can “RSVP” to each event ad, with their selections – again – being shared in their News Feeds.
• Sampling Ads – Sampling ads offer viewers a very clear call to action by enabling companies to offer free samples of their product via Facebook ad.
• Video Comment Ads – Similar to the sampling ads, video comment ads automatically deploy a video for the viewer to watch when clicked.  When the video is done, viewers can leave their comments or share the video with friends (both of which result in additional exposure).
• Standard Ads – Standard ads, as you might expect, are the simplified versions of these options.  There’s no polling features and no pop-up videos – just the opportunity for users to click through to the brand’s Facebook page or to an external page.

Marketplace ads come in four varieties, including Standard, Like and Event ads that are similar to the premium versions described above.  In addition to these options, the Marketplace ads program also offers Application ads which allow advertisers to promote specific Facebook applications.

There are a few significant differences between Premium and Marketplace ads that you should be aware of:

• Premium ads get the best placements. As you might expect, Premium ads are guaranteed spots on Facebook’s highest traffic pages – including the home pages of all users encompassed by the ad’s demographic targets.
• Premium ads are guaranteed. Placing a Premium ad ensures that your message gets seen, while Facebook Marketplace ads may be bumped to accommodate extra Premium ads.
• Marketplace ads have additional link restrictions. Premium ads can redirect to any link location specified by the advertiser, while Like and Event only redirect to Facebook Pages and Facebook Event Pages respectively.

It’s also worth noting that Facebook Premium ads can be significantly more expensive than their Marketplace counterparts, which makes these top-tier messages best suited to large advertisers with extensive budgets.  Smaller operators need not worry, though – both the Premium and Marketplace advertising programs include the advanced viewer demographic targeting features that set Facebook ads apart from other pay-per-click programs.

Why Use Facebook Ads?

As mentioned above, one of the biggest advantages of the Facebook advertising program is its ability to pinpoint the users to which each ad will be most relevant.  Consider the program in relation to Google’s Adwords PPC program…

Within Google Adwords, you’re able to target your ads to specific keyword phrases and countries (in some cases you may be able to target genders or age ranges).  These demographic parameters are obviously limited by the fact that Google has very little information about their users, unless they happened to be signed in to their Google profiles.

Facebook, on the other hand, knows just about everything about you – from your specific city to your birthday to your stated interests.  This makes it possible to target ads not just to certain search queries but to extremely specific circumstances – for example, male Facebook users aged 18-21 who live in Bozeman, MT  and have an interest in clowns and punk rock music.  Although that example might be a bit too restrictive, better targeting almost always results in better performance.

In addition, it’s important to remember that Facebook is the second most popular site on the web and that with more than 800,000 users, it’s possible to attract a lot of interest in a little time.

Who are Facebook Ads Best for?

However, just because you’re able to rack up hundreds of thousands of ad views in a single day doesn’t mean that you should.  The key to success with Facebook ads lies in making sure you understand your expected return on investment (ROI).

Basically, simply accumulating Facebook Page views, “Likes” or even visitors to your external page isn’t important unless you know the monetary value of each visitor and can ensure that your cost to acquire that visitor through Facebook Ads (whether you decide to pay by click or per 1,000 impressions) is less than what you expect to get in return.  Yes, you can use Facebook Ads to dramatically boost your traffic or “Likes”, but if you can’t tie these increases to a positive ROI, there’s no reason to use this program.

So the first question you need to ask yourself when deciding whether or not to use Facebook Ads is, “Do I know the value of each visitor or “Like” on my Facebook page?”  If you can’t answer this question, stop and do not pass go until you’ve figured out this dollar value.

If you can answer this question, set up an advertiser account with Facebook to see what your estimated ad spend will be.  It’s also a good idea to spend some time studying Facebook and the pages of related brands in your industry to ensure that your target visitors are active on this site.  If there isn’t a lot of activity in your niche, you probably won’t see good results from your campaign.

If all signs point to “Go” and you expect that Facebook’s ads will boost your business in a concrete way, give the program a try.  Be sure to put a cap on your daily ad spend and evaluate your campaigns frequently to ensure freshness (Facebook viewers are notoriously fickle) and effectiveness.  Once you’ve generated a few days worth of data, take a look at your numbers to decide conclusively whether or not the Facebook Ads program is right for your business.

Image: West McGowan