Goooood afternoon marketing friends.
I hope everyone had a great weekend. Roxanne and Ben (our 5 yo son) pampered me yesterday (Fathers Day). I ate way too much bbq and cake. It was glorious.
Last week we were chatting a bit about Facebook Ads and I wanted to share my overarching Facebook Advertising principles before we dive into the nitty gritty. The below isn't written in stone, it's just what I (and Roxanne – she's a media buyer too!) have seen after spending several million with our good ol' buddies at FB.
Thought #1 – Facebooks Ultimate Goal
Facebook's #1 goal is keeping people on the site and keeping them happy. The longer they can keep you on the site, the more ads you'll see and the more revenue FB will make. So Facebooks business model is one of attention. If you give Facebook what it wants (ads that don't drive people away) they'll give you what you want (cheap traffic).
Thought #2 – Aligning Interests With Facebook
When you factor in what Facebooks ultimate goal is, advertising starts to make a lot more sense. Ads that have a high click through rate cost less money. Ads that are hold attention or are seen as positive (ie: not drive people away) will always be less expensive. Good ads are cheap.
Thought #3 – Not Aligning Interests With Facebook
This is what the majority of people do. I used to do this too. Here's what usually happens. You create a campaign – let's just use a “retargeting” campaign but this is true for all “interest based” campaigns as well. You run the ad. It does well. Then it gets more expensive. The costs keep going up. You have to swap creatives or turn it off. This cycle then repeats.
Why is this? Why do costs keep going up? It's because people keep seeing the same ad. They don't want to continue seeing it. But because the audience size is limited and FB wants to spend your budget, it just keeps increasing costs.
Facebook is saying “Fine, I'll take your money and run your ad. But because the experience is so bad for my customers, I'm going to charge you a fortune for it.”
All of these things point to one common theme. Align your interests with Facebook, get cheap traffic. So how do we do that?
Well, the easiest way is to give Facebook all the room it needs to decide who will like the ads most (not be driven away from them) and then give FB a few different ad copy and creatives (images) to choose from.
The best part of all this is that it's actually a whole lot easier. But this email is getting long. So here's the TLDR of today's thought:
TLDR: Put FB's interests ahead of yours and it will reward you with cheap traffic. Do this by creating ads people want to see, and making sure you give Facebook the resources (creatives & copy) to show the right message to the right person.
Tomorrow (or maybe Wed ha!) : How To Pick Your Facebook Ad Targeting.
Have a great day!
Cheers
-Adam
P.S. Like this? Have questions? Write back and let me know.
