Design of Effective Facebook Advertising Campaigns

08 Jul 2012

Facebook advertising is easy to set-up and can be very effective at targeting a niche demographic, when the correct strategy is put in place to maximise your return on investment. In this article I provide a 4-step process to measure and maximise your conversion rate on facebook advertising campaigns.

Often, only the advert is considered in the design of a campaign when in fact the design of your facebook landing page is just as important in achieving results. This page must be relevant, clear and present social proof as to the quality of your services. Also, it is important to effectively measure the cost per enquiry or conversion as part of the optimisation of your facebook advertising.

Step 1 - The Demographic

Facebook can be used to very closely select a demographic to target, based on location, sex, age, interest and connection. Start with a tightly targeted demographic and expand it if you are not receiving enough clicks on your advert. It is also important to select an appropriate cost per click you are willing to pay. Facebook makes a recommendation, so start with the recommended cost per click and increase or decrease as appropriate to match your budget. To go through the process of setting up a facebook advert, go to your facebook account and click on Advertise under the home menu, located top right on facebook.

Step 2 - The Advert

A facebook advert will typically consist of an image and a very small amount of text. Examples are shown below. Selection of the image is critical. Ask your designer to mock-up designs of several images, ensuring that you test the selections with your intended audience. Use images that are clear and immediately convey your image, ideally engaging an emotional response. The image size is small, so ensure the selected image has large clear elements such that your message is not lost in the details. Include a call to action in your advert. To source an image, check out a stock photo website like www.istockphoto.com.

Step 3 - The Landing Page

A landing page is the page a visitor arrives at on your website when first clicking on your facebook advert. This page should be very effective, relevant and clear, with a strong call to action. Must haves for this page include:

A strong powerful heading.
A short introductory sentence/s that explain exactly what your offer is.
Features and benefits of the offer.
A clear way to sign-up, purchase or subscribe to the offer.
Social proof including testimonials.
Information on guarantees, special offers and time limited information.
Progressively more detail on your offer with sub-headings.
Lots of graphics and videos relevant to the offer.
Content and answers to questions designed to overcome objections.
Finally, finish with a strong final call to action.

Below is an example of a recent landing page we constructed for a client. There is a strong call to action that appears on the right hand side that is always visible down the page.

Step 4 - The Call to Action and its measurement

Crucial to all landing pages is a strong call to action. The design of this call to action should be integral to the design of your campaign. Ideally provide access to this call to action in multiple locations on your landing page.

Facebook does not provide advanced analytics and conversion rate measurements at this time, so it is important to determine what constitutes a conversion. For example, if you are advertising a free public event, a conversion may be a sign-up to the event through your website. It is important to track the number of conversions per facebook spend and if possible, the location they originated from. Discuss with your developer how you can best integrate conversion monitoring into your landing page and call to action, such that you can determine if your facebook advert is providing a significant return on investment.

Using Google analytics, it is possible to measure the number of visits to each page of your website, so the number of visits to a final page (e.g. a transaction completion page) could be an effective conversion measurement, assuming this page can only be reached from a facebook originating click-through. As such, it may be important to set-up your landing page and completion pages such that they cannot easily be accessed from your main website, so conversions can be accurately measured.