Is Facebook Advertising Really Effective?
Although there are many successful businesses operating on Facebook today, many of which only became successful through using the social networking giant, the jury is still out on whether or not advertising via this medium is really effective. That’s because marketers online have become a bit jaded over the years. Just when something is “guaranteed” to work, the bottom tends to fall out. Is it really that way with Facebook?
One look around the successful pages of Facebook tells a different story, though. Unlike other networks in the past that quickly gave way (like MySpace), Facebook’s format is set up to be advertiser-friendly while still putting focus on the average user. This attention to detail has created one of the best systems in Internet history, perfect for advertisers and perfect for the average user.
Just look at some of the biggest and most successful campaigns on Facebook for proof of the medium’s effectiveness. Kohl’s, a large clothing retailer, has a fantastically popular campaign with their school giveaway promotion. Fans voted for the schools most in need, and the retailer gave away $500k to 20 different schools.
Ford also had a very popular campaign, with their Explorer venture, wherein they presented teaser pieces about their upcoming automobile via their Facebook fan page.
Of course, your business might not have the money to pull off something like Kohl’s campaign, and you might not be releasing a new automobile, but with the right ad strategy (and perhaps the right ads tool), you can quickly and effectively create a unique and popular campaign via Facebook. But make sure you don’t waste time on monkey work and that you truly get the most out of your ads budget.
How Using the Right Ad-Management Tool Can Benefit Your Business
Campaign Splitting
According to Qwaya, one of the best ad-management tools around, campaign splitting is billed as the “Holy Grail for lazy people.” Sure, you might not be lazy in your business, but the thing about using a proper ad-management tool is that you’re afforded the opportunity to take things a bit easier in your business. With campaign splitting, you no longer have to sit at your computer and grind out all the many features of your campaign. You can instead use the system to target various niche groups while automatically splitting your campaign to put a different focus on different preferences.
In essence, you’re targeting far more people with far less effort. The management tool is basically testing ads at different strategic points, while ultimately giving you decision (as opposed to Facebook) of which ads will be used.
Automation Log
In any ad-management program worth its salt, you should be looking for a feature that allows you to gauge how successful your campaigns were in the past so you know in which direction to proceed in the future. The Automation Log feature helps you accomplish this by keeping close track of your automated campaigns for an entire week. Following your logs gives you a detailed snapshot of what you have working for you and what you may need to abandon.
If you use a tool equipped with an ad scheduling feature, you can also go back and see when your individual ads were activated and when they were paused – something you have to manually when using Facebook’s own interface.
The same goes for tools with ad rotation features, which automatically rotates different versions of your ads. Go back and follow the results.
Optimized CPM
This benefit of the system, which is a benefit any good Facebook ads manager should have, is a little more difficult to explain. So, in the interest of simplicity, let’s sum up exactly what an optimized CPM is. This feature focuses on a marketer’s goals, allowing an advertiser to get the most out of his or her ads based on the following categories: Actions, Clicks, Reach and Social Impressions. Of course, with bidding taking place and larger campaigns costing more money to the advertiser, optimization is a must, and thus using ads that are more likely to convert is essential to reach any goal.
The right ad-management tool will help the advertiser achieve these goals by working within the user-set budget and bidding on impressions. The more defined a campaign becomes, while taking advantage of the other management features, the more the complete ROI increases across the board.
Facebook management tools are abundant out there, not to even mention that Facebook itself has a quality tool. But if you’re in the market for something that’s user-friendly, feature-rich, low-cost, and that can help you to better manage any type of campaign, then a tool like Qwaya is in your best interest.
