Facebook punishes boring brands and advertisers? Well, its not really a punishment from Facebook as per an article at the Business Insider. It’s more that your audience isn’t interested in your advertisement.
What the Business Insider is saying is that if your Facebook ad is not driving in traffic or click throughs, it will be shoved further down the stream faster. In doing so, your exposure is less and the advertisement costs more. If your ad is interesting and performs well, then you get more bang for your buck.
Really, this is nothing new and I don’t see Facebook turning into a dominatrix and whipping advertisers into shape. You can do something about it!
How to make your Facebook ads interesting
Use an interesting image.
You don’t have to put a picture of a sexy man or woman into your ad. Yes, sex does sell, but it could bring more harm than good to your brand. Use an image that is relevant to your ad’s message. Keep the design of the advertisement’s image simple. Busy images tend to confuse people.
Don’t always blast your audience with selling products. Mix it up with some public announcements event notices, or other things.
It’s understanding that you do want a return on investment, but if you’re constantly selling, your followers and fans might start getting mad… and that’s a bad thing. You might try promoting public announcements, or free webinar events, or give out some freebies. You can always sell another time, but be thoughtful about it.
Write up clear, concise, and interesting words for your Facebook ad campaign.
The text that you write for your advertisement is just as important as the image that accompanies it. Make it compelling, short, and sweet.
Utilize the options to target your audience.
Not everyone is interested in what you have to sell. If you think so, then you really have no idea what your target audience is. Plan your marketing campaigns out. Think about age, location, and even interests.
Carefully schedule to deploy new ad campaigns.
Time is always an important factor. If you are targeting people from a certain location, you would want to start your campaign when those people will be up and about, and hopefully online. Don’t be afraid to pause your campaign and restart it to fit when your audience is usually online. You can monitor this by using your fan page’s Insights.
These are just a few tips to hopefully help you with creating a better Facebook ad, and not feeling punished for being a boring brand or advertiser.
Have you advertised on Facebook? How did your campaign go? If you have used Facebook to promote a product, service, fan page, or something else, do you have any other tips to help others?
Such an interesting headline. I find this kind of advertising system in facebook really absurd but thanks for great tips.
Hi Nile,
yea, there’s a real art to writing ads. I’m not very good at it -yet. Going through a learning curve! LOL – so what else is new, right? I like the tip about mixing it up – business with something else. As always, wonderful informative post.
I’ve found from the ads I’ve done, that mixing it up really does help. I’ve done one for a product, and then a public announcement for WordPress 3.6 to tell others they need to update. Both have worked well in ROI, both in prospects and new fan page likes.
Nile, I’ve been disliking Facebook more and more as time goes on.
Especially since sponsored posts – whenever I check out my account I’ve got an entire sidebar devoted to advertisements that floats down the page.
Now, I like the floating thing but when most of it is just there to interupt what I’m doing – it’s not cool.
And then the sponsored posts etc.
I remember a TED talk from a while back where a guy was talking about how he was a republican and spoke out on posts by democrats … and then he stopped seeing the republican posts that he wanted to see – oh dear!
It’s a shame the change will increase costs for brands and advertisers – I guess it just means trying harder.
I think this is more of a wake up call to anyone advertising on Facebook. Facebook is a social network and you will see what you want to see, and even have the opportunity to hide individual ads or tell Facebook or the advertiser your thoughts on their ad.
I’ve used Facebook ads and out of 3 campaigns, 2 of them produce very good results. The other, produced some results, but not as much as I had liked. In particular, because of that one, I was able to be more prepared for the next one. I’ve learned a little more about my audience and their interests.
i am currently researching on Facebook advertising and i want to advertise my affiliate niche site and i will definitely try these things.
Posting at right time is really essential, unless your post reach to right audience your efforts will go in vain. So you should give proper attention while scheduling your posts.
Thanks for sharing this, I haven’t been into Facebook advertising just yet. However, I’m going to set my foot into it and try it out.
Facebook is changing their working rules day by day. To remove the spam things from facebook they are really taking some effective process. Which are helpful for every facebook user. Because there are a huge amount peoples are using facebook. So it is very important to present a fresh and well decorated facebook to attract all the user and make them happy.
I agree with you as well Adam,
It’s a good thing they are taking the effort in cutting out the spam. Spam is really annoying in social networks.
A really good post there. Social media has turned to the most important aspect of a marketers life. Thanks for the post again.
Facebook is really flexible now with the kinds of ads we can do, and if you use the Power Editor, you can choose whether you want the ads on the right hand side or in the news feed, and even choose if you want them to show on Mobile phones’ news feeds. I really like them now, and get the best results with page post ads – not the ones you do straight from the page, but those you advertise from the ads manager (or power editor)
Brands spend a lot of money on content creation each year. And agencies charge a lot for it. Most social media management systems (SMMS) and Social Relationship Platforms offer content storage features. But that’s where they fall short. Because what they don’t provide is a consistent, seamless way to measure, discover, reuse, and collaborate around content.
Hi Nile,
Many thanks for sharing these tips . It is so important to grab the attention when advertising and so important to understand how facebook ads work rather than waste money.This week Guinness are doing a big promotion online and offline in either environment there graphics stands out. They well understand marketing and social media as well.
I have heard Facbook cancelling advertisers account many times but they take most of their advertisers and then provide the worst result and it seems that even Facebook use scrape sites.
Well.., however Facebook is the biggest social media in the world. I always use facebook (fp) to promote my websites. It’s so influence to get high traffics. You’re right, Facebook not really punish the boring brands. They do that because, Facebook doesn’t want the members feel boring of full the adverstiements in their ‘HOME’. Facebook only tray to keep their credibility and popularity.
Thanks for the free book! I took a few tips from it, like the 1-5 rule… and I enjoyed traveling around your rock star blog… and I agree with facebook- thanks for the tips!
Very good way to attract visitors. And still the best way is targeting audience.
Great post!
Social media has turned to the most important aspect of a marketers life.
Thanks for share.