This is a guest post by Justin Brooke, author of SEO Lies: A Book About SEO Truths. Justin has helped everyone from home business start-ups to 9 figure earning CEO’s, so you can rest assured he’s got a wallet-fattening tip for you too. You can contact Justin on Facebook here.
Would you like to get thousands of highly targeted visitors to your website for just pennies each? Want to know my secret source from above? It’s FACEBOOK!
How do I get my ads to cost so little?
There are 5 important steps you must follow, but before I teach you those 5 steps there’s a really big obstacle you’ll have to over come – it’s called Banner Blindness.
You see, so many people are on Facebook for hours at a time and every single day sometimes.
They spend hours on end reading profiles, checking status updates, etc. They get so used to the Facebook layout that their eyes start to tune out the unnecessary content (ads they see repeatedly) and only focus on the main content.
Banner Blindness is where your readers are overlooking your ads because they have discredited the “ad” area as having no value, so you’ll need to make sure you constantly change up your ad image at least every other day. If not you’ll see your click thru rates plummet and your costs skyrocket.
Other than that follow these 5 best practices and you too can get traffic for pennies…
1. Call Out To The Target
Your first step is to call out to your target audience in the title. You’re going to call out to the people you want reading and clicking in your ads. The only way to get their attention is to call out to them specifically. For example, If you were targeting tomato growers you’d say, “Do You Grow Tomatoes?” If you targeted bloggers you’d say, “Are You A Blogger?”
Also, notice the question mark at the end of both those titles. That one character has ALWAYS improved my conversions across text link ads, to Google Adwords, to Facebook advertising – even email subject lines. One of the reasons this works so well is because it causes the reader to think more… Are you a tomato grower? Yes – I love growing tomatoes, etc.
2. Ugly images get noticed.
I see too many people trying to use the gorgeous traditional images or they want to look really professional so they have this guy in a suit and tie, but those ads just do not convert.
They are the most susceptible to banner blindness because they are normal, they are common, they are easy, but they don’t break up the vision pattern. Where as if you put in an image that is less common or “ugly” the eye is attracted to it because it is out of place.
Take these two ad pictures for example – Picture 1 is a common stock image that has nothing to really think about, but picture number 2 breaks up your vision. It’s not even an ad you really want to look at for too long, but it gets the point across right away and it gets thought about.
When you’re ads get thought about, your ads get clicked!
Picture #1 |
Picture #2 |
Another tip for creating “ugly” images to overcome banner blindness is to take a regular picture and turn it upside down or sideways. Just make the picture look wrong or all jacked up.
Also, make sure you’re rotating your images. If you’re using the same “ugly” image repeatedly you’re feeding the banner blindness – change it up every couple days so that your viewers don’t ad your images to the “normal and useless” category. Doing these 3 things with your images will get your ad noticed and help improve your click through rate.
3. Predict their near future.
Step 3 is an important tip for you to really learn and apply to get your description section to be most effective. It’s a concept I learned from Brad Fallon a while back – he said that you need to demonstrate the buyers experience.
You need to pretend the person has already bought your product and describe to them what they are going through. If you are selling a Tomato Growing Secrets ebook where you teach readers to grow giant tomatoes. You need to write your description in a way that shows the viewer what their life will be like after they buy.
Other marketers call this WIIFM – “What’s In It For Me.” Tell the ad reader what their life is like now (after they’ve bought the product). For example, Imagine you’ve grown the largest tomato and your friends are raving about it – click here to find out how. This technique really helps the conversion of my ads.
Here are a few ads I created that use the tips I’ve listed here to help you when building your ads.
 |
 |
4. Target your dream visitor
In this section we’ve created the ad and are now ready to target who gets to see the ad on Facebook. In this step you need to think, “who is the perfect visitor to your website.”
If you were selling a mommy blogger workshop in Tampa, Florida. You could specifically target 35 year old women, in Tampa, Fl. who like blogging. You can even target that they are married so that there is more of a chance they have kids (not that you have to be married to have kids, but it’s more likely).
Be specific and ad in the interest of your audience. If they are bloggers, you’d type in blog, blogs, blogging, blogger etc. If it was for the tomato growing niche I’d type in growing tomatoes, gardening, and gardener.
5. Pay for the eyeballs and sell clicks
My final tip is to get you to pay per impression – DO NOT pay per click. Here’s a little example to explain why you should choose CPM over CPC.
CPC MODEL -> 1,000 views @ $0.50 cpc x 10 clicks = $5.00
CPM MODEL -> 1,000 views @ $0.50 cpm x 10 clicks = $0.50
Most marketers get scared and pay CPC to insure they get the clicks, because on CPM you can pay for impressions but never get a click. Even if I only get 5 clicks out of 1,000 views and I’m paying $0.50cpm that’s still 5 clicks for just $0.50.
Just need to start out slow and test different ads to see which ones get clicked. Then once you know what catches their eye you’ve got just about all the traffic you can shake a stick at coming your way for pennies!
Here’s a short video showing you how to setup your own campaign…
It’s been my pleasure to share this with you, if you have any questions post them as a comment below. I’ll hang around for the next couple days to answer them all. You can also just say hi or leave some feedback, either way let’s chit chat ok!
Go Bigger,
Justin Brooke
Internet Mad Scientist
Related posts:
- Max Banner Ads Demo Max Banner Ads is a flexible platform on which...
- Weekend Fight & Birthday Party This weekend, a friend of my husband is having...
- YouTube Sponsored Video How To YouTube announced yesterday their new Pay Per Click advertising...
- Everyone is totally biting off me The StomperNet guys (Brad Fallon & Andy Jenkins) talked...
- Raw Q&A Replay The Social Media Take-All Call went on for 2...
{ 44 comments }
This was very helpful- I will rotate images now- thank you!
Also a question (I think I already know the answer to) when should the ad click through to your FB fan page and when should it click through to a landing page?
Hey Reid,
If you use an app called FBML for pages you can create really nice landing pages for your fan pages. That way you can still drive the traffic inside of Facebook and collect opt-ins.
Great post Justin.
I did a sample ad with fb some time back and the cpc rates jumped significantly after about 24 hours so I stopped the ad. I believe I will give it another try.
Hey Terry,
Sounds like a classic case of banner blindness. You gotta rotate your images and change up your ads daily if not every other day.
Make sure you are paying on CPM not CPC too
This was awesome. Thank you. I really appreciate the up front approach. No hypothetical “do this and count your money” advice – just plain nuts and bolts how to. Thanks.
Hey Adam,
Thanks glad you liked it and yeah I’m not too big on the hypey stuff either.
I tried to market my website http://www.fonts4teachers.com in Facebook: it was a rippoff. Got very few clicks, very expensive and no whatsoever conversions. The idea your are giving is excellent and I will test it but I am skeptical. Facebook is not GAd…. and I think it will never be.
Your post: priceless. I will get back with input.
Hey Diego,
I’ve almost never created a profitable ad on my first try. I always start out with a small budget and tweak my ad till it’s showing profitable numbers.
Stick to $5 – $10 per day and try 10 different ads. Sometimes it can be the keywords you are using as their “likes and interests” too. Try sticking with 1 – 3 keywords at first so the ad is highly relevant.
I cant wait to get started promoting my forex trading course! Thanks again, great stuff!
Glad you liked it Sam and your site looks good
Thanks Justin! I am new to the whole internet marketing world, but did this site 100% on my own.. (ok it was wordpress, so not too difficult
)
Hi Justin,
Your post makes a lot of sense for those wanting to spend money on advertising – I have been making a full time income online for 10 years and have never used G.Adwords.
Currently stats show that the click through rate for sponsor ads on Google are around 2-3% as against 40-45% for the first position in Google. Even #10 position has a click through rate of 3%
Therefore I find my time is better spent on getting #1-10 in Google for free – rather than spending money on advertising.
Cheers,
Kitty.
I’d absolutely agree with you if I were only wanting to rank for a couple keywords. Or if I wanted to only get traffic from one source.
SEO is great and I do a lot of it, but Adwords, Facebook, Banners, CPV, and all the other traffic methods really help scale out and diversify my traffic.
It would be horrible if I relied only on SEO and then Google made a big algorithm change and WHAM there goes my business.
P.S. You mentioned a lot about Adwords and I wanted to make sure you knew I was talking about Facebook traffic above not Adwords.
Thanks for the reply Justin.
I read your post carefully and am fully aware that you are talking about Facebook traffic.
I also take on board what you wrote; “It would be horrible if I relied only on SEO and then Google made a big algorithm change and WHAM there goes my business.”
Personally I have stopped fretting about what Google may or may not change.
I look at it this way:
Google makes money from the advertising they sell.
To sell that advertising they have to convince the advertiser that they have a huge user base.
Relevant quick results ensures a healthy user base.
Therefore any changes they make to their algorithms is to improve their ability to provide relevant quick results for the user.
If I do everything to help Google provide what they need – I don’t think I can go far wrong.
I digress – Back to Facebook traffic.
It is a fact that facebook gets a LOT of traffic.
You have shown that it is more economical for you to place ads on facebook than with other sources [whatever those sources where].
Unfortunately you have not indicated what sales results you got.
In fairness to you – Everyones sales results would vary – depending on the sales page they have in place.
I also feel you have given the very best advise on how to present your advertising on facebook if that is the road you want to take to gain more traffic to your offers.
Cheers,
Kitty.
Kitty, well said. I am on first page of Google for several pages and I haven’t paid a dime to them.
Hi Michelle, thanks for letting Justin guest post on your blog, it was really helpful for me.
I have not yet tried any paid methods of advertising for traffic, have been relying on free traffic from search engines so far.
But this method looks really simple to follow, especially thanks to the helpful video that is included too, and I bet the traffic would come super fast too!
Certainly something I will consider using now, and I will be sure to test lots and lots until I find the perfect ad.
Thanks again Sally
Glad u dig it Sally, just make sure you don’t spend too much too quick. Let your ads prove themselves before you push in a lot of money.
I started out buying traffic with $2/day and then slowly crept my way up. It took me a lot of different ads and tweaking but once you get them dialed in you can buy as much traffic as you want and hit those high sales numbers quickly.
I’ve heard people say use “ugly” images, but you examples were great. I’m going to turn some images upside-down!
Heck yeah Dustin, turn those suckers on their heads. Sometimes it just does the trick. Not every time but a sideways image was my best ad for one campaign.
Hi Justin
You have answered a few questions for me. I have stayed away from CPC due to all the horror stories and have looked at FB but was not sure if it would be effective.
The tip about CPM verses CPC is priceless.
Hey Gee glad you liked the article and CPC can be a horror if you don’t start small. Too many people blow their wad too quickly.
I never spend more than $10 per day on an ad that has not proven to me that it makes me money first. Once it does I carefully scale it up.
Hey Justin, thanks for the info on Facebook. It is nice how you can target your audience there. Hopefully the quality of advertising gets better as that contributes to the “banner blindness”.
Hi Michelle and Justin.
That was a great post and straight to the point.
I have also tried FB Ads and bought quite a few programs to make it work, and have tried it but my mistake was choosing CPC ( probably because of a fear of paying a lot for the campaign).
But I realize its a false fear, but it always happens when you start a new ad platform.
I will most certainly give it another few chances but on impressions this time round.
Like you say it’s absolutely imperitive that the audience is the right target for your product and Quantcast has been a huge help with my Banner Ads.
You’re spot on with your Banner blindness though. That’s a great tip on the rotating images.
Thanks again.
Hamant
You can lose a lot of money on CPM still, but just start with a low budget and once you find a combination of ad and landing page that works well you can blow it up to huge numbers.
What about the conversions? I’m more interested in how the ads are converting to money in pocket sales..Thanks
Hey Craig,
I don’t drive traffic straight to a sales page usually. I drive it to a list builder and then let my autoresponders do the selling.
I do quite well with that model and this traffic as well as many other methods.
Great article, video & information.
I was one of the very first people advertising on facebook many years ago, I was too early with it to be frank, the conversions were tiny, however I think now is the time to get back on with facebook & test it out again.
I would like to see more information about this
Thank you
Hey Net Millionaire,
Direct linking to a sales page still hasn’t been working well for me. But driving to a squeeze page and then follow up works real well for me.
It’s normal for me to convert 20% of the traffic to subscribers and then within 7 days convert 30 – 50% of those people to some sort of sale whether it be my own product or an affiliate link in the follow up series.
Hi Justin
Thank you, this was great and timely as I am just about to start 2 FB ad campaigns. You hear so much differing information about how it should be done but this makes great sense for me especially since I will be targeting 2 totally different markets – self help and travel (not in the same ad of course).
Anne
Glad the timing was so right for you Anne, I hope my tips help you make your ads profitable.
Justin,
Its great to hear from you here at Michelle’s blog. I have been followed like a mad science your Flip Academy, and thanks to it I have made crazy money, so I thank you for that, you have a great way of teaching!
In regards to facebook. I also get very low cost clicks. But the problem is that the quality of traffic, is not bad, its HORRIBLE.
I mean if you truly think about it, what mood is the regular Joe on facebook. Buying mood, or chilling out with familiy and friends kind of mood?.
Now when regular Joe, whats to buy XYZ toy, he goes to google.
So I guess my question is, how do you improve the quality of the traffic coming from facebook.
Cordially,
Dan DeMarco
Hey Dan,
The traffic is not horrible they just don’t know you yet and weren’t looking for what you are offering at the moment.
However, you know they are interested in what you have because you targeted a keyword on their likes and interests.
What you need to do is get them to know you, like you, and then love you. The way I do that is by sending them to free content, getting them to subscribe to me, send more great stuff, and then finally ask for the sale.
Over a 7 part autoresponder series I can make just about any traffic source become profitable.
P.S. Glad you liked SiteFlipAcademy – I no longer own rights to it but will gladly answer questions if anyone has them.
I am very new to all of this.
Does what you talk about apply to Google Advertising as well?? Or is this a stupid question?
Jim
Hey Jim,
No stupid questions here…
Facebook advertising is completely separate from the Google Adwords program. Not only are they separate sources but they act very different as well.
With Google Adwords the visitor is searching for what you are offering when they see your ad. In Facebook they are not.
In Facebook you can include an image with your ad, but with Adwords you cannot.
Both are awesome but they need to be treated differently.
This is a really great post, I’ve passed it around my whole team.
I’m going to definitely apply it to my own niche site as soon as I’ve built up enough content!
@panicattacks, I think I’m also going to try it on Adwords too. I can also see how the tips can be transferred over into regular web copy.
Thanks!
Amazing post! These are some great tips useful for me to know about Face book. All those topics are very much useful for me. Thanks for the valuable information.
Cheers Justin,
A great article. I’ve been using PPC and PPV, I’ll try out on Facebook and see how it goes.
Nash
Thanks Justin and Michelle – this is just what I needed at just the right time. About to start an ad campaign for a local further education college, particularly aimed at 16-18 year olds. Any other advice you can offer would be much appreciated
although this has definitely given me a more fixed idea of how I will proceed.
The clients were happy with last year’s campaign with click through rates of only 0.04% (set-up by an “expert” online marketing company). I snorted coffee all over my keyboard when I saw those figures and their delighted response. I plan on doing a bit better this year for them.
Lisa
Great info Justin, especially CPM vs CPC. We’ve been doing CPC campaigns on Google, Yahoo, MSN and Facebook. Google blows away the other SEs but Facebook sends the most traffic with the best prices. It isn’t even close. Their prices have been getting more competitive (meaning expensive) but still a great value. Guess we need to dumb down our images next. Thanks for the tips!
I’ve always been skeptical of cpm. I will definitely give it a try.
Great post JB!!!
Love when you guest post man. Hope to see you back up on here.
I agree with you. I don’t think that banner ads are dead. It’s just a matter of offering your banner in a way where people don’t consider it as spam or garbage.
Interesting perspective when you talk about ugly vs. professional ads — and interestingly enough, I think you’re right – especially by seeing side by side.
Great article, however I strongly disagree on the last point (suggesting to pick CPM over CPC model). I learnt during my Facebook-advertising-experience that due to banner blindness CTR levels are much lower on Facebook than CTRs on most other display advertising sources, therefore CPM model will cause you to pay much more in order to receive substantial amount of clicks. Plus you’ll be paying for many impressions which are absolutely worthless to you (banner blindness). With such high rate of ads-immune viewers I wouldn’t suggest using CPM to anyone, instead try to improve your conversion rates, which will bring down cost/conversion, therefore CPC level won’t beat you down.
Comments on this entry are closed.