The efficacy of Pay Per Click ads on Facebook may still be up for debate, but most digital marketers advocate a better safe than sorry approach. Seeing as Facebook gets more visits than Google, it makes sense to leverage its potential to help you meet your advertising goals.

Facebook PPC has some advantages that search engine PPC doesn’t. For one thing, all the user data available makes ad targeting easier and more efficient. Think about it, instead of basing your ad bids and positioning on broad demographics you can narrow down your audience to married women aged 30-35 with post-grad degrees and no kids.

What do you think that’ll do for your click-through rate?

Melissa Mackay (Search Engine Watch) says that creating Facebook PPC ads is no more difficult that creating Google or Bing ads. All you have to do is log in to your Facebook account and click on the advertise option. Facebook leads you through the rest.

Facebook PPC tips

As with your search engine-based PPC campaigns you need a strategy before you leap into the abyss.

• Know what you want to achieve. Your goals will determine the content of your ads. They will also determine your audience.
• Make the most of the space allocated. Facebook PPC ads give you 25 characters for titles and 135 characters for the body. Use your words wisely.
• One important difference between Facebook PPC and PPC for search engines is images. Facebook allows you to insert one image per ad. Not only does this make your ads more attractive to users, it also gives you the opportunity to more dramatically punt your call to action and align your message with your brand.
• Matthew Loop advises you to rotate your ads frequently, but bear in mind the time frame that will get you the most eyeballs. He says that despite the efforts of employers, most people are on Facebook during office hours, so the best time to get attention is between 08:00 and 17:00. Don’t forget about geographic location and time zones either, especially if you’re an international marketer.
• Christine Laubenstein suggests that you pay extra careful attention to your ad content because unlike Google PPC, Facebook will remove ads that its users deem annoying. It determines annoyances levels by the number of users that close the ad.
• Mackay recommends that you use Facebook’s estimator tool to help you determine bid amounts based on the potential reach of your ad, which in turn is based on Facebook’s demographic and psychographic based data.

Act now

According to a report by Efficient Frontier, Facebook PPC ad prices rose by 22% in the second quarter of 2011. As more marketers realise that Facebook is delivering on its advertising promise those prices are guaranteed to rise even more. This strongly suggests that if you’re not testing the waters yet now is the time to start.

Read Facebook’s advertising guidelines for more information.

(Image by Maxo [GFDL or CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons)