Hi Tim,
I’ve used Facebook adverts for quite a few project/clients. As with all advertising, it’s got to the right media for each individual project.
My biggest tip is to keep it focused. You can obviously cast a wide net to potentially reach everyone on Facebook – but that takes decent sized budgets (to effectively compete with other advertisers). As a general rule, the closer you can define and target your audience, the greater results you’ll see.
Between CPC or CPM – I only ever use CPM for a brand awareness campaign. I find that the trick with Facebook, is to have a very effective ‘call to action’ in your advert, so that your audience pro-actively engages with your message. CPC makes sure you only pay for that proactive engagement.
With Facebook advertising, it’s also important to monitor and adjust your advert and/or ‘bid’ as your campaign runs.
I find that the stats Facebook collects about your campaign are invaluable. Not only can you see how successful your advert is in terms of impressions/clicks, but also specific information about the audience that you did reach (gender; age; location etc). That not only informs the adjustments you might need to make, but it also provides evidence on ROI, and helps plan any future marketing.
So – as a measurable, flexible, cost-effective way to advertise, I highly recommend it. With MySpace almost dead on its feet, and young people switching away from Bebo to Facebook in droves, it’s presents huge opportunities for the right products and services.
As a final aside – it’s also important to not fall into the trap of taking the actual wording and imagery of your Facebook advert any less seriously than you would (for example) a full page advert in a newspaper. There’s some superb adverts on Facebook, but also many others who are wasting time and money on badly frames messages.
Thanks,
Inga
