A successful ad always has a call to action, engages with the potential client and, the most successful ad, starts a relationship. That is a lot to fit into one little ad. We’ve been working on our Facebook advertising over here at Fundy Software INC., and thought we would share some of our successes and failures with you.
Promoted Posts vs. Sidebar Advertisements
The only way to truly test two different types of advertisements is to create the same ad, in two different formats, add the same amount of money to each ad bucket and see the returns. We did just that last week to see the difference between promoted posts and advertisements.
We created ads for a free skin softening action and started them both as a sidebar ad and a promoted post. We added the same amount of money to the ad and watched them run.
Not only did the promoted post outperform the sidebar ad, but it wasn’t even close. Click-throughs were well over 200 to 1. What does this tell me? I’m not wasting any money on a sidebar ad.
The Goal of a Successful Promoted Post
It’s tempting to post a beautiful image or a clever ad, get a bunch of likes and think, “wow, that was successful.” But, if your post only results in likes and comments, that isn’t a successful ad. The entire goal of an ad, is to have potential clients take action, preferably, to go to your website, contact you or download your pricelist/information (with their email address, of course).
A Successful Promoted Post Part 1 – The Image
I don’t know if you have noticed, but Facebook has started cropping everything square. It makes sense, both verticals and horizontals look fantastic square and they bought Instagram, so… a successful promoted post should include a square image. You are in control of the image and how it is cropped. You should also brand it with either your logo or your ©copyright (you can do both with Image Brander).
A Successful Promoted Post Part 2 – The Copy
You want to keep the copy short and sweet. Tell them what you want them to do and why. “Getting married soon? Check us out and download your free photography cheat sheet.” Or use, “Looking for a wedding photographer? Download our photo guide to see why we are #1 in NY.” And then put in your URL.
Why short? You don’t want to end up going below the “Read More” fold, as no one will read more. Additionally, people don’t have time for ads. If it takes them more than 2 seconds to read and click, they won’t.
A Successful Promoted Post Part 3 – The Action
After a person clicks through to your website, you should have multiple ways that this potential client can interact with you. Obviously you should have a phone number and a contact form, for direct contact, but you should also have a less “committal” form of contact. For example, enter your email address to download our wedding photography guide. All email management programs have the ability to create a web signup form and on entering an email, you can redirect the client to the download link (contact your email management company for more information).
Set a Budget
As with all forms of business, always set a budget. Set a monthly budget and divide that budget into eight. Then run a promoted post every Tuesday and Friday of the week. This will ensure that you hit the most people as promoted posts usually last for three days.
And that’s it. Work on creating your list of potential clients with ads.
