8 really useful facebook advertising tips you should know before running an ad campaign

Facebook advertising is incredibly simple to use, at first but advertiser beware there are many subtle lessons to learn if you want to see your clicks climb like this diagram.

1. You must 'get' facebook to stand a chance of using it as a marketing platform - If you are cynical about facebook you are always going to struggle; and do not think that you can simply use your standard PPC tactics and ad copy on facebook - if you do you will fail.
   
   
2. People are not on facebook looking for your product - in fact I would go further than this and state that most people find ads served in their profile an intrusion. Your advert therefore needs to well targeted and your copy designed to resonate with your target market.
   
   
3. The beauty of facebook is targeting adverts (if you have the right product to promote) because you can target certain demographics including gender, age and even marital status - handy if you are a wedding supplier wanting to target women who are engaged.
   
   
4. You cannot use different credit cards for different advertising campaigns. As a veteran PPC hack I assumed you can use multiple credit cards; alas I got caught out when creating a new advert because Facebook advertising gives you the opportunity to add another card. However if you do indeed add another credit card all you are doing is logging a secondary (back-up) credit card.
   
   
5. The goldrush has begun - with so many people flocking to advertise the cost per click and per thousand impression is going up and fast. However here is my first golden tip - even if you are running an advert go through the process of creating a new advert as you might be surprised at the suggested bid amounts (I have noticed them race up to a reccommended minimum bid of 50cents and 2 days later be down to 31).
   
   
6. You are not guaranteed any number of clicks or impressions. Even when you have an advert that starts to perform well do not be surprised when it fails to serve the next day - this is most likely because a batch of new advertisers have joined the party and out bidding you. Golden tip number two - do not panic or rush to up your bid give it a couple of days and your adverts will most likely be back.
   
   
7. Facebook will select the best ad to run based on the cost per click or cost per thousand impressions and ad performance (this is really important and will form the basis of my next blog so why not subscribe via e-mail or rss now).
   
   
8. You have no control over when your adverts will be served. Running facebook campaigns can be very frustrating as you will wait around wondering what more you must do to get your adverts to appear and then all of a sudden wham they're off. At this point you want to hope your ads start performing (receiving clicks) else they will stop being served as quickly as they started.