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An interesting thing happened the other day that grabbed my attention.  Three different clients emailed me with a link to a recent article.  All three wrote some version of “Check out this case study. Can you make this happen for my Facebook page too?

The title of the article was enough to hook anyone: Facebook Case Study: From 517 to 33,000 fans in two weeks (plus media coverage). After reading the impressive case study and looking at countless other Facebook page success stories, I instantly noticed a common thread throughout these pages.

The Formula for Facebook Page Success

There’s a true winning formula to creating a successful, thriving and engaging Facebook page.  And here’s the good news: If you apply this formula, you grow your fan base, increase conversations with your fans and capture the interest of people who want to spend money on your products and services. Who wouldn’t want that?

Here’s the formula:

Vision + Branding + Inbound Marketing + Engagement =
A Rock-Solid Facebook Page

The strategy behind a Facebook page does not need to be complicated—but it does need to be carefully thought out in advance. When it comes to growing Facebook pages, that’s where business owners and marketers get stuck—they overcomplicate things.  Let’s dissect the formula to see how it works.
To read the complete article go here http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/4-proven-steps-to-facebook-page-success/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR, Amy Porterfield  
Amy Porterfield is a social media strategy consultant. Her passion is helping companies, authors and speakers create raving fans using social media and online marketing.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Al Hanzal

What did we learn from Justin’s step by step example of a successful Facebook Ad?(See previous post) http://successfulmarketingtools.com/wordpressblog/955/dialing-in-your-facebook-campaigns/

Step by Step Formula               

1. He started by making 20-30 ads, placing a large em asis on using different photos in the ads. This is in keeping with Facebook ads which place more importance on visual than text.

2. He used Facebook Ad Manager as a tool. He uploads his ads to this tool, targets his market and lets the tool do the work. How does it work? Just fill out a form with the ads you would like to test and your targeting info, hit “Play”, and the tool will automatically mix and match ads with various targeting options to create as many ads as you want. To learn more about this tool. http://www.4houraffiliate.com/facebook-ads-manager?hop=shoemoney

3. Justin gives each ad an ID number. Since his purchases are made through Click Bank, the ad ID number tells him which ads are producing the most sales of his product.

4. He narrowed his market to improve his profits. Using Facebook demographics indicators, he use age, sex, then he tracked which days, time frames in a day for the best places and times for his ads to appear. He went deeper by identifying in which time zones he should employ his ads. Facebook provides the feed back to narrow down when and where and with whom to place your ads.

By narrowing down this target market and using the Facebook feedback on his ads, he was able to eliminate many wasted Pay for Clicks. He also reduced his Pay for Click from .50 a click to .15 Pay for Click. This greatly increased his profit from his ad campaign.

Conclusion

Using Facebook tools, willing to experiment and having a good understanding of your target market can make your ad campaign on Facebook Pages a success. Thank you Justin for your successful formula.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Al Hanzal

This is the second post showing you a step by step process for creating Facebook Ads

Sneaky Facebook Advertising Tricks – Dialing In Your Campaigns Part 2

Posted on: June 29th, 2010 by Justin Goff

The guest post I did on June 21st about Facebook Ads went so well that I’m back to give you a few more sneaky tricks for making loads of cash with Facebook…

The case study and examples in this post are for the same product as the last post (The 31 Day Fat Loss Cure). I know a bunch of you left comments last time about promoting CPA offers on Facebook – this is something I have never done before so I can’t really help ya there…

Alright let’s get down to business…

Here’s 3 of my favorite tricks for getting cheaper clicks and better CTR’s on Facebook.

Sneaky Facebook Trick #1 – Narrow Down Your Target Market To A Tiny, Tiny Niche…

In the last post one of the things I was doing for our fitness product was targeting ads at women ages 35-55 in the United States.

Now, that’s a pretty broad market, so I decided to niche it down even further to see if I could get cheaper clicks…

From here I niched down to targeting women in the U.S. at each specific age group…

So for example, Women Age 45 was one group and then Women Age 46 were another group. When I did this my CPC’s went way down, and with some new ads I was able to get a CTR of .2+ and clicks for less than .15.

This is super easy to do with the Facebook Ads Manager – if you’re doing this manually, then you’re flat out wasting your time

Anyways, from here I took it one step further and was able to cut even more of my ad spend (and still keep my profits the same…)

Sneaky Facebook Trick #2 – Track Which Days & Times Convert The Best – Eliminate The Rest…

There’s basically 2 main ways to increase your profits doing Facebook Ads… You can get cheaper clicks, or you can eliminate the wasted clicks you already have..

After looking at my sales for a 2-3 week span I went through Clickbank and figured out what days and times most of our sales were coming in. And much to my surprise there was a few different times that we were not making any sales!

Literally… none.

So I charted everything and went through the sales reports in Clickbank and figured out when we were making the most sales, and when we weren’t. There was pretty much a 6 hour time period every day when I never really made any sales so I made sure to pause all of our ads for those times.

This little change alone cut our ad spending by 25% each day, and the profits remained the same.

If you’re doing CPM this is even more crucial than if you’re doing CPC, since your CPM campaign could be going full throttle to get clicks and you end up losing a lot of money…

Once you have that down you’ll want to test out my last strategy for dialing in your campaigns. This is kind of a combination of both of the tricks I just told you about…

Sneaky Facebook Trick #3 – Separate Campaigns By Timezones

Once you do the previous two strategies and you know what time the sales are coming in, you can narrow it down and then segment those by time zones (I do this for U.S. traffic)

So if you aren’t making many sales between noon-6pm for example you might find out that the first 3 hours of that time slot are mostly people on the east coast, and the last 3 hours are mostly people on the west coast.

Once you narrow it down to time zones you can then have your target be women who are age 45, who live in the Eastern time zone – and then you can day part your ads so that they are only running when profitable for people on the east coast.

And when you do this, you’ll also drop your CPC’s quite a bit…

Let me know if you have any questions, and I’ll drop in the comments to answer them.

- Justin Goff

Post written by Justin Goff

Justin sells a fitness product called the 31 Day Fat Loss Cure. We’re up on Clickbank and I personally work with our affiliates. Right now Facebook Ads and Content Ads are killing it . Get more info on being an affiliate here or contact me if you’d like some tips on making money promoting the product.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Al Hanzal

Dialing In Your FaceBook Campaigns

Posted on: June 21st, 2010 by Justin Goff

I want to share with you guys a start-to-finish example of a profitable Facebook Ads campaign I have been running.

This campaign took me a week or so to become profitable, but I’ve got in dialed in now and you could actually just copy this and start making money as an affiliate.

Here’s the nuts and bolts of it…

The Product: The 31 Day Fat Loss Cure ( this is my own product on Clickbank, affiliate info is here if you’re interested)

Landing Page: I did direct linking to our sales video which is at 31DayFatLossCure.com/abs (if you’ve never seen a video like this, the add to cart button pops up at the end of the video so they can order…its pretty cool)

So from here I started making some ads…

When I do this I usually make around 20-30 different ads, mostly testing the pictures in the ads.

I’ve found that the picture will give you the biggest change in CTR. So out of the 30 or so ads I tested, these were the top 3 ads.

Just by improving your CTR you can get a much better CPC and your profits will go through the roof. If you have a few extra bucks to spend I highly recommend picking up the FB Ads Manager. This thing literally saves me 20-25 hours each week. I just upload the ads, target the market I want and let it run while Im sleeping.

And by the way here’s a big, big tip that I got from Shoe in the Shoemoney System…

Set up your campaign so that in Clickbank each ad has a different sub ID on the end (much easier to do than it sounds). This way you can track the EXACT ads that are sending you the sales.

Of the ads pictured at the top of this post, I actually found that the middle ad sent me the most sales, yet it didn’t have the best CTR.

Now once you have some ads ready, you MUST narrow down and figure out your target market…

Narrowing Your Market For Maximum Money Making

If you’ve ever done any campaigns for fitness/fat loss products you’ll know that the BIG market for these products is in the 35-65 year old age group.

I targeted each of these ads specifically to women in the 35-55 year old range on Facebook. I didn’t target any specific keywords with these ads, just women in general.

Actually I’ll just give you the exact settings I used…

§ Female, 35-55

§ United States

§ CPC – I was bidding around .30 per click

In reality that’s a pretty broad market, but it was still profitable. Since then I’ve gotten more into niching down by smaller groups of years and also by time zones in the U.S.

I think there’s also a lot of money to be made targeting keywords. For example you could target people who like “The Biggest Loser” which is over 1 million people on Facebook – I haven’t tried this yet, but I bet that would convert pretty well.

The Profits

Overall on this campaign I spent a total of $493.76 and I brought in $621.19 in revenue. So the overall profit for the campaign was $127.43. Now you might not think that’s much money, but here’s how I’m going to turn that into a big ole’ cash machine.

During this campaign I was limiting my ad spend each day to $50. Now since this campaign is profitable, all I need to do is up my ad spend to $300 or so dollars per day, and within a few days this will easily turn into a $100 profit each and everyday. That’s an average of $36,500+ per year.

Not to mention, I haven’t even started targeting this campaign to men!

Now a question most people usually have is “what’s better, CPC or CPM?”

CPC vs. CPM

This campaign was all run on CPC, but I have been playing around with CPM lately.

Here’s the deal though…

Facebook recently changed its algorithm and they are trying to push direct response marketers over to CPC. Unless I’m really missing something, the days of dirt cheap CPM clicks are pretty much over.

But that’s ok, because even a campaign like this you could still easily make $20k-$30k a year as an affiliate just by direct linking! It doesn’t get much easier than that!

On a campaign like this your goal should be to get as many people to the landing page as possible – for as cheap as possible. If you can find cheap .10 cent clicks this Facebook campaign would be an absolute gold mine.

Now that leads me to my next big tip, which is improving your click through rate!

How To Increase Your CTR on Facebook Ads

One of the keys to making a bunch of money on Facebook is to keep your CR high.

Now the big problem with this, unlike with Adwords, is that the same people are seeing your ad everyday they login to Facebook. So after about 7-10 days your ad is going to lose its good CTR and you’ll need a new ad.

If you have a picture that’s converting well, you can do something simple like adding a colored border or circle around the image.

If that doesn’t work it’s time to test 20-30 new pictures, and then you can simply bring your old one back in a few weeks.

Pretty simple.

There ya have it – If you have any Facebook Ad questions, simply leave me a comment below and I’ll drop in and answer them.

- Justin Goff

P.S. – I personally work with affiliates and any friend of Jeremy’s is usually a good person to work with. Check out the affiliate page, or email me at the address below if you want to make some money promoting our program…

Post written by Justin Goff

Justin sells a fitness product called the 31 Day Fat Loss Cure. We’re up on Clickbank and I personally work with our affiliates. Right now Facebook Ads and Content Ads are killing it . Get more info on being an affiliate here or contact me if you’d like some tips on making money promoting the product. http://www.shoemoney.com/2010/06/21/dialing-in-your-facebook-campaigns/

To be continued, your comments are always welcomed…

Results from Facebook ads in 1 day

Facebook FastTrack student Lisa Ziegler of Nokomis, FL sent in shortly after the class started:

“So….It’s 10:22am EST on Friday. I’ve already gotten 2 conversions from my NEW ad that just got approved this morning. Cost per conversion…..$ 3.27 Cool, Alright, Yeah!

She paid 55 cents per click and got 8,053 impressions in just part of a day.

***Important difference between Google and Facebook:

The cost of a Google click depends on what the person is looking for.

The cost of a Facebook click depends on who’s looking for it.

Right now, most advertisers have no idea how to target the kinds of people they ought to be reaching. So some traffic is super bargain priced.

Perry Marshall

About the Author

Entrepreneur Magazine says: “Perry Marshall is the #1 author and world’s most-quoted consultant on Google Advertising. He has helped over 100,000 advertisers save literally billions of dollars in Adwords stupidity tax.”

He is referenced across the Internet and by The Washington Post, USA Today, and the Chicago Tribune.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Al Hanzal

There is another major difference between traditional pay for click advertising and Facebook pay for click.  It involves the use of key words.  Based on the social nature of its site, Facebook uses key words differently.  Instead of just trying to match keywords, Facebook has a system to tap into how people are using these key words.

Once you learn Facebook’s system, you can use their system of key words to make your ads more effective.  Check out this video from Perry Marshall on the use of Facebook key words.  This will save you a great deal of frustration in your Facebook pay for click efferts.  Check out this 3 minute video: http://www.perrymarshall.com/facebook/renegade-facebook-bidding-strategy/

To be continued, your comments are always welcomed…

Al Hanzal

In the last post, I shared with you the suggestions made by the Facebook staff on how to make Facebook ads effective.  WhileFacebook and Google share the same Pay for Click advertising program, there are significant differences.  You need to recognize these differences and use them to your advantage.

Google has built a successful company based on responding to people’s searches.  They have become the yellow book of the internet.  People are searching for answer to a problem and Google facilitates answers to their problem by showing them websites, blogs and videos that can match.

People do not go to Facebook looking to solve a problem.  They participate in Facebook to connect with old friends, meet new people and become a community of people who share common interest, likes and dislikes.  They go to Facebook to socialize.

If Google is the Yellow pages of the internet, Facebook is the coffee shop of the internet.  People are not searching for answers to a problem.  They maybe an ideal candidate for your business.  They may need your product or service.  However, they are not their looking for it on Facebook.

Do you see the difference?  Applying Google Pay for Click strategies which are based on people searching for solutions to Facebook where people are socializing is like trying to put a round plug in the square hole.  The rules of the game are changed.

In the next post, I will dig deeper into another difference.  How Facebook uses keyword differently than Google.  Once you know this difference, you can put it to use in your business.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Al Hanzal

To get a good overview of Facebook Ads, I chose to go to Facebook itself.  Here are their recommendations on how to create good ads on Facebook.

1. Identify your advertising goals
2. Targeting
3. Keyword Targeting
4. Make your product stand out
5. Keep your ad simple
6. Use a strong call-to-action
7. Use an image
8. Landing pages
9. Keep the user experience in mind
10. Evaluate your campaign performance and make the necessary changes

1. Identify your advertising goals

As an advertiser paying for clicks, you are indicating that what is most important to you is driving traffic to a page on Facebook or your own website. You will want to focus on making sure your ad is highly targeted to the most relevant, appropriate audience. Your landing page should be set up to let users easily find what your ad offers.

As an advertiser paying for views (impressions), you are indicating that it is most important for users to see your ad. You will want to focus on making your ad as clear and informative as possible and having your brand or company’s name be easily recognized.

2. Targeting

Target the audience that you believe will be interested in your ad. For each ad, you can choose to target a particular location. Be sure to target only the locations that are relevant for your business or product. For example, if your service or event is only available in a particular area, target the appropriate region or city. Also, please be aware that an ad is typically best received if the ad is in that country’s primary language.

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3. Keyword Targeting

Keywords are a powerful way to narrow the audience of your ad to people who have interests which correlate with your offer. Include your keywords in your ad text to show users that your ad relates to the people you are trying to reach.

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4. Make your product stand out

Write clear, targeted ads with concise text that speaks directly to the audience you will reach. Be sure to highlight any special offers or unique features that differentiate you from the competition. If your goal is brand/company name recognition, we suggest using your company name in the ad title or somewhere in the body of the ad.

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5. Keep your ad simple

Create your ad so that it is as simple and easy to read as possible. Avoid long sentences or complex punctuation. Use simple, grammatically correct, complete sentences and language. Use proper punctuation, punctuate the end of sentences, put spaces after periods and commas, and don’t use hyphens in place of periods.

Don’t try to fit every detail about your product or service into the ad. Make it clear what your product or service is so a user can tell what your website will be about, but save the details for your landing page.

Incorrect:

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6. Use a strong call-to-action

Your ad should convey a call-to-action along with the benefits of your product or service. A call-to-action encourages users to click on your ad and should explain to the user exactly what you expect them to do when they reach your landing page. Some call-to-action phrases include: buy, sell, order, browse, sign up, and get a quote.

Incorrect:

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7. Use an image

Put an attractive, relevant image in your ad that is appropriate for the product or service being advertised. The maximum image size is 110 pixels wide by 80 pixels tall, so text in images that are shrunk down to that size may be hard to read.

Incorrect:

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8. Landing pages

Your ad should direct users to the most relevant landing page. When a Facebook user clicks on your ad, they should be taken immediately to a page that is specific to the information or product in your ad.

9. Keep the user experience in mind

You should aim for your ads and their respective landing pages to be as attractive, easy to navigate, and informative as possible. Users may be less likely to click your ad if it does not accurately describe your product or service, if it is unclear where they will be directed after clicking, or if it is unclear what the benefit of clicking your ad would be. Make it easy to find important information by placing it prominently on the landing page. Users who have to click around to find the relevant information are more likely to leave your site.

10. Evaluate your campaign performance and make the necessary changes

Monitor your ad’s performance. Your click through rate (CTR) is a particularly good indicator of how well your ads are doing. You can also view your clicks, impressions and average CPC or CPM by checking your account.

Allow your ad performance to educate you about effective strategies for achieving your goals. As you observe your ads over time, you might notice things that are working especially well (or not so well). For example, if you find users aren’t responding to a particular call-to-action in your ad text, try a different call-to-action. If you are not getting as many clicks as you would like, try adjusting your targeting to be less restrictive if you have originally have been very aggressively targeting, or more restrictive if your targeting was initially very broad. If you are not getting as many impressions as you would like, try making your ad simpler and the product or brand easier to recognize.

Information taken from http://www.facebook.com/ads/best_practices.php

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Al Hanzal