One of our Headmasters at the school has had huge success with FB. He has kindly posted some advice on our own forum, which I quote below..
"Firstly, the pro's and con's of FB advertising:
Pro's - you can drive big volumes of traffic, and if you get it right, that traffic can be pretty cheap and generate a good ROI.
Con's - It is very easy to get it wrong on a big scale. You can spend a lot of money very quickly, and even if you are generating leads you can experience a lot of rejections.
So, how to get it 'right'? Here are some pointers:
*CTR is crucial. Your CTR will determine your CPC. Furthermore, your CTR within the first few hours of the campaign will determine the success or failure of your ad - if it is low to start with you will no longer get impressions.
*Once you submit an ad, it generally takes FB around 5-6 hours to approve it, at which point it goes live. So, submit your ad 5-6 hours before you want it to go live, ie the time when you beleive that a lot of users that may be interested in your product will be on line.
*Make your ad picture eyecatching, but make sure it relates to your product AND fits in with your landing page. Otherwise your CTR may be OK but your bounce rate and conversion rate will be horrendous. Pictures of people work well as people on FB are looking at profile pics, etc, so maybe more receptive to them.
*Make your ad title as eye catching as possible without making outrageous claims, for the same reason as above.
*Often less is more in the ad copy. Tell them your key USP.
*Try to get the balance right with ad targeting. You can use your data from other sources of traffic, or your common sense. eg, If you currently find that 70% of your leads for life insurance come from men, target men in your ad campaign. If you are running a life insurance campaign, does it make sense to show your ad to people under, say, 30 years old? Or single people? If they are not likely to want the product, CTR will suffer, and your CPC will spiral.
This is a balancing act though - the more specific your targeting, the higher the initial CPC, but if you have got it right your CPC will come down quickly as your CTR will be good.
*The landing page is vital - it needs to be relevant to the ad, have a few USP's and the form. HOWEVER, I would strongly recommend making it clear that the customer is going to be called by an advisor. If not, you will get a lot of people filling the form in expecting an instant answer, as with 99% of the apps/quizzes/games, etc that they are very used to seeing. You will then have a horrendous rejection rate.
*Track each ad and split test, just like any other PPC campaign
*The bid estimate is rubbish, if your CTR is good you will get clicks for a reasonable cost.
*Don't set your daily budget to more than you want to spend - if your bid is at the right level FB will spend the full amount every day, topping up with lots of clicks whilst you are sound asleep.
*Don't get over excited if you do get a lot of leads and start spending more than you can afford. Wait and see your rejection rate first. "
Hope that helps.
