No matter what your budget, you can display your ads on Google and our advertising network. Pay only if people click your ads.

“immediate and reliable”

The best part about PPC is that you pay only when someone clicks on your ad. Traditional advertising relies on blanketing to spread the word. With a radio, television or newspaper ad, your ability to target listeners, viewers and subscribers is limited. The newspaper might have 100,000 subscribers, but what percentage actually reads the real estate ad insert?

With PPC, you never waste money on ineffective or untargeted advertising. People who see your ad are seeing it because they made a search using keywords relevant to real estate. You pay only when a person makes it to your web site by clicking your ad.

This is where PPC comes in. With a modest investment in time and money, PPC advertising puts you next to the top search results without any optimization at all.

For well over a decade Google’s iconic self-service advertising system has been connecting businesses to potential customers cheaply and efficiently (while generating billions of dollars for Google in the process).

Adwords is so brutally effective that it has become the reflex choice for many brands online. A whole ecosystem of businesses has sprung up around the optimisation and administration of Adwords campaigns.

• Complete keyword research to determine the most effective words to use in your AdWords campaigns
• Set up Google Analytics properly to track AdWords campaign conversions
• Design and configure attractive & effective landing pages that are hidden from the main navigation of your site
• Capture web leads and integrate with a customer relationship management (CRM) system like Salesforce
• Monitor and analyze campaign results & conversions and make adjustments to maximize your budget

#3: Adjust Your Campaigns in Real-time

Let’s face it, companies evolve, it’s part of the process of being successful.  If your organization is exploring new initiatives, wants to reach a new audience, or is revamping its competencies, the timing for an AdWords campaign could be perfect. Best of all, you can adjust your AdWords campaigns, and see your changes reflected in real time – perfect for an evolving and growing business.

The problem, though, is that when you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Many companies continue to pour money into Adwords without even considering their options. When Adwords was the only pay-per-click, targeted advertising platform with any real reach, then this strategy made sense.

But now Facebook’s self-service ad platform is proving itself as a worthy alternative to the big bad Goog. Here are five reasons you should consider using Facebook to advertise your brand.

1 . Facebook has enormous reach
With half-a-billion active users around the globe, Facebook is fast approaching Google’s enormous reach. In South Africa alone, Facebook reaches three mlllion people – most of them (by definition) in the upper end of the market.

2. Facebook targets people, not topics
For all its brilliance, Adwords can only target topics based on what people search for and hope that the searchers match the customer profile that the advertisers are trying to attract.

In contrast, Facebook targets the people themselves using the data they have willingly provided while filling out their profiles. This information has proven to be remarkably accurate and self policing, due to users realising that fewer of their real world friends will be willing (or able) to connect with them on Facebook if they lie about things like age or location.

This makes Facebook’s targeting incredibly powerful and accurate. You can target people based on everything from their geographical location to their favourite TV shows.

3. Facebook uses social leverage
Because Facebook’s ads are native to their platform they can use the behaviour of members’ friends to add a social dimension to adverts. For instance, if several of your friends have joined a Facebook Page for a brand, the version of the advert you see will tell you this.

This kind of subtle peer recommendation dynamic makes these “social ads” exceptionally effective. A recent study by Nielsen showed that social context boosts metrics like brand recall and awareness by as much as 100%.

4. Facebook allows for long-term relationships

Where Adwords is nothing but a clever pipe used to funnel raw demand onto your site, Facebook offers ways to germinate and nurture an online community around your brand.

Yes, you could do this on your own site using all the wonderful free tools out there. But ask yourself – are you a social networking site, or even a community site?

If the answer to one or both of those isn’t an emphatic “yes”, then you’re better off fishing where the fish are. Why compete for attention with Facebook when you can join their enormous ecosystem and win yourself thousands of new readers or customers? You wouldn’t start your own search engine … would you?

The best option for brands on Facebook is to use their excellent Facebook Page offering. These pages give you an official brand presence on the platform along with great features like message broadcasting, stats, brand-centric events and thousands of applications to pimp out your presence. Just be sure not to make one of the common mistakes I wrote about earlier this year.

By advertising your Facebook Page rather than directly linking to your own site, you accomplish three things at once:

1. You recruit long-term brand advocates who can be converted to customers and/or readers in time (very few people un-like a brand unless it actively irritates them)

2. Because pages are native to Facebook, your adverts will have all the social context bells and whistles built in. People will be able to “like” your page with a single click – without even leaving their home feed.

3. As you add new fans to your page it begins to gather a self-sustaining momentum. We’ve found that once it reaches 10,000 fans a page will be constantly full of customer conversations and will send thousands of visitors to your site every month with very little effort.

5. There is (currently) less competition on Facebook
Because Adwords is so incredibly popular and well understood, it can be quite challenging to get your adverts seen and clicked on. Most common search topics have hundreds of thousands of businesses competing for them and require both high bids per click and high technical proficiency to make any impact. Just try advertising “insurance” on Adwords and you’ll see what I mean.

Facebook, on the other hand, is still relatively uncongested – at least in South Africa. I’ve run campaigns which have yielded new fans in their thousands at a cost per acquisition of well under R1. These campaigns also saw a high percentage of “bleed through” traffic to the brand sites, so they won both fans and traffic at no additional cost.

Of course this won’t last forever. Competition will increase and bid rates will climb. So rather join the party early before all that lovely punch is finished and you have to start paying for drinks.

Convinced?
Hopefully I’ve got you all revved up to start your own massively viral Facebook campaign. If you’re still a bit fuzzy on the details, look out for my upcoming piece: “5 tips to getting the most out of your Facebook ad campaign”.

DISCLAIMER: This article is meant to encourage you to try Facebook Ads, not to abandon AdWords completely. The two platforms are quite different and serve certain brands and industries better than others. Facebook, for instance, serves media brands very well because it allows them to harvest cheap clicks by growing Facebook pages. AdWords, on the other hand, is perfect for e-commerce brands because of their great synergy with search. If in doubt, try both and see which works better for your brand.

1. Clients Come To You

You sit at your desk or travel on the road attending to your business and new clients or customers find your website, click through and send you an enquiry. Isn’t that what we all crave as an SME: new enquiries on tap?

2. Instant new client instructions

If you are having a quiet spell you can turn on or start a Google Awords campaign and instantly generate new enquiries. Useful?

3. Can see and measure ROI easily

Unlike many forms of advertising or marketing with Google Adwords you can easily track your return on investment. If you spend £100 you can see how much revenue that has generated instantly for your SME. If it worked, do more of the same, if it didn’t keep tweaking the Adwords campaign until it does start to work for you.

4. You can beat the big boys

This is one of the most powerful ones. I have worked with so many small business owners on their adwords campaigns and have regularly beaten their major, bigger competitors with much higher marketing budgets. The small boys can easily beat the big boys using Google Adwords. Nice!

5. You can cap your investment (no nasty surprises)

You can decide to spend £5 a day or £500, it is completely up to you. But more importantly, once you tell Google what you want to spend it will cap it at that so you can limit your spend.

6. All of my clients use it successfully

Every business client I work with uses Google Pay Per Click advertising effectively. All of them. That is hundreds over the years. They use it because it works and it provides a return on investment.

7. The better you get, the less you pay to advertise

This one is worth reading again as most people are amazed by this, so look again:

Google rewards you if your advertisements work really well by letting you pay less. So the more time you spend on making your Adwords campaign more effective the less you pay. Fantastico!

8. You find potential clients looking for your product or service at the exact time that they are ready to buy!

This is what I call pull advertising. If you use traditional media such as newspaper advertising you have to persuade someone to be interested in what you have to offer and then to get off their backside and do something about contacting you. With Google Adwords that person has already decided to do something as they are looking on Google. All you have to do is ‘waft’ your website under their nose and hey presto, you have a new client!

9. It has replaced the Yellow Pages yet is 1000 times more effective

The Yellow Pages used to be the alleged friend of the SME. I say alleged because Yellow Pages once confirmed to me in a client meeting that 68% of all Yellow Pages enquiries were generated by people who already knew which supplier they wanted, they just needed to get hold of their phone number.

Google Adwords is much more effective and instant at generating new enquiries for you.

10. There are more and more ways to reach potential clients (new keywords/phrases all of the time)

People are becoming more and more creative in their searches, which means that there is always an expanding market of search phrases you can target to advertise your service. When you couple this with the fact that the number of searches and searchers expands every month, your market is always growing. You need to be in front of it by using Google Adwords.

11. You can test on a small budget before you spend more

You do not need to risk a huge investment. You can test a campaign with only a few pounds (and I urge you to do so).

12. You can target geographically

Whether you are an accountant in Edinburgh or a consultant in Manchester you can use geographical targeting and keywords to attract location specific searchers, so you can stay local if you want to.

13. Google’s tools help you to get better and better

Google provides you with a range of tools to make using adwords easier and to make your campaigns much more effective. It wants you to do better as it then means that not only are you getting better results (so you will keep going) but also that Google’s search engine customers are getting better results.

14. You do not have to pay the most to be at the top!

This one is hugely important. You do not have to pay more to beat your competitors. If you get your campaign right you can beat your competitors and spend a lot less than they are spending. There is no other form of advertising that rewards you like this.

15. You only pay if someone clicks on your ad!

This is another common misconception. You only pay if someone actually clicks on your advertisement, so for all the other times that your advertisement is shown but not clicked on you do not pay. Once again, this is unique in the advertising arena. Imagine asking the national or local press to put in an advertisement into the paper but saying that you will only pay if someone calls you. I can just see the Times, Guardian, Express or Mail jumping at your proposal, or perhaps not…..

16. It makes you seem bigger than you are

You can be seen for all of your core search terms. You can be seen whenever your larger, more financially able competitors are seen and you look no different in size than they do. Your presence online can be bigger and perform better than much larger competitors. This is very powerful.

17. It increases brand awareness

If people keep searching for search terms surrounding your business type, whether that be consultancy, retail, accountancy etc and constantly keep seeing your message online it makes it much more likely that they will choose you over and above your competitors.

18. It shows you are a forward thinking business

Using Google Adwords allows you to be found very easily online and shows that you are a business that is keen to engage technology to not only reach new clients but also to work with them and provide a more streamlined service.

19. It makes you more accessible to your clients

You have new clients looking for your service. By using Google Adwords you make it much easier and much more likely that they will find you.

20. You can manage it yourself or outsource it

You can manage a Google Adwords account yourself and I strongly advise you to do so. It can be easily done. However, if you decide that you do need to be using Google Adwords but do not have the time to do it, you can outsource your PPC advertising campaign to another company. As long as you use it in one way shape or form for your business that is the important thing.

21. Finally, it brings you new clients while you sleep

I have left my favourite until the end. You do not have to be asleep, you might be on the golf course or on a beach, however the wonderful thing is that Google Adwords can provide you with new leads without you doing anything. Once you set it up and get it working reasonably well you can forget about it and just check it every week or so and it will keep on providing you with new leads. This is a very good thing and the reason why it is my favourite of the 21 Reasons To Use Google Adwords.

Conclusion

I bet there are some reasons within these 21 which have jumped right off the page at you, so remember them and start using or testing Google Adwords now!

 

) You only spend a small initial investment for creating an AdWords account.

2) You set your own budget so you can never overspend.

3) There is a high ROI because you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.

4) You can send targeted traffic directly to your website.

5) You can test marketing campaigns and keyword effectiveness by trying different ads.

6) You get instant gratification as a result of the immediate traffic.

7) You can track your successes and failures in real-time.

8) You can target your ads geographically so that you reach browsers on a local level or an international level.

9) You will gain hands-on experience, which will help you become an experienced direct marketer and get into the mind of your target audience.

10) Marketing through a pay-per-click ad platform levels the playing field for you and your competition.

 

FACEBOOK

• Connect with more than 800 million potential customers
• Choose your audience by location, age and interests
• Test simple image and text-based ads and use what works

• Set the daily budget you are comfortable with
• Adjust your daily budget at anytime
• Choose to pay only when people click (CPC) or see your ad (CPM)

1. Direct Selling

Facebook is not a fan of this Industry or it’s ads. They will delete your pages…disapprove your ads permanently and ban you from placing ads if you continue to submit questionable ads.

 

You need to keep in mind that you do not want to mention any kind of income opportunity. Don’t tell people they can make money. Focus on self branding or product promoting.

 

Keep in mind that facebook is still a relationship based platform so you want to gear your pages for building relationships with your fans instead of just “closing” the sale.

 

2. Ad Targeting
You want to create lots of ads where you target smaller demographics. It may seem like a good idea to do a very broad ad targeting ALL of facebook, but we tried this method and all we did was spend a lot of money only to shut it off and dig deeper into our demographics.

 

Remember, with facebook ads you can laser target your ads down to the slightest details about a person. You need to figure out your best customer’s demographics and then target people by interests and age.

 

Running ads on facebook is not something you just turn on and hope for the best, you actually need to do your research. Data is gold because the more you have, the better targeted your ads will be because the last thing you want to do is advertise to the wrong people as that is just wasted money!

 

3. Relationship Building
Always remember what facebook was designed for first. Relationship building! This means that you want to focus on the relationships between you and your fans. I cannot tell you how many pages I see where there is no interaction whatsoever with fans. Fans leave comments and ask questions only to have them NEVER get answered.

 

We at FPE make sure we visit that page at least once every other day. I am personally on there almost EVERY day talking to our beloved fans keeping them up to date and engaged. They “like” us, so we want them to have a good reason to do so.

 

So if you take the time to start a page and want it to be successful, make sure you are engaged on a regular basis with your fan base. Even if it is only every 3 days or 2…just make sure it is consistent and you address ALL posts positive and negative.

 

4. Know your Market
If you plan on having a successful campaign on facebook, you need to know your market and know it well. If you are selling kayaks, you don’t want to target users who are shopping for womens purses. This could be the difference of making money or just spending it.

 

I know this sounds obvious, but believe me there are people who keep their targets so broad and do not target well and waste a ton of money. DO NOT be one of those people. You will end up blaming facebook ads saying the don’t work when in reality they work VERY well if you know what you are doing.

 

5. Results
Do not go into facebook ads expecting instant results. There are some people who will see them, but there are other things to measure. If you are building your fan base on top of everything, that is also a successful campaign because not everyone will buy from you right away. They want to get to know you…study you…stalk you and then may buy later.

 

Take us for instance…we started just a couple months ago running small ads and have boosted our ad spend to over $300 a day and went from 642 fans to over 10,000 with a total ad spend of more than $20,000.00. But the returns have not all been in sales. The return has also been in fans. People who actually like what we are doing and are potential customers down the line…

 

Just don’t set your budget too high and jump in expecting sales over night with no regard to the fans you are also attracting. Take all of these things into consideration. Sales will come as long as you stay engaged and plan long term with your ads and not blow your whole budget in a day or even a week and then shut them all down…be willing to start very low and set your monthly ad budget and stick to it.

 

6. Monitor your Campaigns
You need to watch your ads performance on a regular basis. I am in my ad manager multiple times per day. I am looking at spend Vs. leads and profit. I make sure our ads are performing, and give the ones that are more love than the ones that are slow.

 

I also update my banners every week and keep my ads fresh to target more people.

 

You do not want to “set it and forget it” with facebook ads or again, you are going to spend more money than you have to. Maybe you have money to throw away, but you should not do that.

 

So just make sure you keep checking your stats hourly and really get in there and manage your ads for best results. Don’t be afraid to shut them down and start all over if you are not getting results after a couple days or weeks.

 

A couple of the main things you want to pay attention to is you CTR (click through rate) which is how many clicks you get based on how many times your ad was shown. Also, your CPC (cost per click) as this is what shows your spend.

 

We found in our research, which is why our product is so cool, that by keeping our sales funnel inside the facebook platform that we saved on average 48% per click in comparison to the campaign we ran where we linked to an outside website. This is HUGE as I do not know a marketer alive that would not want to save 48% of their ad budget to be able to place more ads…

 

7. Test Test Test
Make sure you are testing your landing pages performance. Try different ones. Create 4 different ones and change them daily to see which one pulls the best and once you have that figured out, sink more ad spend into it.

 

Like I said before…you HAVE to do a lot of research in order to have a successful ad campaign on facebook. If you are not prepared to do this, you WILL waste money. I know because I wasted a lot in the beginning…but now that I understand it…I am making about $4 for every $1 spent. Pretty good ROI if you ask me!

 

8. Demographics Testing
You also want to test different ads to different demographics. Do not target people in the US and Australia in the same campaign. Separate them so you can have data that will see where your customers and leads are coming from.

 

This is VERY important data to help you know where to increase your spending. It is much better to create a bunch of smaller niche ads than 2 wide ones because the wide ones do not allow you to gather much data.

 

9. Good Ad Copy
Most of us are not good copy writers, but I am telling you that it is VERY important that you write good ads. What I suggest you do, is look at ads that you see EVERY day on facebook. Chances are if someone is showing them every day, they are making money with them. See what they are saying. Try to understand how they are targeting YOU.

 

If your ad is boring and does not encourage a click from your demographic then again you are just wasting time and money.

 

This all boils down to doing even more research. Look at your competitors and do what the most successful of them are doing. Just make sure your ads are relevant to your landing page because that is another thing that facebook absolutely hates. Don’t show a chicken on your ad and take people to a page with a cow on it. Keep the ad consistent with the offer.

 

10. Get Help
Not everyone is going to understand how to set up a successful ad campaign. Your strength may be in closing a sale on the phone, or getting people to an event. No matter what it is, if you do not have people coming to see your information, you are dead in the water.

 

I know how hard it is to start a successful campaign because for the first 2 months I struggled through. I spent a lot of money I didn’t have to, and I got so frustrated and called facebook every name in the book for not approving some of my ads…

 

But once I got in there and learned, I had a little epiphany. Once I did I apologized to facebook and started to see massive results.

 

1. Facebook’s audience:

4.2-million active users in South Africa (never mind 750-million global users) are numbers which are difficult to argue with. Very few other platforms are able to offer small businesses an audience of this size for a manageable budget.

2. Targeting ability:

Having a massive audience is useless if you aren’t able to target very specifically. Especially as a local business, you mostly want to target local people. Facebook allows you to do that by geographically targeting your campaigns down to city level. Not only are you able to target geographically, but you’re also able to target Facebook users by demographics and key interests from information that Facebook pulls from their profiles.

3. One on one communication:

By creating a fan page, small businesses will be able to engage their customers on a one on one basis. This does require some planning, but Facebook provides ample advice on how to effectively manage a fan page.

4. Create local communities:

Through engaging with your customers on your fan page, sharing content and encouraging them to share their own content; you’re able to create an intimate online community and in the process learn what your customers are passionate about without making them feel like they are in a focus group.

5. Feedback:

This point follows on from the last one. Fan pages, if managed properly, can provide you with very insightful feedback from your customers. Also if you create an environment in which they feel comfortable talking to one another about what they love about your business and what they’d like to see changed, and you respond accordingly, you will gain a very loyal customer

6. Built in social recommendations:

Facebook’s ad units are designed with the added benefit of having built in social context. So if one of your friends likes a brand, and you see an ad on Facebook from that brand, the ad will reflect that your friend likes this brand. According to research done by Nielsens, an ad with social context results in a two times increase in message awareness and a four times increase in purchase intent.

7. Sponsored Stories:

These are new social ad formats through which advertisers can amplify stories generated in a Facebook users’ news feed that are related to their brands. Sponsored Stories support Facebook’s ‘social by design’ approach to advertising. That is, using the influence of friends to generate actions. According to the TGB Global Facebook Advertising Report, Sponsored Stories ads in Facebook campaigns decreases Cost per Aquisition (CPA) by 32 percent

8. Social by design:

Ultimately, the major strength that makes Facebook advertising a stronger proposition than traditional display advertising is its intrinsically social nature. This allows the advertiser to leverage people’s social connections to connect with new customers. With the information web fast already being overtaken by the social web, these social connections will become an even more crucial piece of any brands marketing strategy.