Facebook Ads: Major Bang For Your Advertising Buck Part 7

September 23, 2010

Let’s say you specify you’ll pay 50 cents maximum per click and the next highest competitor today has a maximum bid per click of 40 cents.  Facebook would charge you 41 cents for that click – just enough to beat out the next highest bidder.  But if next week you still had your maximum bid at 50 cents and the next highest bidder was only for 20 cents then you’d get that click for 21 cents.  So Facebook only charges you what you need to pay to just beat out the next highest bidder for the demographic you’re going after at that particular date and time.  So really keep an eye out for particular dates/times when competition for clicks is minimal and offer more campaigns during those periods.

Once you’ve specified all the criteria for your ad you’ll then be asked how much you want to pay per click.  Facebook will suggest to you a range of prices to pay ($X minimum to $Y maximum).  Facebook would have you believe that you need to bid within this range to be competitive and have your ad seen.  However, it doesn’t necessarily mean if you bid below the minimum that you’ll get little or no traffic to your website because your ad won’t be displayed.  After all, Facebook’s main source of revenue is these ads, so it’s not in their best interest to advise you start your campaigns at a nominal amount per click.

So try out your campaigns starting at very low amounts (less than 50 cents per click), see how many impressions and clicks you get, and let the campaign run for a week or two.  Then start another campaign and gradually increase the amount you’re willing to pay per click (let’s say in increments of 10 cents) and see to what extent paying extra increases your exposure and clicks.  If you play with this enough you should find an optimal amount to pay per click that delivers the highest return on investment.

CPM Vs. Pay Per Click – your Facebook ad allows you to either pay a fixed amount for each time someone clicks your ad or paying a fixed amount for every 1000 ad impressions (CPM means cost per thousand).  One impression is your ad appearing on someone’s computer screen once.  Be careful in using CPM because your ad can quickly get loads of impressions but relatively little traffic.  It makes more sense to use CPM when you have very specific criteria for your target audience, making this audience relatively small.

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