super targeted facebook ads

Since the launch of facebook business solutions late last year, I have been on the scout for some great examples of how the new 'socially targeted' facebook ads can be utilised effectively, providing ROI figures that convince me that facebook ads should be part of any online media mix that I am responsible for.

To be honest- I'm still looking.

From an ROI perspective, facebook ads are definitely a consideration when it comes to looking at additional channels to exhaust outside of the two core Google offerings (Adwords for search and Adwords for Googles' contextual network or 'Adsense'). I say this because facebook ads can be purchased on a cost per click basis, they have comprehensive online reporting and their network is significant and global.

So, as an option for online advertising, facebook ticks the most important boxes. But how do you actually develop an effective targeting strategy using this new channel. For those of us that cut our teeth in ROI media using Google Adwords, the facebook ad network presents a number of new challenges.

Targeting consumers who are using Googles search network with your paid per click text ad (adword) is a lot more closely related to old school direct marketing techniques such as yellow pages advertising. Targeting customers with a pay per click advertisement on a social network is a different story.

Early results suggest that whilst we can now buy advertisements on facebook in a more desirable way ( pay per click NOT CPM), experts are still struggling to replicate the success of their Adwords campaigns, particularly in the area of the first crucial online media metric- Click through rate (CTR).

Typically, great CTR's can be associated to creative that is as relevant as possible to the target audience. Achieving optimal ad creative and relevancy is reasonably simple in the case of Google adwords. You target a key word or phrase, someone types it in and you make sure your relevant keyword rich text ad pops up in front of them in a satisfactory position. With a facebook ad, however, the targeting becomes more complex.

With facebook social ads we need to re-visit marketing methodologies of the past, the ones that are driven by demographics. You need to know who you should be targeting before you place the ad, a question that is not necessary to answer in the case of Google adwords strategies.

Facebook have certainly identified this fact, which is surely why they offer a polling service as part of their overall business solutions offering. If I were to run a significant cost per click campaign on facebook I would be sure to consider the option of polling my perceived audience in the first instance, just to make sure that my intended audience are in fact who I thought they would be.

Apart from polling, I would also start to look more closely at groups and events networks within facebook. These areas of facebook are less restricted than individual profiles, yet they often give interesting insights into the lives and interests of specific indivduals. A great example of this approach is a recent piece of basic research done by Redeye VC in the USA who (using facebook ads) targeted Yahoo! employees who may be looking for greener pastures......

Have any other half-geek readers had specific experiences (good or bad) with facebok cost per click advertisements?