Facebook PPC Advertising Help from Orchid Box

Facebook advertising is a fast growing PPC market which increasing numbers of business are looking at taking advantage of. Though in comparison to Google Adwords the platform has its limitations and the advert options are somewhat limited, the opportunities for demographic targeting are massive and ensure that many companies enjoy a much stronger return from Facebook PPC than they do from Google. 

Though Google allows you to target a specific region, placement site or search term, for many projects these options are somewhat restricting and the ability in to target a group of people you know convert well for your site in Facebook is a great advantage to have. Although it is perhaps more speculative (people are not using FB to find your service), and click through rates are low, traffic opportunities are high (over 20m users in the UK alone) and Facebook ads allows you to target a wide range of options:

• Age range - any exact or age range above 13, or even those users on their birthday
• Geographical region – Google does this by IP address, Facebook by user profiles, so accuracy cannot be guaranteed
• Gender
• Education
• Occupation
• Relationship status and sexual orientation
• Language
• Interests – according to any keyword on a user’s profile

This demographic targeting is hugely useful for aiming for any users you know convert well, and by setting up different campaigns targeting different groups you can track which are the more effective and optimise accordingly. 

Unfortunately Facebook does have its limitations too. As mentioned before, the platform is not hugely user friendly, and the keyword targeting is somewhat laboured – you can only target the keyword options that Facebook gives you, which makes keyword selection is somewhat laboured (though we’ll worry about that). Ad format sizes are fixed, and though you may have an image on the ad it is fairly small and limiting (no banner ads). Having said this, images are a very effective way to improve click rates and it is significantly cheaper promoting image ads on Facebook than Google. 

In terms of costs, Facebook gives no real accurate estimations of what your ads will initially cost, and there are no estimate tools available yet so it’s difficult to predict costs. Create a good ad with good text and you’ll find costs can be cheaper than Google (depending on the subject matter), but it can also more expensive too. 

If that all sounds very complicated but very promising, contact Orchid Box today to see what we might be able to offer you!

A Great PPC Trick - Using Budgeting To Your Benefit

Budgeting within PPC accounts can be a nightmare. Thousands of keywords, adgroups, campaigns and stacks more data to collate, analyse and act upon - you can't leave it a minute without worrying you're overspending.

But fear not, budgeting can also be played to your (significant) advantage! We've recently come across a trick that we're working on testing further but seems to work with high-click, low CPC campaigns in terms of getting increasingly cheaper and numerous clicks.

Got a campaign that is driving lots of traffic to your site and a reasonable CPC? We had one for one of our clients that was doing exactly that, and we found a great way to improve it's performance. All you need do is up your CPC a small amount, and leave it for a couple of days to gain a bit of traffic - and then lower it again to the original rate. Look what happened for us:

Having upped the CPC rate we saw a sharp increase in traffic, and then after a few days we dropped the cost again only to see traffic continue at its old rate but with a cheaper CPC! We're currently testing this trick across a number of sites, and almost like revving up an engine it seems to work well!

In conjunction with our fantastic new PPC keyword bid management tool tricks like this can work like a dream!

Anyone got any more great PPC tips and tricks to share? They don't have to all be secret you know...