Keeping CPC low

Every Facebook ad campaign has a particular objective. Objective refers to what you want your target audience to do when they see your ad.

You have to choose one goal from the following list before you start creating your ad:

  • Page likes
  • Post engagement
  • Clicks to website
  • Website conversion
  • App installs
  • App engagement
  • Event responses
  • Offer claims
  • Video views

Choosing the right ad objective is very important and it plays a very vital role in the success or failure of your Facebook ad campaign.

Though the price of every click depends on different variables, one among them is your ad objective. So if you are really concerned about low CPC, you need to choose the objective with lowest CPC. Page Likes is the ad objective that has lowest CPC, then we have Facebook post engagement or boost your postsFacebook does not want to send its traffic off Facebook.

This is the reason that ad objectives where Facebook users stay on Facebook are cheap (and have low CPC), on the other hand, when traffic leaves Facebook, the CPC gets high.

What this means?

To setup and run a profitable Facebook ad campaign, you need to ensure that you Do Not ever send traffic off Facebook.

Therefore, objectives like websites clicks, website conversions and alike always have higher CPC than page likes and post engagement objectives. In order to keep CPC at lowest possible level you have to choose an ad objective that retains the traffic on Facebook (page likes, post engagement are preferred). For instance, you can go for page likes. Meantime you can publish posts on your page with links to your squeeze page or landing page. More than 60% of the people who like a page, go to the page to see a few recently published posts, and this is how you keep your CPC low while sending traffic off Facebook via your page.

Target Audience
The country, where you will run your ads make a lot of difference on CPC. US (generally) has highest CPC so if you are targeting US, you will have to pay a high cost per click as compared to someone who is targeting Bulgaria.

I personally don’t target US until and unless it is absolutely necessary or if I am promoting a local business. There are two reasons for it:

  1. Very high competition. Every 2 in 3 Facebook advertisers target USA. Imagine from a perspective of a user, a user will see a lot of ads on his/her Facebook account. Therefore in order to outrank your competitors, your ad has to be a killer one.
  2. US traffic is not the highest converting traffic. I know most of the advertisers say that it is, but if you look at the stats, it is not the highest converting country anymore for several niches and for several reasons. Why I have to pay double CPC to run a campaign in a country that is not even converting well?

If you are Not promoting a local business, I’d strongly recommend targeting a different country preferably a European or Asian country (if that is your target market).

I recently finished running a campaign on Facebook that was selling a product. The payment method was PayPal so I targeted people in all the countries where PayPal was supported excluding USA, UK, Canada and Australia. My campaign converted like I was giving a freebie. That’s just amazing and the reason why it converted so well is that my competitors are only targeting USA and Canada. The competition in countries like Qatar, Cyprus, UAE, Hong Kong, Malaysia etc. is minimal and thus CPC is extremely low.

High CTR and High Conversions

Not every person that clicks on your ad will convert. Since we are aiming to use a Facebook objective that retains Facebook traffic, we will stick to Page Likes. However you can choose any other you like.

How To Increase CTR And Conversions

For high CTR, you have to have a killer ad copy having:

  • A killer headline
  • A clear call to action like click here, click here for details, click for more etc. These Call To Action really works like charm.
  • A picture that tells the story. You just cannot use any picture instead use a picture that supplement your ad copy.

For high conversions, you need:

  • A killer squeeze page
  • A freebie
  • Urgency

Before you start your Page Like campaign, you need to keep publishing posts (at least two days before the start of your campaign) with links to your squeeze page with great pictures and catchy headlines.

good idea is to publish 4 to 6 Facebook posts a day for at least two days. With a page like ad campaign, those new fans who will visit your page after liking it will surely see your posts, and that’s where you will have a chance to interact with them.

Selling is a bad idea instead you should send traffic from your Facebook posts to a squeeze page where you should give them a freebie or a free report of their interest. Get their email addresses so that you can contact them for the rest of your life.

Secrets of High ROI

The last and the most important part of a successful and a profitable ad campaign is high return on investment. You just don’t need an average ROI instead it has to be high at least 30% to 50%. Advertisers usually don’t prefer Page Like ad campaigns because this does not give them any results. I mean what you can do with a person who has liked your page? You cannot make money from a new fan instantly. Agreed.

The fact is Facebook users do not like buying because they are not in a buying mood. A person who has signed into his Facebook account is spending time with his family and friends. That’s the point where people don’t want to get off Facebook neither they want to buy something – no matter what their interests.

In such a case, a page like post does the work because the person stays on Facebook and you are not selling anything. You can do all the selling later on. For now, you need to do one of the two things:

  1. Get the email address of every new fan as soon as possible. One method is discussed already in this post.
  2. Setup a Facebook app that grabs the email address of your fans on Facebook. This is a better idea because people are more likely to opt for a freebie if they don’t have to leave Facebook.

Once you have the email address of a fan, then it is all up to you. You can make money from every fan for the rest of your life as long as you don’t spam them or you don’t sell them every single day.

Let’s do some simple mathematics:

  • Average cost per Facebook page like: $0.10
  • Daily budget: $5
  • Campaign running time: 5 days
  • Total investment: $25
  • Total Page Likes (estimated): 250
  • Optins (via free offer) @ 10% conversion: 25
  • Optins (via free offer) @ 15% conversion: 37
  • Optins (via free offer) @ 20% conversion: 50

As they say, the money is in the list. There is nothing better than building and owning a list of potential buyers.  This is however just one way of getting a high return on your investment.  Alternately, you can send traffic from your Facebook page to your AdSense site, AdSense blog, YouTube video channel or anywhere you like.

I mean there are a lot of ways to monetize your Facebook Fans if you have a page on a specific niche. You don’t always have to get their email addresses.  For instance, there are people who monetize their Facebook posts. You have to pay some serious money to sponsor a Facebook post on a page having 50K real likes.  The avenues are just unlimited.

Let me summarize it for you

  • Don’t send traffic off Facebook via your ad because it will be least converting and such ad objective comes at a high CPC.
  • Use objectives that retain traffic on Facebook.
  • Target the right country. Don’t go for US until and unless it is absolutely necessary.
  • The essentials of high CTR and high conversion are nothing but not selling on Facebook.
  • Every Facebook fan is a potential customer and a buyer.