When it comes to advertising products in today’s world, the Facebook family of platforms (Facebook, Instagram and Messenger) is better than anything else in existence. And unless you prioritize some other metric above CPR (Cost Per Result), then that’s not my opinion, it’s a fact.
So how do you use it? How do you take advantage of this massive platform? To understand that you have to understand how Facebook operates as a company, what makes them tick — and why it’s so vital you jump on now instead of waiting.
An Overview of the Facebook platform in 2018
Facebook has over two billion active users worldwide, two hundred million of these in the United States alone. That’s a lot, but it’s not everyone.
As of 2017, approximately 2.4 million people owned smartphones. What do they do with those phones? Among other things over 50% of their time is spent on social media platforms. That’s several hours of attention per day given to a small number of very large sites — the keyword being attention.
Facebook is battling for that attention. They’re battling Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, and Youtube. They’re battling every search Google or Bing produces and every blog, website or video existing elsewhere that anyone would go to.
How do they go about this? Their strategy is two-fold.
Monopolization: Facebook has taken over several social media platforms: Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. The reasoning is simple — more platforms, more users, all connected. If someone jumps Facebook to search Instagram, no loss. Same with WhatsApp and Messenger, they’re still “on” Facebook, or at least in the family. And that’s just what they’re doing right now.
They also own one of the largest Virtual Reality companies out there: Oculus Rift, where they’re preparing for the future. And have no doubt — Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality — these things are the future. So like it or not, Facebook will be around for a very long time. Lucky for you it’s just starting.
The second part of their strategy — and the most important in Facebook’s mind — is very simple and very obvious. It measures their successes or losses and determines what actions they take. It’s the first thing any intelligent business thinks about.
User Experience
User Experience is defined as: The overall experience of a person using a product, such as a website or computer application, especially in terms of how easy or pleasing it is to use.
This is what I was talking about in my last post regarding quality of content.
You can see why all their actions and reactions would revolve around this. If the user is pleased with what they find in their FB feed, they’ll stay. If they’re bored or upset, they’ll head somewhere else — Pinterest or Netflix or Amazon maybe.
So you see why they concentrate on this and how the first part of their strategy ties in? If someone finds what they’re looking at on Facebook boring, they’ll go somewhere else. If that somewhere else is Tumblr or DeviantArt then they’ve lost. But if it’s Messenger or Instagram, that’s just fine.
What does this have to do with you?
The Quality of Content of your Facebook Ads determines your Cost Per Result
It’s true. It determines how well your Ads do, how much reach or lack of it they’re given by Facebook. And more importantly — it determines how much you pay for that reach. And I’m not just talking about organic reach, I’m talking about Facebook’s reward to you based on the quality of the content in your Ad.
This is possibly the most important aspect to think with in creating your Ads. If your content is good — meaning it’s interesting, it’s valuable, it’s communicated in a way people like or enjoy, and which makes them want to share it or talk about it — Facebook is actually going to lower your Cost Per Result. And depending on how much your content is liked, this can be quite a dramatic drop.
You’ve seen this before. The viral video that seems to be everywhere. And you know that little kid didn’t pay Facebook to advertise it. Of course not. People just loved it. So they liked it, commented on it, shared it — the User Experience was good and people stayed on Facebook. Recognizing this Facebook then helped that video spread more so others would see it and… stay on Facebook.
Reversely, if your content is boring, doesn’t provide value, is not being liked or shared, Facebook’s algorithm equates this with Users leaving Facebook and going to another platform. So your Cost Per Result increases, and keeps increasing.
This also works as a metric of an Ad’s performance and an indicator of when it’s time to change Ads. If your Cost Per Result has been $1 per lead for the last week or month, and now it’s $2, or $4 or $5, you know that Ad has gone stale. People have seen it. They found it interesting and shared and Facebook rewarded you with a low Cost Per Result. But now it’s stale. People aren’t watching or sharing it anymore. The User Experience is not good anymore. So Facebook charges you more to promote it.
This is actually what led many people to say Facebook advertising doesn’t work. They saw their Cost Per Result rising, didn’t understand what was happening, and jumped ship.
But it’s their loss. If you know how to play the game — and it’s a very easy game to play — you can kill it. And that’s what I’m going to help you do.
