Facebook is so much more than a traffic generator.  At Infusionsoft, I manage our advertising we do on the web including Google AdWords and Facebook Advertising. In the spirit of Facebook Marketing Week, I’ll share six lessons I’ve learned that will help you advertise your business on Facebook.

The prevailing thought is that advertising on Facebook can drive clicks and inordinate amounts of traffic. This is very true. I however, strongly disagree with those who feel that it can’t drive strong conversions as well. A myth shared by “scholarly marketing expert” types often cite people visit Facebook merely are there to engage and not consume.

While this is partially true, I disagree with the conclusion from that line of thinking.  Specifically, the notion that advertiser’s best hope is to simply drive a lot of website traffic. Facebook users are in a prime mode to engage, and that results in a potential prospect that’s extremely open to consuming various lead generation materials … as long as the ads are relevant and non-pitchy. That’s why materials such as ‘free reports’ and ebooks succeed to the extent that I’ve seen.

Read more about using Facebook for lead generation on our previous post. On there, you’ll pick up several key tactics for using Facebook to help grow your list.

The mere fact that people are on Facebook to engage encourages digestion of your lead generation materials. This is true because we’ve seen our conversion rates measure better with Facebook than any other traffic source. Think about that … we advertise quite a bit on Google in addition to a number of publishers who have good response rates.  Facebook works very well for us.

We closely monitor our Cost per Lead (CPL) across all our advertising. Dollar for dollar, Facebook far outperforms any other lead generation tactic by that metric (except perhaps, an extremely well-executed, well-maintained AdWords campaign). Nonetheless, it’s much easier to create an ROI positive Facebook ad campaign than an AdWords campaign.

Facebook is also an excellent introduction to online advertising. If you’re not yet an AdWords expert, Facebook provides an easy interface and it hits on some concepts that will help you understand more complicated PPC principles.

After five-figures invested into Facebook ads, I’ve decided to share six big lessons we’ve learned with advertising on Facebook. Keep in mind, we tested, tweaked and always aim to improve our ads every day.

1.   Deep Targeting.

Take advantage of Facebook’s easy-to-use targeting options. Invest time coming up with a clear picture of who actually is in your target market. Don’t target the industry as much as you target their specific interests. Consider what keywords their profile would include and specific interests their demographic has.

2.   Use Multiple Campaigns.

While it can be a bit exciting to see one campaign perform well, consider launching several campaigns with different copy, visuals and targets at once. Facebook provides a decent reporting system so you can quickly see what’s performing (and what’s not).

3.   Segment Ad Campaigns.

It’s very important to organize your aggregated keywords into logical segments. Once you’ve done this, you can easily create ultra-targeted ads. This makes it much easier to narrow the reporting between all your ad campaigns and build reports.

4.   Rotate Different Visuals.

Rotate your creative at least every two weeks. Studies have shown that you get much more mileage (and clicks) by rotating images. If time is of the essence and you don’t have the bandwidth to create more masterful ad copy, alter the graphic to a decent impact on the ad campaign.

5.   Check Your Stats, Review Reports.

While somewhat boring to the average marketer, it’s very helpful to invest the time to review the data, demographics and the response rates on different ads. This knowledge will help you create better-targeted, lower-cost campaigns. The most underutilized aspect of Facebook advertising would be the ability to access detailed demographic information. It’s seriously awesome; take advantage of it!

6.   Use Conversion Tracking.

If you’re lucky enough to use a powerful CRM that tracks Lead-sources and performance of inbound traffic, use it. Facebook recently introduced conversion tracking (it’s in beta) and it’s pretty sweet.  I cheat and use Infusionsoft for tracking my Facebook ad activity and it provides the data on conversions that we need and gives me insight on how ads are performing on top of Facebook’s ad reporting.

Take it from me; it’s my job to help others on the web find Infusionsoft and become our prospects and customers. These tips will give you the extra edge to get more out of advertising on Facebook.

Facebook offers more than branding, it delivers lead generation value and helps drive our business. I admit it did take a lot of experimentation and collaboration with our marketing team to get our ads to the level they are performing today. No secret tactics are involved – but there is a unique element of engagement that isn’t typically found with other types of advertising on the web.

If you’ve got questions, I might have answers. Let me know if you want to know more about Facebook ads in the comments below. We have a few more hot items for Facebook Marketing Week lined up. Subscribe now to be notified when we publish them.

Facebook is a registered trademark of Facebook, Inc.

You might also like these blog entries:

• Facebook: Targeting the ‘Who’ and ‘When’ … Not the ‘What’
• Facebook Marketing Week (Recap)
• Marketing on Facebook is More Than ‘Branding’