Most marketing experts agree that Facebook is the king of Pay Per Click advertising platforms. After all, the social media site is used by over 1.45 billion people every single day. Meanwhile, a host of filters and parameters allow advertisers to target specific demographics as well as a universal audience with incredible accuracy. Frankly, this is a dream scenario for all marketers, especially those in the field of affiliate marketing, which is why learning to build a paid Facebook advert should be high on the agenda.
However, it’s not quite so simple for affiliate marketers as Facebook actively discourages creating adverts with direct links to affiliate products. This needn’t stop you from gaining leverage on the world’s biggest social media platform, though. Follow these simple steps, and running a paid ad that essentially feeds your affiliate program should become easy.
#1. Create A Prelander
Given that Facebook doesn’t like paid ads that link directly to affiliate links, it’s necessary to create a gateway. So, rather than directing users from A to B, you’ll be guiding them from A to C before moving from C to B.
The best way to achieve this is by building a prelander page for your website. This works in a similar fashion to a splash page or other landing pages. However, instead of being a precursor to accessing your web content, they will include a CTA (call-to-action) that leads the user to the affiliate product.
As such, the process will follow this pattern:
The user sees the advert on Facebook (point A)
The user clicks the advert and is taken to the prelander page (point C)
They click the advert within the prelander page and will be taken to the affiliate page (point B)
Aside from being a great way to bypass the conflict of interests between your business and Facebook’s rules, the prelander gives you a chance to market those products with far greater impacts, incorporating more information as well as visual media.
#2. Target A Specific Audience
Once you’ve achieved that initial success, you can start to think about reaching a more diverse audience. When starting out as an affiliate marketer, thinking about your ideal customer is crucial as you bid to make your advertising budget work harder.
Conversion rates are everything, and selecting an extremely focused target audience is the best way to encourage the best results. After all, its best to have those clicks to your prelander come from people who fit your niche.
Examples of focused target audiences include;
Male runners, aged 40+, that are known fans of a specific brand.
Female business owners aged 30-40 with no children.
Married homeowners aged 50+ in a certain city.
With the amount of information people provide to Facebook, you can direct your adverts to very specific audiences. As long as that demographic is suitable, this will bring great results.
#3. Consider Your Intentions
No two marketing campaigns are identical. As an affiliate marketer, the end goal probably revolves around sales. However, building up page likes and increased awareness of your own brand could be on the agenda. Taking those aspects into consideration is vital.
Perhaps most crucially, though, you need to appreciate the timing issues. If a product is launching in 72 hours, you need to choose strategies that work instantly. Conversely, if you have time on your side, you can spread this out over the course of a few weeks. The advantage with this option is that you can track performances and make any necessary changes.
Either way, setting your daily spend in the appropriate fashion is a key element. If you only have a couple of days to play with, you’ll spend a bigger portion of your budget per day. When looking at the long-term option, you can always increase daily budgets as revenue comes in.
#4. Make The Advert Eye-Catching
Facebook’s paid Ads largely adhere to the same principles, and will carry a generic layout. However, that doesn’t mean you can ignore the need for making those ads stand out from the crowd. Whether it’s a sidebar ad or a sponsored news feed post, you’ll only get a split second to grab the user’s attention. Make sure that you do.
Images make a huge impact, and yours should always be relevant to the industry and products that you’ll ultimately be promoting. Meanwhile, opting for photographs that include striking bold colours like red will usually perform far better. Not least because they contrast the blue tones of Facebook.
Grab the attention of your core audience from the off, and the adverts are destined to bring the best outcomes imaginable.
The Final Word
Paid advertising through the PPC model is far from being the only way to achieve success as an affiliate marketer on Facebook and other ideas like running a fan page and creating videos should be on the agenda too. Still, now that you know how to master the paid ads platform, the foundations of strategies will feel stronger than ever.
