Last week I posted an article on how powerful Facebook Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising could be for your business.  Since then I’ve received responses from people who say it is not all that great shakes.  This is clearly a case of discovering a new “hammer” and thinking everything is the same kind of nail.  It’s all about using the right tool, for the right purpose at the right time.  Here are some tips that will help you choose the right business promotion tool for the job.

Facebook is about Interests

I recently challenged one of my ULTRA eTEAM members, Roman Pavlik to use Facebook to drive traffic to his new highly targeted DownTownLivingMiami.com Website.  Since most of his buyers for luxury downtown Miami condos come from New York, Canada and South America he targeted his Facebook ads to people who live in those areas.  Let’s just say there are a lot of Facebook members living in those areas.  In a very short period of time (literally just a couple of days) he had over 60,000 ad impressions.  Unfortunately, not one person clicked on his ads.  And to add insult to injury, Facebook stopped showing his ads (after all, they want to make money too!)

So Brad Carroll (our Online Dominance Social Networking Mastermind coach) and I suggested that he further refine his targeting by including interests that would be consistent with anything having to do with Miami.  For example, people living in Canada, New York and South America who are interested in Miami sports teams and so on.  While this refinement substantially reduced his pool of Facebook members that would see his ad, the click throughs to his site shot up (he had 24 just in a couple of days vs. zero before).

When advertising on Facebook, less is more and you really have to think about which member interests are most likely follow through on your ad’s call to action.

Google is About Wants and Needs

When someone searches on Google, by definition they are looking for something specific (i.e. a want or need).  In this case, it makes perfect sense for Roman to complement his Facebook advertising with a Google PPC campaign targeting people who are specifically interested in buying downtown Miami condos.  A little closer to home, I am personally involved in syndicating GoArmyHomes.com Websites for every army base on U.S. soil.  Part of this process includes driving substantial traffic to each respective base site.  At first we considered running Facebook ads because there are well over 300,000 Facebook members who are also in the army.  The only problem is that a tiny fraction of those will be interested in going to any particular base at any particular time.  Without a doubt if we had pursued that course of action we would not have seen any click throughs and Facebook would have shut our ad campaign down.  In this case, our PPC options are clearly better with Google.  However, Facebook is the tool to use as we begin to promote our GoArmyHomes Facebook page.

Facebook and Google are two awesome online advertising tools.  It’s just a matter of knowing which one is the best option for the task at hand and using it in the manner that produces the best results for the lowest cost.  With a little bit of practice and patience, you will get the hang of it :0)