Facebook Ads Cost

Everything About Facebook Ads Cost

It can seem like everybody's doing it—there are so many ads on Facebook today that average cost per click prices have gone up by 23 percent in just the last few months. Can your law firm handle the cost of Facebook ads? Do Facebook ads cost too much to be worthwhile for your firm's marketing strategy? Keep reading this guide to find out the newest trends in how much Facebook ads cost, and how you can minimize the cost of Facebook ads while still targeting the customers who'll give you the best return.

Is the Cost of Facebook Ads Worth It?

The question of whether Facebook ads cost too much has been explored and answered in different ways by several big companies. On the eve of Facebook's initial public offering, car manufacturing giant General Motors announced publicly that it would no longer continue advertising on Facebook due to the high costs and low return on investment.

When a high profile company like GM runs away from a potential advertising strategy because it's too expensive, it causes a lot of other companies to stop and consider whether the cost of Facebook ads has risen too much, too fast.

Your law firm isn't a car company—and when it comes to whether Facebook ads cost too much, that's important. General Motors was targeting its ads at a huge, national base of customers in a recession where car sales have already been stagnant.

Tracking What My Facebook Ads Cost

When you use Facebook advertising, you can track the cost of Facebook ads by viewing your performance report. You'll be able to export your report into a .csv file in order to analyze it with another advertising analytics program, or you can use Facebook's software to analyze your campaigns at no extra cost.

It's a good idea to use split tests on your ads to determine what makes Facebook ads cost more per click. If you're getting great results with a particular demographic, the cost of Facebook ads targeting that demographic may be worth paying, but another ad may be generating such poor results that you'll decide to cancel one campaign.

Reducing the Cost of Facebook Ads: Analytics for Beginners

Using analytics and split testing can also help you figure out what to do in your next campaign to reduce what Facebook ads cost. Change just one thing at a time when you want to do true split testing, or you won't be able to see which changes really worked so that you can effectively minimize the cost of Facebook ads.

The goal of analytics isn't just to choose between two advertisements you're considering. Instead, analytics can lower the overall cost of Facebook ads by telling you what works best. If you want analytics to work for you, you'll have to do it over and over again, learning from every round of testing and developing your ad strategies based on what you learn.

Video Ads: Great for Websites, Not for Facebook

If your firm has been having good luck with video marketing on your website or blog, you may wonder how much video Facebook ads cost. However, the cost of Facebook ads of this type is actually so high that the website currently offers video ads as an option only for companies with a monthly Facebook advertising budget of at least $30,000.

Since video Facebook ads cost too much for law firms to really be able to implement, you can do the next best thing with your advertising. Keep the cost of Facebook ads down by getting more fans for your Facebook page and posting videos in your feed.

You can also let videos be a main component of your landing pages—just a little bit of multimedia can make your website much more likely to convert visitors. By using these strategies, you won't have to worry about the high cost of Facebook ads with video but can still get all the advantages of using Facebook video.

Reducing the Cost of Facebook Ads: Easy Bidding Strategies

Facebook ads cost more today than they did even six months ago on a per-click or per-fan basis. The best bidding strategy for beginners is to start your bidding relatively high, then reduce your bids periodically as long as you're not seeing a precipitous drop-off in return on investment.

After your advertisement gets at least 50 clicks, Facebook's automatic bid suggester will be updated, allowing you to see what Facebook thinks you would be most successful bidding. Typically, your bid should be around the lower end of Facebook's suggested range. Try dropping your bid one or two cents below this range at a time until you reach a click to cost ratio that you're comfortable with.

Do Any Facebook Ads Cost Nothing?

It can be pretty tough to keep track of the cost of Facebook ads if you're not used to doing web analytics. If you're not having great results and don't want to pay what Facebook ads cost usually, you can try to use social media without direct ads.

This can be tricky, and you may want a social media professional to help give you advice about using social media effectively in order to get the most out of your free Facebook marketing possibilities.

Facebook gives you a wide range of tools for advertising that don't cost you anything at all. You can vastly increase the traffic to your law blog by posting interesting articles and summaries of your posts in your Facebook feed. You can also run polls and ask questions of your Facebook fans—a great way to get marketing information without the necessity of expensive focuses group testing.

If you're able to leverage your social media in the right way, you may not even need the additional cost of Facebook ads on the sidebar. Once you've had some practice with taking your blog posts viral, or getting a video to be shared with people several degrees of separation away from you, you'll start to see a widening reach even without paying what direct Facebook ads cost.