Next month, Platinum and Gold White Label Dating® partners will have the opportunity to hear from the Facebook dating team directly at this year’s Partner Conference. They’ll learn how to become an approved advertiser, as well as some best practice techniques. Ahead of that session, we share our learnings from running Facebook Ads for JustSingles.com.
Earlier in the year, I attended a workshop at Facebook for EMEA dating advertisers. For those of you who have dipped their toe in the Facebook advertising pool, you’ll know that Facebook are selective about who their advertisers are and what they advertise. Under their latest policy, they had only approved 47 dating advertisers worldwide. JustSingles.com was the 48th.
Dating ads were being reported at higher rates than other industry ads, and were, therefore, deemed a nuisance. As a result, Facebook reviewed their guidelines last year. Dating advertisers must now adhere to or risk being banned from advertising with them.
At present, their guidelines state that you must target members who fit the following criteria only:
– 18+
– Have selected single or not specified relationship status
– Have stated that they are interested in the opposite gender
The volume of activity we’ve seen since launching Facebook Ads has allowed us to collect large amounts of data, enabling us to optimise our campaigns quickly and effectively. While there’s still room for improvement, it’s been the start of a great journey so far. Facebook’s targeting options allow you to be extremely granular with the way you target users, so we’ve learnt that it’s essential to structure your campaigns well from the very beginning to avoid getting lost in (data) translation.
Here are a few key things we have learned within our first two months of advertising on Facebook:
- Click through rates (CTR) are almost two times higher on mobile than on desktop.
- Women are more engaged. Even if we reach a higher volume of men with our ads, the CTR for women on desktop is 25% higher than men. They also go on to upgrade at a higher rate.
- Older audiences show better responses, regardless of gender, with CTR being higher for the more mature age group – surprisingly even more so on mobile.
- Where there’s a decrease in desktop impressions, there tends to be an increase on mobile. This marks a transition of users moving from one device to another.
- Men and women respond differently to different types of imagery, for example CTR for success stories was 50% higher for women. It’s important to keep testing to find the right fit.
While you’re busy working behind the scenes, it’s important to keep up appearances on the front line. Make sure your Facebook Page is updated regularly, with unique and sharable content. Ask questions and engage with your customers. Let them get to know your brand’s personality to achieve the optimum performance for your ads.
With all the extra attention you’ll be getting from your Facebook Ads, it’s important to have a strategy in place for handling complaints and abusive behaviour. Whilst the easy option would be to delete such comments, it’s important to show your members that you care and that you are willing to listen and answer their questions. Make a note of frequent questions/complaints and have a professional yet friendly respond ready to use. If the conversation moves past two or three comments, invite them to contact you via private message or email.
Above all, have fun with it! Don’t go for the hard sales pitch. Remember that your customers are people, who want to be talked to rather than talked at.