Have you ever struggled running successful advertising campaigns online? Did you waste your entire budget with little or no results? If so, did you manage to pinpoint the problem? Was it the ad design or the copy? The sales funnel, maybe? Or perhaps you never figured it out…
Well, in today’s article, I will reveal some little-known truths about PPC advertising that could be the cause of your previous failures. And without understanding these, you will not figure out why you failed in the past, and how you can do better in the future.
The truth is that advertising is critically important for growing your business.
Think of it as the salesperson who tells the world about your product. It’s your job as an entrepreneur to identify and build the products or services people need. But it’s the salesman’s job to knock on people’s doors and say: “Hey, I’ve got you – here is the product you need, and here’s why you wanna buy it NOW!”
In our digital world, both the guys and the doors are digital. Facebook is where your ads can reach a billion-plus people. Despite this, the truth is that there are some hidden dangers that you must be aware of first.
Facebook Advertising Is On The Rise, But There Are Dangers Ahead
If you have ever promoted your business to the world online, you’ve probably used online advertising platforms, like Facebook or Google. Why wouldn’t you? They are highly appealing options: they have massive audiences and algorithms that help you target your segment out of it. It comes as no surprise, for example, that in 2020, Facebook’s revenue from ads amounted to $84.2 billion!
But popularity has its hazards. For Facebook and other similar online ad networks such as Google, this was the appearance of click farming. Before paying again for your clicks, let me introduce to you this underground game.
What is click farming?
Click farmers are agencies located in places like Indonesia, the Philippines, and India, where people sit at a desk and click on advertising stuff or fill in opt-in forms. They just do the “clicking,” the “subscribing,” the “liking” of your page.
So you pay to get people’s attention, and if a click farmer clicks, the attention you just paid for has no relevance to your business whatsoever. But you still paid for it!!
Despite the rising efforts of Facebook and other ad networks to fight them back, these guys still find ways to do their job and compromise your advertising.
That’s why, if you don’t know what you’re doing, money spent on Facebook advertising can often be money wasted unless you get meaningful traffic.
Why do click farmers click?
Click farming is illegal, and Facebook and other ad platforms are doing their best to stop them… But click farms do earn a living out of compromising online advertising. How do they get paid?
For instance, unfair competitors buy their services. They hire click farms to click on the ads of their competitors and fill in their opt-in forms in order to run up their ad costs and diminish their profits while providing meaningless data that leads them even further astray!
Even if they’re not after you, their schemes can still endanger your advertising. That’s because click farmers must seek to bypass Facebook’s algorithms so that they don’t get caught. That’s why they try to create profiles and activity that looks organic.
Firstly, they use VPNs and different IPs to create profiles that look organic. Using US-based IPs, they can access US-directed ads.
And they could go unobserved under Facebook’s radar if they’re smart. Secondly, to avoid being caught by Facebook’s detecting software, they click on random ads as well, which include your ads. So you get some traffic that would never buy – it’s fake.
But what’s even more important is not to allow Facebook algorithms to drive more and more of this kind of low-quality traffic.
How Facebook’s Pixel Algorithm Can Work Against You
When advertising with Facebook, you must get the algorithms to work for you through optimization.
If your Facebook pixel optimizes for interaction with free stuff (like traffic or clicks), you’re much more exposed to the risk of click farming.
Think about it like this: if many of your subscribers are click farmers, and you tell the Facebook pixel to get you more subscribers like them, what will happen? The algorithm will bring you more click farmers and others like them! So you’ll get more and more subscriptions from people that are not going to interact ever again with your business.
The algorithm starts working against you as you get thousands of views on the sales page and… 0 sales. Your traffic quality spirals out of control.
So you can see that there’s always a risk when doing online advertising. Luckily, you can get your back covered by prioritizing the quality of your traffic.
High-quality vs. high-volume traffic
The dark side of Facebook advertising is that you can pay big money for low-quality traffic. Why would you need many subscribers if they don’t interact at all with your product? So you must prioritize the quality of your traffic just as much as the quantity. There are 2 main strategies to help you do that and protect against click farming.
No. 1: Optimize your Facebook pixels for purchase events
You see, you don’t need people to like your page once and then never again interact with your business. That’s what click farmers do. They never buy. All they do is click on free stuff.
So you can outsmart their game by setting Facebook algorithms to optimize on buyers. As click farmers don’t purchase, you’ll weed them out of your traffic over time and the Facebook pixel will drive more and more buyers to your stuff. It’s the best way to drive valuable conversions, but it only works if you have something to sell at an affordable price to start with (think the $7-47 range).
No. 2: Partner with those who have your audience
If you’re after lead generation and getting people in your funnels, unconventional forms of paid advertising can be a better alternative for you.
Strategic media buying or partnerships with influencers can get you in the eye of the right prospects. As long as the partnership is trustworthy, it can get you that high-quality traffic more reliably, especially if you’re looking for lead generation.
Summary
We’ve seen people WASTING thousands of dollars on online advertising with literally 0 results. But we’ve also seen people INVESTING thousands in advertising and catapulting their sales, through Facebook advertising or Google ads.
The difference is that they understood what was happening and protected themselves from click farming.
Now you know what it takes to be one of the latter. Here are the most important takeaways:
-> Online PPC advertising is essential for growing your business.
-> When using big Ad Networks like Facebook and Google you must be extra careful about the dangers.
-> Click farming increases your risk of wasting your money on fake traffic.
-> High-quality traffic is hard to come by. So it’s incredibly precious!
-> To get the most of it, optimize the Facebook algorithms on “purchase events” rather than clicks or traffic.
-> If you’re after PPC, unconventional forms of paid advertising (like reaching out to influencers or direct media buying) might work better for you.
-> The best advertising strategy is the one that gets your product right in front of actual buyers.