Facebook Ads: Hip? Hype? Or Huh?

4. Timing: For the end-of-year campaign, the last 24 hours had much stronger performance than earlier in the month. Facebook donors may respond best at the last minute.

5. Messaging: CARE did an interesting test of a more emotional ad (first image) vs. a more institutional impact-oriented ad (second image). Contrary to expectations, the impact-oriented ad did far better with an immediate return more than twice that of the emotional ad.

6. Test and refine: As with everything in direct marketing, some ad units performed much better than others. There’s an opportunity to grow future volumes and returns by testing and building on the learnings to date.

7. Who should try this: The short answer at this point is, “We don’t know.” We’re still in the very early stages. However, the national nonprofits with global footprints, big brands and strong social-media presences seem best-positioned to make use of these new tools. Other charities may benefit as well but may not be as good a near-term fit. Time and testing will tell.

Want to start a Facebook Custom Audience or Lookalike model ad campaign? Try checking with online-marketing agencies, direct-marketing agencies or list brokers — or do it in-house via Facebook.

Thoughts? Drop us a note. We would love to hear about your results from your recent Facebook advertising testing.

(The authors want to acknowledge the time and insight shared by some industry experts including Adam Gerber of M+R and Kiera Stein of CARE. Many thanks to you!)

Karin Kirchoff is vice president at MINDset Direct. Reach her at kkirchoff@mindsetdirect.com. Jeff Regen is vice president of development at WETA TV 26 and Classical WETA 90.9 FM. reach him at jregen@weta.org