Beat the FaceBook Review Problem

Sick of Getting Your Ads Rejected by Facebook?  Try this…

Any affiliate marketer doing volumes that utilizes facebook as a traffic source has dealt with facebook banning ads.  Facebook can be very ban-happy, especially when dealing with ads placed by affiliate marketers.

There are of course many techniques and strategies for trying to solve the facebook ad rejection issue.  Most current affiliates have been resorting to more blackhat methods such as cloaking, which allows them to run more “spammy” type campaigns.  However, what if you prefer a more whitehat approach?  What can you do to increase your chances of getting your ads accepted and still maintain some profitability?

I have a “friend” (wink, wink), that is currently running some cloaked campaigns on facebook, and he made a happy mistake which lead to a discovery that we can learn from.

“LJ” we will call him, was running some cloaked campaigns in which he was showing facebook a landing page during the review process that was actually a facebook fan page instead of an off-facebook domain landing page.

Obviously, the idea here is that facebook seems to trust landing pages on their own domain names a bit more than an outside domain name.  Thus, the ads are more likely to be approved if the landing page is a facebook fan page.

With the cloaking concept he was using, and without going into detail, he was basically showing facebook one thing, getting the approval, and then sending visitors to something completely different.  However, LJ stumbled upon a very surprising find.

While setting up a campaign and turning it on for review, LJ noticed he had a profitable campaign PRIOR to the old bait and switch being setup.  In other words, LJ was making a profit by sending his facebook traffic to a facebook fanpage first…which then linked to the landing page and offer he was promoting.

He then began to tweak the facebook fan page and ended up with a very profitable campaign, no cloaking needed.  Since then, he has found other campaigns where this worked great as well.

The other great thing we found about setting up pages like this is that, if done correctly, you can get a lot of “likes” which can send even more free/viral traffic.  This was an added benefit we didn’t really expect initially.  Note:  to get this to work, you really have to be pushy about getting people to press that like button.  See the examples of pages like BMW that make you like the page before seeing the blurred out content.

LJ wasn’t willing to spill the beans on the campaigns and show his exact landing pages of course, so I’ve included some example facebook fan pages that might spark your ideas.

There are plenty of facebook page templates and tutorials out there, so I won’t waste your time with that.  However, let me leave you with some quick tips that might help you with this method.

• Keep the message SIMPLE.  Make sure the page is very direct in your call to action without tons of clutter and information.  Remember, you simply want them to very briefly be convinced to click through to your lander.  Think squeeze page.
• Squeeze Page.  You can actually put your squeeze page as your fan page.  See the subway example below.

• Giant banner design works.  With the current testing I have seen, it seems that creating a large image, like a giant banner, works well.  Banners are designed to get attention and get a click through…and this is exactly what you want your fan page to do.  Use banner design principals and you’ll be good.  The NFL page is a decent example of basically a large banner.

• Large call to action button.  Make everything clickable, but be sure you have a giant call to action button that is readily obvious.
• Reason to click.  Give them a reason to follow your giant and simple call to action…and it better be a really good one for them to leave facebook and wander off into your world.
• If you have good media…use it.  If the product you are promoting has a great video, then by all means, test it on your page.  The Victoria’s Secret page uses video.

• Sneaky Click Tricks.  You can use images of a video player, scroll bars, etc. to entice people to click.  The click can then simply take them to your lander or the offer page.  I’ve seen some sneaky click tricks get 90% visitor to clicks and higher.  Cheetos example below, although it actually links to a video.

Hopefully these facebook fan pages can give you an idea of what is possible.  If you’re having major problems getting your facebook ads approved and profitable, make a facebook fan page as your landing page, and you will likely be pleasantly surprised.