A Guide to Domain Sponsored Stories - How we got a Facebook CTR of 8.62%

There are over 20 different Facebook ad types so advertisers could be forgiven for not wanting to run experiments on all of them. But there is one advert that you should definitely not neglect to try: Domain Sponsored Stories. Over a week-long trial campaign for our friends at Lost My Name children's books we achieved an average CTR of 8.62%, with CPC 25% lower than our previous record, and over 50% lower than our typical CPC.

Sponsored stories are a special category of Facebook ads that highlight social endorsement. With domain sponsored stories, you can pay to promote a user's post to their friends if it includes a link to your website. This makes these adverts extremely easy to set up, since you promote user-generated content and do not create the copy yourself. The flipside is that if your brand is controversial, you may end up paying to promote negative sentiments. More commonly, domain stories boost the Facebook post that is created when a user clicks the Facebook "like" button on your website. You are also given the same targetting options as on other ads with domain stories so you can narrow down who can see them.

Why not give it a go? Just follow our guide below. I'd love to hear about your results via Twitter: @driftrock

Here is what you need to prepare in advance:

(1.) Install the Facebook 'like' button on your website

Maximise the audience for your domain story by not relying just on organically shared links but also boosting 'likes' of the website!

Just follow the instructions on the Facebook developers page.

(2.) Associate your domain with your Facebok page

This is the tricky bit. Before you can create a sponsored story you need to claim your domain by adding a bit of code to your website. Facebook has a guide on how to do this on their website.

Alternatively, you can also create an app for your domain. create an app for your domain.

(3.) Download the Power Editor extension for Google Chrome.

Setting up your Domain Sponsored Story

(1.) Go to www.facebook.com/ads and open the Power Edior.

(2.) Create a new campaign and advert.

Instead of selecting an objective from the pull-down menu, click on the "use old advert types" link.

(3.) Select "about an app" or "about people sharing links to my domain", depending on the method you chose above, and fill out the rest of the form. To see which locations, genders and age groups perform best, you need to create a different ad for each targetting group that you want to test.

That's it!

Now it's your turn!

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