With ALL advertising (paid and free) it's important to understand what represents a 'good' advertisement.

1.  You need to be clear who your target audience is.
No matter what you think, it isn't everyone on facebook or everyone on the internet, or everyone anywhere.  Your target might be people searching for former friends/classmates.  Your target might be people wanting to do a background check or criminal records check.  Your target might be someone trying to locate a 'lost' family member.  Your target might be someone who wants to find out who's been looking for them.  The possibilities are many.

2.  Once you've determined your target audience, clarify your mental picture of who fits that target.
If we use the example of background checks, then you might target parents - perhaps they want to do a check on the background of potential nannies, or of the soccer coach, or of the guy who has somehow connected to their daughter on a social network.

3.  Put yourself in the position of your target audience and write your ad directly to them.
What do they want or need?  What do they fear?  What do they love.  In this case where we are discussing background checks, "Does your nanny have a criminal record?" could be an ad title, and you would create ad text around doing criminal records check or background check.  Then, be sure to SEND THE PROSPECT DIRECTLY TO THE BACKGROUND CHECK LINK.  Don't send them to the generic search engine - they don't know what to do when they get there, so they click away from your site - I'd guess this may have happened to anyone who gets plenty of hits but no results.  The point here is "send the targeted traffic to a targeted landing" -- not a generic one.

4.  Run your ad for a short, trial period and see what the results are.
If using paid advertising always start with a small budget and monitor it carefully.  I spend no more than $5 on a paid advertisement until I know whether it's successful.  Even if your ad IS successful, monitor it for changes in the results you're getting.  If ever the results are not what you would reasonably expect, then tweak the ad campaign -- ie, change the target, change the demographics (on Facebook), change the ad.  If you continue to get no results/very poor results, STOP THE ADS and start again from step 1 (defining your target).

Remember these steps are the same whether your advertising is paid or free, and regardless of the venue you are advertising on.  The guidelines can be used to advertise all the aspects of the Acme referral program (or anything else you  ever want to advertise), but utilizing a different target/different keywords/different demographic than you used for marketing your search engine.

If you can afford it, join a program such as Wealthy Affiliate or Affiliate Classroom.  Whether you can afford to undertake paid training in marketing and advertising or not, and whether you are an experienced marketer or a newbie DO THE THIRTY DAY CHALLENGE - it's free, you get a lot of tools, and you'll be getting practical advice & information from some of the best affiliate marketers out there.  (Plus you get great marketing tools to use during the challenge - tools like Market Samurai).  (For more info about the 30DC, read my post here)

As a marketer, it's your responsibility to become good at targeted advertising, otherwise there's no reason to be in this business.  Learn to Earn.

Mary Payton