Facebook is not just for friendly chatting and pictures. It’s actually quite a powerful advertising tool. We’ve gone over social media marketing plans before and you are hopefully well aware of Facebook’s marketing power already. Entering into advertising on Facebook can be intimidating but certainly should not be ingnored.
From your business page, you can opt to advertise your page or boost a post. You can alternatively launch the full Facebook Advertising section from your personal account and manage ads from there. I recommend doing things this way to get into advertising on Facebook.
Pick Your Target
One thing Facebook allows you to do is to define who your audience for your ads. Picking your target demographic is something that should be easy, considering you should know who you are marketing to in your day-to-day marketing. One thing Facebook allows though that other options do not is to narrow down your ad to only people that have already ‘liked’ things on Facebook. If you sell weightlifing accessories, you can target only people who already ‘like’ weightlifting, fitness, exercise, etc. Picking your target is essential to making sure your message sees the right eyes.
Using Facebook’s Tools
Facebook advertising doesn’t have the biggest learning curve. Granted, if you don’t know what CPC or CPM mean you may have to do some research first, but overall it is a very useable interface. If you found Google Adwords a bit intimidating, Facebook adverstising will likely be a bit easier to get a hold of for you.
As I recommend with anything, jump right in and play around for a little bit. Don’t start your campaign until you are comfortable with what you are doing, but play around and see what things look like and soon enough you will get the grasp of it.
As you get more comfortable, you can explore different ads using CPC and CPM methods, as well as Facebook optimized ads to see what is getting you the best results for your dollar.
Setting Your Budget
Budgeting for Facebook Ads comes in two different flavors — per day and per campaign. You can set your maximum daily budget for a specific ad and run it for a specific amount of time, or you can set a lifetime cap for the ad and run it for a specific amount of time. If you are just starting out and only want to spend a few dollars, you can try a campaign for just $5 or $10 per day and get some decent results with minimum risk. Once you better understand Facebook Advertising, you can up the budget.
Personally, I have found that you can get a slow and steady increase in Facebook likes and a pretty decent bump in your reach early in a page’s life with just a few dollars. As your page grows, you will have to increase your budget to compete with other bigger pages, but getting started certainly can be done for not a whole lot.
If you have experience with CPC or CPM marketing, you can play around with your ads and your budget even more to maximize your potential reach and results.
Observe and Immitate
Probably the best advice you can ever take to online marketing is to observe what the companies you admire are doing and do that. Of course you don’t have the budget to always promote like the big boys, but you can often learn quite a bit about how they are promoting things. Make note of their ads – what they look like, how often you see them, the different versions of the same ad, where you see them, etc. If you want to learn about Facebook advertising, watch the companies that are successful and learn from them. That, and just try. Trial and error will always lead you to a better place.
Know Your Goals
If you want to get likes, there are ads just for that. If you want to get a particular post to more eyes, there are ads for that also. Explore the options that Facebook has and you will more than likely find an ad that works just for what you need. Try it out and spend a few dollars and you will learn a lot as you go.
Like any other form of marketing, knowing your goals and customizing your campaign to reach them is critical. Make several versions of your ads and track them. Work towards your goals and you will find Facebook advertising just might become an integral part of your online marketing strategy.