Believe it or not, Facebook is about more than posting snapshots of your lunch and sharing selfies. No, really. With over 1.79 billion daily active users worldwide, perusing the social network, Facebook also happens to be one of the most powerful marketing tools for businesses. Beyond simply setting up a page and engaging with your clients and prospects, Facebook also offers the option to participate in paid advertising, which is more likely to get your brand in front of the faces of your most valuable audience.
Of course, as with everything else, Facebook advertising is somewhat of an art. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do it, and if you’re in the latter category, you’re wasting your hard earned money for nothing. So, without further ado, I present to you “how to advertise on Facebook the right way” (or something like that….I’m still working on the title).
First, define your objectives. Don’t just throw a bunch of ads up all willy nilly. Understand what your goals are and then create a separate campaign for each of them. This will make it exponentially easier to track and analyze results, which will tell you if you’re wasting time and money anywhere.
Now that you know what you’re trying to accomplish, the next step is defining your audience. Who are you trying to reach with your ad campaigns? This information can help you better design your ads and hone your approach so that you get the most out of your efforts. For example, if you’re product or service is geared toward men aged 18-35, you want to design and promote your ads to better reach that demographic.
Next it’s time to design your ads. Facebook has a pretty intuitive ad creator that starts you with objectives and walks you through the entire process to design and craft your ad campaign. This is fine for smaller businesses that only want to run a few campaigns. For larger businesses or those that plan to create and market with lots of ads, the Power Editor tool might be more useful.
Create a number of different ads using various images, features and sizes. You can then test the performance of each ad to see which ones work better and which may need to be modified or scrapped altogether. Even the color scheme you use can make a difference. Did you know that yellow is considered to be the “happiest” color? Seriously. It’s cool stuff, you should check it out.
When setting up your Facebook advertising campaign, choose “Optimized CPM” and “Use Default Bids”. This basically allows Facebook to adjust the bidding for ad space. This is based on the goals you selected when setting up your ad campaigns. Facebook will adjust your budget based on those goals to maximize your marketing spend.
Split your efforts between mobile and web. Some campaigns will work better on a desktop or laptop, while others will be geared more toward smartphones, tablets and other mobile device. Both are important so don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
Test your ad results on a regular basis. This is almost as critical as defining your objectives. Because, well, how on earth can you know if your hard work and marketing allocation are working if you’re not checking the response to your campaigns? Be patient with this part. Sometimes it can take several trials and analyses to finally get it right.
These are the basics. It really just takes some time, effort and determination (I know you’ve got it in you!) to launch and maintain successful Facebook advertising campaigns, but I promise….when all that new business starts rolling in and you’ve got prospective customers practically throwing their money at you, it’ll all have been well worth it.
