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Friday, December 6, 2013

Facebook Advertising

By Joe Burke


Leveraging your following on Facebook is a great way to advertise your products or services. Taking it to the next level, you might consider placing Facebook ads which is a great way to generate addition money and prospects for your business.

Many people start in the paid advertising arena by placing ads on Google, via Adwords. If you have, then you know the power of direct advertising to your target market. It's likely that you received a number of visitors who were searching for your particular keyword or phrase and may have obtained a list of qualified buyers, or even customers as a result.

Before you Put Ads on FaceBook

Understand your Target Market

FaceBook's demographic information is in some aspects better than that of Google Adsense. With FaceBook you can really drill down to exactly who your target audience is: location, age, sex, education, etc. These are known as demographic bins, and there are thousands of them. Take your time researching and use FaceBook Insight to help, as you progress.

If you have a very good idea who your target audience is, you might want to employ automated bid software that's been designed specifically for helping FaceBook advertisers. More research will find the one that will work best for you.

Create your FaceBook Ads

A lot of research has gone into creating effective advertisements. What words work, and what words don't work are all well documented in books like, "Words That Sell". But the truth is, creating a winning ad is as much an art as it is a science.

If your not experienced in the marketing industry, or ad creation niche, it's a great idea to hire a pro. Don't risk losing your marketing dollars to a poorly written ad. A professional image, and ad, will speak a great deal about the professionalism of your company.

You should also consider having a number of different ads, even if they portray the same message. Rotating the advertisements out with one another will keep your page fresh and new and will give your visitors something different to look at should they come back again. Keep your Facebook page as interactive and thrilling as possible - the people who see it then will want to share it with friends, and those friends will share with more friends. See where that could lead?

Click through rates (CTR) are relatively low on FaceBook - you have to break through the clutter if you want to be effective.

If you wouldn't want to click on your own ad - who else will?

Once Your Advertisement is LIVE on FaceBook

Are You Watching Closely?

You should have already planned to spend about 30 minutes a day answering comments and creating new content for your FaceBook page. Part of that time should involve monitoring - and you can learn a lot.

Perhaps you thought you knew your target market intimately, but by looking carefully at the data you may discover there are other demographics visiting your page. This information will help you adjust and perhaps broaden the reach of your ads on FaceBook.

Be sure to run your advertisements with some tracking software. Know how many clicks your getting, know how many clicks are converting to sales, and know if your advertising dollars are spent well or not.

Friends of Connections

The average FaceBook account has a little over 130 friends. If your one of those people with 130 followers, that's approximately 17,000 people that you can potentially expose your message to. This is a "shot gun" look, because your ad will cross the eyes of people that may, or may not match your target demographic.

If your running ads on Facebook for the very first time, do not use the CPM option, but rather use cost per click (CPC).




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