Top 5 Facebook Advertising Tips

Before you brush off Facebook as not suitable for your advertisements, whether online or offline, do consider these Facebook facts and statistics first:

(1) Facebook has 845 million monthly active users and an average of 483 million daily active users as at end December 2011. Source here. With the world’s population estimated at 7 billion, that’s approximately 12% or 1 in every 8 people who are logging into Facebook actively.

(2) More than half the monthly active users (425 million) are logging in using Facebook mobile products. Source here. Generally, mobile users are more active, largely because they don’t switch off their phones.

(3) In 2010, it was found that a user spends more than 55 minutes on Facebook daily. Source here.

With so many people worldwide spending so much time on Facebook, doesn’t it justify to say that it is a made for marketing platform? Think of all those potential customers that you may have missed out! Now that I have you considering Facebook as part of your marketing channel, let’s look at the mechanics behind putting an ad on Facebook.

As modern advertisement move from print to digital, the audience pool has increased tremendously. Unlike geographically limited traditional advertisements, advertisers now have the ability to bring their ads to worldwide attention. Having said that, there are also advertisers who would like to target local audiences only, perhaps to announce an event. With digital advertising, that can be arranged too.

Why use Facebook?

Good question. Facebook brings a whole new meaning to online advertisement, giving the advertisers the flexibility to determine their target audiences, their budget and how the ad should look like.

Types of Facebook Advertisements

There are 2 Facebook ads categories ie Facebook Ads and Facebook Sponsored Stories. And these are further expanded into 10 types of Facebook ads. Not all of these ads type are available to everyone. It depends on your Facebook page, fan base and the plug-ins you have. The difference between these ads lies in the flexibility in tweaking the ads and the number of audiences you can target.

The other thing that you should be aware of is the ads terms used by Facebook.

(a) Cost Per Click (CPC) – as its name suggest, you will only pay when others click on your ads and visit your website. This is suitable for those who want to draw people to their websites based on a certain budget.

(b) Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM) – In this case, you would be charged when your ads are viewed (even if they don’t click on it). This is suitable for those who want to create awareness rather than conversions.

(c) Click-Through Rate (CTR) – This is calculated by dividing the number of clicks you’ve got (CPC) over the number of times your ads was shown (CPM) and is a good analytical measurement to determine the effectiveness of your ads.

With such potential and flexibility, would it be safe to say that Facebook advertisers will experience overnight success in their marketing campaigns? Well, unfortunately no. Many lack the patience or effort to fully utilize the potential of Facebook advertising. In order to have effective results, advertisers need to dedicate time and effort and of course funds too. Here are some tips that are able to help you in adapting your ads to achieve best possible results.

Tip #1: Selecting Your Target Audiences

The one thing that Facebook ads have an advantage over other means of online ads (like search engines ads) is that you have the option to choose your target audiences. If you are unsure of where to start, you can utilize Quantcast to help you determine your website’s audience measurements and then use these measurements to select the relevant demographics for your ads.

Tip #2: Bidding

Now that you have narrowed down your target viewers, it’s time to bid. You can apply this guideline that I generally use when I start a new Facebook ad campaign.

In a new ad campaign, you would want to test out the effectiveness of your ad so it’s best to start with CPC. You can run a few ads and then analyze which ad has more clicks. Or you can run one ad and keep tweaking the ad copy (text) and images and testing to see which version is most effective.

After you have identified the ad you want to run, then you can convert to CPM. This would enable your ad to be seen more often. Kind of a reminder to Facebook users of your existence. You could adjust your bidding price accordingly too.

Tip #3: Don’t Forget Your Friends of Connections

One great thing about social media is that it links you with your fans’ friends, which in ordinary circumstances, would probably remain strangers. So it is advisable to also select the Friends of Connections option.

This method leverages on the peer pressure factor where there is a higher chance that your fans’ friends would be curious enough to check out your ad once they see their friend (your fan) connecting to your page / website. This would be less sales-like and can be powerful depending on your fan base.

The only down side is that it limits your number of impressions compared to if you run your ads without this Friends of Connections option. Both options have its pros and cons so it boils down to what your objective is. Relevant audiences or large pool of viewers.

Tip #4: Monitoring Your Ads

Since Facebook ads campaigns are self determined, it is crucial that advertisers monitor their ads. One of the ways to do so is base on CTR. The higher your CTR is, the more effective your ad is and the lower CPC or CPM Facebook will charge.

There would be a time when your CTR would reduce by a lot and this would mean that you may have exhausted the interested users in your current targeted audiences. In this case, you may want to change your target group or start a new ad campaign. Continuing with the current ad would only do damage to your pocket without bringing you results.

Tip #5: Landing Page

This does not directly link to Facebook advertisement but nevertheless I find it important enough to deserve a mention here. When you spend so much to direct traffic to your page / website / event, it is only justifiable that you create a landing page that would attract these viewers to browse around or convert.

One of the popular options is to provide a free gift or allowing them to enter a contest in return for an email address, which you can add to your email marketing campaign list.

Facebook is undoubtedly one of the most affordable traffic generator social media currently. I believe most advertisers should harness the potential of advertising on Facebook to drive a tremendous amount of traffic, be it for their businesses, events, websites or even Facebook page. And by applying the above mentioned tips, I hope that you are able to increase the effectiveness of these advertisements without much confusion. Do share your experiences.

Alicia is a WordPress themes designer. She can be found on WordPress Themes Reviews, where she shares her latest WordPress themes review, blog designing ideas and many more. Check out her latest Elegant Themes Review. Her favorite WordPress theme designer is Elegant Themes.