Social media advertising works for marketing. Facebook continues to be the leading platform for social media marketing. A well-designed campaign will generate impressions, clicks, and conversions. Advertisers have found that Facebook advertising is a very affordable online marketing solution. It generates high-quality traffic with very strong ROI.
While it does take some work, it’s possible to see some great results with a budget of only $5 a day.
If you’re new to using Facebook Ads you’ll find there’s a lot to learn. You need to not only create engaging ads, but you also need to find the right audience, set an adequate budget and eventually measure the effectiveness of your work.
Facebook estimates that over three million businesses are now on Facebook and there are 1.13 billion active users connecting to the social network daily, many of whom are on mobile devices. Running Facebook Ads provides you the ability to broadcast a message to the right people at the right time.
Pros of Facebook Advertising
- It’s easy to track your campaigns
- Instant gains in traffic
- You have complete control of your daily budget and cost-per-click (CPC)
- Instant ROI
- You can target your ads based on towns, regions, age, likes/interests, income bracket and many other demographic elements
- Easier to set up than Google AdWords
- Find people while they are early in the buying process
- You can easily use video and photos in your advertisements
- The CPC is very affordable when compared to other platforms
Cons of Facebook Ads
- When not set up properly, Facebook Ads can be expensive
- It’s easy to add too many people to your audience, this will lead to increased cost
- Unless you’re using a lifetime budget you cannot target your ads to appear at specific times of the day or certain days of the week
- Reaching people too early in the buying cycle could reduce your goal conversion rate
Setting up your new Facebook Ads campaign begins by going to the Facebook Ads dashboard (https://www.facebook.com/ads/manager). The dashboard allows you to create a new campaign and manages all elements of an existing campaign. You’ll find a lot of useful features in the dashboard and with time you’ll find it easier to navigate.
Running the Right Facebook Ad
Facebook Ads are very versatile. There are 11 main ways Facebook can produce results for your online marketing.
A Facebook campaign can allow you to:
- Boost your posts
- Promote your Facebook Page
- Send people directly to your website
- Increase the amount of conversions on your site
- Get people to install your mobile application
- Increase the engagement of your application
- Reach people geographically near your business
- Get more people to attend you event
- Get people to claim your offer
- Get more video reviews
- Collect more leads for your sales team
The Facebook dashboard will allow you the ability to set up campaigns with each of these focuses as a goal.
Pick the Right Audience
After setting up your Facebook campaign’s focus you’ll be asked to select an audience to target. Facebook is loaded with some very targeted audience information. There are many elements you can choose from to target the right people for your online brand. Essentially, Facebook allows you the ability to quickly choose precisely who sees your ad, all based on hundreds of factors. You define your audience by locations, age, gender, language, interests, behaviours, connection and dozens of other criteria. The dashboard’s map integration allows you to have a great visual snapshot of your geographic targeting.
How to Set a Budget for a Facebook Campaign
The budget settings of the Facebook Ads dashboard lets you set how much money you want to spend on your ad and when you want to start spending it.
Facebook will default you to a $20 daily budget, this can easily be changed based on your needs. You can also tell Facebook when to start broadcasting your ad and when to turn it off.
It’s clear that Facebook is not showing any signs of slowing down. The social media giant continues to launch really innovative tools for both end users and advertisers. Facebook provides an unparalleled ability to customize the audience seeing your ads and its ROI is very strong when compared to other marketing expenses.
Toronto and area business owners will quickly see that there’s a lot of learning with Facebook Advertising. We’ve been helping local businesses of all sizes succeed on Facebook, please feel free to send along any questions.