Facebook Advertising for your Business
With the huge number of people using Facebook, its potential as a marketing platform is massive. Since 2010 advertising on this platform has continued to grow with over a million advertisers spending over $8 billion already! By moving their budget away from traditional marketing channels to increased social spending, many companies have been able to spend less while earning more! In contrast to Google Adwords, Facebook advertising is comparatively low cost and as opposed to targeting a selection of keywords, you are able to directly target your audience.
Once you have created your ad manager account and connected your billing details you will be all set to start creating your adverts. It is a good idea to set up a secondary source of payment in case your primary account runs out of funds. But before you get started making adverts, take the time to check out the functionality of the platform. Browse through the different targeting options and try to realise which ones are applicable to your business and your business aims! You should also check your notification settings at this point to make sure you will be alerted to any activity on your account. You can do this very quickly on the Account Settings page.
As you start to create your advert, Facebook will ask you what the aim of your advert is. You can chose from several options such as to send people to your website, to promote your Facebook page, to increase engagement on your app and many more. So as you can see, it is relatively easy to have a specific aim in mind and to build your advert around it. One of the most commonly used advert aims is to gain traffic and leads for your website. This can be either to increase your reach overall but also to drive traffic to any specific landing page. This function is particularly useful if you are trying to sell a product or get someone to take another direct action, such as signing up to your newsletter.
Once you have decided on your aim you will be taken to the next stage which is to choose your audience through various targeting options. Following that you will then have to write your advert text and choose the image or images you would like to use. It is important to keep your text short and concise. Make sure that you tell the user what it is you want them to do, be it buy your product or simply click through to read something. Also make sure you use a high quality image that reflects your business or the action you want the user to take.
Once you have built your advert you will be able to review all of the information you have submitted and then click to request approval. Your advert will usually be live within the next 15 minutes unless there is a problem. You can then monitor your results on the ad manager homepage where you can change any of the advert details at any time.
By Alix Jones
Leave a Comment