Facebook Advertising for Effective Targeting

Hi again guys. Lets have a look at Facebook & Facebook Advertising today.

When it comes to social media, Facebook is among the top names that pop to our mind. Millions of people use Facebook to connect & interact with their friends all over the world on a daily basis. As marketers we see this as access to a wide market with better communications. You may have seen that many organizations & brands, big or small have a presence in Facebook.

If you take a Facebook page of a company, their are 3 important items. They are,

• Content - The pictures, statuses, company information, etc. you share on your page to interest your fans.
• Applications - The various applications that are used to encourage fans to engage with the page.
• Sponsored Ads - Advertising the page & the brand through Facebook.

Content plays a major role in this. If the page does not have good & valued content, the mere number of likes or paid advertisements will be of very little use. You must plan ahead as to what content & what categories you will upload & when you will do so. Also you should identify what you will avoid from sharing on your page.

As for an example we have created a Facebook page for the local business of Salon LIYO in order to promote their business & create a loyal fan base.

Today we see many pages promote some kind of a promotion on & off. This is most of the time a contest. It is important to identify "do we need to do a contest just because everyone is doing so?". There are several things you need to know before you embark on a promotional activity on your Facebook page. Also you should go through the terms & conditions of Facebook well too. For example according to Facebook guidelines (https://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php) you should not promote to like a picture on your page as the competition.

Facebook Ads

It is said that usually the reach of a page post on Facebook is below 20% of the total fan base. But with a proper advertising campaign you can almost triple this reach.

There are basically two types of Ads on Facebook. One is the small advertisements that come up on the right hand side bar of the browser when you are in Facebook. The other is the sponsored stories that come in the news feed in your home page. This happens mainly when your friends like the sponsored pages or share their content.

To create a Facebook Ad, you can go to facebook.com/ads & select create an Ad. You can promote either an external website URL, a Facebook page or an Facebbo App through the advertisement.

There are several objectives you can achieve through these Ads. You can use the Facebook Ads to Gain more likes to your page, get more clicks or impressions. Or to promote a specific post. So you need to select your objective well for better results from your Ads.

 

And now you can design your Ad. You can add a picture to increase the attractiveness of your Ad. And also you can select the sponsored stories option alongside your Ads. This is provided free of charge by Facebook.

Then you need to define your target audience. This is very important. Facebook allows you to define the target audience based on country, city, age, gender, and even the relationship status. The below given picture will give you an understanding about this. For example for a small gents clothing store in a small geographic area, they can ensure that their Ad will only be displayed to the males with in the age category and in the immediate vicinity of the store. This will help to gain more fruitful results from the Ad cost spent.

 

Also we can ensure the Ad will not be displayed to those who have already liked our page etc. This helps to reduce the wastage of money talking to the same person again & again.

Now you can set the budget for your Ads. You can allow Facebook to bid by just setting a daily budget limit or you can bid yourself for greater results.This will help you to keep track of your Ad cost and to ensure you do not exceed your limit.

So you can see that Facebook Ads can be customized to be more targeted to the specific needs & characteristics of the individual viewer (for example you can design separate Ads for males & females who are single, in a relationship, married, divorced and target those properly & get much better results at a very low cost) & this will help to extract sales from small niches in the market.

Hope this was of some use to you. Do leave a comment.