Social media advertising isn’t just a buzzword anymore. It’s a real, tangible driver of leads and sales, and marketing departments are increasing their social ad spend across the board in response. For startups it is key to take advantage of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks which are filled with hundreds of millions of consumers.
To help you make use of these valuable new advertising tools, here is a beginner’s guide to Facebook advertising.
Ad types
Facebook has one of the more complex social advertising platforms. There are numerous categories that every ad can fall under. The main categories are based on objective. They are:
Page Post Engagement: Promote well-performing posts
Page Likes: Get Likes for your page and grow your audience
Clicks to website: Get people to visit your website.
Website conversions: Promote specific conversions for your website.
Video Views: Create ads that increase views on a video
App Installs: Get people to install your mobile or desktop app
App Engagement: Get people to use your desktop app
Offer Claims: Create offers for people to claim in your store
Event Responses: Increase event attendance
Several of these ad types might fall under the category of boosted posts, or content that you’ve posted organically that you then choose to promote.
Once you choose the ad type, you also need to decide on placement. Your options are in the Facebook News Feed, the Facebook mobile News Feed or the Facebook right hand column.
Audience and targeting
Like Twitter, on Facebook you can target audiences based on location, language, age and other common demographics. For many people, Facebook is far more valuable when it comes to targeting people by interest. Facebook let’s you choose from a remarkably large list of interests so you can target, for example, people who love Aviation or people who love snack foods (or both). Additionally, Facebook let’s you target people based on behaviours, like their purchasing behaviours and charitable donations. This offers real opportunity to find the audience that matches your ideal prospects.
Pricing
It’s extremely difficult to pin down an average cost for Facebook ads, since it will vary drastically between businesses and ad types. Some sources report Facebook ads averaging around 25 cents for every 1,000 impressions while others point to it being over six or seven dollars. The key is to test your ads in various formats to find out which is most cost-effective for you.
With Facebook you have the choice of using a cost per click (CPC) bid, or a cost per thousand impressions (CPM) bid. The former is a great choice to start off with but if your ad is performing very well, the CPM model may be cheaper since those impressions will come easier. Either way you will only pay for the impressions you receive.
How to buy
The buying process for Facebook ads might seem long at 6 steps, but it’s quite fluid, as almost all of your actions take place on one screen.
Step 1: Choose your campaign objective
Pick from among the ad types described above. Once you do, you’ll be prompted to choose which Facebook page you’ll be promoting and to name your campaign.
Step 2: Create your ad account
If you haven’t already, you’ll be forced to enter your information to create an ad account, including currency and time zone.
Step 3: Target your ad
Facebook calls this choosing your ad set. Essentially you need to choose from all the targeting options and segment the audience of your ads. Facebook informs you if your choices make the ad’s potential reach very broad or very specific.
Step 4: Set your budget
How much do you want to spend per day and on what schedule?
Step 5: Build your ad
Add the images and text you want to use in your ad, and then choose the placement (news feed, mobile news feed or right column).
Step 6: Review and place your order
Review your ad campaign and then place your order. Facebook reviews all ads that get submitted before approving them and sending them out into the world.