A Guide to Facebook Advertising

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This is a guest post by Dane Cross, if you want to guest post on this blog, please contact us.

Pretty much every business has a specific demographic of customer to which their product or service is aimed at – and it’s very likely that they have a Facebook account. Whilst it’s relatively straightforward to advertise on what is widely regarded as the king of social networking sites, it’s crucial that you take some consideration into what your business goals are and how best to spread your brand awareness across Facebook.

Whilst Facebook provides a wide array of advertising options, including events, pages and apps, this article will focus on advertisements.

Facebook Advertising Guide

Many will agree that it’s easier for search engine ads to attract attention as opposed to Facebook ads, given that the potential customer will be actively searching for your product or service. This means you need to have something in the advertisement that will generate curiosity and intrigue, drawing the users eye to your ad text. A good headline and visually appealing image is a great way to do this.

Facebook: Some Facts

  • There are over eight hundred million active Facebook users around the world
  • More than 70% of users are outside the US
  • The average Facebook user is a member of 80 community pages, groups and events
  • The most active Facebook user tends to be between the ages of 13 and 24

Generally speaking, Facebook has a lower click through rate for advertisements than most major websites. It was recently reported that Google’s first position click through rate is 8% on average, whereas Facebook’s currently stands at 0.04%.
It’s worth taking into account that an estimated 70% of businesses have banned access to Facebook during work hours. If your company sells B2B products or services then this may have a detrimental effect on the campaign.

It is also rumoured that Facebook are soon planning on entering the mobile advertising business, due to the dramatic rise of mobile traffic resulting from the uptake of smartphones.

Targeting Options

Knowing your target audience is crucial to any advertising strategy. Start by thinking of your ‘perfect customer’. What is there gender? How old are they? Are they single? What are their hobbies and interests? Use the finer details to target your advertisement to a specific group of people, giving thought and consideration to the ad copy. What can really steal your customers’ attention away?

Location Targeting

Remember to factor in location. You can be as broad or as specific as you like – from an entire country to a small town.

Demographic

Male, female, or both can be selected to aim your advertisement towards. There are two types of age targeting – exact and broad match. It is recommended to keep age targeting set to ‘broad matching’, which will show ads to users just outside of your designated target age.
You can also select advanced user criteria, including language, relationship status, education and employment details.

Targeting Interests

There are three targeting methods for refining your target audience:

  1. Precise interests will target niche categories determined by the terms that your target audience have used in their Facebook timeline. These terms might be related to their interests, occupation, groups they are a member of, pages they like etc.
  2. Topic targeting allows you to target specific certain topics by scanning for hashtags. For example, #jeans will target those who like boot cut jeans, skinny jeans and more specific interests that are closely related to jeans.
  3. Broad category includes users who have included content related to a certain category in their profile. This category provides some useful options.

Let’s say you’re a company who sells house insurance. You would obviously benefit by targeting those over 18, but it might also pay off to focus on people who have recently moved home:

Facebook Advertising Guide

Let’s say you run a dog grooming salon in California. It would make sense to target US residents, particularly those in California, who have demonstrated an interests in pets:

Facebook Advertising Guide

Connection Targeting

Connection targeting allows a company to exclude connections and friends of connections who have already interacted with them in the last 30 days. ‘Interactions’ applies to page likes, event RSVP’s, group membership, or use of an app:

Facebook Advertising Guide

Ad Optimisation

It is best to try out multiple ads on different audiences to get an idea of what works and what doesn’t. Usually, two advertisements per audience and similar optimisation to a search campaign will work effectively.
Facebook has an interface similar to that of Google AdWords when presenting data:

Facebook Advertising Guide

  • Reach represents the amount of people who saw the advertisement. This does not mean the same thing as impressions, as each person probably saw the ad more than once.
  • Frequency is the average number of times each Facebook user saw the ad.
  • Social reach gives details on who saw the advertisement/sponsored story through friends who had already responded to your event invitation, liked your page or used your app.
  • Connections means the amount of people who like your Facebook Page, RSVP’d to your event or installed your app within 24 hours of seeing the advertisement/sponsored story.

We hope this guide can help you to optimize your ads on Facebook. Do you have an experience with facebook advertising? Or do you have another great tips? Please share with us in the comment below.

About the Author!

Dane Cross currently writes on behalf of Marler Haley, a UK based provider of advertising displays and exhibition stands. He enjoys film, music, art and can be followed on Twitter.

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  1. […] … advertising? Or do you have another great tips? Please … … Continued here: A Guide to Facebook Advertising | iBrandStudio ← Facebook Web Marketing Strategy – How the Application Works […]

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