Internet Marketing and SEO by YouMedia

Getting Started in Facebook Advertising

An option many online marketers report increasing success with is Facebook ads. Facebook advertising does not work quite like the search engines. Let's take a look at the following details:

Setting Campaign Goals

Many marketers are running Facebook ads to promote their facebook pages or apps. There is nothing wrong with setting a goal related to social media, like number of new fans, equally it is nothing wrong with setting traditional campaign goals (e.g. direct sales, or traffic) for your Facebook advertising efforts.

Promoting your Facebook social media will necessitate different ad texts, URLs, calls to action and probably spend levels than a more traditional online marketing campaign driving traffic direct to your site. Do not mix and match them if you decide to market via Facebook ads for both.

Creating Facebook Ads

When creating Facebook ads that link to a non-Facebook site, definitely use tracking parameters in URLs as you would for any online marketing. Facebook ads also really benefit from including an image. Click-through rate is much higher for ads with images than those that are text only.

Targeting Tips

The key feature of Facebook advertising is the advanced targeting options. Besides location, demographic and language, there is a robust set of likes, interests and connections options that are worth exploring depending on your campaigns.

Connections on Facebook provides powerful targeting features. You can choose to target profiles that are only connected to a page you manage, which is a great way to market to your current audience. The more compelling feature is to exclude this audience by focusing on those profiles which are not already connected to your page. If your campaign is set on generating new fans, this feature will help narrow the focus of your campaign.

One additional element to consider is encouraging people to “like” your Facebook ad. You could consider this to tbe similar to Google Ad's Quality Score. Therefore, encouraging friends or fans to like the ad, if possible given your targeting, may help the ad’s success rate.

Measuring Success

Facebook ads are a lot more like running a banner or display campaign than search engine marketing; do not expect a search engine marketing result for direct sales campaigns. Click-through rates are generally lower than search and conversion rates can also be low. That said, some advertisers are a great fit and see wild success via these campaigns, others are disappointed with the results when comparing to other marketing channels.

Branding can be an important element of success measurement for Facebook. There is no denying that Facebook is a highly trafficked site and one that many online marketers feel they simply need or benefit from a presence on Facebook as part of their strategy. Since CTRs are on the low side and pricing is CPC based, there are a lot of free impressions being generated for an advertiser.