Article by Paul Kirk – www.paulkirkdesign.co.uk

Most people have personal Facebook pages and since ‘Facebook for Business’ debuted in 2011 businesses have been able to do the same – creating pages to be able to communicate, listen and interact with their customer base. 

Facebook for Business advertising had been rather cumbersome and complicated, but a recent update has made things much easier. Facebook is now fast becoming an appealing advertising option for businesses because, unlike print, you can target your advertising specifically using not just geographical location but age, gender, interests and much more – ensuring that you don’t waste your advertising budget.

So what should you do if you’re considering starting a Facebook for Business Ad campaign.

1. Research

Are your current customers using Facebook?  If you’re a hairdresser, beautician or landscape gardener, for instance, you’re more likely to have a customer base on Facebook than an insurance broker or mechanic. Facebook isn’t suitable for every business so it’s important to do your research and see if you have a good potential customer base – check out some of your competitors and see what they’re up to on Facebook. The more research you do the more likely you are to have a successful presence.

2. Identify your marketing objectives

Do you want to inform customers of a specific service or product or are you after ‘likes’ and going for the long term customer base? Define your goals, set a timeframe and plan how you intend to achieve this.

3. Create your Ad

Once you’ve decided on your objective Facebook can then guide you on the best ad type and placement. Then choose your attention grabbing headline, photo (you can up to five on rotation) and short, catchy text for your ad.

4. Target your audience reach

Once you’ve created your ad, you’ll need to decide who sees it. You can target potential customers by their geographical location, age, gender, likes & interests, birthday, relationship status, language, education and even workplace. You can also choose to target just people who have or have not already liked  your page, or the friends of people who already liked your page. The more specific your target audience the less promotional wastage you’ll get.

 
5. Budget

You can either choose a daily or ‘lifetime’ budget for your campaign. You can then decide how you want to pay when someone clicks your Ad.  You either pay for specific ‘actions’ (such as Likes) only paying if someone clicks on your ad, or by per thousand impressions – which is the number of times an ad appears to Facebook users on their pages. Facebook will help you choose the best option for your business. Pricing will vary according to your businesses competition in the demographic criteria that you’re targeting.

6. Analyse

Using Facebook’s analytics suite you’ll be able to see which ads and image options are performing best and adjust your campaign spend accordingly.

Facebook for Business is about socialising liking, sharing and communicating with your customers – its not about immediately buying products/services. Remember communicate, listen and interact.

Find out more about Facebook for Business and creating Facebook Ads at https://www.facebook.com/business/connect

If you’d like help with your website or social media campaign please get in touch.