Facebook advertising is one of the best ways to get your product out there – every man and his dog has a profile, so it only makes sense to use it as a way to make your product known. Last year, the social network made an announcement stating that their ad units would be simplified by the end of the year, making many marketers very happy indeed as they felt that what Facebook currently offered them was little help with the goals they wanted to achieve. Now the process is fairly simple, and we’re going to walk you through it.
Image taken from Flickr
Identify Your Goals
The ad type you choose for your particular campaign is totally dependant on your goals. Here are some examples of the different ways you could advertise and what they could do for you:
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Advertising a Facebook page could increase your page likes and promote your page posts.
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Advertising a Facebook event could increase attendance to that event.
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Advertising a Facebook application could increase the amount of mobile and desktop app users and app engagement.
Choose an Ad Type Then Create Your Ad
Once you’ve identified what you would like to achieve with your Facebook ad, it’s time to choose an ad type and create the ad. There are many kinds, and as mentioned before they depend on your goals. Let’s go into a little more detail:
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Normal Facebook ads are commonly shown in the right hand column and news feed combined, or exclusively in the right hand column. If a user clicks on an ad here, they can either be sent to a page within Facebook.com or an outside URL. You can select an image and a couple of lines of text to have with the ad.
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Prompted posts are a way of getting people to see your posts in their newsfeeds. This increases the amount of people that could read your message. These ads are labeled sponsored and show up on a desktop as well as mobile news feeds. People who like your page can see these ads, or people who like your page and their friends.
Select an Audience
Facebook makes it much simpler to reach your audience directly. You can choose to target users based on their interests, age, location, sex, family status, and more. Who could use your product? Select the appropriate audience to keep your ads targeted.
Set Your Pricing
Would you like your ads to run on a daily budget, or a lifetime budget? For daily, you’ll need to select ‘per day’, or select ‘lifetime budget’ to make sure your ads are placed across a specific time period until they hit your specified budget. You can also choose a bidding option, which allows you to be charged on a CPM or CPC basis. You’ll then be able to view the cost of your ads any time.
Test Your Ad
By running multiple versions of your Facebook ad, you’ll be able to test which version is best for your specific audience. Test one part of the ad a time so you know what had the impact on your results.
See, setting up an ad on Facebook is really that simple. Let us know how you go on in the comments!
