Facebook Advertisements

Facebook adds are an useful marketing tool and can be used to advertise a blog, website, or Facebook page.  

Facebook adds can appear in one's news-feed directly or on the right side of the Facebook page. 

An advertisement that appeared directly in my news feed

An advertisement that was on the right side of my Facebook news-feed

Facebook as mentioned in previous posts, provides data! This holds true with their advertising options. You can see how many people the add was displayed to (reach), how many people actually clicked on the add, the click through rate ( percent of people who clicked the add out of total),   The extra data may be interesting, but what's really important is how many people are clicking on the advertisement. As a marketer, you want people to see the add, and follow the link to find more information about the product. If no one is clicking on your advertisement, you are not getting any return on investment.

You can also make multiple adds and use Facebook data to figure out which adds are more effective.

Who is your audience? A central idea of marketing is finding a target market. Facebook ads can be targeted towards a particular audience, where theoretically they should perform better. In order to target an audience, chose people who express an interest related to what you're advertising. For example, an ecology blog may be geared to people who have shown at interest in natural sciences.

The fun stuff is actually creating the campaign.

1.  Go to www.facebook.com/advertising
2. Click create add
3. Choose what kind of results you want to receive depending on what kind of add you are making. Page likes (with adds linking to Facebook pages)  and clicks to external websites are likely to stay consistent and relevant overtime even as Facebook changes)  
4.  Follow the prompt to enter your website or page you want to advertise
5. Identify your audience through location, age, gender, language, and interests. The interest sections allows to really hone in on one specific audience. 
6.  Fill out your account and campaign information. This is where you disclose your country, currency, time zone, advertisement schedule and budget over time. Set a start and end date so to your campaign! This gives you a dollar amount as to how much you're spending on a campaign
7. Facebook bidding allows for Facebook to bid on on adds for you.If  you select optimize for clicks, facebook will choose add placement that gets you the most clicks and you're price you pay may go up or down depending on how many clicks you get.
8. You can upload an image for ads. These can be digital images or images made in Photoshop. Content continues to be important in  marketing! 
9. Select a headline and text for your advertisement
10.  Choose if you add appears to desktop users and mobile users
11. Monitor your campaign over time with Facebook's provided analysis

There are many ways to change your advertisements performance. The best way to find out what works is to experiment by putting adds out there and trying various settings. Remember, the main goal is to have your advertisement give a return on investment (ROI).