Scream It From The...Page Margins: Facebook Advertising

Scream It From The…Page Margins: Facebook Advertising

This week, we offer another instructional guide for the only social network whose mission on the internet rivals that of Google–Facebook. As the creator of the patented “Like” button, which allows internet users to offer their approval of bands, brands and products, Facebook’s objectives in the realms of marketing and advertising are vast–and growing all the time.

Though Facebook was once an environment for purely casual and fun interaction (unbelievably, the site was originally called Facemash), Facebook is now a useful business tool to most. But aside from the networking possibilities Facebook affords a company or a brand, it also offers the service of paid advertisement. Anyone can create an application or a game and sell it to Facebook, and anyone (excluding solicitors of inappropriate content and those who don’t follow formatting guidelines) can advertise. And since Facebook Ads are designed to target specific users based on their particular interests, most consider the service a very useful tool.

Facebook ads are directed and distributed to relevant users. Facebook hones in on an ad’s target audience through keyword-matching and calculating a user’s areas of interest based on his or her activity on the internet. The advantage here is that Facebook is doing the work of presenting your product/website/brand to a niche market for you, thus optimizing your audience.

You can set up Facebook Ads as “pay per click” (CPC) or “pay per (thousand) impressions” (CPM). With CPC, you will pay Facebook for each time someone clicks through your ad and is redirected to your website. With CPM, you will pay Facebook for the number of times your ad appears in the sidebar of a Facebook page.

If curiosity strikes about the kind of ads that exist on Facebook, and how a product is commonly presented, you can click through any ad to the Ad Board. This will serve you well with market research.

The Facebook Ad Board...in German.

Facebook’s “conversion tracking” feature allows you to track the activity that happens on your website as a result of someone clicking on your ad, so you can analyse how valuable it was for your business. And with the new “targeting interface”, you can browse Facebook’s targeting filters and control the criteria Facebook uses to determine who actually sees your ad. And finally, the “audience estimate tool” tracks your ad changes, so you can see how many people are in your chosen target audience.

Soon, Facebook will allow you to pay for advertising through PayPal, which will make financing your advertising endeavors more business-friendly.

Though this article may help with your understanding of advertising on Facebook, we also recommend consulting Facebook’s Ad Help Center (specifically the Glossary of Ad Terms) for an explanation in plain language. While there are many ways to market your brand for free on the internet (through blogging, Twitter, reciprocal linking, and so forth), when paying for advertising, always make sure you understand the Terms and Conditions fully. Money is involved, after all.

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