Facebook ads have a few similarities with Google Adwords, but they go beyond what Google can offer (at least up to this date). Facebook advertising is powerful because of how targeted it can be. Ads can be targeted at very specific groups, through things like living location, age, gender, workplace, interests and even relationship status. And all of this is possible because of all the information that users put on their profile. And on top of that, users love to click the “Like” button on pages that they like, which lets marketers target consumers based on their interests.
When creating Facebook advertisement you are given the choice to define your target audience in great detail. You can choose location, demographics and even pick what interests your target audience should have. Meaning you can include people that like a particular book, food, sport etc. My favourite thing is that this allows you to target people who like your competitors! All you have to do is enter the name of your competitors’ pages and then people who like those pages would see your Facebook ads! And you can also select that your ads would not appear to people who already like your page. And if you know your audience well, perhaps there are times in the day when they would not be using Facebook, so you can manage the times of when you want your ads to appear. Not only does all of this help you target your audience better but it can save you a lot of money too.
Facebook ads can be used to either market your website or your fan page. In your ad, you are allowed to have one picture, 25 characters in your headline and maximum of 135 characters in the body text. This is not a lot, so the picture would be the most important aspect used to catch attention and encourage users to click on the ad. Another very important thing to consider is if you want your ads to lead to your company’s fan page or to your website. It depends on what you want to achieve, but statistics have shown that ads that lead to Facebook fan pages tend to deliver better results (I’ll talk more about this next week). And another thing that you should keep in mind is if your Facebook ad leads to your fan page, the “Like” button will appear automatically in the ad along with the information of how many and which of your friends’ already like that page. When people see that their friends like something, they are more likely to press the “Like” button too. And finally, you can also promote an event with Facebook ads and in this case ”RSVP to this event” will automatically become a part of the ad.
So I’ve described majority of the benefits that Facebook ads can deliver. So even though these ads sound very good, it’s important to understand that users on Facebook come to socialise and some may not be interested in reading advertisements at all. So next week I’ll post an article with tips and tactics that you can use to catch attention and achieve best results with Facebook ads.
Good point. I hadn’t tuohhgt about it quite that way.
Hey, that’s a clever way of thiinnkg about it.