A guide to advertising on Facebook .

Just over ten years ago Facebook introduced Facebook Advertising.

Back in the olden days (before Facebook) when businesses wanted to promote their goods they may have gone to the local paper or even hired a billboard to get their message across.  Then along came Facebook and advertising changed forever.

Is Facebook Advertising for me?

Even if you don’t personally like using Facebook, if you have a business you should be on Facebook and you should be using it to promote your product.

The important thing is to have a strategy before you start to spend.  Any business can get great results if they put some thought into what they are doing.  A plan will keep you on track and get you the results you want.

What are your objectives?

Decide why you are advertising on Facebook and what you would like to achieve.  Do you want to get more followers, encourage website visitors or promote attendance at an event?  Then put some structure on it.  Think about your audience and formulate a message for them.  Decide when you want to run your advertisements and for how long.  Decide on budget and how much you will spend.

Who are you trying to attract?  Decide on the audience, are they male or female, what age, what location and really try to drill it down.  Include their interests and behaviours as part of the selection.  Facebook is great for targeting to get real value, only advertising to potential interested people.

You can also advertise on Facebook to people that have visited your website recently, that’s called re-targeting.  You have the option of a ‘look-a-like’ audience, which are people with similar attributes to your current customer base.  There are many options to choose from.

What will your message be?  Decide what you are trying to say and put it in a simple way.  People are scrolling quickly so you want to get their attention.  Remember to have a call to action such as learn more, shop now or contact us for best results.

And finally always measure your results and analyse them.  By learning what works for your business you will get better results the next time and the time after that.  Is Facebook advertising for my business?  In my opinion it is great value for money, highly targetable, easy to manage and measure.  Why not try it today?