Strategies for Advertising Success on Facebook

Targeting your audience

Facebook has made it very easy to target your desired audience. In fact,
selecting your target audience is central to the Facebook self-serve platform.
You can target by location, age, relationship status, and interests. You can
even target by language, as Facebook is available in 40 languages with many
more in development.

Targeting your audience is as important as the message itself. Develop personas
to represent your target audience. Learn what they’re interested in —
their educational background, relationship status, and where they live. Reach
only the audience you desire by targeting to meet your specific business’s
ideal customer profile. (See Chapter 5.)
Facebook has focused its advertising strategy around its vast member data,
allowing advertisers to target an audience segment precisely. You can say
that Google’s AdSense is more a question of where your ad is seen, while
Facebook is all about who sees your ad. In fact, Facebook offers advertisers
the ability to reach their exact audience — from a broad demographic, to a
geographic preference, and to a more granular interest.

Facebook advertising is not directly contextual, meaning ads don’t necessarily
correlate to the content being displayed. An advertiser can’t pinpoint where
on the site their ads should appear. Google’s AdSense, on the other hand,
is a contextual-based advertising platform. Google’s text-based ads are tied
directly into the keywords being queried.

Targeting by location

Facebook allows for precise location targeting, based in part on your profile

data and the IP address of the computer you log in with. Most cities in the

U.S., Canada, and the U.K. allow you to add surrounding areas of 10, 25, and

50 miles for advertisers looking to reach specific regional markets, as shown

in Figure 9-6.

Targeting by keywords

Facebook leverages its members’ profile data to allow advertisers to drill

down to specific keywords. These keywords represent a member’s interests.

Topics that users are passionate of, such as their musical tastes, television

preferences, religious views, and other valuable psychographic data , 

can be used to further micro-target your audience. Never before

has there been a mass medium that allows for this kind of precise targeting.

By adding keywords to your targeting, you can reach consumers based on

the interests listed on their profile page.

Facebook Demographic

,

Money, money, money.. setting a budget

After you create your ad and identify your targeted audience, setting the
budget is the final step before you can launch your advertisement. Facebook
employs a bidding structure for its advertising inventory based on supply
and demand. If there’s greater demand to reach a specific demographic,
the ad typically has higher bids. The company also provides a suggested
bid based on the approximate range of what other ads reaching this demographic
have historically cost.
Facebook’s ads are based on a closed bidding system. You can’t see what
others pay for ads, nor can they see your bid. Facebook provides a recommended
bidding range. As a strategy, setting your bid initially on the low side
of the suggested range is a good idea. You can monitor your campaign to see
whether the ad is performing at your given bid. Although Facebook allows
you to bid as low as one cent, expecting a bid at that price to deliver any
impressions is unrealistic.
You don’t have to follow the Facebook pricing guidelines, but remember, if
you bid too low, your ad won’t appear.
Facebook also allows you to purchase ads based on a pay for clicks (CPC)
or pay for thousand impressions (CPM). If your goal is to drive traffic to a
specific page, paying based on CPC is probably the best performer for you.
If your objective is to get as many people within your target demographic
to see the ad, but not necessarily click thru, then ads based on a CPM basis
could be your best option.

On Facebook, ads purchased on a CPC basis are more cost efficient at driving
traffic to a given Web site or Facebook destination than ads purchased on a
CPM basis. However, if your goal is more of a brand awareness campaign and
you’re trying to gain exposure to as many people as possible, ads purchased
on a CPM basis could be a more effective strategy.

Putting your ad to the test

The social network offers marketers a full range of metrics to measure success,
both from the Web site’s internal ad management measurement or via
Facebook’s internal reports and measures. Because replicating an ad and creating
different iterations for testing is easy, Facebook is quickly becoming the
advertising platform of choice for savvy marketers. For a complete review of
how to measure your ad’s success,