Facebook Advertising Strategy
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part of your marketing strategy, particularly because the competition for eyeballs
on the site’s content is ever-increasing, in tandem with the site intentionally
decreasing organic (non-paid) reach - especially for self-promotional Page posts.
In fact, Facebook now deliberately limits the appearance in the News Feed of
Page Post content that features only promotional messages - asking people to
buy something, encouraging them to enter a sweepstakes, etc., which makes paid
promotion even more crucial. You wouldn’t launch a real-world business and
expect people to just turn up and continue to maintain their interest without
promotion, and a Facebook Page is really no different. Luckily, you don’t need
to spend a fortune: Facebook ads can be a cheap and effective way to gain new
fans, keep existing fans engaged, direct people to your website, or get them to do
whatever you please on the way to reaching your marketing goals. Consider this:
if you allocate just $1 of marketing spend per day on Facebook ads, your content
will be exposed to several thousand people that would not otherwise have seen
it. If you are doing this and your competitors aren’t, you'll be way ahead in the
awareness game for your business niche.
The most basic Facebook advertising: boosting posts
To increase the ordinary reach of your most important posts - like special offers,
big events, or a company milestone, Facebook encourages you to use its "Boost
Post" tool, located via a button underneath each and every status update. Boosted
posts last for three days and will increase the reach of your content beyond the
people who see it organically. In basic terms, boosted posts create a set of instant
Facebook ads, without any of the detailed customization options available
through the main Facebook ads tool. Boosted posts do the following:
1. Promote your post within mobile and desktop News Feeds of Fans.
2. Promote your post within mobile and desktop News Feeds of Fans, their
friends, and via a limited set of variants like age, gender, interests, and location.
3. Generate a Sponsored Story ad within mobile and desktop News Feeds.
The eventual cost of a boosted post depends on the number of people you want
Facebook to try to expose to that specific piece of content. Costs range from a
maximum budget of just a dollar or two for a few thousand people, to hundreds
of dollars if your aim is to reach many thousands of users. Once Facebook
approves your boosted post in accordance with its "no more than 20% text if an
image is used" guidelines (more on this topic below), which doesn't normally
take very long, the promotion will begin. The amount you are charged rises as
your boosted post reaches more people, but if you don't feel like you are getting
value for money, you can stop the promotion at any time. On a similar note, you
can add to your initial maximum budget if the promotion is going better than
expected. If your boosted post does not reach the number of people Facebook
estimated it would reach, based on your budget over the three-day window, you
will only be charged according to the number that it did reach.
To get the most out of boosted posts, remember the following:
Wait at least 5-6 hours before boosting a post - let its organic reach take hold and
settle first.
Once a post is boosted, it may take some time until it reaches the full breadth of
your target audience. Will it still be relevant as much as a few days away from
when it was first promoted?
Don't boost every post. Spend money on increasing exposure to content that will
drive meaningful engagement or make an impact on your bottom line, e.g. eyes
on a new product or service, or clicks through to a valuable blog post.
Pin your boosted post to create additional visibility for the promotion.
Measure the success of your boosted post through Facebook Insights and other
analytics tools.
Note: If you're a small business owner that wants a quick and easy way to
increase the visibility of standout posts a couple of times a week, then boosting
posts should be a very strong consideration. If you are want a bit more control
and customization or aim to build complex advertising campaigns on Facebook,
utilizing the main ads tool and Power Editor respectively make more sense - see
below for more information on these.
Beyond the Boost: Facebook Ads Strategy
If you decide that boosting posts is too simplistic for your needs, the Facebook
Ads tool at https://www.facebook.com/advertising is a marked step-up, with many more
customization options and, crucially, it's pretty user-friendly. Some of the
options available in the Facebook Ads tool include:
Choosing what the ad promotes depending on your goal (your
Facebook Page, a particular post, a Facebook event, a custom tab with
a newsletter sign-up form, an external website, etc.).
Choosing where on Facebook the ad appears (e.g. desktop and mobile
News Feeds, right-hand column).
Adding a call to action button to ads to increase click-through rates,
(e.g. Shop Now, Read More, for web-based targets, or Call Now, Get
Directions for local, mobile customers).
Choosing who the ad targets (based on location, age, gender,
interests, and connections). Before targeting non-fans, I would
suggest honing in on existing fans (many of whom won't have already
seen your content or promotion organically, as well as your email list
- both which Facebook enables you to do).
Tracking conversions like registrations, checkouts, and views of key
pages on your website.
While Facebook's main advertising tool will be suitable for the vast majority of
businesses, those with large and complex advertising needs may prefer to use a
tool called Power Editor (http://www.facebook.com/powereditor) to create, manage, and
track their ads on Facebook. If Boost Post is for beginners and Facebook's main
ads tool is for the masses, then Power Editor is for "pros". It's the least userfriendly
of the bunch, but includes experimental options that may be useful to
those who like to micro-manage their ads, and perhaps who are running lots of
campaigns at once. The Power Editor too is much more accessible to use than it
has been in the past, so don't be afraid to take a look.