Facebook can be a great outlet for marketing your small business as it is relatively simple to set up and can accommodate both large and small budgets, allowing you to escalate or deescalate as you see fit.
Ads on Facebook appear along the right-hand side of the page. On the main newsfeed page you will see up to seven ads and on a profile page you will generally have two or three. All these ads are generated using the same self-service platform and follow the same format with a short headline, small image and longer text below or beside the image.
Whether you are trying to generate awareness for your business, want to directly generate leads or what to increase your fan count on your business Facebook page, these ads can work for almost any type of business.
Before starting your Facebook advertising campaign however, there are a few things you should consider first.
Budget
The first thing you have to decide when starting an advertising campaign is your budget. How much money you can afford to spend. It is important to set a specific budget, for a specific period of time to make sure that spend is being made correctly. Leaving an open ended budget can lead to gross overspending and low return.
Facebook offers you two different types of payment either Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM). CPC will mean that you will pay every time someone clicks on your ad, CPM will mean that you pay each time your ad has been shown 1,000 times.
The next option you have is whether you set a daily or a lifetime budget. The first is obvious, you set a budget spend for each day, the second is similar but you enter an amount spend over a specific period of time. The lifetime budget normally suits more small businesses initially as they do not know when their peak days will be.
Message and Photo
Crafting the message for your advertising is probably the most time consuming task. You need to decide what your purpose for the advert is, what you are trying to get the Facebook visitor to do. You then need to make sure your message directly communicates this.
Put together a list of potential options and involve people. Ask your team, ask your friends, ask your suppliers and see what relates to them the most. Then go out to Facebook and see what works. If something doesn’t convert, change it.
It’s important to remember your ad will not be alone; it will be sat next to at least one other ad. It is therefore important to use your photo and message to compete for the Facebook users’ attention. Remember it is a social network and people are used to seeing funny and colourful posts in their newsfeed, your ad needs to call their attention, but remember not to be too risqu