Understanding Facebook Ads

Latest counts put the number of businesses with active pages on Facebook at 30 million and it’s really no wonder that so many have flocked to Facebook since its launch in 2004 considering they are provided with a free platform to promote themselves.

On Facebook, businesses can actively interact with the general public, invite friends and customers to “like” their pages, interact through competitions, ask for feedback on products and inform their customer base of any important announcements. However, where in the past every person that “liked” a company’s page would automatically be subscribed to all of their updates, they now only see a fraction of them. Among marketers this has been described as a decline in “organic reach”. It’s not all doom and gloom though as we explained in our blog, if you have a creative mind then there a few ways to improve engagement organically, such as using photographs and videos as well as text, but what about using paid promotion to boost your reach?

Facebook advertising

One concrete way that you can improve the performance of your Facebook page is by using Facebook’s advertising features.

Objectives

When using Facebook advertising it’s important to have a goal in mind. Do you want to drive more traffic to a URL? Do you want to attract more “likes” on your page or do you want people to attend an event?

Targeting

When users sign up for accounts they give lots of information to Facebook, such as their age, where they live, their profession and their gender. All of which can be factored in when creating adverts. Further to this, you can also target people by the pages they like, for example, you could run an advert that targets users who “like” a page ran by your competitor.

Placement

Facebook Ads can appear in what is called the “news feed” or in the right hand column of any page on Facebook. When a company pays for an advert, users who are in their target audience, selected through targeting, will see it. Facebook has such a large audience base that even the most niche business will be able to attract some interest, and the sophisticated targeting options that Facebook provides will help you to track down and display your ads to the right kinds of people, which is a very valuable resource indeed.

If you our Beginner's Guide to Facebook Ads helpful and would like to know more about how Facebook can help your business talk to our Digital Marketing Team, on 01522 811688 or freephone 0800 988 8366.