Facebook Advertising: Add it to Your Marketing Mix!

Christine Halvorson

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Facebook is free, and it’s a great business marketing tool. Why on earth would you pay to use it?

Because paying Facebook to “boost” a post or to conduct another type of advertising campaign works. I’ve seen the results firsthand.

Every business should have a Facebook advertising plan in place because Facebook ads are easy to create, inexpensive to run and can meet your business goals — whatever they are.

​I especially recommend Facebook advertising to my nonprofit clients, and to the micro-businesses with which I work. Rest assured, I believe traditional paid advertising (newspapers, magazines, radio or television) has its place. I just wouldn’t spend a lot of money on it these days without being absolutely sure of getting results and having my goals met.

IMMEDIATE FEEDBACK

You’ll know almost immediately if your Facebook ad is working. You’ll see how many clicked on it and how many just saw the ad. You’ll also be able to tell if the copy you wrote and/or the graphics you included were lousy, and you can then quickly change something and try again, without losing your shirt.

In fact, Facebook has this marvelous option for your ads: You can design a Facebook ad with one set of text, but six different images. Facebook will run the ad, alternating the six images to your targeted audience for 24 hours. Then it will deliver only the one with the image that performs best. That’s A/B testing (which marketers always recommend) on-the-fly and on-the-cheap!

GREAT FOR EVENTS

I’m a fan of Facebook advertising and Mark Zuckerberg didn’t pay me to say that. I have used it mainly for event marketing and can state unequivocally that, with a Facebook ad as the only form of marketing, I brought people to my events, for pennies-per-attendee. Seriously.

Your costs will vary, but trust me when I say they’re cheap. If you have $10, try running an “offer” ad (such as a coupon) and see the response. You’ll get substantial impact if you know exactly who you are trying to reach.

​KNOW THY AUDIENCE

Ah, but there’s the key. If you do NOT know who you are trying to reach with your ad, walk away. For effective Facebook advertising, you must know 1) who you are trying to reach in terms of their age, gender, and location, at least, and 2) exactly what you want that reader to do — click here, buy this, sign-up, for example.

With a specific target audience in mind and a specific goal for your ad, you’ve completed 90 percent of the work in a successful advertising campaign on Facebook. So, what’s stopping you?

Source: http://www.sentinelsource.com/business_journal/facebook-advertising-add-it-to-your-marketing-mix/article_592b408e-adc5-11e7-a6f9-1f6363a4f47a.html