Advertising on Facebook – Methods to Pursue to Be Successful

If you are a local company considering doing some advertising to young adults then the thought of advertising on Facebook has probably already crossed your mind.  Good chances are that you have at least created a Facebook page so people can be a fan of your business.  

Business Facebook Profile

If a business can get their name out to more people for free then why wouldn’t they do it?  Anyone with any kind of business concept would understand the benefit of free advertising.  That is exactly what creating a Facebook profile for a business is—free advertising.  Most people know the company called Starbucks.  It almost has 4 million fans on Facebook!  That is a lot of free advertising!  Facebook users can see what their friends have become fans of.  One of the best ways to get a business more popular is by word of mouth.  Knowing that a close friend likes something or prefers something can greatly affect that our decision making process. If all of your friends were drinking an ice cold glass of lemonade on a warm day, chances are that you will want some lemonade too.  It basically comes down to peer pressure.  Remeber the old saying, “everyone is doing it.”  

Ad Purchasing

This is where Facebook has a unique step up on the basic ad from Google.  Facebook is able to target the ad to specific Facebook users.  First the ad can be targeted by Location down to the city and state.  The second option is age and it lets the user decide the range.  It even lets you target people on their birthdays!  The third option to choose from is male or female.  The fourth option that it lists gets pretty specific.  You can list keywords “based on the information that users list in their Facebook profiles, such as Activities, Favorite Books, TV Shows, Movies, etc.” (facebook.com). The fifth option is targeting by education which includes: All, College Grad, In College, or in High School.  The sixth option is pretty unique.  There are companies that have Facebook groups and users can join those groups to connect with other employees throughout the company.  Ads can target certain workplace groups which can be a huge benefit.  The last three you can choose from are user relationship status, user’s interest in gender, and last but not least, languages.  If the ad is a great program on how to learn to speak Spanish, then targeting people that speak Spanish probably would not be very effective.  One of the best advantages of targeting is that Facebook calculates how many people the ad will be displayed to.

Now that you know how ad targeting works on Facebook, you can see how it correlates with Facebook ad purchasing.  Facebook’s Tim Kendall had this to say in an interview with Justin Smith, “It’s a people targeting system, not a keyword targeting system.  On Google, I would select things like a specific camera brand or name a target.  On Facebook, it would be more like interest or hobby keywords” (Smith, 2009).  

It makes sense how this is a better way to advertise because the ad focuses on someone’s likes and dislikes instead of just putting a random ad out there and the chances of someone seeing that ad, and relating to it are slim.

Facebook Share

The Facebook “Share” link is another extremely effective Facebook advertising tool.  Pretend that you found an article about the Utah Jazz trading Carlos Boozer to another NBA team and you wanted to let all your friends know about it.  All you would need to do is click on the Facebook logo or link on the website with the article and you can immediately post it as news to all your friends.  If they are on Facebook, they can immediately see what you posted into the news feed.  

Most businesses have already spent the time and money to have a nice website to promote their business.  A Facebook link on their website will promote the site, thus promoting the business.  It is also free just like the Facebook profile page.  

In conclusion, the free avenues of advertising on Facebook would be applicable to almost anybody looking to advertise whereas the ad purchasing would be more advantageous to those hoping to target a specific market segment.

Ad purchasing on Facebook offers deep advertising and the power to see the number of people that would be in the ad’s audience.  The user Randfish from SEOmoz.org blogged about the power of Facebook advertising:

The demographics are far more accurate than most data (age, sex, gender preference, relationship, etc.) The deep data – being able to choose to market to employees of specific companies – should be an amazing tool for the right advertiser The keyword associations that people have with their Facebook accounts are correlated quite highly with true interests The “approximate reach” number gives you great insight into your target market size (even if you never place an ad)

How effective is Facebook advertising?  Well, it is ultimately up for you to decide.  One thing is certain: creating lasting relationships with your customers is a positive thing, even if it doesn’t get them to purchase goods or services immediately. If you have not created your Facebook page or added a Facebook share link to your website, then hop to it and create a lasting relationship with some of your customers.