Facebook Engagement 101: Advertising Primer | Business 2 ...

Advertising on Facebook
Facebook sells a limited amount of advertising formats, but the self-serve dashboard is always available and it is very valuable as a free research and business planning tool.

i.e. A Toronto ice cream shop wants to know IF they were to invest in cases of Girl Guide cookies to create a special limited-time flavour that blends in real chunks of Girl Guide cookies, how many people in Toronto between the ages of 13-45 have already ?raised their hands? and identified themselves as fans of Girl Guides of Canada? By accessing Facebook?s free self-serve advertising panel the shop owner or anyone with a Facebook profile can predict the number of people they can reach, who are the most likely to be interested in your new product or service. This can allow you to estimate if it might be a worthwhile promotion for your business, and the research is 100% free!

As it turns out, the answer (at the time of this post), would be only 820 people, which means it would cost VERY little to reach 100% of your most likely interested prospects!

The self serve ad planner is valuable as a business planning tool, because you can tell exact numbers of people who are active on Facebook by geographic location, age, sex, and many variables of brand and community ?likes?. As you add or remove targeting variables, the total reach number dynamically changes to show you potential campaign reach! How awesome is that?!?

The cost of advertising on Facebook
Just about 10 years ago, as the ?search engine wars? were heating up and daily volume of Google searches were growing rapidly, Google opened up its self-serve advertising platform to anyone with a credit card. They based their pricing model on a ?bidding? system for the keywords consumers are using in their searches, so in theory the more competitive keywords would always allow the highest bidder to have the best position and draw the most volume and relevant clicks from consumers actively searching for that product, service or subject.

At the start, there were many more web pages indexed and daily keyword searches than there were individual advertisers, almost every keyword seemed cheap to draw audience back to your website or landing page (in comparison to now). Since then, millions of individual advertisers have started competing for those searching consumers, driving up the cost of competitive Google search engine advertising. Facebook has grown its audience and use so rapidly, they currently have a HUGE inventory of advertising impressions available unsold, so prices are currently low, especially if your competitors haven?t really started buying up the available inventory.

Facebook is priced in a similar fashion to Google; you can choose to buy CPM (cost per thousand impressions) or CPC (cost per click) advertising that shows only to your defined target group of people who are within your demographic and groups of population defined by interests and passions (pages they Like).

While $1000/month is a very healthy budget for a car dealership (a highly competitive category), many businesses won?t need to invest nearly that much to see value and positive ROI for their Facebook advertising campaigns. I recommend starting with a sustainable weekly budget, and working to slowly increase the budget and amount of positive ROI as you can rationalize it based on your experience.

Many small businesses can gain a lot of valuable insight (and a couple hundred new followers to their page) in a short time, with a small campaign of only $100. Just remember that every campaign you do is unique and every day is a test > you can manage and adjust the settings of your campaign including how high or low your CPC/CPM bids are, every day. Just remember to take note of what changes you are testing (for results), and to really know the impact of that adjustment, only test one campaign element at a time.

Advertising to drive people to your website, or to your Facebook page?
Although many people still want to focus on ?driving traffic to the website? where you can cram a lot more sales promotional messages down their throat, the best thing you can do for your page and community is keep them on Facebook. Drive them to your Facebook brand page, and welcome them when they arrive. If they really like your page personality, tone and engagement (not just Like your page), they?ll be that much more ready to buy.

Have immediate questions for your business about social media you?d like answered by a panel of experts on #SparkleSOS? Send me an email or ask them on Twitter to hashtag #SparkleSOS and I?ll add them to the queue for an upcoming live show! You might even be invited to join us on the show!

Source: http://www.business2community.com/facebook/facebook-engagement-101-advertising-primer-0293534

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