audience

Facebook Advertising

Facebook Advertising is relatively low cost and low risk. So what’s stopping you from trying it to promote your company? But before you take the plunge, here are some considerations to think about. Facebook advertising is better suited for some products over others. The advertising campaign’s objective and your target audience is also important to consider.

Each time a Facebook ad is shown to a user, it counts as 1 impression. Advertisers can choose between 2 payment options. The first is to pay a certain amount for every 1000 impressions the ad receives (advertisers are charged even if no one clicks on the ad). The other payment option is to pay for every click the ad receives.

Unlike Google search ads, Facebook ads are randomly shown to users. This means users may not have the intention to find more information or take action on an ad when they see it. As a result, Facebook ads generally have lower conversion rates and click through rates than Google search ads.

Type of Products

Facebook ads are better suited for consumer facing products. If you consider a Facebook user’s mindset while on Facebook (messaging friends and seeing what they’re up to), these users are more likely to respond to social event ads over business solution ads.

Advertising Objective

Similarly, some advertising objectives are better suited for a Facebook user’s mindset while they are on Facebook. User are more likely to convert on a call to action that is easily digestible and have a lower barrier to convert. For example, users are more likely to “Like”, share or interact with something rather than to submit their credit card info to purchase a $500 product.

An analogy I like to use is to compare a Facebook user’s behavior to shoppers lining up at the check out counter at a grocery store. You have probably noticed all the candy bars, magazines, etc. that line the check out aisles. These are “impulse buy” products that entice shoppers to pick one up even though they originally had no intention to purchase it. Facebook ads are good for messages that call for impulse reactions.

Target Audience

Facebook has a set of targeting options to help advertising show ads to a particular audience. The targeting options include:

• Location – target users by country, state/province, and city.
• Age – target users in an age range
• Gender – target users by gender
• Likes & Interests – target users by their Likes & Interests specified on the users’ profiles
• Connections on Facebook – target users and friends of users who are/are not connected to Pages, Groups, Events or Apps that your own.
• Birthday – target users on their birthdays
• Interested In – target users who are interested in men or women
• Relationship – target users by marital status
• Language – target users by language
• Education – target users who are in High School, in College or a College Grad
• Workplaces – target users who work for a specific company or organization

Using these options to narrow down your target audience will help increase the campaign’s click through rate since ads are only shown to users who are interested in your message.

It may be worth it for your company to try advertising for a month and review the results to measure the return on advertising.

Newsflash: Facebook just announced a new ad unit called Sponsored Stories. It basically turns users’ activities into an ad. Read more about it on Mashables.

Victor

Tags: ads, advertising, audience, facebook, impressions, targeting

What’s the Plan, Stan?

We encourage every business, every campaign and every cause to have some kind of online strategy. That means an online presence with a purpose. What we see time and time again is one of two things: no real online presence at all, or a spray & pray type of online presence where every online tool imaginable is engaged but…poorly.

Some people say you should just dive right in and try social media, which we support. What we don’t support is opening multiple Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts, blogs, Flickr accounts, and even websites – having them falter and then abandoning them. Abandoning them but not *removing* them. It’s a bit like getting a goldfish, not feeding it, and then never throwing it away.

Something else we see a lot are companies opening a social media account, and then someone else within that same company, opening one as well. And then a repeat of those actions by someone else a few months later – or on another coast – or in another department. Suddenly one company has 3 Facebook Pages and 4 Twitter accounts. The profiles are active – but each has a different fan base with different messaging. Talk about diffusing your online potential and confusing your online audience.

These are signs of diving in without a plan. It smells of “We should be online. Let’s make it so.”. Yes. Do make it so. But do it strategically. Do your homework. We promote the idea of doing an online assessment first to understand what you should do online and how you should do it. Then comes a strategy to get it done right.

Tags: assessment, audience, facebook, strategy, Twitter, website