Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Advertising

I have read some articles around social network advertising and thought I’d start a blog of my own to document some experiences I have had with the social network advertising functionality of Facebook.

 

Advertising on Facebook is relatively easy if you are new to the game. They recently rolled out a newly formatted advertising page that gives you an overview, preparation section, and a step by step guide. They show you the guidelines which they accept for advertisement and make creating an ad pretty simple.

 

In a nutshell there are two ways to advertise on Facebook. The first is a Cost per Click (CPC) model or what Facebook calls “Pay for Clicks”. The second is a “Pay for Views” strategy. We will discuss both in a breakdown below.

 

Pay for Click Advertising

 

This form of advertising allows you to pay only for clicks on your advertisement. It’s a pretty simple theory. You create an ad then allocate your daily budget limits to spend on that ad including the amount you are willing to pay for each click on your advertisement.

 

Goals and Objectives

 

Generate Website Traffic

Exposure

Cost per click – Can be Low to Medium

Cost for an impression – Low

Example:

 

You create an ad that you want to spend $2.00 a day on advertising on Facebook. You allocate a $.20 pay per click on the ad. This gives you 10 clicks on your website a day before your maximum daily budget is reached. Once the daily budget is reached Facebook will stop publishing the ad for that day. Each day the ad will be displayed until the daily budget is reached.  

 

 

Pros

 

This is a good model for online business. You are only going to pay for views of your website. This model also helps you control your advertisement a little better I feel. In reality you are trying to get people to click on your advertisement right? If you want to sell product then you need to translate ad impressions ( we will get to that in a moment) into clicks.

 

Cons

 

There are drawbacks to both models. If you have a small daily budget and a low “Pay per Click” allotment on your ad you will not get a lot of impressions. Impressions are the amount of times your ad actually appears on Facebook. Don’t be fooled it does not mean your ad appears anywhere in particular just that it “appears”.  You must also manage your bids constantly to increase the impressions which in turn generate clicks.

 

How to get those needed impressions

 

In order for you to get more impressions Facebook makes a recommended bid amount for each ad that you create. I have experimented with this a lot and can give you some pointers. Facebook gives you a suggested bid amount for each ad. I found this varies from day to day. The recommended amount is based on many factors. From what I can see it depends on the ads running that day in comparison to the traffic the site is getting during your advertising hours. If you are trying to get your ad to run in the top sections of Facebook and on the right sidebar the recommended bid amount for the ad is actually low. Most times you will not see your ad appear even though in your management screen, which shows you how many impressions of your ad are being shown, you may see thousands of impressions being made.

 

What is a Bid?

 

A bid is the amount you are willing to spend per click. What happens is this. Facebook puts you into a bidding war with other advertisers. Whoever has the highest bid on their ad gets the best visibility on the site. This returns more profit for Facebook logically so it makes sense for them to create the most impressions for the highest bids.

 

My suggestion  

 

Give your advertising budget some flexibility. Start out with a $.25 bid on your ad and work your way up. Each time you raise your bid you will see more impressions being generated. I have raised my bid up to $.60 and still have not seen my ad appear. Be careful with this as well. I have noticed more clicks on my ad and my budget being reached must faster at this higher bid level.

 

Pay For Views

 

This form of advertisement allows you to create impressions rather than focusing on overall clicks. It is independent of clicks so to speak. You are paying for impressions which are “appearances” on Facebook.

 

Goals and Objectives

 

Brand Awareness

Exposure

Cost per Click – High

Cost per Impression –Low

 

Pros

 

If you are confident your site will generate many clicks this may be the way to go. This translates into your click per impression ratio. You don’t have to worry about how many times your ad is clicked on so you aren’t paying for them. It works well with viral marketing ads, high traffic sites, popular advertisements, and high profile ads. One good thing is that you can generate large amounts of impressions while controlling the cost to do so.

 

Cons

 

Okay, so this sounds great get your add shown to possibly millions of people. Well first question is where the ads are being published. This again goes back to how much you are paying for the impressions. Ever see that “more advertisements” section on Facebook? Your ad may just as well be showing up in the gutter if you don’t pay enough for your impressions. This is costly if you are selling niche products and services.

 

My Suggestion

 

Use this method if you want to get your name out but aren’t as concerned with people visiting your site as a result. Brand recognition is important today. You must differentiate yourself from the competition. It is sometimes more valuable to get people thinking about your products and services rather than having them make a purchase that day. Use this for sites you think provide a vast value to many people.

 

Overall

 

Both methods offer pros and cons so use your best judgement to pick which one will work for you. Experiment, it isn’t set in stone that you can only advertise one way. If you try both ways you will know for sure which works best for you. Facebook offers some nice guides to getting started. I was actually contacted directly from their staff to assist me in my ad campaigns which was a nice surprise.

 

Facebook Advertisement in General

 

To be honest some of my colleagues have told me that they haven’t generated any sales as of yet from Facebook advertisement. It leads me to believe that clicks on the site are taking place only to collect from the advertiser. This is the reality of advertising. Facebook needs to make money and the way they do that is through advertising. It wouldn’t surprise me if people were just sitting around clicking on ads so they get paid.

 

To access Facebook Advertising visit:

 

http://www.facebook.com/advertising/

 

Any comments or suggestions are welcome. Please submit any additional information to us so we can share the experiences and know-how of our reader community.

 

 

Thanks,

Mr. Foil