Social Media has changed the way people interact with each other in the last years and brought new ways of online advertising with new targeting possibilities. There are many networks available like Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+, but the most used worldwide is Facebook. The advertising possibilities that Facebook offers represent a really interesting option where to spent a portion of your online advertising budget. With over 1,350 million active users (December 2014), Facebook brought in $2.96 billion in advertising revenue in the third quarter of 2014. In this article we will have an overview of the main advertising options that Facebook offers.
Choosing the objective of your campaign
Facebook advertising possibilities are wide, starting with the objective of the campaigns you want to build. Facebook gives some predefined options:
- Page Post Engagement: Get more people to see and engage with your Page posts.
- Page Likes: Connect more people with your Page.
- Clicks to Website: Increase the number of visits to your website.
- Website Conversions: Send people to your website to take a specific action, like signing up for a newsletter
- App Installs: Send people to the store where they can purchase your app
- App Engagement: Get more people to use your Facebook or mobile app
- Local Awareness: Promote your business to people who are nearby
- Event Responses: Promote your Facebook event to increase your attendance
- Offer Claims: Promote timely discounts or other deals for people to claim in your store
- Video Views: Promote videos that show behind-the-scenes footage, product launches or customer stories to raise awareness about your brand
Audience and targeting options
In Facebook you can target audiences based on:
- Location
- Age
- Gender
- Languages
- Interests
- Behaviors
All the targeting possibilities above are interesting, but they belong to the common demographics we are all used to. The real added value that Facebook brings regarding targeting possibilities is “interests” and “behavior”. These two features gives you the opportunity to target users based on the pages they like, groups they belong to or the actions they perform. Facebook lets you choose from a large list of interests and behaviors, so for example you can target users interested in windsurfing, running or based on their purchasing behaviors.
Pricing
Facebook gives the possibility to choose between CPC (pay per each click in your ad) and CPM (pay every time 1000 users se your ad). It is difficult to forecast which remuneration model is the best, mainly because it may vary depending on the objective of the campaign, country, audience, etc. The best is to A/B test the same campaign with same targeting, and get to your own conclusions.
Creating ads
The last stage comes with creating the ads and choosing the placements. Facebook offers a wide range of possibilities. First of all you can choose if you want to promote a single picture in your ad or more than one (max 5 images). This feature may be interesting for e-commerce, since it allows to show different products in the same ad. After adding the text and links to your ads, you can select the placements:
- Desktop News Feed
- Mobile News Feed
- Right Column
- Audience Network (Facebook + partners)
As a conclusion, Facebook offers a wide range of features to setup your advertising campaigns. It may be complicated to find the ideal setup that will bring conversions to your campaigns, so we recommend to start testing as soon as possible!