Facebook advertising is more than just being present in the social media. If not handled properly, it could just be merely a business relation that won’t yield you anything. As in the real world, the goal of online advertising is the same: to deliver unique selling points and increase your sales. The only difference with online advertising is that it allows advertisers to have a closer and more personalized approach in delivering their ads. And this is where Facebook is most effective. However before running your very first ad in Facebook, there are a few things you should consider:
1. Budget. This is the first thing you have to decide whenever you want to engage in any advertising activity. How much money can you spend for you ad? Setting a specific budget for a specific length of time is important to ensure that you are spending your money wisely. Not identifying your budget might just result in overspending and low profit.
Facebook advertising offers two payment options. Either you pay per click (you only pay when someone clicks on your ad) or per thousand impressions (you pay every 1000 times that your ad has been shown).
Your next option is to set either a daily or a long-term advertising budget. For your daily budget, you have to set a specific amount that you’re willing to spend on advertising each day. Long-term budget is the amount you are willing to spend over a certain period of time. This is important, especially during the initial stage of a small business as they are still not aware when their peak days will be.
2. Research about your campaign environment. If you want to build and manage a huge following, you must gain a thorough knowledge of how your rivals have been doing in the market. Also, read the success stories of others from different sectors. Learn from their experience and follow their models.
3. Identify the toolsets that are applicable to your marketing plan. When you’re engaged in social media marketing you have to be able to deliver the same consistent message throughout the social networks. Tools that you might need in your marketing campaign include Blog, Twitter, and YouTube. Make sure you have accounts in these sites so that you’ll have a strategic place where you can bring your followers when the need to drive them away from Facebook comes.
4. Identify your target market. As in any advertising campaign, knowing your target users on Facebook is important. With Facebook you can pick the groups of users for your ads to reach based on age, location, gender, relationship status, college, and interests.
5. Hire a marketing manager. Social media marketing is a round-the-clock job and you shouldn’t expect yourself to be capable of handling it alone. Instead, choose someone to do it on behalf of your company. But make sure you choose someone who writes well, are creative, tactful and loyal.
6. Identify your business with influential companies or individuals.If there is any influential blogger or social media activist who has shown interest in your business, make sure you maintain your relationship with this influential person and get him to like your fan page or display ad in the future as this would be like tapping into all his followers who would just follow his recommendations. Just imagine how many doors of opportunities would open for your business if a blogger with over a million following gets to like your product.
7. Identify relevant bench marking tools. Every company needs to know whether their ad campaign is working or needs some fine-tuning. So before you launch your first Facebook advertising make sure you know which tools you need for this purpose.
8. Image and message. Creating your message for your ad is perhaps the most difficult and time-consuming task. You need to identify the purpose of your ad or what you you’re your viewers to do. Then you have to translate your purpose into something interesting and eye-catching. List some of your options and ask your friends, your team and your suppliers and see to which they can relate the most. Then start advertising.