Did you know you can target those who like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on Facebook? While that might make sense if someone sells bread, peanut butter or jelly – what about for your business or organization?
Why would you pay to advertise on Facebook, it’s free right?
While Facebook is “free” to use when creating your page, posting to it and working to grow your “likes” or fan base, we know that only a fraction of those who like it will see your posts. One article we found states that about 11% of your fans will see your posts, if you have less than 10K likes. If you have more than 100K likes, then that drops to 5% who will see your posts.
How much does Facebook advertising cost?
That’s a good question. Less than you’d think, because you can control it! So you can try $5 a day, $10 a day and adjust up or down as you desire. The goal is to ensure you’re investing a reasonable amount based on the conversions (action) you want from your audiences.
How do you reach all those people you worked so hard to get to like your page?
Reaching only about 10% of your audience organically is not idea. Certainly you want to reach more people connected to your page, as well as find new prospects for your products and services.
How do you know that your audience is on Facebook?
We know that*:
- 71% of adult internet users are on Facebook
- 58% of entire adult population is on Facebook
- Seniors continue to increase usage of Facebook
- Women tend to use Facebook at a higher rate than men.
- *(Source: PewInternet.org )
How Does Facebook Advertising work?
Facebook has all kinds of advertising tools. The best part is that all the information used to create a person’s Facebook profile is information you can use to target your best prospects. It makes sense to understand your buyer personas, what their demographics, interests and hobbies are. Like the peanut butter & jelly example, you could target people who are your ideal customers.
Say you’re a fitness clothing retailer or fitness studio in Grand Rapids, who do you target?
- Women
- 20-30 mile radius of your location. Depending on audience size you could make smaller or bigger radius
- Ages 25 – 55 (could adjust if needed)
- Interests & behaviors selection options could include:
- Physical fitness, Yoga, Nutrition, Triathlons, Gyms, Zumba, Tennis, Running, Weight training, Hiking, Bodybuilding or Physical exercise or other activities that might fit your audience, perhaps TRX, CrossFit or other popular workout programs. Maybe they are also a fan of Beachbody, P90x or 21 Day Fix too.
Here’s an example of going through the audience selection screens: (click to enlarge)
You can target people on Facebook who are just like your customers.
You want to reach your specific customers via Facebook ads with something new or specific to them? Facebook has the option to do a Custom Audience, where you upload your contact list of people you want to reach.- Lookalike audiences are another way to find people who are similar to your customer list, but not your specific fans – so you reach an all new like-minded audience group.
- Of course, retargeting is also an option where you can remarket to people who have visited your website and are back on Facebook. You’ve all seen those ads where it’s like a website is secretly stalking you? They’re not, well not specifically, they just use tools like cookies and bits of code to understand your browser history/web history. They don’t know who you are specifically.
We can go on and on (and on, and on, and on), with the importance of testing different ad creative and image options. How you can create different campaigns or ad creative for desktop users vs mobile users. And that your ads can be used to drive different “conversions” like: drive clicks to your website, claim special offers, build your email list or simply increase the likes on your page – all the way to simply promoting a big event or boosting a popular post. We’ll save that kind of thing for another post of our own.
As it gets close to the holiday season, we can bet we’ll see a lot of creative ads in social media. Will you be ready? Let us know how we can help you make the most of your advertising and marketing budget.
