There is no question about it, advertising on Facebook does bring in some nice return on investment. It can work well as part of your Marketing Plan. Whether you’re a local Gold Coast business or in a remote country town. However, for someone to achieve this, there are several requirements and conditions that must be met. Without which makes advertising on Facebook a waste of time, effort and money.
To fully harness the potential of Facebook ads, you need to take the time to learn the ropes of the process. Doing so will enable you to understand how Facebook advertising works. When you do, you will improve your chance of making your Facebook ad campaign much more successful.
Bidding and Facebook Ads Budget
Advertising on Facebook can be relatively cheap or extravagantly expensive depending on several factors. Facebook ads work slightly differently from Google, in that you do not bid against your competitors for ‘ad space’.
The great benefits of Facebook advertising include:
- You can kick start for as little as $5 per day
- It allows you to specify locations e.g. Gold Coast, Brisbane, etc.
- You can see results immediately, which enables you to tweak campaigns
- With power editor, there are various options in terms of the types of ads you set up
- You can customise audiences, according to your ACTUAL customers
We would recommend setting aside $10 per day to test what works. If your business already has a Marketing Plan, this can be monitored in the budget.
Facebook Targeting
If you are going to allocate some of your Marketing Plan budgets towards Facebook advertising, then you need to ensure you are getting back your advertising costs. This is where Facebook Targeting comes in.
As we have mentioned before you can target by location e.g. Marketing Gold Coast or Marketing Brisbane. In addition you can also focus on a particular type of audience, customer, or client that you want to see your ads. There are so many selection tools so you can be very specific about whom you target.
You can select the location, age, gender, interests, relationship status and so forth and Facebook will automatically show your ads to Facebook users who fit the conditions you set.
For example, one of our Gold Coast clients is using Facebook Adverts as part of their Marketing Plan. They have set criteria to target customers including using a ‘location finder’ tool, which allows them to target within a 10km radius of their Gold Coast business. For their type of business that is imperative.
Location Dependent Business
If your business is not location dependent, then the opportunities to market yourself globally are unlimited. The important thing to remember is when looking at your target market, ensure you are clear on whom to target and what the most important factors are e.g. Interests, Gender, Lifestyle etc.
The challenge here is setting the right targeting criteria. If you set the wrong parameters, your ads will be shown to the wrong people. The strategy is the same as what you would apply to other areas of Marketing within your business.
Final tip? Do not start your campaign with a hard-sell approach, as people will usually be turned off when asked them to commit immediately. Instead, begin by asking for their email address first (perhaps by offering them a freebie). Give them a reason to like and keep visiting your page and then work your way to sales by up selling through email marketing. This is how Facebook advertising can work well in conjunction with a Marketing Plan.