What You Need to Know About Facebook Advertising

Since 2010, Advertising on Facebook has grown more than 680%. More than a million advertisers have spent more than $8 billion.

Every day, more businesses are pouring advertising dollars into the social network. Currently, it’s one of the most powerful avenues for paid marketing.

If you’ve ever used Google’s AdWords, you know that program shows ads to users based on their searches. If they search “Chinese food Omaha,” anyone who bought that term will show up first. Those types of ads are effective because the searcher is already looking for that solution.

Interruption ads, like billboards and TV commercials, are usually just noise. They get in your way and often provide no value.

Interruption Marketing

Facebook ads are interruptive (because the user didn’t request them), but they are powerful because they’re powered by Facebook’s tremendous data sourcing machine. Facebook keeps data on everything you or I do on the social network. It builds profiles for each user that catalogs everything they can.

Facebook knows your religion, political party, favorite soft drink, preferred book genre, and where you live. From basic pieces of data, they can extrapolate bigger things, like how much money you make, where you work and in what field, and your opinions on Donald Trump.

With all that data available, marketers buy ads that carefully target their ideal customers. You can have your ad shown to people based on their location, hobbies, interests, behaviors, and several other factors.
So even though I’m not requesting anything through Facebook, the ads that are shown to me are highly relevant. Since I’m interested in that content, I’m likely to click.

Growing Your Brand

The benefit over AdWords, is that you aren’t bound to a certain demand. Through Google, ads can only be shown when a similar phrase is searched. If customers aren’t searching it, the ads won’t display.

On Facebook, however, you can put your ads in front of people who may not know a solution or product like yours exists. This ad format is a great way to expand your brand.

It’s also good for promotion products or services that people ordinarily wouldn’t buy off the Internet. You may sell an extraordinary line of premium jam and jellies, but most people get those at the grocery store. You have to interrupt a user to market to them.

Buying Facebook Ads

Since 2014, Facebook has been using an ad buying structure that’s suited for serious testing and experimentation. Their goal is to give users all the tools they need to create powerful ads with solid ROI.

If you use this structure properly, you can adjust audience segments and run different ads against one another to determine the most effective.

When you buy ads, you’ll first establish a budget. This prevents Facebook from charging you more than you expect (which would be very easy if you didn’t understand how to use the interface properly).
When an ad is to be shown, Facebook holds an auction. The auction considers three factors before displaying an ad:

1. The advertiser bid – You can let Facebook choose this (recommended) or set the bids manually (for advanced users only).
2. Ad quality and relevance – How much Facebook thinks people will like your ad.
3. Estimated auction rates – How likely a person is to take your ad’s action.

Evaluating Your Campaigns

Once you set your ads, don’t forget about them! Even though they can be set to finish at any time, you’ll want to check back into the Ads Manager to see their performance. Facebook is great about showing you the data you need at a glance.

Evaluate the results of your ad, the cost, and the reach. Does anything seem out of place? Can you do anything better? How can you tweak your ads to get better results?

The answers to those questions are an entire industry of advertisers, but that doesn’t mean Facebook’s ad program is beyond you. With some careful study and data-minded thinking, you can use Facebook to sell products, build subscriber lists, and grow your business.

Have you seen some really cool Facebooks ads recently? We\’d love to hear about them.