How to Place a Facebook Ad

One of the most powerful and cost-effective ways for a business to advertise online is through social media. Social media advertising helps businesses find potential clients by advertising based on various criteria such as users’ interests, location and demographic. Social media advertising proactively targets relevant users by displaying ads in their news feeds regardless of whether or not they are actively searching for your products and services. Facebook advertising offers advanced targeting and reliable tracking tools to measure the success of your campaigns, such as impressions (number of people who saw your ad), clicks to your website, “likes,” shares, comments, etc.

Ads can be found on most social media platforms, but the platform that leads the digital empire is Facebook. With 1.65 billion active daily users, including 989 million active daily users on mobile, Facebook leads the charge in social media users. If you are a business owner or a marketer who is still doubtful about the impact of Facebook for your business, here are some reasons why Facebook advertising is so effective.

1. Facebook’s Popularity = Opportunity

Facebook is the second most popular website in the world next to Google. Can you just imagine having the potential to reach even just a fraction of its 1.65 billion users? With Facebook, you can maximize your reach, by putting your ads in front of your highly targeted prospects, for a fraction of the cost of other forms of advertising media.

2. Advanced Targeting Options

Facebook builds a profile of users’ interests based on information they have provided on their own personal page, posts that they “like”, the Facebook pages they follow and what they are responding to on Facebook through their replies, comments, and shares. All that data allows advertisers the ability to target well beyond general demographics (male, female, age) and geographic data (where they live). With Facebook, you can target at a much deeper level by focusing on interests, behaviors and connection-based targeting. For example, you might want to target people based on their interest in snow plowing, landscape maintenance, pickup trucks, four-wheeling, etc. By building these deeper layers of targeting, you can connect with your ideal audience.

3. Track Your Success

Unlike a lot of traditional advertising placements (TV, radio, print), Facebook advertising gives us the ability to understand how people are reacting to your ads. Facebook allows you to easily track who is clicking on your ads, how many people are liking your page, how many people are clicking to your website, or watching your videos.

4. Multiple Objective Options

Depending on your advertising goals, Facebook offers a long list of objectives to set up your campaigns. Following is a list of some Facebook options that you might find helpful to get started:

• • Local Awareness: serve ads to people located physically near your business
  • Page Likes: grow your page following and drive new fans to your page
  • Page Post Engagement: make sure more people are seeing your content when you post it to your page
  • Video Views: get more people to watch the video content you post
  • Website Clicks: drive more fans to your company’s website

5. Find and Connect with a Local Audience

Local business ads are great for serving ads to people in your area. With the “local awareness” objective, you can target people who live within a certain radius of your business – for example, I only want people within 30 miles of my business to see this ad. This ad format allows your local prospects to learn the unique value your business offers, including your proximity to them, a map to your business, and even allows them to make a direct phone call right from your ad, on mobile devices.

6. Reach Your Mobile Audience

In 2014, mobile usage surpassed desktop usage. In the first quarter of 2016, Facebook reported 90% of total Facebook users access it on mobile. Every year more and more snow and ice control users are accessing product information on mobile devices. Facebook ads give you the ability to put your message right in the palm of their hands.

7. Advertising On Facebook Is Cost Effective

With the tools available from Facebook, you can narrow down who you are targeting. You can find people who care about your business and the value your business can offer them, and you only pay when you get results! Depending on your desired actions, such as page likes, video views, engagement, and visits to your website, you can see results for under $1.00 per action. Better yet, you can set daily spend budgets or even maximum spend budgets so you never spend more than you planned.

8. Creative Flexibility

Facebook makes it very easy to update ad copy or images quickly. This allows you to test different image and text options to see what ads are performing the best.

If you were considering digital advertising, Facebook marketing would be a great place to start. With a very large and active audience you have the ability to target exactly who you want to see your ads, define your goals, track the result, and have creative freedom – all for minimal costs compared to other platforms. Once you get started, you’ll discover it’s easier than you think!