Advertising on social media: Facebook

Written on the 4 January 2013 by Snap Marketing

Social media sites attract millions of users every day who spend hours on their networking platforms, so its no surprise that businesses want to advertise on those same online spaces.

Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn are a handful of the social media sites offering advertising possibilities, but Facebook is by far the most advanced and popular.

Advertising options

Facebook adverts are highly sophisticated, offering a range of options for businesses looking to increase exposure to their target market.

Facebook advertising options include:

• Promoting a specific post on your profile to achieve greater reach and visibility amongst your existing fans.
• Sponsoring a sidebar advertisement that targets existing fans.
• Sponsoring a sidebar advertisement that targets users who arent yet connected to your page.

There are many advanced options that make configuring the right ad for your intended audience easy for businesses to achieve. You can even run multiple versions of adverts simultaneously to determine which ad works best, while the Advert Manager enables businesses to track and measure the success of their campaigns.

The benefits

There are many potential benefits for businesses that invest in Facebook advertising, including the ability to:

• Attract a new fan base to your profile page and website.
• Generate familiarity and client loyalty amongst existing fans. 
• Promote special offers, content or products through your fan page.
• Extend your audience to include smartphone and tablet users.
• Finely segment your target market for each ad according to specific demographics.
• Directly link audiences to your profile page, external website or features such as a Facebook Event page.
• Create image-based ads as well as text-based ads.

Another great benefit of the Facebook advertising structure is that you can choose between two payment methods: pay per click (PPC) or pay per 1000 impressions (CPM).

Is it right for your business?

Advertising on Facebook is brilliant for some businesses and not so great for others. To determine whether this is the right avenue for you, evaluate the benefits against what you seek to achieve from your advertising endeavours. Also ensure that your target audiences are active users on Facebook.

For any social media advertising to work, strategy and total commitment to the platform you wish to advertise on is key. You must commit to engaging with your audience outside of advertising to truly earn results.

Contact Snap today to find out how we can help with your branding, marketing and website.