Target Your Marketing Campaign with Facebook Ads

Facebook ads are quickly becoming the top choice for targeted online ad campaigns. Whether your goal is lead generation, sales, or improving brand recognition, a targeted campaign will always have better results.

Google Adwords used to be the king of online ad campaigns because they can target users based on their current search priorities. Facebook ads are the next generation of targeted text ads.

Learn how to get started and why you should create a Facebook ad.

Facebook has servers of data just waiting to be leveraged for your next online ad campaign: age, gender, location, likes and dislikes. By laser targeting your web ads to just the right users, you’ll not only spend less money but you’re more likely to get a better response as well.

Using these steps to you’ll be able to make a Facebook ad to advertise your products, services, events or just about anything else. You can also advertise your Facebook Fan page. Once you have a few thousand fans, you’ll be able to reach out with different promotions on a regular basis.

Today we’re going to focus on a basic text ad with logo, although these instructions also work for text-only ads or banner ads too.

Start by gathering some information about your ad campaign. First, decide on a budget. Then, make a list of characteristics your customers have in common — their demographic. Does your customer enjoy the outdoors or reading? What is their education level? Where do they live? You may even want to create different ads targeting different types of customers.

Now that you know your target, it’s time to write your ad. Remember to write to your customer. Customize your text for each demographic you want to reach on Facebook. For your ad you will need:

• a title: no more than 25 character
• body text: no more than 135 characters
• a photo: 100 pixels by 80 pixels

Gather your ad information and let’s go. After logging in to Facebook, make your way to the Facebook advertising page.

From here, you’ll “Design Your Ad” in Facebook’s tool. Type in your text and url, upload your ad image.

The next part is the fun part. Using your list of “customer characteristics,” you can include or exclude specific types of people. Facebook ads let you set demographic filters for things such as age, geographic location, sex, relationship status, interests and more. Use the keywords filter to target users that mention specific terms such as the Obama or Sarah Palin.

Next you’ll need to choose between Pay Per Click or Pay Per Impression advertising. Pay for Clicks (CPC) advertising allows you to specify a certain amount that you are willing to pay each time a user actually clicks on your ad. Pay for Views (CPM) advertising allows you to specify how much you are willing to pay for each 1000 impressions. Personally, I’ve tested both and found very little price difference over the long-term.

Set your budget and place a bid for your Facebook ad. You can set a daily limit, however, you can’t set a monthly limit. You can pause your ad at any time, so just pay attention to the calendar and turn the ad off when your budget is spent.

Finally, review your ad. Make sure your image is appealing and easily readable. Check for spelling errors. After you submit your ad, Facebook will also need to approve it. This usually takes less than 24 hours.

Once your Facebook ad goes live, you can monitor it’s progress through your dashboard. Keep an eye on click-throughs, impressions, cost-per-click. And, don’t be afraid to tweak your ad through out the campaign. Facebook makes it easy to adjust your ad. If it’s not performing as well as you expected, you might try adding or deleting certain keywords to reach a different audience.