Advertising on Facebook

Love it or hate it Facebook is still extremely popular with brides to be and offers lots of opportunities for wedding businesses.

But it’s changed dramatically over the last year or so and it’s no longer easy for businesses to get noticed without paying. Even the most savvy social media gurus are turning to advertising to boost their results. So if Facebook is a key part of your social media strategy then you need to look at Facebook advertising.

The plusses

Facebook lets you be extremely targeted with your adverts – want to target women aged 20 – 40 living within Manchester whose relationship status is engaged? No problem.

You can test things out using a very small budget. Spend as little as $1 per day.

You can see what does and doesn’t work very quickly.

The downsides

Like all advertising some will work and some won’t. You’ll need to try different things and learn what works for you.

Advert fatigue is common. People don’t go onto Facebook to see the ads and we’ve all become very good at ignoring them. You really need to stand out to be noticed.

Succeeding with Facebook Ads

You need to treat Facebook like any other advertising. It’s vital to:

• Know your goals
• Plan your campaigns
• Test and measure

Setting your Goals

Make sure you know what you want to achieve. Facebook lets you organise campaigns around specific goals – page likes, website visits and post engagement are just some of the options – so use these wisely.

What you don’t want to do is just click wherever Facebook suggests. That “Boost Post” button is far too easy to click by mistake for my liking!

Here are some ways you can use Facebook advertising:

Building your fan base

Unless you have a huge circle of friends to help you out, growing your page likes organically is going to be a slow process these days. Using advertising will speed things up so you no longer look embarrassingly unpopular.

You should give people a reason to Like your page – adverts are much more effective with a call to action.

Reaching your fans

As you probably know, only a small proportion of the people who Like your page will see any specific post. You can use the “boost post” to ensure more of them are shown your most important messages.

When you click on “Boost Post” you’ll be asked who you want to target. In this case choose “Only people connected to….” your page. This will limit the audience to your fans and their friends.

Use this for things you think your fans will be particularly interested in – it could be a new product or service.

Promoting something special

Are you running a competition, having an open day or offering a discount? You can use advertising to reach more people while giving them a good reason to engage with your post.

Use the targeting options to define who sees your advert and make sure you use really good images to go with your text.

Plan your campaigns

To run your campaigns successfully you will need:

• Great images to make your advert stand out
• A well defined target audience
• A realistic budget and timescale

Test and Measure

You can’t just set and forget Facebook advertising. Keep monitoring your adverts and test different things to see what works for you.

Facebook allows you to test different images, positions and text so make full use of the capabilities.

Have you tried Facebook advertising? Do let us know what does (and doesn’t) work for you.