The Facebook Ads platform has transformed how companies market to consumers….forever! Before we talk about how this has happened let’s clear up a couple of myths.

Myth 1: Facebook Advertising is Free because you don’t need to pay to sign up.

A lot people are under the false impression that Facebook advertising is free, however it’s far from free. A lot of companies believe that by making a business account under the personal account option on Facebook they can gain access to more people without spending a dime. Their thinking is if they have a business account setup as a personal profile they can simply go out and friend their entire target market. Not a bad course of action until you read Facebook’s Terms of Service. You see it happen all the time even though it’s strictly against Facebook’s TOS. Keep your companies profile on an official business page if you want to stay off of Facebook’s naughty list in 2012.

Myth 2: Facebook advertising isn’t efficient or effective

A lot of people are under the false impression that Facebook advertising is not effective. The truth of the matter is you don’t know how effective your ads will be until you try. Not every ad you throw on the side of a Facebook profile is going to be successful. The trick is finding those ads that trigger engagement and utilizer them to the max.

The Facebook ads platform is a lot like any other media buying tool. The only difference is the same media buying tool (Facebook) has access to your exact target market. In the history of marketing there has never been a better medium to reach your target market then on Facebook. Let me explain. The Facebook ads platform allows marketers to create content specific ads for their exact target market, and will deliver that ad to the target market only. This can be crucial when developing a marketing plan on Facebook. This means you can create an specific ad for your target market. Age, gender, income level, race, and ethnicity all are demographics marketers will generally target. In the past marketers would have to get out and find out where they can place ads to reach their target market. Nowadays the consumers come to the marketers via Facebook ads platform. Marketers no longer have to ask themselves “is this ad reaching our target market?” because with FB ads platform you know exactly which ads are reaching the target and which ones are starting the relationship building process with the consumer.

Here are a few tips to help you get started on paid advertising with Facebook:

1. Create multiple ads for your specific target markets. Run a few separate messages and utilize the one that creates the greatest response moving in to the future.
2. Try to create something to engage the customer. No one is going to click on a boring “fans save 5 percent!” message. If your message isn’t engaging and fun then no one will click it.
3. Advertise a contest or promotion you are having. Provide some incentive for them to click the advertisement and the “like” button.
4. Create a “Fan Gate” on your page. This makes user become a Fan of your company before they can gain access to content of information. This enhances everything you are trying to do in terms of community building on Facebook.
5. Get to know the platform. There are quite a few of amazing statistics that Facbook provides for you on the ads platform. Get to know what social reach is vs. reach, understand the difference of Paying Per Impression or Paying Per Click, ETC.
6. Measure your ROI and adjust your campaign as necessary on a weekly basis.
7. Be open minded. Not every ad you run will be successful, the key is to finding the ones that work and keep building off of those ones.
8. Have fun with it!

Do you have questions about the Facebook Ads platform? Drop us a line in the comments box and maybe we can help you out!