The short answer is “YES”.

We can do Facebook ads, YOU can do Facebook ads, your neighbor’s teenager can do Facebook ads. Facebook works really hard to make it easy to do ads.

The long answer is “look before you leap”.

While I believe Facebook advertising has a lot of potential, it hasn’t been quite right for any of my clients so far. Which means, we haven’t actually placed Facebook advertising.

One client who wanted to use it just wasn’t ready to jump directly into Facebook advertising. Our experience over the past year taught us that their existing customers are not Facebook savvy to generate the reviews and conversations that we wanted to drive more business. Our solution was to have them start working with RevLocal to aggressively collect online reviews and generate online participation. RevLocal is a Google partner that offers a feedback request that our client’s receptionist can trigger immediately at customer checkout.

The point is that understanding Facebook is critical for getting the results you want. Most people are comfortable enough posting on their own Facebook timelines or commenting on their friends’ posts. However, many casual users don’t understand how Facebook business pages are populated and promoted. Even frequent users are often unaware of the underlying complexities of privacy settings and user roles that are required for making Facebook so easy.

Yes, we do that but…

We can certainly place and run both Google and Facebook advertising for our clients.  Our expertise is in being able to work well with the technology and produce great content.

We do not pretend to be an expert at working the systems. There are specialists, like RevLocal, for that. There are Google Adwords specialists.  There are Facebook advertising specialists, too, but FaceBook advertising is really designed for the DIY crowd.  They have a fabulous Advertiser Help Center and video tutorials called Facebook Blueprint.

I’ve done some research on behalf of clients and I recently attended a Facebook-sponsored presentation on the “ease of using Facebook to promote your business”, so I’m going to share key learnings.

Start here to learn more.

This is best if done through the personal Facebook account of the person who created the business or fan page. If you are worried about this being tied to your personal Facebook account, then you will need to learn more about how Facebook Basic Privacy works. The “world” doesn’t need to have access to your personal information. Your personal Facebook profile is your only valid key into the world of Facebook.

Spoiler Alert! You may find this overwhelming: https://www.facebook.com/business/

Set up Facebook Ads Manager. After doing this, you can go to Account Settings > Ad Account Roles > Add a Person to allow someone else to manage your Ads.

The audience for your Facebook ad doesn’t necessarily have to be on Facebook because of Facebook’s audience network. Facebook has partnerships with other networks that also display their advertising.

Yes, you essentially pay per view because you set an ad budget based on audience size, your bid to reach your audience, and your schedule. My research has indicated that you should generally be prepared to budget a minimum of $5 per day in advertising spending. There is more good stuff on Wordstream and Adspresso.  Adspresso even has a post titled “Everything You Need to Know”.

One of the best Facebook options is to create a Custom Audience by uploading a list of current “customers” and Facebook will create a “look-alike” audience to target based on the Facebook profiles of your current customers.

There is a Facebook Pixel to embed on your website to track Facebook conversions – this can help you understand your customers’  entire online experience better, including tracking the devices they use.

There are 4 ad formats available with Facebook: Carousel (5 images that each have unique URLs), Slideshows (up to 6 images), Video, and Canvas.

Facebook also has a couple of apps – via Instagram –  to make creating your content easier:  Boomerang and Hyperlapse.

Nothing is constant except change.

We’ve all heard about the Google search algorithms that change frequently and upset everyone’s SEO strategy. (Read about “Possum” here.) Facebook changes, too. As a platform, Facebook changes to increase it’s value for users. As users change their personal content, the options that Facebook presents to them change, too. You will not be able to control what Facebook users see, you will only be able to increase the chances of them seeing what you want to show them.

For advertising and promotion in any media, relevant content is the key.

If you would like help getting relevant content to your market, we would love to help you do that.