Advertising comes in many forms, and like with so many things where you are given the opportunity to choose, some forms are going to be more subtle than others and some will definitely be more effective than others. With over one billion people having an active Facebook account nowadays, this social media channel is rapidly becoming an extremely popular and cost effective way to advertise with maximum reach.
With the option to ‘pay as you go’ where you top up your account similarly to an electric meter, Facebook advertising is particularly good for small businesses and besides being simple and easy to set up, eliminating costly start-up fees, it also allows you to customise your entries based on your business and audience demographic so you can be sure that you are serving relevant content to relevant people.
Adding clout to your advertising can also pose a challenge for small businesses but Facebook has subtly mastered the art of spreading the word by advertising your ‘liked’ sponsored links to your Facebook friends giving it an immediate trustworthy endorsement.
Facebook allows you to create and publish all types of adverts yourself using its self service interface, the adverts are visible all across Facebook but only some will show in the News feed… So with all that said and done, now you just need to pick the right advertising format for you, below is a brief guide to Facebook adverts:
Facebook ads belong to one of three categories, Ads, Sponsored Stories and Promoted posts.
On Facebook, the Ad category is the one that gives you total control and lets you don your creative cap with pride and gusto. Here it is possible for all elements of your advert to be tailored by you, from the title and text right down to which images you choose to support your message. The choice of audience is maybe the most interesting, as you can choose by age, location and interests, down to the most specific level.
But it is the origin of your advert that determines where on Facebook it appears so when deciding what is right for you, you need to consider all the main ad formats:
- The Standard Ad
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The Promoted Page Post Ad
- The Sponsored Story
The Standard Ad
The Standard Advert is the one we are all probably most familiar with, these are the traditional adverts that feature down the right hand side of all the most frequently used Facebook pages (such as the profile page, events page and albums)
With Standard Adverts you can direct traffic wherever you want, be that your Facebook page, a blog, another website, an online shop or even a Facebook app or event. Bear in mind that once on Facebook, most users are reluctant to go elsewhere, so ads which link to pages within Facebook tend to be most effective.
Promoted Page Post
Promoted Page posts work in the same way as Standard Adverts, but instead of using new content, they use one of your recent posts and turn it into an advert. They still show up on the right hand side of the page but can be used to get more people to see a specific message.
Sponsored Story Adverts
In a nutshell, these are normal page posts which have been sponsored in order to increase their reach and will show up in desktop and mobile news feeds. This is an interactive way of advertising as a promoted page post acts in the same way as a standard page post with viewers being asked to ‘like’, comment and share. You can also use them to show people that their friends have liked a particular post so that they can see the connection. You can choose to boost a post so that more of your followers see it or you can choose another group of people to target.
The world of social media and Facebook can sometimes be a little daunting, especially to novices or infrequent users. And Facebook in particular changes very quickly and regularly. If anything in this post has left you scratching your head then fear not, Début Marketing’s Julie offers one-to-one social media training as well as seminars and is always happy to help when it comes to clearing up the mysteries of social media platforms.
Next week I will give you a little break from social media and instead explain the importance of proof-reading.