Facebook Advertising For Dummies E-Book

Paul Dunay

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 385

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

Profitable ideas and techniques for advertising on Facebook Tap into the explosive growth of social media and reach your customers with effective Facebook advertising campaigns and savvy insights into how to use this social media phenomenon effectively. It's all here and more in this detailed, easy-to-follow guide from two award-winning marketers. You'll learn what makes a good Facebook ad, how to apply the latest strategies and tactics for effective pay-per-click and cost-per-impression advertising, how to test your ad results, and much more. * Explores Facebook advertising inside and out; there are now more than 400 million active Facebook users and over 1.6 million active Pages on Facebook * Works as an all-around, hands-on guide for both experienced and new Facebook advertisers * Walks you through planning and creating an advertising campaign * Explains writing effective ad copy, how to use landing pages, and how to test and optimize your ads * Shows you how to use Facebook Insights to understand your results and how to create reports that analyze data Put your company's best face forward with the sound advertising tips and techniques in Facebook Advertising For Dummies.

Leseprobe

Facebook® Advertising For Dummies®

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

How This Book Is Organized

Part I: Getting Started with Facebook Advertising

Part II: Launching Your Facebook Advertising Campaign

Part III: Managing Your Facebook Advertising Campaigns

Part IV: Minding Your Metrics

Part V: The Part of Tens

Foolish Assumptions

Conventions Used in This Book

Icons Used in This Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Getting Started with Facebook Advertising

Chapter 1: Profiting from the Facebook Revolution

Introducing Facebook Advertising

Finding Your Way around Facebook Advertising

Seeing the Familiar Aspects of Facebook Advertising

Design your own advertisements

Manage your own ad budget

Understanding Unique Aspects of Facebook Advertising

Targeting profile attributes

Using clickable ads that don’t leave the original Web page

Gathering responder information with Facebook Insights

Direct and Relationship Marketing Aspects of Facebook Ads

How direct marketing techniques affects your advertisements

Understanding relationship marketing as part of your sales cycle

Chapter 2: Setting Up Your Facebook Account

Creating a New Facebook Business Page

Creating Your First Ad Campaign

Elements of a Great Ad Campaign

Titling your ad

Writing body text

Choosing an image

Choosing your destination URL

Preparing your Facebook Business Page for Your Ad Campaigns

Adding or updating the necessary elements on your business Page

Selecting elements for ad campaign landing pages or targets

Part II: Launching Your Facebook Advertising Campaign

Chapter 3: Matching Your Ads to Your Marketing Strategy

Picking a Target Group from the Facebook Audience

Establishing the Scope of Your Ad Campaign

Local campaigns

Regional campaigns

National and international campaigns

Align Your Ad Campaign with Your Marketing Objectives

Building your brand

Driving sales

Forming a community (alternate title — building your Fan base)

Listening (and responding) to feedback

Chapter 4: Buying Strategies

Choosing a Payment Model

Cost per impression

Cost per click

Determining cost per click

Basing Bids on Recommended Range

Tracking Your Campaign Budget

Running a budget report in Ads Reports

Understanding report results

Adjusting as You Go Along

Pausing or Stopping a Campaign

Chapter 5: Understanding the Types of Ad Campaigns

Differentiating between Ad Types

Using Ads with Social Attributes

Understanding the Importance of Images

Multiple Concurrent Campaigns

Reaching internal and external Web sites

Scheduling your Ad

Chapter 6: Getting Set to Implement and Measure Results

Allocating Resources to Create and Monitor the Campaign

Integrating Your Off-Line Campaigns

Testing Your Ads

Creating test campaigns

Determining ad success

Placing Ads through a Facebook Rep

Getting in touch with a Facebook rep

Taking over a home page

Developing Performance Objectives

Defining conversions

Analyzing results

Exploring Alternative Facebook Advertising Options

Advertising within applications (FarmVille, Mafia Wars)

Advertising by creating an application

Cross-Promoting via External Networks

Cross-promoting with blogs

Cross-promoting with e-mail blasts

Part III: Managing Your Facebook Advertising Campaigns

Chapter 7: Creating Pages for Your Campaign

Choosing a Landing Page

Opting for an internal Facebook landing page

Opting for an external Web site landing page

Creating a Separate Tab for Your Campaign

Using FBML to create a custom tab

Installing FBML on your Page

Building a custom FBML tab on your Facebook Page

Capturing Customer Data with Forms

Chapter 8: Testing and Optimizing Your Ad Campaign

Using Facebook Reporting Data

The Advertising Performance report

The Responder Demographics report

Optimizing Your Campaign

Refining bid range pricing on your ads

Gaining audience perceptions

Maximizing results

Measuring Insights with Facebook Insights

Users who Like your Page

User demographics

User Page Views

Media consumption

Story and discussion feedback

Page Activity (Mentions, Reviews, Discussions, Videos, Photos)

Chapter 9: Tracking Conversions to Sales

Setting Up a Process to Convert a Lead to a Sale

Defining a conversion

Understanding the types of conversions

Converting a lead

Following Up with Your Leads

Verifying a lead

Calling on a lead

Tracking leads in a CRM system

Converting a lead to a sale

Tracking the ROI

Tracking Your Conversions

Metrics to track

Optimizing conversions

Part IV: Minding Your Metrics

Chapter 10: Checking Out the Data

Getting to Know Ads Manager

Understanding campaign notifications

Analyzing Lifetime Statistics

Viewing graphs

Reviewing multiple campaigns

Reviewing weekly stats on your ad campaigns

Adjusting Account Settings

Chapter 11: Creating Reports

Introduction to Facebook Reports

Generating Reports

Creating an Advertising Performance report

Creating a Responder Demographics report

Creating a Responder Profiles report

Gaining Insights from Facebook Insights

Tracking interactions

Measuring User engagement

Breaking out demographics

Exporting data

Piecing Together a Dashboard

Identifying what’s important

Exploring third-party tools

Chapter 12: Extending the Facebook Experience

Introducing Social Plugins

Benefiting from Facebook Plug-ins

Fostering community

Building engagement

Adding Social Plugins to Your Web Site

Choosing Social Plugins for Your Business

Like button

Recommendations

Login (with Faces)

Comments

Activity Feed

Like box

Friendpile

Live Stream

Part V: The Part of Tens

Chapter 13: Ten Facebook Page Promotion Techniques (Besides Ads)

Promote Your Page Offsite

Put Compelling or Unique Content on Your Page

Have a Clear Focus on Your Page’s Purpose

Make Your Content Easy to Share

Get Your Users to Collaborate

Provide Something Exclusive to Your Facebook Page

Build a Facebook App

Create and Interact with Facebook Groups

Post a Facebook Marketplace Listing

Market Yourself, Not Just Your Page

Chapter 14: Ten (or So) Facebook Ads Beginner Mistakes

Not Using a Picture or Graphic in Your Ad

Not Refreshing the Ad Often

Not Split-Testing Your Ad at Least Once

Not Targeting Your Audience

Targeting Your Audience Too Tightly

Testing Your Ads for Too Short or Long of a Time

Focusing on CPC or Membership, Not Profit per Click or Engagement

Writing a Simple or Boring Headline

Not Including a Strong Call to Action

Not Connecting with Your Audience on a Relationship Basis

Not Following Facebook Advertising Guidelines

Chapter 15: Ten Nontraditional Facebook Ad Campaigns

Paging a Party of One

Showing Off Contest Entries’ Creativity

I Want to Work for You!

Can You Solve the Riddle?

Bring the Community to the Mountain

Wanted: A Few Young Minds

Are You a Tough Mudder?

Build a Better Book Group with Facebook

No Purchase Is Too Large

Be Your Own Brand

Chapter 16: Ten Resources for Facebook Advertisers

All Facebook Is All about Facebook

Get Inside Facebook with Inside Facebook

Do an About Face with AboutFaceDigital

Hear the Buzz — Marketing for Technology

It’s the Age of Advertising: Ad Age, That Is

Stay Up to Date with Social Media Today

Get the Picture with iStockphoto

Get the Scoop Directly from Facebook

Access the Libraries Created by the Facebook Developer Team

Like Facebook Ads? Why Not Like the Facebook Ads Page?

Facebook® Advertising For Dummies®

by Paul Dunay, Richard Krueger, and Joel Elad

Facebook® Advertising For Dummies®

Published byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River St.Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2011 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

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About the Author

Paul Dunay is an award-winning B2B marketing expert with more than 20 years’ success in generating demand and creating buzz for leading technology, consumer products, financial services, and professional services organizations.

Paul is Global Managing Director of Services and Social Marketing for Avaya, a global leader in enterprise communications, and author of Facebook Marketing For Dummies (Wiley). His unique approach to integrated marketing has led to recognition as a BtoB Magazine Top 25 B2B Marketer of the Year for 2009 and winner of the DemandGen Award for Utilizing Marketing Automation to Fuel Corporate Growth in 2008. He is also a five-time finalist in the Marketing Excellence Awards competition of the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA) and a 2005 gold award winner.

Richard Krueger is co-founder and CEO of AboutFace Digital, a social media marketing agency focused on Facebook as a network for acquiring customers, building brand, and driving sales. Recognized as a serial entrepreneur with extensive business development, branding, public relations, technical product development, and business management experience, Richard has a successful track record in leading the business strategies on behalf of social media and interactive entertainment companies. He has served as founder, CMO, and part of the original management teams of companies that brought true innovation in the areas of broadband infrastructure, content syndication, social media, mobile entertainment, online gaming, and local search.

Joel Elad has written six books about various online topics, including LinkedIn For Dummies, Starting an Online Business All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies, and Web Stores Do-It-Yourself For Dummies. He is the head of Real Method Consulting, a company dedicated to educating people through training seminars, DVDs, books, and other media. He holds a Master’s Degree in Business from UC Irvine, and a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science and Engineering from UCLA. He has contributed to Entrepreneur magazine and Smartbiz.com, and has taught at institutions like the University of California, Irvine.

Dedication

We dedicate this book to advertisers everywhere who are in the middle of the biggest sea change in marketing history. We believe there has never been a better time to be a marketer, and that tools like Facebook are rewriting the rules. In fact, we believe that Facebook will become the preferred platform for marketers and advertisers to acquire new customers, interact with existing customers, and sell products and services. We hope that by providing you with straightforward, step-by-step advice, as well as sharing our real-world experiences in marketing companies via Facebook, you’ll become better at your craft and thereby take us all to levels in marketing we’ve yet to explore.

Authors’ Acknowledgments

This project could not have succeeded without the support of many people who truly helped make this book a success.

First, we would like to acknowledge all of our families for allowing us to pursue our passion for Facebook Advertising. We appreciate all your understanding and support, throughout the time we took away from you to write this book.

We would like to thank the superb team at Wiley: Amy Fandrei, who reached out to us because of our blogs and supported us through the entire process. Christopher Morris, our project editor, who kept us on track every step of the way and helped us conform the book to For Dummies standards. And all the other Wiley folks behind the scenes who made the book possible.

Thanks to scores of bloggers, too many to list, who kept us informed about changes Facebook was making in their Facebook Advertising platform and what they meant to users. Most of all, we’d like to thank Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and his team of young entrepreneurs and software developers, for their vision in realizing the most popular online social network on the planet.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments at http://dummies.custhelp.com. For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax [phone].

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions, Editorial, and Media Development

Sr. Project Editor: Christopher Morris

Acquisitions Editor: Amy Fandrei

Sr. Copy Editor: Teresa Artman

Technical Editor: Michelle Oxman

Editorial Manager: Kevin Kirschner

Editorial Assistant: Amanda Graham

Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case

Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)

Composition Services

Project Coordinator: Patrick Redmond

Layout and Graphics: Joyce Haughey, Laura Westhuis

Proofreader: ConText Editorial Services, Inc., Lauren Mandelbaum

Indexer: Cheryl Duksta

Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies

Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher

Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher

Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director

Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director

Publishing for Consumer Dummies

Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher

Composition Services

Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

Introduction

In 2004, Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg created a Web site that would take the world by storm. As of mid-2010, Facebook had more than 500 million users, 70 percent of whom resided outside the United States. Even more amazing, 50 percent of all users checked their Facebook account at least once per day. Billions of photographs, status updates, Web links, and notes are shared among Facebook users every month. With all that activity, it shouldn’t be a surprise that businesses started to show up, wondering how to reach out and talk to this vibrant global community.

Facebook responded by offering different solutions for companies, public figures, and brands to interact with Facebook users on both a professional and personal nature. An initial effort called “Fan pages” gave way to “business Pages,” by which users can follow the activities of a business through their own News Feed on Facebook. When Microsoft made an equity investment in Facebook in 2007, Facebook allowed Microsoft to sell banner advertising on their site. Over the next few years, Facebook has changed their strategy and created different types of advertisement opportunities that companies of any size can use.

Of course, in true Facebook style, their advertisements were slightly different from the typical online ad model. On Facebook, advertisements can have “social” elements, which allow advertisers to show a potential user which of their friends have already interacted with that advertiser. These ads also have an “engagement” factor that allows users to interact with advertisements directly, allowing them to, say, click an option to Like a Business Page, or RSVP to a Facebook Event, without having to leave their current Web page.

Despite these differences, several elements about Facebook advertising are quite familiar. Like other Web sites, Facebook allows businesses or people to design their own advertisements, set their own daily budgets, and track the progress of their ad campaigns. Facebook allows advertisers to provide some targeting information to focus the audience that will see the advertisement. In fact, this feature contains one of the greatest strengths of Facebook advertising — a series of targeting filters that allow you to set extremely specific guidelines and take advantage of the copious amounts of information each Facebook user has already provided about him- or herself. If you want to target 35–44-year-old females in Midwestern states who like Brad Pitt flicks or Danielle Steel novels, you can make sure your Facebook Ads display to only those Facebook users who match these criteria.

We wrote this book to help you with the aspects of designing, testing, running, and maintaining advertisement campaigns on Facebook. Because advertisements can be seen as an “intrusion” on people’s interactions with each other, it’s important to look at how your advertisements, and overall Facebook presence, can simply extend the conversation instead of intrude on it so that you can gain acceptance and users — and, hopefully, conversions to paying customers or loyal users. A lot of power is available to any eager person willing to reach hundreds of millions of active users, and this book is designed to help you reach that audience as successfully as possible.

About This Book

This book covers all aspects of creating, launching, and maintaining your Facebook Ad campaigns: From establishing a presence and an account on Facebook, to designing your first ad campaign, implementing strategies, understanding your options, testing your concepts, updating your ad messages, targeting specific users, understanding your ad results, and thinking about the future of your ad campaigns and Facebook business presence, and everything in between. There’s a lot of advice and concepts but also some step-by-step instructions to get things done, and it’s all right here in this book.

How This Book Is Organized

We divide this book into five handy parts. This book is organized as a guide; you can read each chapter in order, or use specific chapters to supplement your own efforts. Throughout the process of building your Facebook Ads, you can think of this book as a reference, where you turn to the chapter you need that applies to your situation, find the knowledge you need to consider, and then continue in your process. We do a little amount of cross-referencing, too, so if you need to look elsewhere in the book for more information, you can easily find it.

Part I: Getting Started with Facebook Advertising

Part I starts with the basics, as we talk about the world of Facebook, how to establish yourself and your business on Facebook, and be ready to start running advertisements.

Part II: Launching Your Facebook Advertising Campaign

Part II goes into the ad launch process, where you devise strategies for which markets you wish to target, which pricing models you want to consider for your ads, how to make your budget go the farthest, which types of ads you want to run on the site, how to test your ad concepts, and what other advertising options exist on the site.

Part III: Managing Your Facebook Advertising Campaigns

Part III is designed to help you maintain your existing Facebook Ad campaigns, as we discuss how to build targeted landing pages that your users will see after clicking an ad. We also discuss how to explicitly target your advertisements for the highest results, and how to track the results of your ad campaign, even as far as those new users’ activity on your own Web site.

Part IV: Minding Your Metrics

Part IV takes a keen focus on understanding and interpreting the results of your ad campaigns. We discuss the Ads Manager utility within Facebook, where you can monitor the ongoing statistics of your different ad campaigns, and begin to identify trends, successes, and failures. We then go into how you can pull specific reports on your ad campaigns, showing you results of those campaigns down to the last click. We finish this part by looking to the future and how you can integrate other parts of Facebook into your own Web site so that you can continue the conversation with your Facebook users on your own domain.

Part V: The Part of Tens

Part V is the traditional For Dummies Part of Tens — lists that detail a number of Facebook Ad resources to consider and some lists of best practices of what works, as well as the biggest mistakes and things to look for to limit how much you need to fix.

Foolish Assumptions

We assume that you know how to use your computer, at least for the basic operations, like checking e-mail, typing up a document, or surfing the great big World Wide Web out there. If you’re worried that you will need a Ph.D. in Marketing to write your own Facebook Ads, relax. If you can bring up Facebook in your Internet browser, you can write your own Facebook Ad. Hopefully, you’ve done some form of advertising in the past so that you have an idea of what kinds of ads you may want, as well as how to write a headline and advertising message.

We use the word “page” to talk about any regular Web page, but we use the word “Page” to talk about a specific kind of Facebook page where a business or brand has its own presence on the social networking site.

This book assumes that you have a computer that can access the Internet; any PC or Apple Macintosh line of computer will be fine, as well as Linux or any other operating system with a Web browser. Please note, though, that we don’t get into the core specifics of how to write marketing copy or find the necessary keywords for your specific Facebook Ad. In some parts of the book, we talk about specific applications (like Microsoft Excel, so we presume that if you have Microsoft Excel, you know how to use it for the purposes of building a spreadsheet and entering data).

This book doesn’t describe the basic operations of a computer, accessing the Internet, or using an Internet Web browser such as Safari, Internet Explorer, or Firefox. We try to keep the information here specific to Facebook, and the pages within Facebook that support the ad creation and management process. Beyond that, if you need more information about connecting to the Internet or using a Web browser, any standard Internet reference works fine.

Conventions Used in This Book

To make sure instructions are clear and easy, we follow these conventions:

When you need to take a specific action in a step list, they are printed in bold.

When you see something printed this way — http://facebook.com — you’re looking at a Web address (URL) or perhaps (and rarely) a snippet of markup language.

Icons Used in This Book

The Tip icon notifies you about something cool, handy, or nifty or something that we highly recommend. For example, “Just because there’s a dancing clown out front doesn’t mean that it’s the best restaurant on the block.”

Don’t forget! When you see this icon, you can be sure that it points out something you should remember — maybe even something we said earlier that we’re repeating because it’s very important and you’ll likely forget it anyway. For example, “Always check your fly before you walk out on stage.”

Danger! Ah-oogah! Ah-oogah! When you see the Warning icon, pay careful attention to the text. This icon flags something that’s bad or that could cause trouble. For example, “No matter how pressing the urge, no matter how well you know these things, do not ask that rather large woman next to you when she is ‘due.’”

This icon alerts you to something technical, an aside or some trivial tidbit that I just cannot suppress the urge to share. For example, “FBML is known as FaceBook Markup Language, which is similar to HTML, or HyperText Markup Language.” (By the way, FBML may be going away, so consult Facebook Application Development For Dummies by Jesse Stay for the replacement method of iFrames.)” Feel free to skip over this book’s technical information as you please.

Where to Go from Here

You can start reading this book anywhere. Open the table of contents and pick a spot that amuses you or concerns you or has piqued your curiosity. Everything is explained in the text, and stuff is carefully cross-referenced so that you don’t waste your time reading repeated information.

Please note that some special symbols used in this eBook may not display properly on all eReader devices. If you have trouble determining any symbol, please call Wiley Product Technical Support at 800-762-2974. Outside of the United States, please call 317-572-3993. You can also contact Wiley Product Technical Support at www.wiley.com/techsupport.

Part I

Getting Started with Facebook Advertising

In this part . . .

If you’ve ever had to move to a new town, you understand the need to explore your new area and get comfortable with your new surroundings so you can adapt to your new environment. Believe it or not, that same analogy can be extended to the world of Facebook. If you want to set up shop as an advertiser, your best chance of success is to become comfortable with the overall environment before you start advertising.

In this first part, we cover the Facebook site in general and discuss how and where you can place advertisements on the site. We also discuss how your business can have a free presence on the site by building your own Facebook Page (yes, that’s with a capital P) where your business can have “Fans” or people that follow your business’ status on Facebook. Your ad campaigns will be more authentic and successful if you are a member of the community where you advertise.

Chapter 1

Profiting from the Facebook Revolution

In This Chapter

Discovering what Facebook advertising offers

Seeing the similarities between Facebook and other advertising

Identifying the unique functions of Facebook advertising

Understanding the direct and relationship marketing aspects of Facebook Ads

The old adage in real estate is that the three most important qualities of a property are “Location, location, location.” Many say the same thing about advertising as we watch ads pop up (and under) all over the place. You can’t watch a NASCAR race, drive along the road, read a magazine, or listen to the radio without hearing, seeing, or experiencing a message from an advertiser. Naturally, advertisers want to be where people are, and incorporate their products and messages into everyday life, from the bus stop bench to the clock on your doctor’s office wall. As the World Wide Web has evolved, and more and more people incorporate the Internet into their daily lives, advertising naturally followed them online. And the Web has never been the same.

Online advertising has experienced a phenomenal growth, from the early days of text-only ads to the online streaming videos and media-rich ads that we can see today. In that time, advertising has taken on different forms (banner ads, pop-up ads, pop-under ads, everything but the Pop-Tarts ad) and different ways of charging the advertiser. One of the main functions of advertising, though, has been that ads allowed popular content to stay free of charge for users on the Internet. People got to host their own Web sites, have free e-mail accounts, and carry on all sorts of discussion with ad-supported Web sites and companies. In fact, the most popular Web sites today are the search engines, like Google and Yahoo!, that help direct people to what they are seeking on the Internet and receive a lot of revenue from the ads displayed alongside the search engine results.

Today, the hottest category of Internet usage for most people is the social networking space, where people use social Web sites to stay connected and communicate with their friends and colleagues. The current leader in personal social networking is Facebook, with more than 500 million members as of this writing. Members can talk to their friends, share photos and stories, comment on each other’s status, and join groups and discussions on their favorite topics. Facebook also has third-party applications that run on its site, allowing people to take and share quizzes, play online games, and support their favorite causes. Alongside all this activity and discussion, quietly and unobtrusively placed, are advertisements that anybody can purchase, create. and launch by using Facebook advertising.

Facebook is in a unique position: It has a wealth of information about its users, with more content being generated daily, and Facebook has figured out how to allow advertisers access to that information without affecting the privacy of any particular user’s sensitive data.

In this chapter, we talk about the basics of Facebook advertising, from what an ad looks like to its basic structure and placement, and the different types of ads and pricing models that Facebook offers. We cover some of the basic principles Facebook Ads uses that are similar to other online advertising sites, as well as highlight some of the unique aspects that Facebook offers to their advertisers. We end the chapter by discussing the two types of marketing an advertiser should keep in mind when using Facebook Ads: direct marketing and relationship marketing. By showing you all of these concepts, we will demonstrate that Facebook Advertising gives you the power to advertise your exact message to your exact audience in a hip and non-threatening environment, which should be any marketer’s dream.

Introducing Facebook Advertising

When you use Facebook, whether you’re on your home page, reading comments on your Friends’ Walls, or playing your favorite online Facebook game, you’ll probably notice at least one advertisement, usually on the right side of the page. These are Facebook Ads, and they are available to anyone with an advertising budget, from $1 to $1 billion. (That last option is probably just for Dr. Evil from Austin Powers.) Large advertisers, such as Pepsi, Proctor & Gamble, and Walmart, run ads on Facebook, but it also offers a great opportunity for many small businesses. A quick look at the Facebook for Business Page (see Figure 1-1) shows ads from companies like Nike to a company selling eBay auction templates.

Every advertisement on Facebook has the same four core elements:

A title (25 characters or fewer)

An image (optional but we strongly recommend having one; 110 x 80 pixels)

The ad copy or message (135 characters or fewer)

A link to a Facebook or other Web page (when someone clicks the ad)

Figure 1-1: Facebook Ads appear along the right side of the page.

Facebook also adds a link entitled Like to do one of two things. If the advertiser is promoting a Facebook business Page, then clicking Like will add that user to the Facebook Page as a Fan. Otherwise, this link let users vote whether they like the advertisement. This is one way how Facebook enables its community to help police the types of ads that get displayed on the site. It also adds an interactive nature to the ads because when someone clicks the Like link for an ad, their friends find out that the person liked the ad, which may prompt some friends to view the ad as well.

If you’re a Facebook member, you’ve likely seen ads displayed on the right side of most Facebook Pages. These ads include a headline, an image, and body copy (text). As we mention earlier, Facebook also includes a Like link with which members can either join a Facebook Page or express their thumbs-up approval for the ad. Like most traditional display ads, the user is then redirected to another page within Facebook or an external Web site.

Increasingly, Facebook Ads also include an option to engage in a social action, such as “Like,” or “RSVP to this Event,” like in Figure 1-2. Ads that include a social action are referred to as social ads or engagement ads. Social ads can even include a video (instead of a still image) that allows the user to view the video from directly within the ad unit.

Figure 1-2: A social ad offers visitors the ability to engage in a social action.

On your Facebook home page, only one ad appears as the Sponsored ad, as shown in Figure 1-2. For most other Facebook Pages — also called Rest-of-Site pages — you should see at least three ads along the right side of the page, named the Ad Space.

Finding Your Way around Facebook Advertising

When you’re ready to use Facebook Ads, start by going to its home page (www.facebook.com/ads), as shown in Figure 1-3.

Your Facebook Ad account will be tied to either your personal Facebook account or your Facebook Pages account, which is tied to your business. We walk you through how to create your own Pages account in Chapter 2. After these accounts are set up, Facebook walks you through the four-step process of building your own Facebook Ad:

Figure 1-3: Start at the Facebook Advertising home page.

1. Design your ad.

a.Write your title and ad message (or body text, as Facebook calls it).

b. Attach an image to be included in the ad.

c. Designate an internal Facebook Page or external Web page.

2. Target your ad.

Use Facebook’s different target filters to assign the specific audience that you want to view your ad.

3. Price your ad.

You designate a campaign name for your ad, set a budget for that ad, and decide whether to use a CPC or CPM pricing model when the ad is displayed. (Read more about CPC and CMP pricing in later chapters.)

4. Review your ad.

You go over all the information you entered in Steps 1–3, and make sure the ad is to your liking. After you review everything and make sure that it’s correct, you submit the ad to Facebook for approval.

You can read about all these steps in more detail in Chapter 2.

Seeing the Familiar Aspects of Facebook Advertising

Certain elements of Facebook advertising are very similar to other ad solutions out there, like Google AdWords. Some of these elements — such as writing your own advertising messages (a catchy title, some enticing call to action) and managing your own advertising budget (setting ad bid prices, doing daily or total ad budgets) — are proven winners that simply make sense for an online advertiser and create a better experience and return on investment (ROI).Because of these similarities, anyone with some experience in online advertising can use the Facebook Ad platform with no sharp learning curve. Later, we discuss some of the unique aspects of Facebook Advertising to further demonstrate the power and reach of this platform.

Design your own advertisements

When running an ad on Facebook, it’s time to channel your inner Don Draper (from the AMC TV show Mad Men) and come up with your own design. After all, it’s up to you to write your own ad. And this is a good thing because you’re the one writing an ad that speaks directly to the customer you’re trying to attract instead of having to pick from templates or stale prescripted messages. You’re free to design targeted advertisements that match your goals, product catalog, or intended cause.

Facebook guidelines, however, do govern what you can and cannot put in an ad. Most of these guidelines have to do with protecting other people’s copyrighted or trademarked information; or preventing anything obscene, offensive, or illegal from being displayed. Failure to abide by these guidelines can result not only in your ad not running but even removal of your Facebook account. You can find out more at the Facebook Ad Guidelines page at www.facebook.com/ad_guidelines.php.

Manage your own ad budget

With Facebook Ads, like other ad systems, you can set your own daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly budget, so you have virtual control over how much you spend. This allows you to plan your ad campaigns so you know your ads will be on Facebook during specific periods of time. Too, you keep yourself from spending your entire yearly ad budget in one or two days.

By managing your own ad budget, you can also decide when to spend more or less based on how effective your ads are performing. We discuss this strategy in Chapter 4 when we talk about how to calculate the effectiveness and ROI of your ads.

Of course, the value of being able to manage your own advertising budget occurs only when you take the time to decide when and how much to spend on your advertisements. Before you start running any major campaign, ask yourself a few questions:

How much money do I have, total, to spend on Facebook advertisements? What percentage of my overall ad budget will I dedicate to Facebook Ads?

How long do I want this ad campaign to be visible on Facebook?

For what specific dates or timeframes will I need extra visibility or spending?

After you’ve thought about total spending, decide your per-ad spending. Many online advertising systems, including Facebook, have a bidding system for determining an ad’s price. A bidding system is a method in which the advertiser defines the ad they wish to run and then create and enter their own bid price, which they are willing to pay the ad system for running this ad on that ad system. The bidding system will also look at any competing advertisements in their system inventory and suggest a bidding price or bidding range for this new ad request that the ad system would likely accept.

Facebook bases its ad pricing on a closed bidding system. This means that you can’t see what others are bidding for ads, nor can they see your bids. Facebook provides a recommended bidding range, although you can choose to under or overbid their suggested range. However, if your cost is too low, the ad will not appear. Sometimes a penny too low on a bid can mean the difference between an ad being seen and one that isn’t.

Similar to other systems, you have two different methods you can use to bid for your ads:

CPC (cost per click): This is the method most often used, preferred by advertisers who closely track the performance of their ad. In the CPC method, the advertiser doesn’t pay until a potential customer clicks the ad and is taken to the intended target page of that ad. This way, the advertiser doesn’t pay every time an ad is merely displayed, and each click can be tracked to see whether that potential customer performed any action after clicking the ad.

CPM (cost per [thousand] impresssions): This method was how online ads were originally paid for by advertisers. Whenever Facebook displays your ad, that counts as an impression against your ad budget. You can bid on the rate charged per 1,000 impressions.

Some advertisers still opt for this method, especially in cases where they are looking for visibility instead of getting the customer to perform a specific action. The cost is much less with CPM because the advertiser is not paying for performance.

For those of you wondering why cost per thousand is abbreviated as CPM instead of CPT, the M refers to the Roman numeral system, in which M stands for 1,000.

We discuss more about CPC and CPM, as well as specific bidding strategies for both models, in Chapter 4.

Understanding Unique Aspects of Facebook Advertising

The most recent Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Revenue Report (done by PricewaterhouseCoopers) estimated that $22.7 billion was spent on Internet advertising in 2009. Ten years ago, the estimates on Internet ad spending ranged from $1–2 billion. Part of this phenomenal growth is attributable to Internet companies figuring out bigger and better ways of serving the advertiser more — and, in most cases, better — information that advertisers can use in their efforts. As Internet technology has improved, Web sites have been able to incorporate images, then audio, video, and Flash technology into their ads to make them more attention-grabbing and user-friendly. Search engines were able to relay keywords typed in as a user’s intent and geared ads targeted for those keywords.

Facebook Ads, unlike other ad systems (such as Google AdWords) can provide some great features for their advertisers mainly because of one thing: information. Facebook sits on a mountain of information about each of its users, from user profile information to the discussions, groups, and other ads that each user clicks or fills out while using Facebook. New information is generated daily, and Facebook has figured out how to harness that information in a way that shields the privacy of each particular user’s sensitive data while providing a richer experience for the advertiser.

Targeting profile attributes

If you’re designing an ad for a search engine like Google or Yahoo!, the most you know about your viewer is typically the keyword(s) that user types when using the search engine. Therefore, your ad has to be attractive to those visitors using those keywords as you try to figure out whether your product or service matches what they’re searching for.

With Facebook, however, you can know a lot more about each person who will potentially view one of your ads. The typical Facebook user completes an extensive profile that tells the world (or just their Friends) everything from their Interests, Likes, and Dislikes to their Age, Gender, and Marital Status. Because this information is stored in each Facebook user’s profile, Facebook can offer its advertisers the ability to target specific profile attributes so that you, the advertiser, can set very specific audiences for your ad.

Say, for example, that you’re trying to advertise a shop that sells wedding dresses in Los Angeles. With other ad systems you might run search engine ads targeting phrases like wedding dress or getting married, but with Facebook you can actually tell Facebook to display your ad only to those 35,620 Facebook users (see Figure 1-4) who are Women, 25 to 44 years old, whose Marital Status is Engaged, and whose location is Los Angeles or a surrounding area.

Facebook has 11 profile attributes that you can set for each ad, including location, age, sex, education, and so on. For more on this, see Chapter 2.

Targeting your audience is as important as the message itself. Develop personas to represent your target audience. Learn what they’re interested in — their educational background, relationship status, and where they live. Reach only the audience you desire by leveraging Facebook’s targeting to meet your ideal customer profile.

Figure 1-4: Target the exact users who will see your ad.

Using clickable ads that don’t leave the original Web page

The design of most online advertisements is to redirect the viewer to a specific Web page, or pop open a new tab or window to get to a message that the advertiser wants the viewer to see and then hopefully perform some sort of action. This is why we discuss landing pages at various places throughout this book, primarily in Chapter 7. However, some Facebook Ads offer a feature not possible with other systems: namely, the ability for the viewer to click the ad, perform the call to action (what you want the viewer to do), and never be taken off the original Web page where the ad was displayed.

With Facebook Ads for Pages and Events, the ad actually includes another element not found in other ads. That extra element is a button or link that the user clicks to perform the necessary action on Facebook’s server. This button or link then changes to a confirmation message when the action is complete — and, most importantly, never updates, redirects, or changes the Web page that the user was on when the ad was clicked.

For example, take the ad for AllPosters.com in the left side of Figure 1-5. If you click the Like link, the ad subtly changes, replacing the link with a confirmation message (You like AllPosters.com, as shown on the right side of Figure 1-5), but the rest of the page stays the same, allowing the customer to go about their Facebook experience as usual.

Figure 1-5: You can interact with Facebook Ads without leaving the page!

This feature is significant because it enhances the relationship marketing aspect of Facebook Ads. You, the advertiser, can interact with new customers without interrupting their daily activity. You become part of their overall experience as they are added to your Fan page or event RSVP list without losing track of their everyday Facebook interactions. The immediate confirmation of the action without the jarring effect of the visitor being moved to a new Web page often means that user is more likely to stay with that advertisers’ brand in the future.

Gathering responder information with Facebook Insights

If you’re going to advertise on Facebook, we highly recommend having a Page on Facebook as well. (We talk about how you can build a Facebook Page for your business in Chapter 2.) Not only will having a Page include you in an ongoing conversation with your customers and visitors by using Facebook, but it also gives you more information that you can use to update and refine your ads.

Facebook keeps track of visitor information for your business Pages through an interface called Facebook Insights. You can see user exposure, actions taken, and behavior related to either your social ads or your business Page, which allows you to monitor trends so that you can better gauge the effects of your ads beyond the common metrics of click-through rate and CPC.

We discuss the ins and outs of Facebook Insights, and how to use the data to update your ad campaigns, in Chapter 8.

Direct and Relationship Marketing Aspects of Facebook Ads

As you begin to use Facebook Ads to create and run your ad campaigns, you should understand two of the basic marketing disciplines that are coming into play in your efforts to reach the consumer:

Direct marketing

Relationship marketing