Facebook
Advertising

TL;DR (Too long; didn’t read aka if you only have 30 seconds, at least read this short intro)

Facebook ads are very different and vastly more powerful than Facebook posts. They allow you to find and talk to “customer clones”–people very, very similar to those who already purchase your products or services. We are experts at doing this.

Facebook advertising is easy and effective. It can seem daunting at first to the uninitiated, but not only have we been doing it successfully for many years, we can also quickly help you understand everything you need to know about it. Facebook features a powerful advertising system built on a massive audience. (More than two billion people.) With Facebook, you can dramatically increase not only the number of people who will learn about your business, but also the quality of that audience. Let’s face it, if your business is home construction, you probably don’t want to spend money showing your ads to members of the “Renting” interest category.

Here’s a quick “Facebook Advertising 101” for you. If you understand it all after reading this–great! If not, don’t worry. While this is an “intro level” course on using their platform to grow your business, we here at Digital Caffeine have our Doctorates in this stuff. We’ve got your back.

TL;DR (Too long; didn’t read aka if you only have 30 seconds, at least read this short intro)

Facebook Post VS Facebook Advertising

It’s important to understand what Facebook advertising is and what it is not. After just a few seconds on Facebook, you will see posts from your friends, posts from businesses you follow, posts from groups you belong to and sponsored posts, better known as “ads”.

As a business, it is important to have a presence on Facebook in order to establish credibility, interact with your current customers and, more importantly, reach prospective customers. Creating daily posts, posting events and sharing posts are all important aspects of creating a strong Facebook presence, but they are not Facebook Advertising.

Post

The first image on the right is an example of a Facebook Post. Facebook Posts are little updates you create on your business page which display in the timeline of your account. These posts will only be shared with people who “like” your page–and only about 2% of those people will actually see those posts. Posting does not cost anything. You can, however, boost the post by paying a few extra dollars for more people to see the post. Because money is involved, people sometimes confuse boosted posts with ads. Don’t do that. Boosted posts are simply the same posts viewed by some more people. They do not have any of the control, options and targeting that paid Facebook ads have.

Ad - Newsfeed

To the right is an example of a paid Facebook Ad. This ad runs in a user’s newsfeed, including Instagram (remember, Facebook owns Instagram). It can be easily identified as an advertisement by the “Sponsored” label, as circled in the image. These posts can be targeted to very specific audiences based on your brand. Looking for residents of Springfield, Ohio between the ages of 22 and 33 who love cupcakes? We can help you target them with Facebook ads.

Ad - Sidebar (Desktop Only)

The next image to the right is another example of a paid Facebook Ad. This type of ad, which shows up in the sidebar of those folks using a desktop or laptop, runs in the person’s newsfeed and, again, can be easily identified as an advertisement by the “Sponsored” label, as circled in the image. Just like Newsfeed ads, these Sidebar ads can be targeted to very specific audiences based on your brand.

Facebook offers businesses a paid advertising platform to reach new customers and engage with current customers. These ads go above and beyond the capabilities of Facebook posts. Facebook Ads can appear in News Feed on desktop and mobile, and in the right column of Facebook on the desktop view. These paid ads on Facebook can be used for a number of campaign objectives. These objectives include Page Likes, Clicks to Websites, Website Conversions, Event Responses, and Offer Claims.

What Facebook Advertising Can Do For Your Business

Increase Online Sales

You probably have a pretty good idea about who your ideal customer is, right? Now, we’re not saying that determining this is the “easy part”, but reaching this ideal audience in a cost-effective way has always been the much harder part. Thanks to Facebook, however, you can quickly and easily engage your ideal customer where they currently are. Using a wide variety of targeting options, you can put your products and services directly in front of the person most likely to become a customer. This can include past customers and Lookalike audiences of your past customers.

Product/Service Promotion

Let’s face it, creating “buzz” around your product is the Holy Grail of advertising. How many times have you seen a product go viral and thought, “How did they do that??” Well, more often than not, they did it via Facebook advertising. Creating compelling content is only half the battle. The other half is getting it out there in front of enough of the right people in order to help it spread.

Lead Generation

With Facebook ads, you can pinpoint your ideal customers and engage them with compelling messages about your unique business. Lead Generation forms are embedded directly into Facebook, so the customer never has to leave the site, making it convenient and easy for them.

Event Promotion

With Facebook advertising, you can easily promote your upcoming events by reaching the right people most likely to attend. At the same time, you will also increase your brand exposure. Event promotions are a great way to both increase brand awareness and collect those valuable leads.

How We Reach Your Goals

Pinpoint Targeting

Imagine if you could clone your current customer base. Think about how powerful that would be. You don’t just want to find more people to advertise to, right? You want to find people who are actually going to become customers. Well, we can help you do that with Facebook advertising. Traditional advertising is a net, while Facebook advertising is an arrow. Using the unprecedented amount of information Facebook makes available to advertisers, we can help you target your ads to your ideal audience. This will allow you to reach people based on their location, age, gender, interests–even their behaviors, job titles, income, and so much more.

Custom Audiences

Using a list of email addresses or phone numbers as small as 100, we can leverage the Facebook algorithms to…wait for it…create a huge list of people exactly like them.

That’s worth repeating: With just a small sample of “customer DNA”, we can essentially clone your customers.

Custom audiences can be built based on your current or ideal clients. From these lists, we can create “lookalike audiences” to expand the reach of your brand and services. These lists, along with associated tracking pixels, allow us to create “remarketing lists” which can be used to target a website visitor who has not yet been converted to a customer. This allows us to create custom ads based on their particular behavior, which allows you to engage with them in the way that’s appropriate for them–and to do so at any stage of your sales funnel.

A/B Ad Testing

Creating a variety of ads is great, but the real power comes with knowing which ones work better than others. This is where A/B Testing comes in. Also called “split testing,” it’s a way for us to help you test things like ad headlines, body copy, images and calls to action. Using this method, we are able to continually refine the ads to better engage your target audience and increase the likelihood that they will become customers.

Pre-Exam* Review: Facebook posts show up on your page and the pages of your followers, while Facebook ads are delivered to new and specifically targeted people. The power of their platform lies in the massive amount of data available to advertisers. Turning that data into useful information in order to send compelling messages directly to a “microtargeted” audience is our specialty. We are here and ready to help!

*Just kidding. There is no exam.