Facebook is the world’s top social networking site with over 500 million active members and thousands joining each day. With even a small section of this number as customers businesses can make a lot of money. While there are a number of ways of creating a presence on Facebook, one of the easiest ways to sell a business is through advertisements on this networking site. Advertising on Facebook is different from advertising in the real world, since this offers a lot more control and advertisers can select their goals and budgets at the outset.
Facebook requires that businesses first understand the site’s policies and rules, and take approval from the Facebook team. It offers two types of ads:
- Premium ads that have to be routed through the site’s sales team
- Marketplace –these ads can utilize the self serve tool.
Marketplace ads are the most common ones used by most businesses. Any event or page created on Facebook can be promoted and endorsed in the ad, and thus make it more personalized and appealing.
Steps for Creating Ads
- The first step about ad creation is, first understanding the end target to be achieved through it. These could be increasing sales, creating brand or product awareness, get a larger following or promoting specific events. Sales can increase only if people know about your product, see it endorsed by others and your business has a Facebook page already where they get updates, information and offers. Brands need to be popularized through campaigns and getting more and more people to rate products which others can see, and brands need to be highly visible as well. While it is possible to have multiple goals, the best results come from adopting and pursing one goal at a time.
- The next step for creating an advertisement is getting to know the audience, that is, the people who shop online through your website, their location, preferences, age group and so on. This is important since it helps to then create ads that will appeal to the target audience. In fact knowing the audience helps to develop ads accordingly.
- Ad design is the next step. This is time consuming, requires artistic talent and awareness about how to get a message across. Specialists may need to be roped in who can make an ad aesthetically appealing and eye catching. The ad campaign has to have a catchy name and a suitable price can be set. It may be a good idea to take advice from known people and seek their comments on a preview, before submitting it. The advertising button appears at the bottom of the page, and when clicked, it displays a “create your ad” button with various options to choose from. The next step is to click on the link “I Want to Advertise Something I have on Facebook”. The next click has to be on the internal destination, followed by the target options. The title text box will need a heading or title for the ad, followed by the body and the image to be loaded. The ad can be localized to a country, age, gender and these can be typed in the appropriate boxes. Numerous other options follow and can be filled with ease, and the ad is then ready for submission.
Facebook offers advice and tips and has a team of people to assist those who are unable to accomplish ad creation on their own.
