I use Facebook more for personal reasons than for business, but I do see many business benefits. At one point Facebook was considered a “free” way to promote your business but with the recent changes to the Facebook algorithms businesses who aren’t spending money aren’t being seen. The good news is that over the past couple of years Facebook has made significant improvements to its ad targeting options which makes Facebook continue to be a great means of marketing your small business, the difference is you have to spend some of your marketing budget to do so. Here are three tips to effectively using Facebook ads:
1) Choosing Your Target: Choosing your audience is the most important part, you can target by basic demographics (age, gender, location, relationship status, etc) but you can also target by interests and pages they follow. For example as a small business consultant I may choose to include people who have liked the Small Business Administration page or Entrepreneuer magazine. The more specific you are with who you target the more effective your campaign will be.
2) Select Appealing Content: I do not recommend spending money to get page likes, likes don’t make you money and since only 10% or so of the people who like your page will actually see your content page likes aren’t worth the money. Instead, promote content on your fan page that would appeal to the specific audience that you’ve chosen. This could be a freebie such as an eBook, video, or report or content that they have to pay for like a webinar or live event. If you are promoting paid content the price point should be fairly low and give you the opportunity to cross-sell or Upsell.
3) Leverage What Others Sharing About You: I recently dined at a local restaurant in Atlanta and posted about the amazing meal I had. Because I tagged them in the post they saw it and spent some of their ad dollars to promote the post. I consequently had several friends who saw the ad (not my original post) and visited that restaurant based on my review. So, if others are already talking about you then leverage that to introduce your brand to more people, a third party endorsement is far more effective than you tooting your own horn.
Have you tried Facebook ads? How effective has it been in your business? Leave me a comment below.