Hey Everyone,
Why should my business have a Facebook Business Page, Group Page or do advertising on Facebook?
Answer: There are many people using Facebook and because Facebook Ads can target based on geographic location as well as keywords, what a great way to target those running businesses or people groups! Using a business page or group page, allows more interaction with clients, potential clients and people groups.
First, if you have a personal Facebook account, you can create a Facebook page for a business or a Group page for an organization. Since I'm well known to be a web guy anyway and often share my new web projects with my Facebook friends, I chose to use my personal account to create a Group page for my business. If you don't have a personal Facebook account and don't want one, you can create a business account for the sole purpose of advertising on Facebook.
Once your Facebook page is created, you can click on the link "Promote Page with Ad" or "Promote Group with Ad" depending on which you choose to do. I also setup a Fan Box that is listed on my Business web page at www.billsweb.biz which provides a link back to my Facebook Page as well as other information. Anyone can become a fan of my Facebook Page, even off of my web site.
Here are some helpful tips I found while attempting to do this setup an ad. You need to have an image (if not using the one from your Facebook company page) as well as target information as shown below. You will need to know what you want to say in 135 characters or less. Go to Facebook's help page on this.
The list of items used for targeting: (my choices are in parenthesis)
- Location (Loveland, Fort Collins, Greeley and Longmont - you can also add a range of distance from your choices)
- Age
- Birthday
- Gender
- Keywords
- Education
- Workplaces
- Relationship
- Languages
- Connections
The resulting estimate for my ad based on information below: 61cents per click. I would probably pick 65 cents per click as this will place me higher on the ad column. I chose for my spending limit to be $3.25 per day = 5 clicks per day)
Estimate: 910,960 people
- who live in the United States
- who live within 50 miles of Loveland, CO, Greeley, CO, Fort Collins, CO or Longmont, CO
- age 18 and older
- who are not already connected to Bill's Web Biz
If I choose within 25 miles of Loveland, Greeley, Fort Collins and Longmont, the number of people drops to 91,280 people. If I choose within 10 miles, it would drop to 86,080. This is probably what I would choose as too broad an area would mean my clicks per day would be gone right away. After running ads for a couple days or more and if I find my 5 clicks are not being used within day, I would expand my area. If I find it still goes too fast, I would either cut it down to a smaller geographical area, add keywords and other target information or increase my limit per day to more then $3.25.
Having 5 clicks per day at a limit of $3.25 per day would cost me just under $100 per month. If you've done any print advertising you would know that it would cost you much more to place your ad in front of 86 thousand people. Since Facebook is relatively pretty new, I would say this is a decent investment. If you don't find it has brought any business after a month, you've only invested $100. And, though you may not have received any direct business from your ad, at least you are increasing brand name recognition. And, if that's all you need, just pay for impressions which at $3.25 per day would net 12,000 impressions.
I have not started my ad with Facebook as of today. However, I plan to very soon. So stay tuned and I'll let you know how well it works. If you need assistance with this or Google Ads (something I've been doing on & off), or perhaps search engine optimization for your web site contact me. Maybe you need a new or updated web site? Feel free to contact me directly if you think I can help you. Have fun Facebooking and look me up there at my Company Page or Personal Page. You can also follow me on Twitter.
As always, if you have any questions or feedback, feel free to give your feedback here or contact me directly.
God Bless!
~ Bill
