Facebook Marketing Cheat Sheet

Facebook is the largest social network on the planet and the second most visited website on the net after Google. There are huge marketing opportunities here and especially if you attempt to use the site’s purpose-built advertising platform.

In the e-book, we provided a comprehensive overview into using Facebook ads. This cheat sheet then, will serve simply as a quick refresher so that you have all the information you need in one spot.

How Facebook Ads Work

Facebook advertising is a form of PPC advertising. This means ‘Pay Per Click’, so advertisers (you) only pay when someone actually clicks on one of the ads, taking them to your website.

You set the amount you’re willing to pay (your CPC – Cost Per Click) by ‘bidding’. The higher your bid, the more often your ad will be shown, leading to more potential traffic to your site.

As an added measure, you can also set a maximum budget which is the most that you’re willing to pay over a set period. This makes Facebook advertising particularly flexible to suit a variety of budgets.

Facebook is also very powerful for its ability to target. It allows you to select who sees your ads based on:

• Age
• Location
• Gender
• Relationship status
• Job title
• Interests

You can also target your users by ‘behavior’ which can be useful for particular industries.

Types of Facebook Ad

There are a lot of different types of Facebook ad. These include:

Domain Ad: These appear only in the right column and link out externally to other websites.

Page Post Links: These are promoted posts from your Facebook page. They will appear in the homefeed normally (though they can appear in the right hand column) and they feature a large, HD image.

Multi-Product: These ads scroll through products, effectively allowing you to show off multiple items with a single ad.

Page Like: These are used to help you generate more page likes.

Page Post Photo: Like Page Post Links but for images rather than links. Page Post Videos: For using videos to promote a Facebook page.

Page Post Text: Really these have very little advantage over Page Post Photos.

Other types include Events, Offers, Mobile Apps and Desktop Apps (for promoting apps for mobile devices and Facebook respectively).

CPA Advertising

CPA means ‘Cost Per Action’. When you use CPA, this means you’ll only  be charged if someone completes a target ‘action’. These can include downloading apps, redeeming offers or liking a Facebook page. These types of ad can provide great ROI because you don’t pay for clicks that don’t lead anywhere.

Tips for More Effective Facebook Ads

Here are some tips that can help you to get even more from your Facebook ads:

• Try Facebook Power Editor – this is a powerful tool for advertisers with large numbers of ads
• Use split testing – this means comparing slightly different versions of your ad campaign to see which is most successful
• Think about your title – a good title grabs attention and promotes your value proposition. But if you are paying per click, you also want to try and filter people who will
• Think about what makes people click ‘like’. Normally this is about expressing yourself or about communication

Summary

And there you have it! That’s pretty much everything you need to know to start getting a lot of success from Facebook marketing and advertising. Of course there’s more – there’s always more – but the best way to learn this is ‘on the job’.

To finish, let’s take a look back over everything we’ve covered in a brief summary…

• Facebook is the largest social network and the second biggest website in the world
• Facebook advertising is a highly versatile and flexible platform that connects you with this audience and gives you a ton of powerful tools
  • The main advantages of Facebook advertising is the ability to precisely target people…
  • And the ability to leverage existing social networks to spread your message and gain ‘social proof’
• When you create a Facebook ad, you need to choose a goal, a position and a type of ad
  • Ad types include domain ads, page post links, multi-product ads, page post likes, page post images and more – the best ones are the page post ads, placed on the newsfeed
• You can target your audience by multiple different criteria
  • Location
  • Age/gender
  • Interests
  • Behavior
  • And more
• Choose two or more images to let Facebook find which one works best for your ad
• When writing the copy think AIDA and think ‘value proposition’
• View your ads’ performance in the ad manager
• And tweak the design occasionally to see how this impacts on your conversions
• Use Facebook Power Editor if you have a huge amount of ads
• Combine your Facebook campaign with a good content marketing campaign
• Use BuzzSumo to find good 3rd party content to share
• Share things that allow people to express themselves and/or communicate And that’s basically it…

So there’s nothing left for it but to dive in. Good luck!