If you’re looking to make money online you have undoubtedly heard that Facebook advertising is one online advertising option that can be very effective. Is this true? Does Facebook advertising work? Why is this? And, how can you maximise your chances of success?
Facebook does work really well in terms of online advertising. Why does it work? This is largely in part due to the fact that Facebook is a social networking site where people reveal a lot of personal details. Advertisers can take advantage of that and place very targeted online marketing campaigns.
Targeted Demographics
Through those revealed profile details, advertisers are able to target their demographic quite easily. Want to market to 35-49 year old women who are single and maybe looking for love or help with infertility? Want to market to 18-25 year old boys who enjoy RPGS (role playing games?) or 40-60 year old men with sexual performance problems? Want to market to elderly people who enjoy playing golf or to families that live in New Zealand that are interested in joining a vacation club? You can do that too.
It’s easy when people reveal so much about themselves and use the tool so regularly. Facebook advertising allows you to focus on specific individuals and that can maximise your marketing campaign’s effectiveness.
When you choose which demographic to market to, you maximise your advertising spend. Instead of showing an ad to all Facebook users and hoping 1-2% will click, you can show your ad to people who meet your target market demographic and increase your potential conversion rate. Targeted advertising doesn’t just cost less but it results in more profit.
Facebook Advertising Variables For Success
• What niche are you in? What’s the demand like for it?
• Can you write a compelling ad?
• When you link to a website from Facebook, will the copy on that landing page be effective enough to interest the visitor?
There are a lot of variables!
Learning all you can about effective contextual advertising will help. Learn about your demographic, learn about your competition, and regularly analyse your statistics so you can see what’s working and adjust what’s not.
Many more people are expected to hop on the social media bandwagon. Whether people are online playing games and may click your ad to pass the time for entertainment or social purposes, or are online for business reasons and you convince them that you can help them be more successful, highly targeted Facebook advertising is a great way to approach marketing online.
About Sean Rasmussen
I have been wondering whether to try facebook advertising. To have your adds directly linked to the people that would most likely be interested in them is a huge advantage over google ppc.
The only thing I’m concerned about if the adds are so directly targeted why do I keep getting adds up asking me if I want to lose my belly fat – is someone trying to tell me something. lol
The ads are probably being displayed to you as the advertiser may think you are part of their target demographic Jackie. They may be targeting a particular age group for example.
Isn’t technology amazing? Not!! Seriously though I was going to say just what Sean has re an age group or area group.
Hi Sean,
Facebook advertising is something I want to start doing in the near future. I’m just waiting until I have fixed my keywords, tidied up my site a little and have the right product in place. I want to make the most of that first impression.
We should treat Facebook advertising the same way we treat PPC right? The only major difference I see is that with Google Adwords we’re focusing on keywords and with Facebook advertising; it’s the demographic we’re targeting?
Other than that it’s the same. We need to write great ads, set a budget, and test everything we do. Also, we need to try and find a Facebook advertising coupon to get started.
Yes, Facebook advertising is very similar to Adwords advertising and should be treated with the same respect (as in… you can lose money if you are not careful). Demographics is one of the really cool things with FB, do some research on your target market and advertise to the people you fell will benefit most from your product or service. Start out with a small budget and learn all you can about this form of advertising
I was wondering about FB compared to Adwords – re costs etc. PPc can be ruinously expensive if you don’t know the ins and outs – and the need to keep tracking – which I don’t so i don’t do PPC.
That’s an interesting one Peter. I am not 100% sure on the costs, but I know that if you spend over some ridiculously high figure (like $10k), you can get your own Facebook account representative to help you set up and maintain your advertising.
I have seen the Facebook Advertising, but not though about it for the moment. Same as PPC advertising I think it will become an issue for me once I
a) have a great product to sell or
b) have a page that is already creating a small income and I want to increase that.
Until then I will keep it low key and try it with the no-cost methods – great keywords, great content and a great organic ranking with the Search engines
Hi Renee,
You really do need to know what your doing with PPC advertising or you can blow up a lot of money in a very short time. I rushed into it without knowing anything about keyword research etc and spent over $700 in the first month without anything in return – but that was because I didn’t kwow how to maximise my adds.
Hi Jackie,
Thanks for sharing your experience. It really highlights the need to spend the time learning everything you need to know before investing any money.
There are so many things to consider with PPC. It’s definitely not for beginners.
Thanks Sean,
The question ‘Does Facebook Advertising Work?’ is a very interesting one!
A few months ago I noticed a huge push for Facebook Advertising by a variety different internet marketers through emails & ads. The claim is that Facebook Advertising is significantly more effective than Google Adwords because of the targeted demographics as you have also suggested in this post.
From a newbies perspective, it sounds to me that ‘Facebook Advertising’ is a much more appealing PPC avenue to take than Google Adwords.
I would think that Facebook Advertising would have to be working, there are so many people who are on the pages at any one time and I know I “look” at what is being advertised
I too have seen a few advertises who push you to use Facebook Advertising, some will tell you it is more effective than google.
I too have noticed that a lot of the adds I see now when on “My page” are aimed at my age group before I put my correct Birth date in I was getting ones that were aimed at a much younger group
Hi Sean,
I understand that the more Facebook fans your fan page has – the more demographic information that Facebook allows you. Is this correct? If so it puts pages with a larger fan base in a powerful position to better target their advertising. If you know who’s attracted to your site – your Facebook advertising can be tailored to that niche, reducing advertising waste.
Hi David,
Yes this information is correct!
When creating a new Facebook ad you are given a variety of options that are far more specific, allowing your ad to only be shown to people within your target market.
I have not tried it yet myself but have given it some definite consideration.
I like the idea of being able to target your advertising to a certain demographic, it would enable you to get a greater result from your advertising budget.
I have seen first hand on Facebook that when you change a setting in your profile, how the advertising will instantly change. For example when I changed my status from Single to Engaged, all of a sudden the advertising changed from Travel and Adventure to Engagement Rings and Wedding products. Amazing!!
Facebook Advertising will be tool I will use in the near future for sure!
Great post Sean!
I have done adwords and fb ads and have spent a lot on them (I wont say I lost because it was a learning experience and anything that I can learn from is never a loss)
The reason they didnt work for me was because firstly, I was promoting something I wasnt passionate about, and secondly, I didnt do any testing or monitoring of the ads.
I believe that fb ads are a great tool to incorporate into a business so go for it and keep monitoring!
Facebook ads sound like they are worth looking into, I like the fact they are aimed at a particular demographic. They do catch my eye when I’m on Facebook but i haven’t clicked on any yet. I think I’ll give it a go and get some experience in what is catchy.
Hi Sean,
I’m looking forward to learning how to advertise on Facebook in a way that will be effective on targeted demographics. This is a skill that takes a little time to learn and to be sure of. I hope to learn enough to maximize my chances to run a successful ad campaign on Facebook.
Firstly though, I will need to find a popular niche product. To help achieve this I’ll research keywords and find the most suitable ones for advertising to a target market.
This blog has certainly increased my knowledge to the many facets of Facebook. I have noticed that the demographics are at times inclined to have no relation to what the site is discussing. I guess that reveals just how important choosing the best key words can be.
Hello Sean,
What you are saying about ads targeted to certain ages, areas, women/men etc makes sense. I have seen a few ads on Facebook lately and they change to what I am saying for the day….eg:- Inspirational Speakers ads will pop up when my comments are based around those keywords and was wondering how that worked.
Interesting thought that ads could be targeted for specific reason with the product that you have to offer. I like that – and its an area worth exploring. I think Facebook Advertising works because it has caught my eyes a few time and I have clicked on the ads to see/hear more
Now its a matter of taking that information and using it with the right keywords so that I can have an ad that will attract the viewers……more to think about!!!
Cheers
Lisa
Hi Sean,
I’m relatively new to the Facebook game (have typed more on Facebook during the competition than ever before! I think my daughter knows more about facebook than I do, but I am learning.
In regards to Facebook Advertising, are we talking about personal Facebook sites or ones made to go with individual or company’s business?
Cheers Cath
Hi Sean,
Great concept only market to a receptive audience, social media gets better and better.
Very good idea. I have been thinking about it often but only in the sense that it can be annoying but what is annoying to me (Farmville) may be just what someone else is looking for. This weekend I plan to find a few really good ebooks and market them through Facebook as well as my drop shipping site. Bringing more exposure to my sites is always a good thing.
Thanks Sean!
Facebook really is more powerful than people think. Many people in the media condemn it for many reasons, but people dont realize just how amazing it can be. For alot of people, (I used to be one of them) facebook is used just to hop on and chat to your friends. It is very powerful for you to connect with your friends who can be accross the other side of the world! However, I would never have thought it was so powerful in terms of getting your name and business out there!! It is amazing the success you can have just sitting behind your computer at home these days!
Hi Sean,
Thanks for posting this info! Great advice for targeting a specific demographic. I’ll definitely be ultising this strategy in the future.
Patryc
With Advertising on Facebook becoming more and more popular, I can see that Facebook will be investing more into this part of their business. This should bring a lot more functionality to the platform.
Hopefully the costs associated with advertising on Facebook do not sky-rocket. Big Business can’t have it all to themselves.
Cemil, do you have any comparison costs with say Yahoo or Adsense?
Just lately there has been an abundance of clickbank products being marketed on facebook advertising, alot of these are only $37 dollar ebooks paying 75% commission, about $28, which wouldn’t leave much room for error in advertising cost. If 1 in 10 went to the payment form and 1 in 10 actually completed it that would be 1% actually buying. Not including refunds, you couldn’t spend more than 28 cents just to break even.
I found old friends on facebook, people i hav,nt seen in years. I was thinking about the advertising thing
Since being on Facebook so much lately (wonder why?) and after seeing the webinars and videos so far I thought I would revisit this article.
Traffic generation is obviously vital and Adwords is an expensive form of PPC. I like the possibility of FB’s more targeted approach as this can maximise any potential results/
Facebook advertising has really taken off and I am getting lots of emails daily in my inbox from affiliate marketers (who I signed up with for the free Ebook) about getting Facebook advertising to work for you.
Some people seem to be getting it work quite effectively now…..so it probably is worth investing time into researching into now (or have missed that boat……probably not – everyone likes to take money off you!)
Soon I will have my niche blog up and running and I am going to improve on my copy writing skills
Once I get those two things happening I will consider advertising on facebook
Hi Sean one thing no one has mentioned is that Google (AdWords) Advertising is outsourced to other sites just like this one and so called Google (AdSense) that “Offers a contextual advertising solution to web publishers Delivers text-based Google AdWords ads that are relevant to site content pages” but in reality web sites are Made For AdWords (MFA) and what Goggle doesn’t tell you is about AdSense is things like click-bots third world countries employ people to click on their adds and many other antics that are deployed by the sites owners that are made for Made For AdWords (MFA),
Now lets look at face book advertising. All advertising is done internally to Facebook.
Not outsourced this in its self is a major advantage for Facebook and Advertisers knowing ads are going to be clicked by people that have no ulterior motive.
I know where I would rather but put my hard earned money what about you? Dnot be an idiot there is no comparison
So here is my contribution CLICK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!