How to Use Facebook Advertising

If you want to get more exposure for your business, build your fan base, or increase engagement, then Facebook Advertising can help. Here are some ways you can use Facebook Advertising to grow your business.

Creating a Facebook Ad

The first way you can use Facebook ads is to drive traffic to your website. To get started, visit the Facebook advertising section and click the button to create or manage your ads.

 

Setting up a Facebook ad is simple. Start by pasting in the destination URL for your website. This can be to your homepage or a specific landing page on your website. Then enter your ad’s title, description, and image.

Next, you can choose to just display your ad in the right sidebar throughout Facebook, or connect your ad to your Facebook page. By connecting it to your Facebook page, you can have the ad show in the newsfeed as a sponsored story and increase engagement for your page.

Next, you will target your ad to a specific audience. To ensure that you get highly qualified traffic to your website and engagement on your page, be sure to specify your target audience by location, age, interest, etc. A smaller estimated reach means spending less and getting more return.

Lastly, you will set a budget for your ad campaign along with the length of time you want the ad to display.

Depending on your ad goal, you may choose to optimize your ad for clicks or impressions. By optimizing for clicks, you only have to pay when people click on your ad vs. paying per thousand impressions. Note that with the sponsored story ad option where it is tied to your page, you will be charged when people see and engage with the story in their newsfeed.

Using Promoted Posts

Another way to use Facebook advertising is by promoting, or boosting, your posts. This is simply where you post something to your Facebook wall, then you pay Facebook to make sure the post is shown to more of your fans and even their friends.

You can choose your budget based on the reach you would like your wall post to have.

Note that this option is only available to page’s with over 400 likes.

Using Promoted Pages

Last, but not least, you can use promoted pages to increase the likes for your page. You can find this option in your page’s admin panel.

On the next screen, you will be able to target an audience based on location and set your budget based on the number of estimated likes you would like to receive per day.

If you’d like to target a more specific audience, then circle back to the main Facebook advertising section to create a full ad, with your page as the destination.

Measure Your Facebook Results

As you use Facebook ads, you should see an increase in activity on your Facebook page and traffic to your website. But don’t just assume that visits, likes, comments, and shares are helping your bottom line. Know that they are by signing up for a free trial of SumAll and connecting your Facebook, Google Analytics, and e-commerce platform.

Then you will be able to see the connection from your Facebook ads in terms of audience growth and increase in engagement alongside your other important business data.

Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, blog marketing expert, and social media enthusiast. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.