A newbie's guide to Facebook Advertising [Part 1]

Facebook is an excellent online advertising platform for you to grow your online business. Yes, you can advertise on Facebook. If you just found that out, it’s ok I’ll get you up to date. This is the first part of the Facebook Advertising guide for beginners. Stay tuned to EasyStore blog for the upcoming parts.

What is Facebook Advertising?

Facebook Ads are ads (short for advertisements) that appear on your news feed on both desktop and mobile and also in the right column if you are using desktop. For example, you may see a post on your news feed about a product offered by a business. “But those are posts from pages I like isn’t it?” Yes, what you see in your news feed might be posts from pages you liked. They might also be ads. So how do you tell the difference? If you see a post with these elements below, then they are ads.

How does it work?

More than 1.4 billion people use Facebook and 900 million of them visit every day (soure: Facebook) Facebook provide the tools for you to reach out to these users. You can use Facebook advertising tools to create posts and have it show up in the news feed of Facebook users that are way beyond your network of fans and followers. This makes it a great platform for you to bring awareness for your business and bring in a completely new audience. Talk about scalability!

Business objectives of Facebook Ads

There are literally thousands of ways people are using Facebook Ads. Here are some main objectives to focus on for your ecommerce business. These objectives allow Facebook to optimize your ads base on the objective that you set. Boost posts - This helps you increase the engagement of any posts on your page. The post will gain more likes, comments, and shares Promote your page - This is great for when you are just starting out on using Facebook as your marketing channel. You can get more likes to your business page. This will build some credibility and trust for your business (also known as social proof) Send people to your website - If you are running an online store, you are probably looking for ways to get people to visit your site. This will help you to generate traffic. Increase conversions to your website - People just visiting your storefront is not enough, you want them to convert. Use this if you want them to take a specific action. For example, adding a product to cart. Reach people near your business - Do you also have a physical shop or only deliver to a certain area? You can advertise to people located near your business or your delivery coverage. Raise attendance to your event - Set this as an objective to promote your event Get people to claim your offer - Promote timely discounts or other deals for people to claim in your store. You can use EasyStore to generate a unique promo code which visitors can use to get discounts in your online store. Get video views - Videos are a great way to increase awareness for your business and products. Use this to get your videos in front of more viewers.

Show your ads to the right people

What makes Facebook stand out from any other advertising platform is their targeting features. As mentioned earlier, there are A LOT of people using Facebook. This makes them “people experts”. They have a lot of data about their users. Facebook has a strict privacy policy so you don’t have to worry about them selling your information to advertisers. You can view their data policy here  So if I advertise on Facebook, will all 1.4 billion people see my ads? Now that is a good question. Unfortunately, the answer is no. Facebook will determine who will see your ads based on a lot of factors. We won’t know who exactly will see the ads. This relates to the privacy policy. Luckily, Facebook offers a wide range of targeting options that will help you find your target audience.

Demographic targeting

The first set of options to narrow down your audience is a basic demographic. This include age, gender, and location. Take a look at your existing customers’ demographics or come up with the demographic of your ideal customer. You also have the option to go into more specific demographics such as education level, job title, and even relationship. For example, you can tell Facebook to show your ads to young executives living in Philippines.

Interest targeting

Now this is where it gets interesting. This targeting option allows you to target people specifically interested in a subject related to your product. Going back to the previous example, you could target young executives in Philippines who are interested in fitness. You can really get creative with this targeting option. What magazines does your target audience like to read? What kind of music do they like? These are all possible targeting options for you to reach your potential customers.

Behavior targeting

Facebook gathers a lot of data about their user’s behaviors. These behaviors are available as targeting options. You can narrow down the ads audience to the mobile devices that they use. Great if you are selling iPhone accessories. You have the ability to target only iPhone users! Other behavior options include, operating system used, type of device, network connection used, and much more. Bonus: Facebook offers an even more powerful way to target users called Custom Audience. If you want to know how you can use custom audiences to increase your online sales, check out this post 3 effective Facebook Ads targeting for your online store

Conclusion

So, are you ready to jump on the Facebook Advertising bandwagon and start generating sales for your online business? You should be. As you can see, Facebook is a powerful advertising platform that allows you to make your marketing effort more effective. Read Part 2 of this newbie’s guide to Facebook Advertising.