Facebook offers advertising benefits to business owners from all industries. Yet for direct sales consultants, it may be particularly effective. Why? Because Direct Sales is all about connecting with your audience and prospects – it’s social networking. Facebook of course is a social networking tool. You can use Facebook to build your business and recruit new teammates. Let’s take a look at how to advertise with Facebook.
Image courtesy of David Berkowitz
Step One: What Do You Want To Accomplish?
It’s very important with any advertising strategy to create a goal for your ad. An example might be that you want to recruit five new teammates. Once you have your goal you can then create an ad and a plan to achieve it. The goal comes first.
Step Two: Register for Your Account
If you don’t have a Facebook account you’ll want to get one. Registration is free and you can get a Facebook page up in a few hours. Once you have your account you can then move forward and create your ad.
Step Three: Create Your Ad
Facebook is incredibly user friendly. It actually walks you through the step process of creating your advertisement. Initially, you’ll be asked to:
- Create a title for your ad
- Prepare the text for the body of the ad
- Upload an image for the ad
- And provide the web address of the page that users will click through to – where will you send your prospects? An example might be a contact us page or an opt-in page.
There are a few specs to pay attention to when creating your ad. For example,
- You have 25 characters (including spaces) for the headline of your advertisement.
- You have 135 characters for the body of the ad.
- Your ad image must be no larger than 110 pixels wide x 80 pixels tall – it should have an aspect ratio of 4:3 or 16:9. (The Facebook interface will attempt to resize it automatically).
One of the wonderful user friendly features a Facebook ad provides is the ability to view your ad as you create it. This helps you make minor tweaks as you go and generate your ideal advertisement.
As you’re creating your advertisement make sure the ad copy, including the headline and call to action in your body copy support your goal. You’ll also want to follow basis advertising guidelines – namely, capture attention and tell your prospect what they have to gain by clicking on your ad.
Step Four: Target Your Audience
The next step is to target your advertisement. You can target:
- Location
- Age range
- Gender
- Education level
- Where your prospect’s work
- Their relationship status
- And the language they speak.
Step Five: What’s Your Budget?
Your final step is to decide on your advertising budget. Start small and consider initially creating one ad rather than several. This will help you fine tune the results and make sure your ad is generating the desired results. Once you’re achieving Facebook advertising success you can then branch out and create several advertisements.
Have you tried Facebook advertising and if so, were you happy with your results? Comment below to tell us about your experience or to ask any questions you have about social media advertising and marketing
Very informative post with some good example on direct sales advertising here. Step 4 on target audience and Step 5 of Budget are probably the most important one to pay attention on when advertising on facebook.
I’ve heard a lot of people say that Facebook advertising isn’t actually all that successful, especially compared to Google Adwords. Certainly, that would ring true for my own using of Facebook – I have never clicked an advert there, as I am not using their site to look for anything in particular. Whereas on Google, a paid advert for what I’ve just searched for may well catch my eye.
Hi Rich. Thanks for stopping by and commenting. You’re right, many people say that haven’t been successful with Facebook advertising. But there are reports that it works well for certain types of ads and promotions. For example, as explained in the Search Engine Land article, Let’s Get Social How To Make Paid Social Media Ads Effective And Engaging, ads that users can “like,” with the goal of increasing the advertiser’s fan base are more effective than those that link to an outside web page. And in another article, explains the importance of using the right type of images in Facebook ads – 3 Types Of Facebook Image Ads That Work.
Like any type of advertising, there are many variables involved in a successful campaign. Because you only pay for clicks, I think Facebook advertising is worth a try. But I probably wouldn’t expect the same click through rate that you might get at Google. Maybe the real goal is simply more clicks than your competitors get.
Just came across some great tips on Facebook advertising.