Facebook is huge. But how huge is huge? Like 1.19 billion active monthly users as of September 2013.
As such, Facebook is a huge marketing opportunity for businesses of any size and most businesses have created a Facebook page. But how do you get more likes? In this post we'll talk about how Make Believe Steve helped his fictitious Facebook page get more likes using Facebook Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.
Getting More Likes
Steve starts his journey by checking out the Facebook for Business page. He clicks the large blue "Create an Ad" button, logs into his Facebook account, and immediately has to start making some decisions.
Since Steve is looking to increase the number of "likes" he chooses that option, selects his company page from the drop down menu, and off it goes to the ad creation page.
Creating Your Ad
Facebook ads have 3 components:
- Headline - 25 characters max
- Text - 90 characters max
- Image - Facebook recommends uploading an image that is 1200x450px with an 8:3 aspect ratio
Steve writes a headline, some text, and adds an image. He also notices that the ad can appear in the News Feed or in the Right Column (examples below)
Both formats look good, so Steve leaves the boxes checked and moves on to the audience targeting section. Now things have gotten more complicated and Steve needs to make a lot of decisions. Here are the options he has:
- Location - You can choose whole countries, states, cities or zip codes. You can even choose to show your ads to users within a certain mile radius of a location
- Age - 13 is the minimum and you can go as high as you want. The 65+ crowd is one bucket however
- Gender
- Interests - This combines precise and broad interests, so you could target people who are interested in "Duck Dynasty", natural grass fed beef, or Whole Foods Market
- Connections - Target only your current fans, only people who haven't liked your page or a combination
- Relationship Status
- Education - Level achieved, school attended, field of study, and/or graduation year.
- Language
- Workplace
This is where you really need to know who your potential customers are and what makes them tick. I suggest a persona exercise (here's one I've written) that would help you determine which options work best.
You're Off To The Races
Steve set's his budget and Facebook starts serving his ads to get him more likes. Here are a few tips as you get started:
- Use separate campaigns for different audience targeting so you can measure which performs best
- Make sure to set up Facebook conversion tracking
- Download the Power Editor extension in Google Chrome to make larger account changes quickly and easily
About the Author: Robert Brady
