Don't Be Afraid of Facebook Marketing

Happy Halloween. Don't be afraid to market on Facebook, especially if you use a few solid fundamentals when setting up your Facebook marketing strategy. In this article we'll cover Facebook business pages, Facebook groups, Facebook Marketplace ads, Facebook CPC or Facebook PPC advertising (not PPV), How to work with Facebook groups, and finally how to list your business in a Facebook group.

All that is required to drive these strategies is a valid Facebook account, and a functional email.

One of the reasons we love Facebook for advertising, is that it allows the user to target by demographic, meaning age, group, sex, and location. Depending on the offer or product you are promoting, this way of slicing demographic data can be very powerful (as opposed to Google ads which are more keyword drive, for example). People who enroll with Facebook actually put in this type of data when they sign up for their account, whereas with Google only an email address is collected. This is especially true of age group data, which can be powerful when used correctly.

Facebook business pages are an essential part of your business. Simply select the proper category for your business or product offering, add a keyword driven description, and find a picture that properly represents what you do or offer. Upload that picture, and you are ready to drive traffic from your Facebook business page, and link it to some of the other strategies that we are abou tto cover.

Next is to take your business page, and link it to your Facebook group. Remember, when creating a Facebook group, that even one fan of your group can mean reach to hundreds or even thousands of Facebook users. For example, if you have 5 Facebook fans (and this is extremely conservative), and each has 100 Facebook friends (also extremely conservative) that you will be reaching 500 people with your message. Now that's leverage!

Facebook MarketPlace ads are, or can be FREE to you and a great way to expose your business to your market. Absolutely recommended, they can be used to drive traffic either to your Facebook business page, blog, or even to your group. Just be sure to drive the traffic from there to somewhere where they can make a decision about your offering. In other words, use a strong call to action so that people know what to do when they land there...for example: click on a particular link to learn more about xyz subject of interest, and that link would typically be your blog or site.

Finally, a word about Facebook PPV vs. Facebook PPC. We strongly recommend starting your Facebook advertising with PPC, not PPV. The reason is that many times when you begin a particular campaign, literally in minutes you could find your ad gaining thousands of views. Even at a penny a view, you could literally spend thousands for minimal results. The best way to begin is to start your advertising effort with Facebook is with the PPC, tuning your results, and only when the numbers work on a particular campaign to drive profit through PPV would you make the leap to PPV.