What Kind Of Facebook Advertising Is Right For You?

Social media marketing has certainly been the hottest topic in business over the last year or two. Entrepreneurs and start up businesses have been popping up all over the place creating thousands of new Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts. Unfortunately many of these businesses are leaping ahead with unrealistic expectations only to become stumped as to why their Facebook fan pages don’t have a million fans and are not bringing in millions of dollars a year. This is due to both a lack of common sense thinking and the masses of junk advice available on the net heralding huge results from social media marketing without having to spend a dollar.

It is true that there have been many amazingly successful careers launched by low budget social media from chart topping music artists that have become overnight sensations to entertainers and sports stars that have found multi-million dollar opportunities and contracts.

However before launching any type of social media presence or basing any business plan on an Internet marketing campaign it is essential to take a step back and make sure you have realistic expectations.

Social media marketing and, in particular, Facebook advertising offer several options. Which is right for you depends on your business and the type of products and services that you are promoting.

Is just throwing up a fan page for your business really going to magically attract millions of fans by itself and turn them into customers that are spending money with you? To give you an example, Atilus has setup a fan page, however it has not let to many fans outside of our clients, and family/friends – and we did* do almost everything right (I say did, because we realized absolutely no return on our time from this). However, Atilus is a b2b company, facebook is a b2c and c2c platform.

If you are promoting music, video games or a dating service you may well be able to build a formidable fan and customer base on Facebook on a minuscule budget. However if you are promoting mortgages, toilet paper holders or something a little less exciting you can hardly expect masses of prospects to be seeking you out in the time they have set aside to relax and chat and mix with friends and family. Again, the medium must match your business.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t successfully market your business on Facebook however, it just means you need to give a little thought to how you are going to do it and your own expectations. Many businesses of all sizes have created incredible results from Facebook by using the PPC (pay per click) and CPM (where you pay when 1000 people view your ad) advertising options available, it is fast and effective and can begin showing results quickly. And unlike Fan pages, which in and of themselves take time to build – not to mention OUTSIDE marketing campaigns needed to drive people to them, can be setup immediately.

Who is using Facebook’s PPC & CPM service?

Photographers, real estate companies and even airlines.

This enables you to target your ideal customers extremely effectively and maximize your return on investment. Facebook’s targeting options offer an incredible range of filters to hone in on prospects by age, sex, location, education and work and even interests and much, much more. You can choose between pay-per-click programs where you pay per person who clicks on your add or CPM (cost-per-impression). Using CPM you pay per 1,000 impression or views of your ads. This is especially great for those new businesses who want to get the word out and create brand recognition.

So before you jump head long into social media marketing, make sure you have given some thought to what is right for you…