Profit with Facebook Fan Pages, Part 3

Do you have your Facebook Fan page set up? With more than 105 million unique visitors to Facebook in September alone, what are you waiting for? During the month, your potential customers will spend more than 330 minutes on Facebook. Is your brand in front of them during this time? Facebook has tripled its share in the social network world to a dominating 58.59 percent. (By comparison, the "popular kid" of the Internet, Twitter, has a market share of just 1.84 percent). Are you where your customers are? Are you sure?

In the last two articles, we discussed when it makes sense to have a Facebook Fan page, and how to successfully set it up, including applications to enhance your profitable opportunities.

Now, would you like to be able to market to your unique customers with little advertising cost? The final two parts of this series will teach you about Facebook Ads—the hottest thing in pay-per-click advertising.

Many business owners are finding that when they compare their return on investment (ROI) from Google Ads to that of their Facebook Ads, Facebook is receiving higher audience participation and better conversion percentages. What does that mean to you and me? It means that members of Facebook are not only more likely to participate in the main content of the site, but that they are also willing to utilize the advertising space as additional information and content. It also means that because Facebook Ads are so specific and targeted, the people receiving the ads already fulfill your customer profile before they get to your site. Having more targeted customers… always a good thing!

Before we can begin, though, as with all things in business, we need a plan. I don't want you to throw money at an opportunity just because others are seeing such great success with it. Without a plan, you are wasting your time and money. Let's work on some specifics:

You should have one measurable ROI goal for each ad you run

What is your goal for running this ad? You should have one measurable ROI goal for each ad you run. This could be, "I want them to sign up to be a 'fan' on my Facebook page," or "I want them to register for my newsletter," or "I want them to purchase our featured product," or anything else you can measure. You will be able to track this with the reports Facebook provides you. You will also be able to utilize your eBay Store reports and Google Analytics if you are sending them to your Web site. This will provide you specific information to fine-tune your advertising on Facebook.

Do you have your specific goal picked out? Good. Let's get started.

First, go to www.facebook.com/advertising and click the "Create an Ad" link in the right corner. You can either choose to do an ad where your potential customers are sent to your Facebook Fan page, or you can advertise an outside Web site like your eBay Store. Both have their advantages depending upon your specific goal.

Design your ad

Use the drop-down menu to choose to include either the URL of your outside Web site or your Facebook Fan page. If you choose to promote an outside URL, you will have the additional option of creating a unique title for your ad. If instead you opt to promote a Facebook Fan page, the title will be created for you.

Janelle's Success Tip: Remember when we talked about purchasing a domain and redirecting it to your Facebook page? Well, that little trick comes in handy here, too. By typing in that redirected domain you just purchased, you can create your own ad title and promote your Facebook Fan page!

You have 25 characters to create an eye-catching title. This shouldn't be the bland "come visit my eBay Store" variety. Instead, create urgency, excitement and intrigue for your customers. Mine says "99% eBay Stores are wrong." Use the 135 characters of the body text to entice browsers even more. I only used approximately 20 of them. My ad copy says: "Are you ready to be that 1%?" Yours will incorporate wording from the ROI goal you originally set up.

Your image for the ad is 110 by 80 pixels. This isn't very big, but it needs to graphically grab your reader's attention—bright, bold and simple work well. Be careful about using pictures of your products as the details will be lost.

Facebook Ads are only shown to the people you specifically request

Target your ad

This is where you locate your unique customers. As mentioned before, Facebook Ads are only shown to the people you specifically request. If you ask for only engaged men who belong to the Department of Homeland Security and speak Spanish, then only those specific dozen men will see your ad. On the other hand, if you choose anyone in the U.S. who is over the age of 18 and reads the Twilight books series, your ad will potentially be shown to 1,021,000 people.

You have the options of drilling down into your target audience with:

• Location (by Country, State or City): This is a great opportunity to open up your international marketplaces or fine-tune a local audience.
• Age: Choose ranges from 13 years old and up. This will allow you to have access to "tweens" or "baby boomers," for example.
• Birthday: Do you have an item that a person should see on their birthdays?
• Male or female: Are your customers 50-50, or do you definitely have a product that is especially geared toward one gender? This is also a great opportunity to market your "Top 10 Gifts for Men" to women or vice versa.
• Keywords: These are probably one of the most powerful areas of targeting. This will allow you to choose keywords that are in that person's profile such as activities, favorite books, etc. If you sell knitting supplies, you could choose the keyword "knitting" to locate all of your knitting enthusiasts.
• Education: Is your product geared to a certain educational level?
• Workplaces: It amazes me that you can use this. This option allows you to type in the name of a company or organization. For example, you could have all the people who belong to the Four Seasons Hotel & Resort workplace see your ad. This would be fabulous if you were selling something like spa lotion, and the chain decided to carry it at all of its hotels!
• Relationship: Choose between "Single," "In a Relationship," "Engaged and/or Married." If you sell bridal items, this is a no-brainer. But this also has great potential if you are selling products that two or more people could use together.
• Interested In—Men or Women: You will want to connect this target with the fourth one on this list to make sure you are receiving specific information on relationships.

Thinking about your customer and what their world looks like is a huge success step that many businesses fail to put into practice

• Languages: Going after a specific country? This makes finding these customers even easier. Also, if you have bilingual products, you can easily locate both types of your customers.
• Connections: There are two choices for this target. You can choose groups/pages/events, or applications that people are connected to. You can also choose one that people are not connected to. I use this to remove people I'm already marketing to. I obviously don't want to pay for fans of my Mermaid Caramels Fan page to receive additional advertising to join my Fan page. That's just spending more money on advertising than necessary.

Take stock

While you're checking boxes and filling in information, there's an estimate number at the bottom of the page that is updating with the approximate number of people that could see your targeted ad.

Click "Continue."

Wow, you're doing great! Thinking about your customer and what their world looks like is a huge success step that many businesses fail to put into practice. Congratulations for having accomplished what many entrepreneurs overlook.

In the final part of this series, we will teach you how to choose a daily budget for your campaign and ways to utilize your powerful reports to optimize your success.