Facebook advertising had become hugely successful and has become an absolute asset for advertisers. It’s one of the most popular websites on the internet and you can’t afford to be missing out on such an audience. What’s truly amazing about Facebook advertising is the way that you can highly target individuals to suit your business needs. Are you targeting married women with kids aged 6 and living in Sandton? Or are you selling wedding dresses in Durban and want to advertise to newly engaged couples in the Durban area? Facebook’s targeting abilities are unparalleled.
Facebook is also great word-of-mouth advertising. One of the unique advantages of advertising on Facebook is that you can target friends of your fans. If someone sees a Facebook advert that says one of their friends likes a page, they may be more inclined to click on that advert. Friends trust their friends’ opinions and are influenced by them.
And for companies with smaller budgets, Facebook is really the way to go. It’s a very cost effective advertising option, especially when compared to above-the-line advertising. A perk with Facebook advertising is that you retain your audience if they like your page. You even have the option to choose between cost structures. On one hand you have the option to pay for every 1000 impressions – i.e. for every 1000 displays of your advert you pay a certain amount. On the other hand you could go for cost-per-click, which means you’ll only pay if someone clicks on your advert, no matter how many times it is displayed. To stop things going out of hand, Facebook has developed a way that you can set a daily budget and an overall budget, so that your adverts are displayed throughout the campaign as opposed to all in one day. And with this repeat exposure of adverts, you’ll be on top of people’s minds – even if they don’t necessarily click on your ad.
Ever seen that little bit at the top of your Google search labelled ads or sponsored ads? Yes? Well that’s Google Adwords. To sum it up, you can select search phrases or keywords relating to your business and when people search for those terms your ads display at the top of the Google search. That’s the very simple version. But there is more to it than that. Similar to Facebook, you set your daily budget of what you’re willing to spend so you can control costs, but, you also have to bid for placement of your advert against other advertisers who have selected the same keywords as you. You only pay for clicks on your adverts, even if it seen hundreds of times per day. It’s almost like free advertising if people don’t click on it because you still get brand exposure.
It’s really great when combined with your search engine optimisation (SEO) process because Google Adwords reports on the effectiveness of your search terms. So you’ll know what will work and what won’t. And since SEO is a long and on-going process, Google Adwords means your adverts will always be on the 1st page. This is always where you will want to be. A famous saying relating to this is – “the best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of Google search”. Bear that in mind next time you search for your brand online. With Google Adwords, you’ll drive traffic to your site and increase sales or awareness, depending on what your specific goals are.
If your budget is looking a bit grim some months, you will have the unique opportunity to stop or pause your ad campaign at any time and resume whenever you wish. It’s as simple as that.
Both Facebook and Google Adwords are measurable and trackable so you can always know exactly where your money has gone and what the results are. You’ll be able to figure out what is profitable and what isn’t. This is especially important for Google Adwords where you’ll be able to see what keywords are profitable and which ones you should get rid of. So you’ll know to put your money where it matters. Not only that, but this can ultimately help your search engine optimisation process in the long run by telling you what words work or don’t work for you.