ADVERTISING PURPOSE
1. What are you advertising?
What is the purpose of your ad? Do you want to promote a special product? Are you trying to increase traffic to your website to increase sales? Are you running a special offer on something you are selling.
Each of these objectives will have an Advertisement that will best suite the need. If you are running a product special than a post featuring that product is important. Along side the product post you can highlight the discount or special offer.
2. Who are you making an offer to?
If you are trying to increase website traffic that consider your ideal user. If you sell women's clothes than ideally women are your target audience. But sometimes men buy clothes as gifts, so you might want to consider this in your promotion.
3. What is the best way to reach your audience?
Now that you have an offer - or ad focus - and you understand your target audience, we can work thru the Boost or Promoted Post audience.
In the
previous post we walked thru how to identify a Post that you have on your Facebook page that is well liked and viewed. What we are not reviewing in this article is WHY the post did well.
The Boost Post and Promoted Post definitions.
There are two things to understand when you are about to Boost a Post. Facebook has different terms for running ads on their site. When you will be making a selection for your Ad Audience, it is important to understand the difference. There is no difference in price when you run a Boosted or Promoted post. It really is understanding the audience you are getting in front of.
Definitions: Boost Post | Promoted Post
BOOST POST
If you pay to run your Post to your existing fans and followers - it is called a Boost Post. Literally taking your Post and Boosting it to Your Facebook Page Fans (followers).
PROMOTED POST
If you pay to run your Post to a larger portion of your fans and a target audience based on your selection criteria, this is called a Promoted Post. Literally taking a Post from your Facebook Page and promoting it to people who DO NOT currently like your page, people you choose through targeting. The option to “Like Page” will only appear to non fans.
Newsfeed Ad (Advertising)
Realize in this particular process we have not talked about creating Facebook Advertisements from scratch. That is developing the ad and target audience independent of the Posts existing on our page. So the Ad looks like a normal post but has the word sponsored in the newsfeed.
When it comes time to view the Insights from your promotion, the Like, comment and share data will be shown both on the original post and the boosted post.
The Pro's and Con's of Each Options
A Boost post is circulated just to page fans, so just that limited audience will see your post. But that is not necessarily a bad thing. But there are a few more things to understand in the decision making process.
Exclusive Offers
Perhaps you are running a special offer to EXISTING CUSTOMERS or Fans (Page Followers). Customers love feeling special. So an offer made just to them on a exclusive basis generally gets a good reply.
Test Market
Perhaps you are offering a new product, and you want to TEST your idea on a group of people who understand your brand and who can offer customer feedback.
Repeat Purchase
If you had run a deal in the past that was very successful, and you want to run the same offer again next season, or next year, using that same Post again to your existing fan base makes sense. These customers have purchased from your before and would like the offer to make their purchase again. Think
Clinique Bonus Days every spring or
Victoria's Secret Semi Annual Sale are both examples where a fan base would be beneficial.
New Products
When offering something new and exciting, and you already have an established brand, a new product offer could be the introduction people need to be induced to exploring your product and website. In this case a promoted post to an expanded audience is beneficial.
Growing the Business
If you are in growth mode then you will want to include an extensive audience for your offers. Or just promoting your brand to people who have not seen it before. When in growth mode go beyond your fan base.
A/B Tests
Maybe we don't know which audience is right for you. You can run a program called an A/B test. This is something we marketers use to determine which approach is best for your business. We run test offers to a test audience and review results within a certain time frame. After some data analysis we can make some assumptions on what is the next steps to achieve your goals. Keep in mind that A/B testing has protocol behind it, and there are easy missteps to make if you do not have experience running these tests.
DIY Boost Post Process, the How To Run an Ad Promotion
Now that you have considered your advertising purpose and understanding your ideal target audience we can look at some screen shots of the actual process on Facebook to run your Boost post. Running a post or an ad is called a Promotion. It doesn't come from Promoted Post. Instead it is derived from Advertising when you run an an Advertisement you are Promoting your Business. Therefore a Promotion. An Ad Campaign is a series of Promotions and channels.
These are some basic screen shots to get your thru the process. I realize that Facebook Advertising can be time consuming, confusing and when you add in the data analysis overwhelming. If you have reached your limit and want addition support you can reach out to me and I can help make this "Mission Possible."
Selecting People through Targeting (Target Audience) includes their gender, age, where people are located, and their interests. You do not have to use all these categories, only those applicable to your audience.
Things to Consider for Location. Location does not mean where people live. Instead it most often relates to WHERE people Log Into Facebook. So it will identify users near the location you select. In addition consider the volume of users near the location. In this example Chicago, Illinois brings a large volume of potential audience. You can limit the audience more specifically be a neighborhood name or a zip code selector. Perhaps use your existing client list and pulling zip codes from that? Or are you trying to enter a new market, look at zip codes you are targeting getting into.
When Facebook Identifies HOW MANY PEOPLE you can reach it is only an estimate. Why an estimate? Because it depends how many people are given in that area on a certain day. If there is a Fest happening on the Saturday that you run your ad, you will have a bigger volume of users than on the day the Fest is not happening. These are all factors to consider.
After you have made your target audience selection you click SAVE and the BOOST. Clicking BOOST Starts your campaign.
We have covered many
Facebook Advertising terms in this blog series on Facebook Advertising. I recommend you take a peek at the list and familiarize your self or use it as a reference list on your Facebook Advertising Journey.
Good luck. and Happy Posting.
