Spark Notes Summary of Facebook AdvertisingFacebook advertising is a very powerful tool when used correctly and to its full potential. But in order to understand why it is so powerful we need another medium for which to compare it by. We will use search engine advertising as its comparison.Search engine advertising provides an amazing opportunity for businesses to reach their target market. For health clubs search engine advertising could promise a great ROI because you can pay to advertise only to those individuals who are actively searching for a health club to join in your area of business. For example lets say you own a health club located in San Diego. If you pay to advertise for the keyword phrase, “gym membership in San Diego” then every time somebody types that phrase into Google or Yahoo, you will be a top search result. In other words you are paying to advertise only to those people who are already interested in the service you offer. It can’t get much better than that? Or can it?Now let’s consider Facebook advertising. Facebook advertising is similar to search engine advertising except that it is several times more specific and therefore several times more powerful. With Facebook advertising you don’t pay for a top search result instead you pay to advertise to a specific type of person. With Facebook ads you can advertise to people based on their gender, age, location, marital status, interests, and friend affiliation! Advertising by friend affiliation may be a marketers favorite tool of the bunch because you can essentially advertise to Ron’s friends. (For this example Ron is a member of your gym) Having the ability to market to Ron’s friends is a huge bonus because consumers are likely to trust the products and services that their friends also use. So with a little bit of research prior to your ad campaign you can effectively advertise to the exact type of person that would be interested in joining your gym!

One of the reasons why Facebook was catapulted into the most popular social networking site that it is now is due its consistency with maintaining the overall user experience and making sure that every part of Facebook and everything that gets connected with it, including the ads, should contribute to the steadiness and uniformity of the whole website setup and the makers of this wondrous social site have been without fail committed to protecting the user experience by keeping the site clean, steady, consistent, and free from misleading advertising and they are able to do this by passing the strict regulations on Facebook advertising. So the whole Facebook advertising setup is generally hinged on transforming existing ads into more personalized messages that are cut to the form and liking of the individual users based on how their friends interact with music artists, brands, and all the businesses that are relevant to them.So Facebook has put in place a set of guidelines that applies to all ads that will appear on the website and even those ads within canvas pages of Facebook Platform applications and in addition to this, all ads are required to meet the terms of the Privacy Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities meaning all advertisements are subject to the rules of Facebook and the website reserves the right to reject or remove advertising that they may consider as going against the company’s ad policy. At the same time, the same guidelines may change at any point in time and Facebook can waive any of the guidelines written whenever it wants based on its discretion.One of the strict regulations on Facebook advertising that an advertiser has to always keep in mind is that nobody can create and/or manage different Facebook accounts for the sole purpose of advertising unless otherwise given the expressed permission by Facebook and in this regard, ads that contain a URL or a domain name in the body must link to the same URL or domain, not to any external website. At the same time, landing pages are not allowed to generate pop-ups, and this includes pop-unders and pop-overs, when a user enters or leaves the web page, or mouse trapping where the advertisers do not allow the users to use their browser back button and traps them on the site leaving them nothing to do but “x” out from the whole site altogether.Before an ad can compel a viewer to click on an ad and submit pertinent personal information such as date of birth, name, phone numbers, social security numbers, et cetera, the advertiser has to make sure that it is being done to enable an online purchasing transaction where the landing ad page clearly and succinctly indicates that a product is being sold. In short, hanky panky is not allowed.

If you are tired of trying to advertise on Google AdWords and only losing money, it might be time to give Facebook advertising a try. In spite of its youth, Facebook is growing quickly. Advertisers are actually reporting a good number of conversions coming from their ads running on Facebook, which is a positive sign. This means that there are lots of profits available to those who want to reach out and take them. Here are three easy tips that you can use to make sure your Facebook advertising turns a profit.So what exactly should you do with your Facebook traffic once you get some? Obviously you should send it to a landing page, but what kind of landing page should you use? The fan page you made on Facebook! That’s right: you can increase your conversions by sending your site traffic to the fan page you’ve made on Facebook. Lots of new advertisers don’t yet realize just how beneficial it can be to send traffic to a fan page. If you use your website instead of the fan page, you’ll notice that the CTR and as well as the conversion rate is lower. Facebook users are more comfortable with fan pages because it is easier for them to click the “like” tab to show that they are a fan.Your chance for conversion is better with a fan page because you have the ability to interact with them personally there. The more people you get to your fan page the better off you are. Use this strategy and you’ll see for yourself how well it works out. Facebook advertising wouldn’t be able to attract the advertisers they do if it were not possible to target your market audience. You can tap into these groups and actually bring a high response because these people are passionate towards that niche, which increases the likelihood of them clicking on your ad often. If you’re a beginner, then you should learn something about writing PPC ads, or classified ads, and then practice writing them. The best approach is to present your benefits so that people feel them as much as possible. So the secret to longevity with your ads is to have compelling and strong copy that converts well.Let’s not forget about keywords and getting the most out of your campaigns. You’ll be casting your net far too wide if you only base your campaigns on demographic criteria. There are some instances when you can safely target wide, but they are probably not the norm. You can decrease click prices by targeting smaller niche markets with keywords just like you do everywhere else. When you’re advertising on Google AdWords, your ad is given a quality score to make sure it’s relevant enough. Facebook’s algorithm is not as sophisticated as Google’s, but it still has code that looks at relevance. The more relevant ads you use for you Facebook advertising, then the better they’ll perform – all things considered.There’s no reason why you should not be able to see positive returns from Facebook advertising. In many ways, this is just like writing classified or PPC ads, and it’s imperative you do solid market research. If you are a beginner to IM or Facebook advertising and have little experience, then you will do fine as long as you approach this as a serious business activity.