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Are Facebook or Twitter ads Right for Your Business?
Facebook Ads
All advertising starts with a campaign objective. For Facebook ads, you'll decide whether you want to raise awareness (promote your company page or "boost" a post), influence consideration (send people to your website, increase event attendance, get more app installs, etc.) or increase conversions (get people to claim your offer, more engagement on your app, etc.). Facebook will walk you through all of the options, including:
- Selecting your audience (age, gender, geographic region, etc.)
- Primary interests (Your ad will show where people who are interested in your topic are looking)
- Facebook will place your ads where they're likely to perform best, or you can choose placement (Facebook, Instagram or Audience Network)
- You can also choose the type of device or exclude types of devices where ads will be shown (for instance, show on Mobile only)
- Define a daily budget or a maximum budget for the entire campaign
- You can have the ads run continuously from approval or choose a start and end date
- Your ad can include a single image or video or multiple images & videos
- You'll be charged per click on your ad or visits to your website (based on your objective).
- Help is available via FAQ's, an online community and you can send an email with a specific question.
Twitter Ads
With Twitter Ads, you'll also be able to choose the type of ad based on what you'd like to accomplish, such as engagements, website clicks or conversions, app installs or downloads, video views, increase followers, etc. Once you've decided on the campaign objective, you'll begin to narrow focus:
- You'll target specific users who will see your ad in their timelines and search results (you'll choose geographic area, age, gender, etc.)
- Your audience will click on the ad and be linked directly to your website
- You'll optimize your campaign (you enter type of business, key words, etc.) and charged for website link clicks
- You can set a daily budget and/or a maximum budget for the full campaign.
- You'll choose whether you'd like the ad to run from approval on or with a specific start and end date.
- Help is available via an online ticket submission
Don't think your target audience is active on Twitter? That doesn't mean that they don't use Twitter as a search engine - it's #2 behind Google/YouTube.
Both Facebook and Twitter offer analytics that will help you see the return on your investment. Although both offer options when you need help, if you have a quick question, send a message to a help/support page on Twitter. You'll find that tweets are answered almost immediately, and you'll be invited to send a private message with anything complicated or negative. Here are some resources, or you can search for Facebook/Twitter Support or Help. (Some are independent companies or individuals with helpful advice; if you want to communicate directly with the source, stick with the "official" pages. Read the profiles carefully to determine where you are!)
Before You Pay for Ads
These notes were included last month but bear repeating:
The purpose of all social media and digital advertising is to direct people back to your website, so before you start thinking about paid advertising, make sure your website is optimized. There are a number of things you can do to make sure you are getting as much organic traffic as possible, including:
- Install an SEO tool if one does not come with your website template. This tool will evaluate your search engine optimization for every page of your website. By revising the content and following their guidelines, you'll be in the best position to invite organic searches.
- Make sure your page url's match the page headline. Sounds like a no-brainer, but as you change copy and revise things on your website, it's easy to forget this. Double-check this for every page on your website.
- Offer something free in exchange for an email address. This will help you build an email list of course, but also help you track engagement. This could be a White Paper, an Infographic, an eBook or other item that directly relates to your business and will be useful to your clients and prospects.
- Link to other websites or information. Search engines love links so anytime you can link to or from your site, do it.
Whether you do this on your own or hire a professional to handle it for you, it makes sense to fully optimize your website before paying for advertising.
Advertise intentionally!
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