Why Advertise on Facebook?-A Review of the emerging trends in social advertising

The number of users on social networking sites has been ever-increasing. Facebook is the most popular among the latter. A common question among internet marketers is, “Why advertise on Facebook?”

Most people keep revisiting Facebook on daily basis to check updates and know the latest gossips of friends. An attractive ad with appealing lines can grab immediate attention and force the user to check it out once.

Advertisers can use this to their advantage by placing ads and also contests and stuff to attract these daily visitors. Apart from the free advertising of Facebook, there are also lots of paid advert options which have good plans suiting your purpose.
They have a Cost per click or fixed budget expenditure. Also there is cost per 1000 clicks or day-wise options.
It provides the same at quite reasonable rates and you would not have to shell out much. You can specify your max expenditure limits into your account.

The effective cost goes down because you can target specific audiences. Suppose you are promoting chocolate, you can put the ad on the user profiles who have liked chocolates on Facebook.
You need to register on the main page to create a new page, choose your page type, put in content, make some moderators and wait for sometime. The next step is to invite and add people to it. You have to provide them with valuable information to make them “like” it.

To give a brief summary regarding effective advertising,

• Identify Your Goal and needs - What is your aim? Is it to create awareness of your product, or give updates to users, or simply to generate goodwill and get feedback from users?

• Target the Right Audience- According to your needs target relevant age groups and demographics, and use that language or simply English.

• Design an Appealing Ad or Page - Make sure you have an eye catching caption which attracts users and a good small image to use to.

• Manage Your Budget- In case of paid ads choose an appropriate plan as mentioned above and from the Facebook plans that Facebook gives you in detail on their advertising page (very easy to use and understand).

• Review and Make changes- Check if the feedback is working or advert is working and make changes accordingly to your ad or to target audience selected or simply the ad strategy.

There are millions of users with various demographic profiles and ages. Facebook consumes at least 30-40% of our time spent online. So it is not possible that your ad would not get noticed.

Before you create a Facebook page or an advertisement, make sure you keep note of the following points.

• Use the paid ad option carefully, by analysing your requirements (look at the points above)
• Having a fan page can regularly keep users updated and informed about your products, articles, sites and services.
• If you have your own company website, put a Facebook “Like” button somewhere prominent on the site.
• Create contests and keep them involved and updated.
• Have customized pages for different target audience according to their needs and preferences.
• Create some application or news feed so that you can post them on regular basis.
Simply follow the above steps to get results.