How to Boost Your Brand Through Facebook Advertising

by Karly Sandsmark

It’s common knowledge that using social media is pertinent to any successful business’ marketing strategy; however, there is more to building an online marketing strategy than simply creating accounts and posting.

You need to carefully craft each message you post on social media, and sometimes, you may even consider paying for promoted posts and advertisements.

Facebook is the most popular social medium in history. In fact, more than

1.9 billion people

use Facebook every month. That’s why more and more businesses are jumping online and creating Facebook accounts to boost their reach with Facebook Advertising.

The social platform offers two marketing options to business users—boosted posts and ads. Both of these are paid options that promote your Facebook page and increase your marketing reach. So, as a business owner, what does it take to boost your brand with Facebook Advertising?

START WITH A BUSINESS ACCOUNT

In order to boost your brand on Facebook, you must have a Facebook

business account

. Business accounts allow users to like your page, drive traffic to your website and increase communication by allowing consumers to contact you directly from their Facebook account. The best part? Your business account is free!

Opening a business account is a relatively easy

process.

You’ll need to first have a personal account to link to and manage it. From there, you’ll need to verify that you are a real business and that the personal account linked is affiliated with your business. Once you select your business category, provide a short description of your business (max of 155 characters) and link to your website, as well as who your audience is by selecting a geographic area, gender, age, interests and languages.

You’ll also need to upload a profile picture. Be sure to use a photo that your consumers will recognize and associate with your business. When in doubt, your

logo

or a photo of your physical business is always a good idea. You should also add a cover photo. Without one, your page looks unfinished and unprofessional. Now you’re ready to start promoting your business on Facebook.

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BOOSTING YOUR POSTS

The first way to boost your brand on Facebook are Boosted Posts. You can "boost" almost any content that you’ve posted to your page, including status updates, photos, videos and offers.

Content that has been boosted will appear higher in your audience’s News Feed (not on the sidebar), helping your content gain more views. Moreover, Facebook states that by boosting your posts, they become optimized to reach those who are likely to take action (e.g., sharing, liking, etc.). Essentially, this allows your business to also increase its engagement, which is a great way to develop a connection with consumers.

To Boost a post:

Click “Boost” at the bottom right corner of the post you wish to promote
Select your budget. (There is a minimum spend of $5.) Depending on the amount of money you want to spend and how long you want the post to be boosted, Facebook will give you an estimate of how many people will see your content based on your budget.
Determine who your target audience is—you can choose people who like your page and their friends, or you can target specific members by selecting location, gender, interests and age preferences.
Share your post!

CREATING A FACEBOOK CAMPAIGN AND ADVERTISEMENT

Facebook Ads are a bit more complex than boosting posts. Instead of promoting one individual post, Facebook Ads allow you to create a campaign based on your business’ goals and objectives. Ads appear in both desktop and mobile newsfeeds as well as in the right hand column on a desktop view.

Remember, you’ll want to create your images, graphics and write ad copy prior to building your Facebook ad campaign to simplify the process. To boost your reach with Facebook Advertising:

Select an objective. Facebook offers three major categories: Awareness (brand awareness, local awareness, reach), Consideration (traffic, app installs, engagement, video views, lead generation) and Conversion (conversions, product catalog sales, store visits).
Set the budget for your campaign.
Select your target audience. Facebook Advertising gives you two options for choosing your audience—core audience and custom audience.

If you choose core audience, you’ll be asked to select your target market by location, demographics, interests, behavior and connections. A custom audience, on the other hand, will allow you to create an audience based on your own mailing list, website visitors or app users. Learn more about the different audience settings

here.

Once you’ve chose an audience, your ad is ready to go!

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MEASURING PERFORMANCE OF YOUR PROMOTIONS

When you create a Facebook business account, you automatically receive access to

Facebook Insights

, where you can measure the success of your business page, Boosted Posts and Facebook Ads with several analytic tools. You can access Facebook Insights through your business page.

You can also track progress of your individual posts by measuring their reach, number of engaged users, how many people spread the word about it and percentage of virality. Your page’s likes will be broken down based on demographics and source (e.g., admin invite, mobile, Facebook recommendation, etc.). Insights will also allow you to track changes in:

Total number of likes and dislikes
Friends of fans (potential number of people you can reach)
People actively talking about your page (by posting on your page, commenting, or mentioning your brand)
Total weekly reach

Building a strong online presence takes dedication. You must be active on social media platforms and communicate with consumers. Luckily, you can boost your brand with Facebook Advertising, which will allow you to reach out to thousands of potential consumers. Take advantage of the strong user base on Facebook and start to expand your reach online!

Want to learn more about social advertising and strategy? Learn how we can help here!