How to advertise on Facebook

Facebook is an excellent example of how not to start a business. Starting in 2004 as a programmingexercise by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook was, for a long time, a great platform looking for a way togenerate profits. In other words, the product was developed first, and only then was thought givento make money from it.

This might seem counterintuitive given that Facebook floated for $100 billion in 2012, but for everyFacebook, there have been thousands of start-ups whose only aim is to build up enough users toattract funding. In almost every case, they fade out of existence.

Facebook has identified advertising as its main income source and this has become much moreurgent since its flotation. The good news for online business is that the only way Facebook canincrease its revenues is to make its advertising more and more effective for us. When firstintroduced, Facebook's ads aped those of Google by directing users to the external website of theadvertiser. Since then, Facebook has experimented with many different forms and begun to tacklethe thorny problem of advertising on the smaller screens of mobile devices.

Because of this, Facebook now offers a wider range of advertising than Google - this means that formany businesses, Facebook advertising is now a viable choice, especially if they've already built upan How to advertise on Facebook audience.

Advertising on Facebook - The Options

Each of the different types of Facebook ads targets a different audience. If you want to drive trafficto your online shop or website, you'll most often use an AdWords-like ad that will appear in the right-hand column. Later on, when you have more than 400 fans, you'll also be able to use Facebook tosupport a coupon-based campaign via Facebook Offers.

This is a very powerful resource as it allows you to create a coupon in your ecommerce package, forexample, and have that publicised to your fans. When the user clicks, Facebook sends them an emailcontaining the offer code and instructions. Crucially, it also alerts all their friends (who may notnecessarily be fans of your page) that they've "claimed" the offer, which encourages these people toalso participate.

Typically, however, your earliest campaign will be aimed at getting more fans of your page.Remember, though, that this is the sort of advertising that has a long and uncertain gestation period- it only turns into money in your pocket if those fans and their friends buy from you. Contrast thiswith Google AdWords campaign, which drive traffic direct to a sales page.

It takes a worthwhile Facebook community, so building this is best done in conjunction with yourmain AdWords campaign - but with a much lower budget. As soon as you've got AdWords runningeffectively (and assuming you've chosen Facebook as one of your promotional channels), you shouldthen focus on gently building your fan base using Facebook ads alongside a Facebook page for yourbusiness that already established. By established I simply mean "created", and does not require asingle follower, just as long as it has been created using relevant information to do so, for example,business name, description, and so forth.