Setting up facebook ads is relatively easy to do and it can be pretty gratifying to see the available demographics. Many companies implement Facebook ads to increase direct sales and long-term branding. In our print business’s marketing plan, we were trying to build an audience by adding connections (or likes). The trick was to attract the right people and get the most connections per click.

For those who have yet to try advertising on Facebook, its quite interesting to target different demographics so easily. Google has its HUGE advantages, but for now we’re talking Facebook, which has its own dreamy marketing benefits. We can target ages, occupations, interests, areas etc. The opportunities seem endless. In no other platform can you build an audience and continue dialogue in such a way. Its email marketing on steroids and we’re down with it.

First, lets briefly look over the many options Facebook offers advertisers:

The targeting options Facebook offers

Location – Facebook enables advertisers to target by country, state/provice, city, metropolitan areas and zip codes. All advertisements are required to have a location selected. This is super essential for more localized businesses like local print shops.

Sex – Gender is another typical targeting filter for Facebook.

Age – Age is a standard demographic factor. Most marketers that have a well defined target-market will be able to select their age.

Interests – Target potential customers by their interests. You can be specific or broad, but I find it better to be specific. This is my favorite aspect of Facebook advertising.

Connections – Include and exclude users based on pages, events, and applications that the users have joined and you happen to be the administrator of. If you’ve created a Page and don’t want the ads to display to people who have already joined, this is a great way to avoid duplicate clicks.

Education – While you can target based on their level of education, this is most effective for targeting ads based on the schools that people went to. Want to announce a reunion for the University of Illinois class of 1996? This is a great way to promote it.

Workplace – This is another great targeting filter. Often times you will know the companies that your target market works at. If you are looking to get new clients or looking to spread awareness within specific organizations, this filter can be priceless.

Languages – If your ad is in English but the user speaks Chinese, it’s probably not a good idea to be displaying ads to them.

Interested In – This factor is useful if a user’s sexual preferences are relevant to whatever you are advertising.

Relationship – Want to target people that are about to get married? This is a great tool for that. If you are a bar or club, you most likely want to go after those people that are single. While this filter can be useful, you also need to keep in mind that selecting any of these settings will remove all users that haven’t selected a relationship status in their profile.

In the beginning, we created separate campaigns that targeted photographers, graphic designers, teachers or entrepreneurs. We kept the campaigns separate so we could see what worked. Each campaign should be precise in order to easily detect weaknesses.

These campaigns worked for us at first, but as Facebook grew, the click costs increased at huge rates (recommended click bids were $2-$3 easy). I also wasn’t feeling good about the conversion rates. Facebook measures and reports the amount of connections you build (likes) along with the quantity of clicks (CPC).

I started targeting people who “like” big online print companies like Vistaprint, Zazzle and Cafepress. Now I was getting somewhere. This click of people is already purchasing items our business offers AND since they “like” my competition, there is an increasingly good chance they’ll like us too. I’m probably increasing my brand awareness to the right people. Every one hundred clicks, we’re receiving about seventy “likes” which is phenomenal in connection building in my opinion.

Remember split your ads up. You can run multiple campaigns that are very similar. This is key in identifying which ads are working. You can test different demographics, age groups, interests etc. Split them up in ways that make sense to your business.