Facebook Advertising:  Keyword Challenged?

Have you created your first ad on Facebook yet?  Unless you have $10,000 to spend, you’ll likely be creating a more economical Profile Page ad.

Moving through the four-step process to create a Profile Page ad on Facebook is relatively easy.  What’s not so easy is dealing with copyrighting (given the character limits, the capitalization limits, punctuation limits—it would make even Shakespeare sound like Scooby Doo), and targeting your ad.

Targeting your ad on Facebook is a lot like other things in life—anybody can do it, but it’s going to take some practice and trial-and-error to be any good at it.  To Facebook’s credit, every change you make to your targeting selections gives you an instant calculation for how many people you will target.  Creating your ad may include defining a geographic area and choosing appropriate keywords to fit your audience.  Choose a large urban population, and you’ll instantly get a huge reach.  Try to reach Northern Minnesota, and you’ll be looking for the solution all day.  You’ll also be challenged if you use any keywords from that bygone era, “Pre-1980.”

For example, if you want to advertise to “Fargo, ND”, you could potentially reach 47,920 people.  If you then limit it to just 18-21 year olds within Fargo, you’re down to 21,340. If you then limit your reach to just Fargo’s 18-21 year olds who also have “Peter Frampton” listed among their favorite musicians?  Then you’re left with the 40 lost souls whose parents rocked them to sleep singing, “Baby I Love Your Way.”

On the other hand if you want to reach everyone in “Massachusetts”, 18-and-older, who included “Barack Obama” in their profile, you’re targeting a whopping 100,960 people with your ad.  These are just two examples, but they do show how your choice of keywords will play a major role in targeting your ad.

Since Facebook is still a relatively new media, there’s not a lot of reference material or “best practices” to follow.  This is a tough pill to swallow for many of us, but if you’re ready to head down the Facebook Ad Highway you might have to just ask for directions…or in this case, contact Facebook to talk with one of their sales representatives.