Using Facebook Ads - Insider Tips from George

I've found Facebook Ads to be very cost effective way of reaching youth people.  Facebook makes most of their money through the targeted ads on the right hand side of the Facebook pages.  They either get paid for "Impressions" or for "Clicking through".  Most are for Clicking Through, which means someone on Facebook actually clicks on the ad and takes them to that advertisers page.  Facebook doesn't make money, unless the advertiser is driving traffic to them.  So Facebook, really helps you drive traffic to your website or Facebook event, or page.  They target Facebook users which will most likely want your product, or event.

My example, from Paintball Paradise (my business), was a trade show event.  I was able to target young people, within 50 miles of Prince Albert, that liked Paintball, or mentioned Paintball in their Facebook pages, or Walls.  I could take male or females, and various age categories.  If I wasn't getting a great response I could increase the target audience, in various ways.  I also capped my Budget for click per day, so once the budget was met, the ads stopped running.  Creating the Ad was short and easy to do (you need a good picture, and short bit of text).

This is a great link that helps explain, how and why to use Facebook Ads.  The links below is for businesses, but the information applies to Optimist Clubs as well.
http://www.facebook.com/business/ads/

The above links goes through 5 Steps to a successful Facebook Ad campaign.

Here's some quick thoughts from my perspective. 

Step 1: Identify Your Goals
Do you want to build your fan base, drive sales (attendees to events or sell tickets and such), or just build awareness of your Club, and the good it does in your community?  Maybe sign up new members?

Step 2: Target the Right People
This is the extremely powerful tool.  You can choose: an area (within 50 miles), or just a city or town, languages, age, gender, Likes and Interests (like what I did for Paintball, but it could be for Oratorical, Essay, poetry, hearing impairments, Police, Law & Order, Junior Golf, sport teams, and such), Relationship Status (singles dances), scouting, guides).  Play around and see how many fit into your category, before ever launching the campaign.

Step 3: Design an Engaging Ad
Make sure you mention your own local city or town name, otherwise facebookers might not check it out because they figure it's in Toronto or somewhere else.  Call to action, tell them what they need to do.  Click here and sign up.

Step 4: Manage Your Budget
CPC vs CPM : Determine if you want to pay on a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM) basis.  I prefer CPC, but it depends on what you need, and what works.  Set your daily budget, and bid price per CPC or CPM.  If you bid too low, Facebook doesn't run your ads, until everybody with a higher bids runs out of daily budget.  I did this, and nobody clicked through (too low), so I upped the bid the next day, and started to get clicks.  Minimum budget is $5 per day.  Bid prices vary between $.05-$2 per click, but they will give you an example of a good range.

Step 5: Review and Improve
The reports are great, so check them out.  They will tell you who is clicking through, every deomographic.  Very easy to use, and maybe you will need to modify your campaign.  Change it up and experiment.  Let us know, how you do.

Facebook has many free resources to help you design better ads, because if you aren't successful, they are not successful either.  They want you to succeed.  

Sponsored Stories
There are also things called Facebook "Sponsored Stories".  I have not tried these but they could work too for your club.  This is a link to Facebooks Sponsored Stories.
http://www.facebook.com/business/sponsoredstories

Experiment, play around, see what works and what doesn't.  Let everybody know, share that information.  This will help our clubs grow and do bigger and better projects in our communities.