Should You Pay for Facebook Ads?

Once upon a time, you could post something on Facebook and be pretty sure that all of your friends or followers would see it. Today, it’s harder to get your content seen, whether you’re using a personal Facebook profile or a public business page. To make the most of your marketing efforts and make sure people see your posts, considering using the promotional options available on Facebook pages.

Sidebar Posts

One advertising option is to have your ads show up in the sidebar. You can encourage non-fans to “like” your page or you can direct a specific audience to click a link to your website. It’s important to make sure your sidebar ads are optimized for both Facebook’s website and mobile. Since a lot of social media users access Facebook from their smartphones, you don’t want to miss out on this audience. You can view how your ads will look before moving forward.

Boosted Posts

Once you post something to your Facebook page, you can add a boost promotion. There are a lot of perks to using this feature. You can choose to boost your post to a specific audience that you create. The audience can take a lot of things into account, like gender, age, location, interests, buying habits, or more. Or, you can boost your post so just your followers see it. You may think that if someone’s following your page, they’re bound to see your post, but this isn’t true. There’s so much competing information on Facebook, that people don’t see a majority of what their connections are posting. You can also opt to have your fans and their friends see your post. This is a great idea if you think that your audience’s audience will also like your content.

Pricing and Audiences

When it comes to advertising, Facebook has low pricing options. You can create an ad or boost a post for as little as $1 per day. When you choose the audience, the number of days you want to advertise for, and then amount of money you’re going to spend, you can even see how many people you have the ability to reach. If necessary, you can adjust your budget or audience accordingly. Sometimes, an audience will be too broad; other times, it will be too narrow.

Once you get started with Facebook advertising, monitor your results. Figure out what’s working and what needs to be changed, then apply those lessons to your next ad.

Jonah Engler is a successful entrepreneur, investor, franchise owner and coffee lover who hails from New York City.