Social Media Marketing

(Facebook)

I- Introduction:

Social Media has taken the world by a storm, especially after the
appearance of Facebook. In the world of marketing, social media has
created many valuable opportunities. This is because social media,
unlike other media devices such as TVs and Radios, can target specific
audiences.

II- How does targeting happen?

When you open an account on a social network, you need to input a lot
of your personal information such as your name, age, gender, marital
status, etc… Moreover, sometimes Facebook proposes that you fill in
other personal information such as the schools or colleges you went to,
favorite music, and other preferences. All of this information helps your
friends identify you, but it also plays an invaluable role for advertising.

When someone turns on a TV, it is near impossible for the TV station to

know who its audience is. They may be children, adults, married, single,
etc… Sometimes even pets watch tv, not to mention when the TV is on
and you are in the other room. Therefore, when people buy advertising
on TV, they can never be sure who is watching it.

On the other hand, when you log on to Facebook, you usually see ads
which interest you. These ads are either in your feed with the word
“sponsored” on top of them or on the right side of the screen. It is very
rare for single guys to see ads for handbags on Facebook and equally
rare for married people to see ads for dating services. This is because
the advertiser can specify who sees his ads based on the profile
information that users input.

III- Types of Social Media Advertisements:

There are mainly three types of advertisements on social media. They

are Free Advertising, CPC, and CPM.

The first one is the free advertising that almost all of us do when we
share a post on our wall. Even though this type of advertising is not
subject to the targeting strategy mentioned above, it is nevertheless
subject to a certain form of targeting, which is based on your
importance to your friends. For example, your best friend will almost
always see your post at the top of their feed, while a far acquaintance
who is your friend on Facebook but who you never talk to will not see
your post unless they scroll down very far or they visit your profile.

The second, CPC, stands for Cost Per Click, which means that you only
pay the price of the ad placement once someone clicks on your ad.
When you buy such an add, Facebook will ask you to decide who your
target audience is. For example, if you are selling tennis shoes for guys,
your target audience will be guys aged between 16 and 30. If you are
selling child toys, your audience will be people who are between the
ages of 20 and 40, who are married and who have kids. Your target is
based on the people who will be most interested in what you are
offering. The more you specify your target, the better engagement your
ad will generate and the more sales you may make. In CPC, your ad will
be shown to many people and more than once to each of them until
they click it. If they don’t click, you don’t pay, but your ad keeps
appearing. However, if they click and you run out of budget, your ads
stop showing.

The third, CPM, stands for Cost Per thousand (M stands for the Roman
numeral for thousand), which means cost per thousand impressions. An
impression is when your ad is displayed and someone sees it, regardless
of whether they interact with it or not. In this case, the ad impression
usually goes to the highest bidder until budget runs out. For example, if
you value a thousand ad impressions at 10$ and another person values
them at 20$, the other person is bidding higher than you, therefore,
Facebook will prioritize his ads over yours and will display his ads at
better times until his budget runs out. Afterwards, they start showing
your ads. Bidding is also what happens in CPC, but it doesn’t matter
much since you are getting the click that you need. Usually, people who
opt for CPM place a high budget for their marketing campaign. When
they have a thousand impressions, these impressions can generate
more clicks than if they only pay per click. This option is also important
for companies who are trying to raise brand awareness in branding
campaigns. They want people to get used to seeing their logo, and they
don’t care much about page likes.

IV- What gets advertised on social media?

You can advertise anything on social media. However, this form of

advertisement usually comes in the form of page posts, events, offers,
website ads, etc… Regardless, they are all subject to the same rules
above.
 V- Why do people usually
advertise pages on
Facebook?

When you like a page on

Facebook, you are indirectly
telling the page owners that you
would like to see more of the
content that they share. If you
press the like button on a page
about puppies, it means you
want them to send you posts
about puppies. Almost all
businesses nowadays have
Facebook pages. Also, the more
likes a page has, the more
important it seems. That’s why
most businesses value
Facebook
Figure likes
1: A detailed line a lot.showing
chart If a Facebook
the increase page
or has a million likes and another
decrease of page likes on Facebook.
has a thousand, it means that the page that has a million has a much
wider reach than the one who has only a thousand. What’s more
important here though is that this advertising becomes free. When you
already have likes on your page and you post something, you don’t
have to pay for Facebook for people to see it. This is because the
people who like your page are now seeing your ads in their feed for
free. You can still pay to increase your reach though.

it
Figure 2: Organic reach is the number of people
seeing your post without you paying for it. Paid
reach is the number of people who see your post
when you pay for it.
unless the owners boost them.
The concept of post reach is
very important on social
media. Even if your page has a
thousand likes, it doesn’t
mean that all the people who
like your page are seeing your
posts. This is because the
same concept that applies to
best friends and far
acquaintances applies to them
as well. Even if you like a page,
doesn’t mean you will always
see its posts in your feed. If
you don’t interact with a page
by liking, commenting on or
sharing its posts, you won’t be
seeing too many of its posts

A lot of pages with huge numbers of likes decide to boost posts by

paying to advertise them so that they get more likes on that specific
post. This helps them increase their reach, which means that their posts
will start to appear more in people’s feeds.

VI- Conclusion

When you decide to advertise on social media, you need to first decide
who would be most interested in your ad. After that, you need to
decide on a budget. Some pages advertise for 1$ per day while others
decide to pay thousands of dollars per day. This is entirely up to you.
However, you need to be careful of buying too many likes too quickly
because people will think that your page is fake. Usually, for a new
business’s page, an increase of around 1,000 likes per month is
acceptable. Moreover, even if you think the information here is too
much, when you decide to experiment, Facebook and other social
networks have a very detailed step-by-step program to get you well
acquainted easily.