Google forever changed the world of advertising with Pay for Click Ad words. Pay for Click are the small ads you see on the right side of every Google search page. Pay 
for Click advertising is successful for three reasons.
First, when someone clicks on the ads, the visitor is acting in a proactive way. They had interest in the product or service and are willing to click on it. Pay for Click visitors are more likely prospects than causal observers.
Second, Google Pay for Click helps your business appear on the top page of the search engine ranking. It is not easy to get on the first page of Google. Using Pay for Click you can by pass the normal organic ranking system of Google.
Third, with Pay for Click, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. Google helps you create a budget and monitors the budget based on how many clicks are made on your ad.
Google Pay for Clicks has limitations. You get proactive views on your site but beyond their interest, you know nothing about the visitor to determine if they are a good candidate for your business. In highly competitive areas, Pay for Click is expensive. A Click can cost you 10-12 dollars per click. A $100 budget can go in less than one day!
Facebook Ads
What if you could target these pay for click ads so they only appears before certain types of prospects? Facebook ads allow you to do this. Take the example of the Woodbury Minnesota wedding Photographer. He places a Facebook ad to appear only on those pages of women from the St.Paul/Minneapolis area, ages 22-30, whose status is engaged. Over a two year period he spent $300 to generate $60,000 in business. How does this work?
When people join Facebook they complete a profile about their age, their sex, where they live, their interests, their hobbies, their family status, their political and religious preferences.
Facebook ads use this profile information as a screen. As an advertiser your ad appears only on the profile pages you determined, just as the wedding photographer does. The result is a more targeted ad. Because these ads are new, there is less competition, Facebook ads are cheaper. A $100 budget can last for weeks.
Facebook ads provides all the same features as Google ad words, daily budgets, measured results, pay based on clicks. In addition Facebook also allows consumers to interact with the ads in an entirely new way.
Conclusion
Facebook ads not only target keywords like Google, you can also target these words by age, sex, location and a variety of personal attributes such as hobbies, favorite types of music, sports, food and many other preferences.
Can you begin to see how you may use these Facebook Ads to your business advantage? Not surprising, many predict these targeted Facebook ads will soon overshadow Google ads. It’s another reason why a Facebook Fan page should be in your marketing mix.
We will talk in more details about how to create your Facebook ads in a later post.
To be continued, your comments are welcomed…
Al Hanzal
