Don’t know what PPC Advertising is? It’s OK, most people have never heard of this term. PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click and is a strategy used by millions of companies around the world. Did you ever wonder how Google has became so huge and profitable? Well, the reason Google has been able to develop all of the new and amazing technologies they are coming out with is due in large part to their number one revenue generator, Google Ad-Words. The most popular targeting strategy used in Google Ad-Words is Pay-Per-Click. Basically the way this works is that you develop your advertising campaign, choose your target keywords, then Google will post your Ad on their website when someone searches for one of your targeted keywords.
How does Google make money you may be asking…well it’s simple, they charge you every time someone clicks on the advertisement to your website! Some companies pay $10 or more dollars per click depending on their keywords and if they are targeting local or national markets, and how competitive the keyword is. PPC quite simply is YOU pay per click every time someone clicks your advertisement. Why all of this talk about Google, this is suppose to be a Facebook blog post right? That is because to get an understanding of how PPC actually works you need to know how Google works, since they control the web in this day and age.
Now about Facebook! They have taken the PPC Advertising strategy to an entirely different level, a new and very exciting way to target your customers. You may have noticed while browsing Facebook you are getting advertisements on the right side of your screen, and they just happen to be stuff you are most likely interested in or have recently looked at on the web! How is this possible? Well Facebook is tracking everything you do on their website! Every time you click like on a link, website or profile page…in addition to all of the interests and information you loaded into your actual profile, Facebook puts into their database. This is a disaster for personal privacy and some people feel that this is too intrusive, but this is a gold mine for advertisers!
By going to https://www.facebook.com/business you can start your Facebook advertising campaign. They are currently running several different specials offering a free $50 to try their service. The way this works is that first you develop your ad, with your image and text and customize the appearance. Once you are done you should have something that looks like the following.
Now on to the money maker, Targeting! With Facebook’s enormous database of user interests, likes, and demographics, you are able to target the exact type of potential customer you are looking for. You can target potentials by specific location, age, sex, type of relationship they are in, type of relationship they are interested in, languages spoken, education, where they work, and you can even target people only on their birthday!
My favorite feature is the next area of targeting, targeting people by their “likes and interests.” For example, if you run a newspaper or magazine company, you can target all of the people who have clicked “like” on similar interests such as “The New York Times”, “People Magazine”, “Popular Mechanics”, “The Austin American Statesman.” This is an amazing feature that Google does not have because they do not have peoples social networking profiles on hand. This feature actually allows you to directly target competitors and people who are already interested in your type of product! Once done you should have something that looks like this.
Now just select how much you want to spend per click, I recommend setting this at 2.00 (most clicks cost about $1.00), and watch your graph to see how many people are clicking on your ad every day. Give this a try, and watch your business grow!
