Facebook ads are a way to promote your University unit and it's activities. To start advertising on Facebook, visit Facebook Advertising.
Tips for creating an ad
- When you create a Facebook ad, you have the option of either advertising for something inside of Facebook (such as your own Facebook page, a group or event), or you can promote a website that is outside of Facebook.
- The title of your ad is limited to 25 characters, and the body can have up to 135 characters. In that space, you will have to focus on what you're offering, and why people need it. Your text should be interesting and appealing so that it captures a reader's interest. At the same time, keep it simple so it is easy to read. There should be a clear call to action: an imperative for the reader to use your service or be affected by your ad. Simplicity and clarity are important to avoid being vague and losing the audience.
- You should also add a picture that helps give some visual exposition to your efforts and draws viewers to your text. Remember that images attract the eye and can generate interest regarding your ad, which in turn gets people to read it and click it.
Here is an example of a typical Facebook ad:
Advanced strategies
Facebook is an extremely engaging medium and ads should be targeted to the appropriate audience, communicate the worth of your service to that audience and appear compelling enough to generate interest. Many options exist to help you determine targeting, campaign and pricing strategies.
Targeting
You'll be able to target users by location, age, sex, keywords, education, workplace, relationship status, relationship interests, and languages. According to Facebook:
Your ad is more likely to perform better and continue running successfully if it is being displayed to the users who are most likely to be interested in your product or service. Because of this, we recommend targeting your ads to smaller, more specific groups of users at one time.
Campaigns and pricing
You can create several ad campaigns which you'll be able to tell apart by the name you give them. The Daily Budget is how much you intend to spend in a single day on advertising. You can schedule your campaigns to run continuously, or you can further target the campaign by scheduling dates the ad will run.
When paying for your ads, you have the options of choosing to pay for Clicks or Impressions. The difference between these is that clicks are when users actually click on your ads or the destination URL you've provided, and impressions are times that the users see those ads, regardless of whether they click on them afterwards or not. According to Facebook:
CPM advertising is usually more effective for advertisers who want to raise awareness of their brand or company, while CPC advertising is more effective for advertisers who are hoping for a certain response from users (like sales or registrations).