How Does Facebook Advertising Work?

                                    

Recent reports show that Facebook now has around 500 Million members worldwide.
If you are looking for ways to promote your website or business on the internet you may be wondering how does Facebook advertising work?
In this post I’ll cover 3 different Facebook advertising methods – the first two are completely free and the third one costs money.
1) The Like Button
One easy way to incorporate Facebook into your current website business is to add the “Like” button to your website. If you scrolldown to the end of this blog post you will see a like button (feel free to press it if you like this )
When someone visits your website, if they are a Facebook member they can simply click on the Like button to show that they like your web page. This is very powerful as it will show up on their Facebook wall area along with a link and there is the potential for some of their Facebook friends to see this link and click it out of curiosity.

If a large number of people click the Like button on your site this can go viral and result in lots of new visitors from Facebook. I’ve just added Like buttons to my blog and home page in the last week and I’ve already seen some traffic coming from Facebook even though I only have a few “Likes” so far!
2) Facebook Fan Pages
If you are a member of Facebook you can setup as many different Fan Pages as you wish. These are completely separate from your personal page and they allow you to promote a business, a website, a cause, a place or pretty much anything. To setup a Fan Page just login to your Facebook account and click on the “Account” menu then click on “Manage Pages” and Facebook will guide you through setting up your page.
Your page can contain lots of information about your business including the website URL, the address and telephone number, the products you sell, photos relating to your business or website, news updates and much more. If someone clicks the Like button on your page, they become a “Fan” and their Like shows up on their wall for all their friends to see. Again, if lots of people click this it can go viral.
You may want to consider offering people a free gift for liking your page – there are a number of scripts available to help you set this up. Be sure to use eye catching photos on your page to grab the attention of the visitor. If you create a good fan page this can be an excellent way to get more visitors to your website and you can also keep your fans up to date by posting the latest news on your wall.
3) Facebook Ads
When you login to your Facebook account you usually see a few ads on the right hand side. You can click on these ads, “Like” them or make them disappear if you are not interested in them.

Facebook ads can be set up as pay per click ads or pay per impression ads, but they are different from most PPC ads as they incorporate a picture. When you setup an ad in Facebook, you can choose the demographics of the people that you want to show the ad to. This is huge as you can narrow down your target audience based on their age, sex, where they live, what their interests are and much more. This means that these ads are many times more targeted than Google Adwords and Yahoo Ads can ever be.
The image you use in your ad is very important and you should be sure to choose something extremely eye catching, but obviously related to your ad. If you choose the pay per click method the price you pay for your ad will vary based on how successful your ad is – the higher the CTR (click through rate), the lower your cost per click.
Before setting up an ad in Facebook be sure to read their terms of service as there are certain types of products that they don’t allow you to promote, including MLM opportunities. I also recommend doing some training before setting up ads e.g. Facebook Cash Generator, as it can be easy to lose money if you don’t know what you are doing.
Hopefully these three methods will help you understand the basic principles of how Facebook advertising works. You can get started very quickly by incorporating a like button into your blog or website right now!