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The beauty of advertising on Facebook is that it is so targeted and, based on the demographic you’re trying to reach, you basically pay for exactly whom you’re targeting without much waste. However some have complained that the click-through rates are less than stellar. So how do you create ads that drive more traffic to your website?

First, get specific with your targets. Facebook ads allow you to target your ad in the following ways according users:

• Location
• Age
• Gender
• Education
• Relationship status
• One keyword at a time
• Specific workplace names
• Connections to your established Facebook pages, groups, events or applications

(You may also target people by birthday, but you would have to create a separate ad for every day of the year.)

You should know these details already about your core customer, and if you don’t it’s time to do a client survey! Be very specific with your demographics and, if you have too broad a spread create two separate ads. For example, if you appeal to men and women you might run two separate ads, each targeted to one specific gender. If you attract people ages 25 – 50, you might do one ad for the 25 – 34 demographic and the other for 35 – 50. In this way, you can really tailor your ads and determine who is responding most.

Create several different ads and landing pages. Even if you only select one demographic (and I really don’t recommend that) you should develop several different ads to see which offer gets the most clicks. For example, utilize your website keywords. Use a different keyword focus for each ad. Develop several different offers, such as a percentage off, BOGO or even a contest to enter for free products or services. Then, create simple landing pages for each ad to best capture through your own website analytics how the ads are coming in (otherwise your site might read them all simply as from Facebook). All of these methods will help you determine what pushes whose buttons.

Bid high. Once you select the demographics for your ads, Facebook calculates how many members meet the specifications, calculates how many clicks you are likely to get in a day and what the bidding range is for those demographics. The bidding range is the approximate range of what other advertisers are bidding for your target demographic. And you should note, as Facebook grows by unbelievable proportions, demographics change hourly so rates will change slightly day-to-day. You will never pay more than your maximum bid, but you may pay less. Facebook suggests the higher your bid, the more likely it is your ad will be seen. Professionals concur the higher you bid, the more likely your ad will appear on targets’ pages and the greater your click-through rate will be. You can also set a maximum amount you’d like to spend per day; once you’ve reached that limit, your ads are pulled down for the rest of the day.

Review and adjust your results. You can use Facebook’s reporting tools to see who is engaging with which ads on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. I would look at it weekly, which will give you a better view than daily, but with enough time to make changes before you have gone a whole month. Based on your results, you may want to expand or narrow your demographics for better ROI. If you can afford to go monthly (some demographics are far more inexpensive than others), you’ll get an even better picture as so much can happen within a particular week (not to mention a day) that could affect how your demographic is using Facebook.

Facebook does offer small businesses in particular a great opportunity for very targeted, low-waste marketing. It’s just up to you to squeeze the most from every ad (and ad dollar). For more information on how bigBUZZness helps clients develop Facebook ad campaigns, buzz us.