Should You Promote Your Business through Facebook Ads?

By Marsha Collier from Social Media Commerce For Dummies

Regarding Facebook ads for your business site or fan page, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that an advertiser can tightly target an ad's appearance. The bad news is that people on Facebook rarely click ads; they're on Facebook for social interaction.

Many major brands have pulled their paid advertising from Facebook (they still find value from their free fan pages for customer engagement) due to the lack of return. At this point, the best way for a small business to use Facebook ads is to target customers for items in their Facebook store.

People are on Facebook to visit their friends' posts and don’t want to leave the site for outside clicks. If your product is in a Facebook store, odds of getting some results from your ads may be pretty good.

Should you decide to run a Facebook ad, you can select your budget based on CPC (cost per click). Just be sure you don’t set the cost per click too high. The web has been rampant with reports of bots clicking ads on Facebook. You don’t need to be paying for worthless clicks.

If you want to give ads a try, try this approach: Open your ad at the Facebook suggested cost per click, and then lower what you will pay per click after a few clicks. Monitor whether you are continuing to get clicks and then adjust your pricing again.

Sponsored posts might give you more control of your ad dollar and better results on Facebook.