Are you finally coming to terms with the reality that Facebook has become a “pay to play” platform?

Do you know you need to advertise on Facebook but have no clue what your ad options are?

This post will provide an overview of Facebook’s 3 ad products: the Boost button, Ads Manager, and Power Editor. Each advertising option has its own pros and cons, and each ad tool has a different interface than the other two.

All of these ad products are for use on your Facebook fan page, all can be run with a very minimal daily budget, all include analytics of your ad’s success (or failure), and all limit the amount of text used on the ad image to 20% or less.

The Boost Button

The Boost button is the small blue button located underneath your status update, on the right side.

Boost Button Pros: Easy to use, quick to get a paid promotion up and running, and a simple interface.

Boost Button Cons: You are limited with your ad targeting options, and minimal stats are provided as to your ad’s performance (via the Boost button). However, if you are comfortable working with Ads Manager, you can now view & monitor your Boost button campaigns in the same way as the ads created using Ads Manager.

Ads Manager

Facebook Ads Manager is an incredibly powerful ad tool that doesn’t come with the complexity (and often, confusion) of the Power Editor.

Ads Manager Pros: Several ad types available, far superior targeting options and control over your ad vs the Boost button, far superior reporting vs the Boost button, the ability to advertise to a Custom Audience, and a straight-forward, step-by-step interface to build your ad.

(Click on any screenshot to enlarge)

Ads Manager Cons: Very few. There are a few, very specific features available in Power Editor that you don’t get when using Ads Manager, like the ability to advertise unpublished posts (a.k.a. dark posts) and to set specific days and times across your ad’s total run to show your ad (e.g. Show your ad on Sunday, off on Monday and Tuesday, but run it again on Wednesday.).

One other Con is that Ads Manager has moved to calling its Promoted Page Post option, “Boost Post”. The Boost Post option within Ads Manager is not the same as the Boost button located on the status updates posted on your fan page.

Power Editor

Power Editor is the advanced- or expert-level Facebook advertising tool. While it can be used by anyone, this ad tool is more popular and more necessary for larger companies that run lots and lots of ads.

Power Editor Pros: Nifty features like Bulk Upload, publishing “dark posts”, and having very specific control over when your ad runs (as stated above). Also, once an ad is created using Power Editor, you can monitor it from within Ads Manager.

Power Editor Cons: In general, there’s a steep learning curve to this ad tool. The interface is such that you have to visit different tabs to create your ad vs the single page view of Ads Manager. Also, when using Ads Manager, you are given the option to review your ad and confirm that you want to place your order; however with Power Editor, it’s go time as soon as you’ve completed all steps of the ad creation process. 

Before placing your first ad of any kind, you’ll need to set up your Ads account using your desired credit card. A nice feature here is that you can also add one or more fan page admins as an Ads Account Manager. Doing so gives those select people the ability to create and place an ad on behalf of your fan page while billing those ad charges directly to your account. The Ads Account Managers that you set up cannot view or access your billing information, so there are no concerns over your credit card number becoming available to them.

Here are a few additional Facebook Ad resources:

• Facebook’s 20% Text Grid Tool – Just upload the image including text that you want to use, mark the cells that contain text, and see if it passes the 20% test. If not, adjust the amount, size and/or location of your text, and retest. If you check to make sure your image passes Facebook’s text test before creating your ad, you’ll avoid any last minute changes. Facebook’s been known to initially approve an ad that uses an image with too much text, start running the campaign, and then – hours later – shutting it down citing too much text. It’s not worth chancing it.
• How to Use Facebook’s Graph Search to Improve your Ad Targeting – Facebook’s internal search tool can provide some additional insight into your fans’ and ideal customers’ Likes, which can – in turn – aid in your ad targeting.
• Use Facebook Ads Reports to Improve Future Ads – Once you’ve run 1 ad, you have basically uncovered another layer of statistics and insight to use to improve the targeting and success of future ads. For example, you can review ad results by age, gender, and location.

This post is designed purely as an introduction to the 3 Facebook ad tool options. Learning how to properly develop a Facebook ad strategy, design an ad, determine proper ad targeting and ad type, and monitor an ad once live are things we can help with, if needed.

What has been your experience with the 3 Facebook ad tools?