Facebook offers a powerful online advertising platform.  The potential reach is huge.  In Malaysia, Facebook has over 13 million user accounts, which makes Facebook the largest online social network in the country.

Here is a guide to Facebook advertising for the Malaysian market.

Create a Facebook Advertisement to Link to a Website

Here are the key steps, insights, and explanations for creating a Facebook advertisement.

Select a Destination (where your ad should link to):

• Login to Facebook.
• Click the gear button in the top right corner,
• Select “Create an Ad” from the drop down menu.
• You’ll then connect to a page asking, “What do you want to advertise?”
• Choose a Facebook destination or write a website url address.
• If you choose a website url address, continue with these steps.  If you choose a Facebook destination, then proceed to the steps below, marked with the asterisk*.

Write Your Ad Copy:

• Write a headline (max 25 characters).  This headline should be catchy but not ostentatious.
• Write the ad copy (max 90 characters).  Again, be catchy, but not ostentatious.
• Upload an image (100 x 72 pixels).  This is a small image size, so make the most of it.  Your visual impact opportunity is very limited.  Don’t waste it.

Target your Audience:

The Facebook advertising platform’s greatest strength is probably its demographic targeting capability.

• Select a country.  At the time of publishing this post, Facebook indicated 13,605,160 resident in Malaysia.  According to the World Bank, Malaysia has a population of approximately 28,859,000 people.  This suggests 47% of the population in Malaysia have Facebook accounts.  That’s incredible reach.
• Select age.  You can refine this group further by selecting an age group between 13 and 65.  Alternative, you can choose not to select a maximum age.  Facebook requires the minimum age to be 13.
• Select gender.  Select male, female, or both genders.
• Select interests.   Facebook determines people’s broad interests based on their personal timeline, such as their interests, education, job titles, liked pages, and group membership.  If you’d like to target Facebook members’ interests using exact words – make sure you don’t select a keyword that has the “#” symbol infront (e.g. select “Malaysia” and not “#Malaysia”).    Here are some examples of interests that you can select:
  • #Malaysia –> Facebook indicated that about 8,100,00 live in Malaysia and have expressed interestes associated with Malaysia.
  • #Football–> Facebook indicated that about 700,000 people live in Malaysia and have expressed interests associated with Football.
  • #Brad Pitt –> Facebook indicated that about 70,000 people live in Malaysia and have expressed interests associated with Brad Pitt.
  • #Travel –> Facebook indicated that about 1,336,000 people live in Malaysia and have expressed interests associated with Travel.
• Select broad categories.  This setting is similar to the “interests” setting but is designed to be more general.  Here are some broad category examples:
  • Personal Finance Category –> Facebook indicated that about 189,000 people live in Malaysia and fit the Personal Finance category.
  • Photography Category –> Facebook indicated that about 954,000 people live in Malaysia and fit the Photography category.
  • Health and Wellbeing Category –> Facebook indicated that about 1,289,000 people live in Malaysia and fit the Health and Wellbeing category.
• Select Connections.   Select if you want to target people connected to certain Facebook pages, apps, or events.  Or choose to select anyone for this setting.
• Select friends of connections.  This is similar to the point above.  Select people whose friends are connected to certain Facebook pages, apps, or events.

Campaign Pricing and Schedule:

• Write new campaign name.  This is for your internal reference to identify and differentiate among the various advertising campaigns you create on Facebook.
• Identify campaign budget.  You must set a budget for your campaign.  You have two options for this:
  • Daily: In the daily setting, you must identify the maximum amount of American dollars you are willing to spend per day. Facebook will then display your ads to ensure you do not exceed your budget.
  • Lifetime: In the lifetime setting, you must identify the maximum amount of American dollars you are will to spend during the life of the campaign.    You also identify the start and end dates for you campaigns.  Facebook will then display your ads to ensure you do not exceed your budget.  Facebook will then display your ads to ensure you do not exceed your budget.
• Select advertising payment model.  Here you have two options to select your payment model: CPC and CPM.   Typically, you should select CPM, if you want to maximize your reach and generally have branding or awareness objectives.  If you have action-oriented, such as sales or other conversion-related objectives, you should use CPC.  Details about both of these are explained below.
  • CPC: This means cost per click.  In other words, you are charged every time someone clicks on your ad.
  • CPM: This means cost per thousand impressions.  In other words, every one thousand times your ad is displayed on Facebook, you will be charged.  For example, say you login to Facebook and arrive at your Facebook news feed and a iPhone ad is displayed.  Then you click to another page, such as your profile page, and the same iPhone ad is displayed again.  That would count as two impressions.  If you clicked on a friend’s name to view his/her profile page, and the iPhone ad is displayed for a third time, that would would count as three impressions.  If a separate person logs into Facebook and the ad is displayed once to that person, that would count as another impression.

That covers the core components for Facebook Advertisements that link to websites.  It’s certainly worth considering, and we recommend you explore these tools deeper on Facebook.

*Create a Facebook Advertisement to Link to a Destination on Facebook

If you select you want to create a Facebook ad to connect to a destination on Facebook, then your next step is to identify your Facebook Objective.

Identify your Facebook Objective: “What would you like to do”?

The purpose for identifying the objective is that Facebook will then try to display your ad to members who will most likely take action aligning with your objective.   For example, if you want to get more people to Like your Facebook page, Facebook will try displaying your ad to those most likely to take action by liking your page.  You have three options for answering the objective’s question:

• Get More Page Likes: This option is for those people want to build a bigger Facebook audience – get more Likes.  You will create an advertisement following the steps above but your ad connect will connect to your Facebook page.
• Promote Page Posts: This option is for those who want to promote posts published in their Facebook pages.
• See Advanced Options: This option is for those who want a bit more customisation.  You can configure an advanced creative and pricing options, such as a bidding for clicks.

After selecting an objective, you basically follow the same process described at the top of this post for configuring your Facebook advertisement.

Should You Advertise on Facebook?

Should you advertise on Facebook?  It’s certainly worth considering.  Here are some key points highlighting pros and cons for advertising on Facebook:

• Pros
  • Low Cost: CPM and CPC offer very low rates, which can be very attractive for those on tight budgets .
  • Large Network: The Facebook network is vast.  You have the potential to communicate your message to an enormous number of people.
  • Powerful Demographic Targeting:  Facebook offers powerful settings to specify who you want to reach.
• Cons
  • Low Visual Impact:  The visual impact for the ads is low. The size for the ad creative is only 100 x 72 pixels.  This is not
  • Limited Campaign Customisation: Facebook advertising is a packaged product.  This makes it easy for everyone around the world to use, but it means you are limited in how you present, tell, and position your message.  Local media companies can carefully craft a campaign that might include editorial support, specific ad placement options, various ad sizes, and multi-channel (print, event, direct) media support.
  • Self-Service: To start advertising on Facebook, you need to start the campaign yourself.  Rely on guides (like, Leaping Post!) and teach yourself.  This comes with a learning curve and requires allocating some time to manage your campaign.

What do you think about advertising on Facebook?  Post comments below.  Registration is not required.

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Photo Source: sherifer22 / flickr