![\"\"](\"https:\/\/reddotblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/FacebookAds.jpg\")
\t<\/p>\nIn my recent posts on social media art marketing, I\u2019ve been discussing the value social media can provide to artists and galleries. Most of the focus has been on the viral nature of social media and the ability it gives you to share your art through your social network for free.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve shared some stories of success, both from our gallery and from artists I contacted for this series. We haven\u2019t yet discussed, however, the power of paid advertising through social media.<\/p>\n
As powerful as free publicity through social media is, leveraging the the marketing tools available on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social media platforms can allow you to reach an entirely new audience.<\/p>\n
In today\u2019s post, I want to briefly explore some of those possibilities. My post today is not intended to be a comprehensive guide to social media advertising. There are entire books written on the subject and entire businesses built around helping you understand how to use social advertising tools. I can\u2019t even begin to scratch the surface in a short blog post. My hope is that I can raise your awareness of some of the advertising opportunities and tools that are available and encourage you to explore the possibilities in more depth for yourself.<\/p>\n
Because Facebook is the largest social platform, and because it\u2019s the platform I have the most experience advertising on, I\u2019m going to focus on Facebook advertising, but much of what I\u2019m writing would apply to other platforms and their advertising tools.<\/p>\n
The Duality of Our Feeling About Facebook<\/h2>\n
Users seem to have a love\/hate relationship with Facebook. Facebook allows us to stay in contact with our friends and families in a simple, engaging way. They also know a tremendous amount about us.<\/p>\n
This can be scary, and as a Facebook user, I can understand why many users worry about the information Facebook is gathering every time you like a post or share an article.<\/p>\n
As an advertiser, however, I see the user information Facebook gathers as incredibly valuable to me. The rich, dense information that Facebook gathers allows me to reach the best potential buyers at an incredibly reasonable price.<\/p>\n
Because Facebook customizes its content for each individual user, I can select exactly how many people I want to target and budget exactly how much I want to spend.<\/p>\n
This is very different than magazine or broadcast advertising. With traditional advertising, you have to pay to display your ad to a magazine\u2019s entire audience every time you advertise, even if it\u2019s only a small portion of the magazine\u2019s audience that is likely to respond.<\/p>\n
With Facebook, I can dial in my advertising to hit only the users I want to hit, and I can continually refine my advertising\u00a0in real time<\/em> to further optimize my ads.<\/p>\n As an advertiser, this has been revolutionary. I still do print and direct-mail marketing for the gallery, but I can foresee a day when most of my advertising budget goes to Facebook.<\/p>\n Now, lest you think that Facebook\u2019s\u00a0sole purpose is to put ads in front of users, to their harm, I would argue that this highly customizeable targeting actually benefits Facebook users as well. Over time, users should see only advertising for products and services that will be of interest to them. This should also mean that they will see fewer and fewer ads, since the only ads businesses will want to pay for are those that are likely to result in sales.\u00a0I see it as a win-win.<\/p>\n Before I can answer that question, I have to let you know that the tools that I\u2019ll be talking about are only available to you if you have business page, in addition to your personal Facebook profile.<\/p>\n We discussed the benefits of business profiles in this article<\/a>, and I shared that most of the artists who are doing well on Facebook are focusing their efforts on their personal profile activity.<\/p>\n For advertising, however, you have to set up a business page. As a number of readers pointed out though, you don\u2019t have to choose between having a personal profile and a business page, you can have both. Setting up a business profile is easy and free, so there\u2019s no reason not to set one up so that you can access and experiment with Facebook advertising tools.<\/p>\n Once you have a business profile, you will have access to Facebook\u2019s Ads Manager. The Ads Manager will give you the ability to create ads and access all of Facebook\u2019s targeting tools.<\/p>\n You shouldn\u2019t have to spend too much time thinking about what you are going to be including in your ads \u2013 it\u2019s likely to be your latest art \u2013 so we won\u2019t spend a lot of time talking about content or imagery. You should basically create ads that share your art and a narrative about that art, in the ways that we\u2019ve discussed in the last several blog posts.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the targeting where things get interesting. With your personal posts, you are targeting your friends and followers. Once you have a Facebook advertising account set up, you can target just about anyone in the world.<\/p>\n Facebook calls the groups of users that you are going to target \u201caudiences,\u201d and they provide a number of different ways for you to select and target your audiences.<\/p>\n One of Facebook\u2019s best targeting tools is interest profiles. Every time you like a page on Facebook, you give me, as an advertiser, the ability to target an ad to you. So, for example, if you like the page for the Smithsonian\u2019s National Gallery of Art page on Facebook, I can target an ad at you. If you like my gallery page, I can target you. If you like my competitors\u2019 gallery pages, I can target you.<\/p>\n These \u201cinterests\u201d can tell me a lot about you, and I know that if you like certain things, you are more likely to be my potential audience.<\/p>\n Read more about targeting by interest here: Likes and Interests<\/a><\/p>\n Facebook can also estimate users\u2019 income level. As an advertiser, you can pair the demographic information with users\u2019 interests to get to an even more specific audience, or you can use demographics alone.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve successfully used demographics, for example, to advertise art to high income earners within a 20 mile radius of our gallery. You could do the same to share your art with people who live close to your studio.<\/p>\n Read more : Detailed Targeting<\/a><\/p>\n Another useful tool Facebook provides is what they call a \u201ctracking pixel.\u201d It\u2019s a little snippet of code that you add to your website that ties your visitors to their Facebook profile.<\/p>\n You can then create Facebook ads to show them your art in their newsfeed. We know that it often takes repeated exposure to an image to generate the kind of interest that will lead to a sale. Facebook gives us the ability to generate that repeated exposure.<\/p>\n Read more: Custom Audiences from your Website<\/a><\/p>\n Facebook also gives you the ability to form a target audience of people that their algorithms think will have similar interests to your current followers or website visitors.<\/p>\n You can build these \u201cLookalike Audiences\u201d from your page followers, the visitors to your site if you are using Facebook\u2019s tracking pixel, or by uploading your mailing list.<\/p>\n The caveat is that you need to have a fairly large sample audience in order to tap into this tool. If you don\u2019t have a large following yet, or if your mailing list is small, you won\u2019t be able to use this tool until your audience grows.<\/p>\nThe Tools<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/reddotblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/PostPromoted-263x300.png\")
So what tools does Facebook offer that are useful to me as an art advertiser?<\/p>\nInterests<\/h3>\n
Demographics<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/reddotblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Demographics-300x144.png\")
Interests become even more powerful when they are matched up with demographics. Facebook knows how old users are, where they live, marital status, and much. much more demographic information.<\/p>\nWebsite Visitors<\/h3>\n
Lookalike Audience<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/reddotblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/ShowResults-300x184.png\")
<\/p>\n