Facebook has more than 400 million active users. Recently it reported more traffic than Google Search. Most of Facebook users are 18-37 – adults with disposable income to spend.

That’s why advertising on Facebook presents a fabulous business opportunity. You can drive traffic to your website, connect with a huge community of your target customers, promote your services, products and special offers. What’s more – Facebook offers very cost-effective advertising opportunity through its own pay-per-click ads. However you can do it for free by just creating a business page or a group.

Pay-per-click advertising

Facebook allows businesses to purchase image and text-based ads that can be targeted to a specific demographic based on age, location, gender, marital status, interests and more. Therefore a luxury wedding planner in King’s Lynn can target women who are 25-40, engaged, within 20 miles from King’s Lynn and are college graduates. It’s impossible to achieve such targeting with Google AdWords as all you can specify is someone’s location.

Ads are charged on a cost per click (CPC) or cost per mille (or 1,000 impressions, CPM) basis. You can set up a daily budget and a bid per click or impressions. The minimum daily budget is $1. Facebook will show a suggested bid range displaying what other advertisers targeting your demographic are paying. To get good results you’ll need to bid somewhere in the middle of the suggested range. continue

We often come across small business owners without a definite plan to follow up on their leads. They keep a collection of business cards from networking events, and have address books where they record contact details. But these are often used at random, if at all, and are sometimes simply forgotten. So what is a database, how does it differ from the card collection and why should a small business have one?

The answer is simple. Would you use a typewriter to prepare a proposal for your customer? Probably not. Same reasoning applies to managing your customer data. The business database is one of the most important assets in your business and, if used properly, it can generate a steady stream of income each time you turn to it.

A database is essentially a collection of information about something, in this case – about your customers and prospects. The main benefits over collecting paper cards are:

• Access: you can share access to the information between multiple team members, which you can’t do with cards.
• Flexibility: you can access the information wherever you are, without having to carry a big pile of cards with you.
• Accountability: you can track how well your business is doing in closing sales and converting leads into prospects.
• Security: you can lose the cards or your bag, and all the information with it. If your database is stored online it’s safe and secure no matter what.

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Guest post by Alex Hearn, The Big A.

How do you instruct a designer in order to create an effective brand that works for your company?

To instruct your designer effectively give them useful information but also allow them to do their job freely, or you won’t get the best out of them.

How do you allow them to utlilise their expertise while ensuring you get what you want?

Express yourself clearly but in general terms. Too much detail and you’ll be telling them what to design, which is what you’re paying them for and is something they’re better at than you! For example, instead of specifying a particular shade of blue, try to identify the feeling or values you are trying to communicate, such as ‘conservative and stable’. continue

I’ve come across a lot of business owners who are not sure why they should be on LinkedIn. “Is it just another social network?” “Why should I have my profile there and spend time keeping it up to date?” Or even – “It’s not going to work anyway so why bother…”

Why bother indeed – with well over 50 million users all over the world, the absolute majority of who are business professionals (not kids or teens like you may assume about Facebook or MySpace) – why would a business owner not want to be part of such network? If you are still wondering how exactly it works, here’s a short video that will explain the basics:

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Guest post by Olga Sladeskova, director of Marketing Resolutions:

Google AdWords is one of the fastest ways to promote your business. All you need to do is open your AdWords account, set up your campaigns and start advertising.

Google search engine - AdWords is outlined in red

This can only take a few moment however if you really want to get the most out of AdWords it is crucial to educate yourself first. Here are some tips for setting up your first Google AdWords account.

Google AdWords account is very easy to open. Just go to this link www.AdWords.Google.com, follow the instruction and you can have an account open within 3 minutes.

Once you open your account you will need to start thinking about what products or services you want to sell through AdWords. Write them down on a piece of paper and then brain storm other variations to these words.

For further help with keyword variations use the free Google keyword tool on the following link: https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal

The length of your keyword list will depend on the number of products or services that you are selling. Once you are happy with your list, group the keywords by services or products.

These groups will later become your Google AdWords campaigns. Split up your keywords further into subgroups which will later become your Google AdWords ad groups.

You have now created your AdWords account structure:

You will now need to write ads for each ad group. It is a good idea to write 2 ads per ad group and test which one is getting better performance.

When writing ads the rule of thumb is to use the keywords in your ad text. This will help in increasing your conversion rates but also help reduce your cost per click.

For more information and tips on advertising with AdWords download the FREE Google AdWords guide.

Olga Sladeskova and Marketing Resolutions is a Google AdWords Certified Partner and advertising professional based in London.