Thinking about how awesome it would be to get in front of those millions of Facebook fans?

Advertising on Facebook is pretty quick to set up and get going, but like other online advertising platforms don't forget that Facebook's goal is to get more money out of you.

Fortunately they do this by helping you create ads that get lots of clicks because you pay when someone clicks on your ad. The trick is making sure this translates into business for you.

Facebook provide step by step instructions on the nuts and bolts of setting up ads with some specific help on managing and editing ads and campaigns so you might as well get it from the horses mouth.

Beyond that, how do you avoid your fledgling Facebook advertising campaign ending up on the scrap-heap of failed initiatives?

1. Decide on your strategy and goals first - and if Facebook is the right choice.

There has been conflicting reports on how well Facebook advertising works. Like most other marketing and promotional efforts, it's going to be a case of testing it and seeing if it works for your particular target audience and type of business.

But experimentation can be costly, so consider:

• Is your target audience active on Facebook? Despite the impressive figures of millions of active users, advertising on a platform your audience doesn't use is like yelling in an empty room.
• You can use Ads to promote your Facebook page and grown the number of 'likes' rather than pushing to make a sale. If you get people on your database, or liking your page, you can build a relationship over time so they are ready and willing to purchase when the time is right.
• Choose specifically what you want to promote. Pick one service or product at a time, not a generic group of products or vague service – be specific
• Have a look at what your competition and others are doing 

2. Choose the destination

You can direct people who click on your ad to an external website (preferably your own!) or keep them within the Facebook ecosystem, which can mean lower cost-per-click.

If you are taking people to an external website, direct them to a purpose built landing page. If this page is being used by more than one campaign, add url parameters so you can identify in Analytics what traffic is being referred from Facebook.   You can use this real handy url builder  to make this easy.

3. Target your campaign tightly

With Facebook you can select who see's your ads using variables such as interests and location, age, gender and keywords. Social Fresh reports that there are big differences in performance based on gender, so optimise your ads by segmenting by gender (target one ad to the men, another one to women).

Of course to target the right people, you'll need to know what demographics your audience has and their interests, so if you don't know this you'd better stop until you do!

You could make the mistake of many new advertisers and 'go wide' for geographic location and stated interests, but this almost always ends up with lots of clicks but few sales and therefore a poor return on your investment.

Highly targeted ads are the smart way to go. Who exactly has the problem that you can solve?

4. Set appropriate daily budget, bids and scheduling

You didn't think advertising on Facebook was free did you?

Facebook ads are charged on a CPC (cost per click) or CMP (cost per 1000 impressions). CPC tend to have a slightly higher click through rate, and ads that keep people on Facebook have (reportedly) a higher click through rate and lower cost per click.

Start bidding at Facebooks suggested amount, you can always limit the duration or daily spend until you have some initial data about effectiveness.

Once you've created your ads, it takes up to 24 hours to approve – although it can be quicker, remember to build approval time into the timing of your campaign

5. Create effective ads

Create ads that:

• Has an image that is relevant to the offer
• Align with the brand in terms of tone, style and linkage
• Includes an incentive such as 'switch and save'
• Are transparent – don't try and 'trick' people into clicking on your ad - not only does it not work but it's against Facebook guidelines

You have to be concise as you only have 25 characters for the headline and 90 for the body text.

Create multiple versions of ads so you can see which gets the best response. Refresh your ads regularly to prevent them going stale as a result of people seeing them many times.

Consider sponsored stories instead of traditional ads.

6. Measure and monitor

It goes without saying (or does it?) that you should look at your statistics to figure out whether your campaign has been successful.

How you do this depends on the purpose of your campaign but might include:

• Click through rate's to your website
• Conversions on your website (set up goals in Google Analytics to help with this)
• Facebook engagement data – this will only show what happens on your ads, not what happens afterwards

There are tools starting to emerge to help you manage your Facebook campaign if your budget warrants stumping up an extra few hundred bucks to get things like fast ad creation, bulk editing, and ad rotation.

These include (this is not a recommendation of any of these tools):

• Qwaya
• Syncapse (who has aquired Clickable)
• Kensoo