Using Facebook Sponsored Stories to Market Your School

If you haven’t set up some Facebook ad campaigns for your school, you should. The process is rather simple and follows an intuitive process for setting up your ads.

One of my favorite Facebook ad options is the sponsored stories page-like and post-post ads.

Think of sponsored stories as a way to facilitate word-of-mouth to the potential private school prospects you are trying to reach. Sponsored stories focuses on showing your ad to the friends of your Facebook page “likes” (your fans!), which a personal endorsement.

Your ad will appear in the sponsored section of a profile page as an endorsement from one of your fans. The following is an example of how this ad appears for Indian Rocks Christian School.

The page-post option is similar except that it allows you to select one of your most recent posts on your school’s Facebook page to highlight in an ad. For example, you may have recently posted a great story about your academic program, a graduate or an announcement about your upcoming school open house. These page posts could be great ads to feature.

Think about these ads in this way: Your ad will appear as an endorsement from one of your fans. Instead of paying someone famous to advertise your school (which you really wouldn’t do anyway!), your fans will endorse your school on Facebook to their friends.

This is why it is important to grow your Facebook “Likes.” The more people who like your school’s page, the more friends of your fans you will be able to reach.

Also, if you have a Facebook Welcome/Landing page (as I discussed recently), whenever someone clicks on a sponsored story ad, they will be more apt to click on the “Like” button on your school’s page. This is exactly what you want and need. The more “like’s” your school has, the more friends of your fans you can reach.

If you want to learn more about setting up Facebook ad campaigns, you may want to check out Killer Facebook Ads by Marty Weintraub.  I found his book to be an excellent Facebook resource.

He says, “Sponsored stories are not the same as ads, and they’re awesome; including them in your FB campaign amplifies your target audience’s actions in a natural and inherently viral way” (page 37). I wish I could have said it that way.

So go ahead and set up a sponsored stories Facebook ad today. It is one of the most effective ways to advertise your school on Facebook.