For our winter carnival, I decided to run some Facebook ads. With all the talk in the news about the way Facebook can target an audience, I felt it was something that should be in my skill set.

I focused on two groups. The first set were people in my school’s Facebook group. Around 400 people follow the page. And on a good day, a post will be seen by half that. I can pay Facebook to get the post seen by more. I put 10 dollars into this ad for five days.

You can also target by distance. I could select a radius around the building to choose my audience. I used a three-mile radius. Again, I did 10 dollars over five days.

For the add, I used the same infographic in both ads. It was from our PTA. It has all the who, what, where, and when of the event with our logo.

Results-wise, the second had more impact. For ten dollars, an additional dozen people showed up at the event. If even half purchased something, that probably would recoup the cost.

For the next steps, I would try three types of experiments. First, increase the spend on the distance-based ad. That seems to get the most return on investment.

Second, try a more engaging set of pictures for the ad. Maybe something better than an infographic. Our PTA’s next event will probably be a restaurant night fundraiser. I thought photos of our school mascot going to the restaurant would be cute.

Third, look into language targeting, specifically Spanish. Half of our schools’ students have Spanish as a home language. For flyers, we do translations; we should for Facebook as well.