Considering Facebook Advertising

At the end of my recent failed political campaign for Texas State Senate, I took out a few Facebook ads which I believe to have been moderately successful.The first was early in the campaign after launching my campaign Facebook site. The ad was to all anyone in the United States who had listed “Libertarian” in their profile. Within four days I had gone from 150 friends of the site to over 600. The ad cost me $100 and while I do not think anyone who “liked” the page from this ad donated money, several become regular contributors the conversation on the site lending it higher credibility to subsequent visitors who did, in fact contribute.The second ad was over the five day period before Election Day. In created an ad specifically targeted at the four major cities in the Senatorial District in which I was running and it excluded people who were already friends of the page. In all, I received 1,227,893 impressions over this critical five day period. I am certain that this helped my campaign with name recognition and increased my overall vote total.What I find so fascinating about this is the ad engine works 180 degrees differently that Google Adwords. With Adwords, you are trying figure out what a prospect might type into the search box, with Facebook, you are selecting the criteria of the intended target audience. It is very powerful.As an example, I created an ad for everyone over the age of 18 in the state of Texas who listed “Accounting” as a interest. As you can see this ad, if I ran it would target 8,440. Not a large number, but certainly a very targeted list.I see this as assisting not only prospecting, but in the creation of candidate pools for jobs.If any of you have additional experience with Facebook ads and care to share your results, I would love to hear about them.