Utilizing Facebook Advertising
Anyone can start a Facebook page, the question remains on how do you grow them. The most common steps any company would take is to send out their company fan page to the internal team, asking their immediate friends and family to like them. This often followed by a boasting press release of reaching an X amount of fans on the page, but...
Does this help the company at all, getting your friends to like your page or even your content maybe great on the surface, but defeats the purpose of truly reaching out and creating a set of direct conversation with your audience.
After a long time experimenting on Facebook (and still am until today), I've discovered some of the following that might help your fan page:
- Leverage the power of Facebook advertising, but don't take on an approach of traditional advertising.
- Running contest and giving away free items maybe great, but how to convert them into your customers.
- Take your online effort, to an offline effort (e.g. a flashmob to introduce your new Facebook page, a door stopper campaign, etc).
- I found ShortStack to be the best and affordable tool to create and manage the content via the easily editable CMS. It is also one of the platform that has rich integration with third party systems. They have ready made template, but I recommend setting aside a budget to get it designed properly.
More notes on how to use Facebook advertising (first I think its a different approach on what you call advertising on Facebook):
- I found conversion for acquiring fans are traditionally low or slow sometimes, but the figures is between 5-10% or could be more depending on what you are offering.
- Leverage on the power of your existing fans (when I say this, this only works when you have organic fans).
- It doesn't work like Google Ads, there are no keywords. Instead its interest, gender, age, language, etc (having said this always take into account that no one will ever complete their full interest or what they like on Facebook, the most basic or common targeting you can use are - age, gender and location).
- Start with a small budget, I normally start with USD50-100 a day.
- Always conduct A/B testing on your ads, find out which one works best and then roll out with that one on a bigger budget/scale.
- If you are intending to lead the ad outside of Facebook, make sure you have a well designed landing page with capture form or conversion point (but take note normally it will be a one time visit only and the conversion is even lower once they've left Facebook environment).
- The best Facebook ads that works are to direct them to your own Facebook page, it can be a post story, promoting an event to capture RSVP, sponsored stories, etc.
- Before you start the ad however, make sure you have designed a proper landing page. It should be no less than fan gating, introducing who or what you are, what's your product or service and why they should like you. Try to provide fans reward and best not be a cheapskeat, as they are your fans after all.
- There is a good reason why you need a landing page, imagine your new fans landing on your wall, where the conversation has happened. You can see why they can get confused.
- The chance of your fans unliking your page after they became a fan is less than 1%, so no worries there.
- Focus on engaging ads, something that will draw their attention from the wall for a split second. Maximize and design a great image that demands attention.
- Got a special announcement or story to tell, use Facebook ad to spread the words to the people or audience that matters to you.
- Rotate your ads as much as possible and localize.
- "Great artists steal" go to Facebook Ad Board for some inspiration - https://www.facebook.com/ads/adboard/
- The minimum threshold for your targeting should not drop below 20,000 otherwise it will not go anywhere.
- Always go for CPC model, even when there is no click your ads will keep on appearing until the end of your campaign.
Final note, keep on experimenting :)
I will try to keep on updating the ads and share how it works out.
Update - 30 January 2012: updated an ad sample of sponsored ad by Ritz-Carlton.
