Facebook Ads

[Patrick]

Hey Bill (ps1),

I have had minimal experience with Facebook ads, so you couldn't qualify me as being skilled with them. The main thing I would say is that you should spend time educating yourself on ad optimization, conversion tracking and A/B testing.

It sounds like you have some experience buying ads on Facebook and Google. Hopefully you are using that experience to see what works and improve. A lot of people spend $20-$100, get no results and blame the system. But the only effort they put in, more or less, was buying the ad.

You have to think about why you are buying the ad. What do you want people to do? And then you want to track if they are doing it.

Sidenote: Most small businesses who try to use social media aren't that great at it. They may get some minimal value from it, but they don't take it seriously enough to spend time educating themselves or understanding that it can actually be a job in and of itself. "Post on Facebook? Anyone can do that! Do people actually get paid for that?" Heh.

Small business are well positioned to take advantage of social media. They have this great little guy quality and usually have stories to tell. For anyone serious, I'd recommend reading three books: Face2Face by David Lee King, Youtility by Jay Baer and Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk (in that order). That's about $50 invested. King's book sets a foundational understanding, Baer's book introduces more advanced thinking and Vaynerchuk's gives you a crash course on getting the most out of what you post with easy to follow examples.

Hope this helps a little. I'll contact a couple of friends and see what resources that they recommend.

Thank you for the mention, other Bill (MasterPain).

Thanks,

Patrick

Edited February 15, 2014 by Patrick

[beley]

The key to any advertising is to get it as targeted as possible. Facebook ads can be highly targeted, especially for a local business like a martial arts studio. I'm not a FB ads expert, but have used them a good bit and have a few suggestions for maximizing your results:

Target, target, target

If you are a local business, limit your target geographical area to your city or county. In addition, you can target specific interests, so if you have a martial arts studio it might make sense to target lovers of martial arts related films... Best of the Best, Bruce Lee films, Bloodsport, etc. Classics.

Go for page likes or run a contest

I haven't had much success with facebook ads that link to my website. Conversion rates are almost zero because people are on Facebook to hang out and see what's going on with their friends, not join a website or place an order. But you can pretty easily get them to "like " your page, then you can engage with them with your posts over time, building a relationship.

Do you have a customer list already?

If you have a customer or email list, upload it as a custom audience in Facebook ads, and then target an ad to it for page likes. Yes, they're already customers so they might not be able to spend more money with you but read on... you'll get a LOT more likes from existing customers. I've got this running right now and have added 50% more likes to our FB page in 2 days.

ONCE you have a lot more of your customers and friends liking your Facebook page, run an ad targeting friends of people who already like your page. They're much more likely to like your page and engage with you since they're friends are customers. And they are a great potential source of customers, because they can ask their friends for recommendations.

Hope that helps, good luck with your campaign![/b]

[Ted S]

[Patrick directed me here, hope this helps add to your marketing efforts]

There's two sides to social ads: cheap reach (which is where most people start) and the chance to grow your social presence (which is my preferred opportunity, but a less direct path to return).

As Beley mentioned, businesses often struggle with ads pointing to their site. That's because people are on Facebook to interact with friends, family, perhaps even brands... they aren't out searching (i.e. it's interest marketing, not intent). Still, with the right targeting and the right site, you can find a response. Just don't expect it to be click, credit card, purchase like you might on AdWords or a direct response campaign (multi-source attribution is key to measuring social, as is post-purchase research).

More than that however, let's think about what a small business has to bring to the table in social irrespective of ads. Usually it's personality.

Whether paid or organic, you've got the ability to talk personally, to share local or topical information, to be an expert. That's what you advertise. If you have a class on Mondays, show it. If there's a rotating schedule of instructors, tell people who is on. When there's a success from a student, make that be the focus point. People respond to things which inspire / aspire, which they can discuss, or which they've tried as well. You want discussion.

When Beley suggests promoting your page, what it's really about is getting more people to see that great content so, over time, they can act (buy). Otherwise you're just buying attention for nothing.

Tactics:

If you're buying clicks, refine to a target that matches and do what and give them a reason to click. Then hone your site to fit them (i.e. you can't expect me to know your lingo if I'm a random visitor). On the other hand, if you're pushing for interaction, step up the relationship fit (i.e. ditch the contest or make it easy entry, must-follow fans don't tend to care much) and push harder on the content.

You have to understand Facebook as a system. Their goal is not to show your business, it's to show people what they'll [potentially] like so that they keep coming back. Thus Facebook suppresses posts to a small fraction of followers (i.e. 5-25% of your fans are likely seeing your posts), boosting can help get past that but should be reserved for the right post (one which is both interesting to people and targeted to your offering).

Finally, think format, know the tools. Newsfeed ads tell a story, the sidebar pushes an offer or tests creative. Use the right one for you (usually the feed).

There's lots of links and resources on the subject but this is ever evolving stuff (i.e. last month you could not tell how many link clicks you got on a boosted post, now you can). Read the books about the theory, the blogs which cover changes more than practices and test like hell. It's not hard to be at the forefront of this stuff yourself.

[ps1]

Some really great information here. Thank you so much for the advice! Now it's time to act on it.

[Patrick]

Glad to hear it, Bill.

Thank you for replying, Brandon and Ted. I appreciate you both stopping by.

beley is Brandon Eley and Ted S is Ted Sindzinski. They have a ton of online marketing experience for companies big and small. They are part of my circle of friends that I turn to when I have questions like these.

Patrick