Quick, if you haven’t yet, run out and buy a copy of Inc magazine, the March issue. Inside, you’ll find a coupon for $50 in FREE Facebook ads. For anyone on the fence about the value of Facebook advertising, I hope this will convince you to give it a shot.
While I have spent many thousand of dollars quite effectively on numerous client campaigns, I haven’t spent a dime advertising Jellybean Boom.
And when you are talking micro-marketing a micro enterprise: FREE and $50 and Facebook can be big indeed.
I just launched my first Facebook advertising campaign for Jellybean Boom, and I’m in the process of helping a client launch his first Facebook advertising campaign, and I thought some of the questions and considerations we thought about might be illuminating to you as you plan your own Facebook campaign.
Decide first: traditional call to action, likes, or “social ads.”
If you are new to Facebook and looking to build a following, bidding for likes is one of the most efficient uses of money and time on this platform. I just launched my business in December, so I am obviously still looking to build my “tribe,” the people most in need of the services I provide, and the people who most likely to recommend me to others. Facebook likes, in my experience, are often less costly than clicks.
One caveat applies: you need to contribute your own elbow grease once you have some momentum going with your fan page. Offer original content, contests, and engage with the community there.
Another option is to offer a straight up call to action to your external website. People with a clear-cut sales objective are well-served by this approach.
Finally, Facebook social ads tap into existing consumer sentiment about your product, which can be a huge boon in terms of reinforcing positive word of mouth. However, a strong drawback of this strategy is that when you are just starting out, its difficult to harness any sentiment at all.
Think about targeting
Facebook ads are served via the demographic information Facebook collects, including age, gender, martial status and self-identified interests. One good way to target your ads is to think about the kinds of television shows, retail establishments, books, blogs, magazines and movies that your ideal consumer is likely to enjoy. For instance, since I am targeting independent artists and craftspeople, “etsy” is definitely on my list.
Be careful in the way you set up your budget
You can set up a budget one of two ways: per day or lifetime. If you plan to budget and parcel out your spend monthly, per day is the way to go. However, in most cases I have a set budget in mind, so “lifetime” has quickly become my preferred target for budgeting on Facebook.
With lifetime budgeting, you pick a time-frame for spending your set amount: choose a matter of days if you want to amass a big number of concentrated clicks, or a longer time frame if you are trying to rack up those affinity points or “likes.”
Just be aware that the more days you choose in a lifetime spend, the smaller parcel of clicks you will buy during that time. A client wanted to know why there had been so few clicks on his account after a few days. It was because his lifetime spend of $100 was set for a month. You could easily only have two clicks a day for that spend.
Decide how much a click is worth
I’ve heard of people setting their bid limit for clicks to 2 cents, unwilling to pay any more. That’s totally counterproductive. Although two bucks may seem like a lot of dough on the face of it, it’s often what is needed to get that action you want. I typically set bids high (above two dollars), and my average cost-per-click is usually a bit over a dollar. It all averages out in the end, so don’t be afraid to set your bid high to get your ads seen.
