Have you ever thought about advertising your business on Facebook? You always see the ads appearing on the right sidebar of Facebook, but most of the time, these ads are not for local companies. Small to medium sized local businesses can benefit from using Facebook ads because you can target your ad to people living in a specific geographic area. This post is about a Charlottetown company who spent $100 on ads and was successful in growing their Facebook “likes” or fans by 128 users in 2 weeks.
Back in July, they approached Brad about integrating their business with social media. They did have a social media presence on Facebook, but their goal was to increase their numbers of fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter.
This would allow the business to:
- Better inform and educate their clients about their products and services on a regular basis and
- Keep their business as the top choice for future purchases.
A contest was held to win a prize worth $550. To enter the contest, customers could:
- Make a purchase at the business
- “Like” the business on Facebook
- “Follow” the business on Twitter
- Subscribe to the website mailing list
To “get the word out” about the contest on Facebook, $100 was allocated. Not a significant amount, as this was somewhat of an experiment and the company already budgeted thousands per year on other forms of advertising.
As mentioned, Facebook allows you to target your ad by location, sex, age, keyword, relationship status, job title, workplace, or college. As you select each targeting criterion, it displays the approximate number of users that your targeting encompasses. The ad was targeted to these users:
- Who live in Canada
- Who live within 50 miles of Charlottetown, PE
- Age exactly 21 and older
- Who are not already connected to the business
Back in July, this amounted to about 34,000 people.
You can choose to “pay per click” or “pay per impression” – we chose to “pay per click”, slightly more expensive, but a better way to ensure that you’re paying for the user to go to the business’ Facebook page, then to “like” the company page and hopefully remain fans for an extended period of time.
Here are the results for the 2 week campaign:
- 623,000 impressions (or times that the ad was displayed)
- 257 clicks on the ad
- Likes increased from 265 to 393, a 48% increase; (3 months after the ad, there are 400 likes)
- Cost per click $0.42
- Cost per new like $0.83
- Daily budget $7.14
The business owner was really pleased with the results. He had a busy summer season, which he attributed partly to the contest and a renewed online presence. And the contest was fun too, creating excitement for all involved, especially the winner of the contest.
Links:
http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?campaign_id=402047449186&placement=pf&extra_1=0
