We often help our clients build, manage, and maintain their social media accounts. Facebook is still a leader in engagement opportunities and traffic, especially if your target audience is women over 28. So, we often get asked if it is worth it to pay for more exposure.
On Facebook, there are a variety of ways that a business can pay to increase their visibility. In fact, Facebook has made it increasingly difficult to reach your audience organically because they want you to pay for it.
Facebook Business Advertising Options include:
- Promoting a Post
- Promoting your Page
- Creating an Advertisement
Obviously, we cannot speak for everyone when it comes to advertising or promoting on Facebook; however, we can offer a couple of case studies based on first hand experiences that we have witnessed and assisted with.
Case #1 – Promoting an Individual Post
Goal: Increase page likes and engagement
Business coaching Facebook page with 270 likes, who typically posts at least twice per day, and whose normal reach per post averages around 200.
We decided to craft a post that was a give-away for a book. It was around Valentine’s Day, and the book that was being given away was appropriately a love/relationship based book.
The post stated that if you like the page you would be entered into the drawing, and if you re-shared the post, you would be entered twice. It was published on a Tuesday morning around 7:15am.
This post reached over 49,800 Facebook participants in 9 days! The post was liked by 296 people, received 54 comments, and was shared 29 times. The page received 52 new likes in February, up from only 6 in January, and 11 in December, and average reach per post after the giveaway increased to between 300 and 400.
The financial investment was $60, plus the cost of the book.
Case #2 – Promoting an Entire Business Page
Goal: Increase page likes and visibility
Virtual Assisting page with 117 ‘likes’, who posts an average of once per day, and whose normal reach is per post averages around 30.
We decided to try paying Facebook to simply promote the page. This is when Facebook shows page suggestions in your news feed.
We ran the promotion for 3 days in April. In that time the page received 24 new ‘likes’, up from 4 in February, and 5 in March, and average post reach increased to about 40.
The financial investment was only $15.
Facebook Advertising Suggestions
If you are considering advertising on Facebook, we have the following advice.
- Be selective – know your audience and don’t be afraid to target appropriately. Casting a wide net might seem smart, but you could be waisting money.
- Test the waters – start with smaller budgets and a variety of message and image options and then narrow things down to the ones that perform the best.
- Give it time – wait at least 3 days before trusting your stats and make sure you plan enough time in your promotion schedule for proper testing and optimizing.
Feel free to share your experiences with Facebook advertising. Has it worked? What benefits or reactions have you received?
Contact us if you have questions or need help with your next promotional campaign.
