As many of you know, we recently started our own Facebook Business Page, and are both pleased by the results so far and humbled by your outpouring of support.
After learning some Facebook Business Page tips, exploring the strategies behind Facebook insights and getting a better feel for what content connects with our audience, we felt ready to take a big step forward with Facebook boosted posts.
Why Facebook boosted posts? The answer is simple: it’s the solution for bridging the gap between social media and growth. Imagine reaching hundreds or thousands of people without ever leaving your office, all for a few bucks. That’s the reality with Facebook boosted posts!
We’ve run one and have already seen some positive results. While we know it will take time and consistent work, we are encouraged and excited for what the future holds, and want to help you look into growing your business the same way.
Here are some tips and tricks we have learned along the way:
How to Boost a Post
After you’ve published your post, you will see an action in the bottom right (see above) called “Boost Post.” Click that and you’ll be on your way.
Next, decide on your target audience. This is all about choosing demographics, including who to target (men and/or women), what ages, the location(s) and the specific audience. This involves thinking through the demographics of your clientele, the content of your post and the specific type of people to target for that content.
For our first paid Facebook business ad, we went with a giveaway, offering new customers QuickBooks Online free for one year. A giveaway is always a good strategy for igniting a response, as the audience is more drawn in by this call-of-action and enticed by your offer (The offer must be sound and meaningful, of course!).
As you can see above, we went with both genders, chose to target people from ages 30 to 60 since that represents my clientele, went with anything within 50 miles of Atlanta, and chose to target small business owners and self-employed, among others. We chose Atlanta because of our messaging and felt small business owners, entrepreneurs, self-employed and more were the best specific targets for prospects interested in QuickBooks Online. Of course, you can cater this to exactly what you prefer based on your own content, and with each decision comes a potential change in the number of people you’re attempting to reach, as depicted by the graphic at the bottom of the photo above.
Finally, you’ll choose how much you want to spend (see above), and for how long to run the ad. In our case, we chose $15 over three days, spending $5 per day. The bar below “Estimated People Reached” will then adjust to how many people you can roughly reach per day. This can be hit or miss, and you’ll have to consistently work on this over time – and keep producing original, engaging content – to improve and reach your goals. But, all in all, you’re spending a small amount of money to potentially reach hundreds or thousands of people – a colleague once spent $7.50 and reached over 4,000 people!
What We Discovered
After your paid ad ends, Facebook will send you insights, as shown above. In our case, our first paid Facebook business ad reached more than 100 people and generated 27 likes and even one share. While we would, of course, like to reach more people, 27 likes is a very promising start. That told us that more than 25 percent of people who saw it liked it. Considering we don’t have thousands of Facebook followers and we aren’t a big brand, we feel this is a strong start.
This data also told us a few other insightful things. It not only told us how much we are spending for each person reached, but also how much we are spending for each action.
By spending $14.99 and generating 103 people reached, we spent 14.5 cents per person (14.99/103). The big value here is that we paid 14 cents per qualified person because we set it up with a very specific audience of small business owners within 50 miles of the Atlanta radius. Moreover, we spent $14.99 and yielded 27 likes, so for every person that liked it, we spent 55 cents (14.99/27). The graph also gives us insight into what gender and age groups most connected with our post, giving us useful metrics for the future.
Next Steps
While we are pleased with the results, the buck certainly doesn’t stop here … at least not if we want to grow and reach our goals! Reaching more than 100 people and getting likes and a share is a good start, but where do we go next?
Ultimately, we want to get these folks to contact us grow our business. So, we aim to be even more specific and intentional with our next posts, targeting audiences such as churches and lawyers. In this case, we plan to increase our location to all of Georgia, creating a greater reach and more opportunity to be seen. That means we must change our message from Atlanta to Georgia, and we will still do a giveaway, hoping to get the most clicks and viewership possible. As for the dollars spent and the amount of time to run the ad, we will decide based on each post we boost and what works best for our budget and goals. You can constantly tweak these to gauge interest and see what works best.
Let us Know if we can Help!
If you’re hesitant to jump into social media for your business, that’s normal. Believe me, I was the same way.
I’ll be the first to admit that social media is not my forte, but after seeing how successful it was for others around me, I took the plunge and am happy so far.
I know this may seem overwhelming, but don’t worry because we are here to help! Contact us today to get started, or with any questions, and you’ll be on your way to getting your business on the map and watching it grow.