INTRO: I decided to try the new Facebook promotion tool, mainly because I saw a lot of posts saying negative things about it, and while understand many people are looking out for their shops carefully, I thought I would have a good look at it by myself. I'd hate to turn a marketing tool down, just because other people think everything should be free.. and that I might be giving my back to further promotion of my brand. My fan page gets usually about 5-10 likes a week without me posting. But my posts are usually not commented unless some one is asking for a price or saying hello from another Facebook page or Etsy. My goal is to have more people interact with the page, sharing my pics with their friends and to get more visits. Honestly, I dont expect to bring sales from this method but more traffic... which in turn could convert but not necessarily.
DISCLAIMER: Results may vary. There's many variables when it comes to Facebook advertising and specially the new Promoted Posts. This might work for some shops, maybe not for others.. this depends on your target market, your fan base, how active are they on Facebook, what part of the country and what country they are in.. so just see this as an example :)
HYPOTHESIS: Facebook Promoted Posts will reach more fans than your regular posted posts, therefore bringing more likes and more views to your pics, links and shares within your fan page post.
PREPARATION:
• 1 post was posted on Sunday, June 3rd - Photo post with a link to the shop. Promoted post was set to run with a budget of $5 which gives you 3 days of promotion, this case until Wednesday at the same time you posted.
• No interaction was made with the post. If there was comments, I would have answered but in this case, there was none.
RESULTS: After promotion ended on Wednesday, these were the results:
• $3.54 budget spent (yeah, you don't have to spend the whole thing, it depends on how many people are reached, and mine didn't get it's full potential)
• 4 people liked the post
• 10 people liked the page during that time, 2 came in because of the post
• 353 (fans and non fans) people reached compared to an average reach of 95 on an average post (based on the last 10 posts before this one).
• 271 came in as paid reach, meaning they saw my post because of my promotion. (Fans and non-fans)
• 215 came organically (meaning they naturally saw my post in their news feeds or ticker but because any special promotion) I'm guessing that more people than the usual avg 95 saw it, because it was becoming important according to Facebook's algorithm, but that's just guessing.
• 79 saw it virally, meaning that they saw it because their friends interacted with it. I think this comes from the 5 people liking the post. • 33% of my fans saw my post, at the time that % was 223 fans. 24% of my fans were reached because of my promotion. That's about 3 times more reach that what I normally get...
CONCLUSION: I'm happy with the results. I can't say what would happen if I shift some variables (adding a link instead of a photo, or showing pictures of real product vs. a character ) but I think that every now and then that I do one of these promoted posts to refresh the flow of people in the page, can only benefit me. I didn't break the bank by paying 14 quarters and 4 pennies.
The best thing I compare this method and its results is like a sponsored party.. You can pay $5 0r $10 bucks to have a "party" sponsored by your shop and hope the invitation reaches all the people interested in coming. If they come great! Hopefully they'll like the party and stay (meaning Like the page or revisit tif they have already liked it) Even better if they like what they see they could buy too.. but they don't have to.. It's true that there's people that can throw a "party" and have no need of paying for promoting too.. I guess they are that popular :) but some of us need a little help getting our voice out there..
Thanks for sharing your experiment with us. It's good to know how it worked for one real shop.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting! Thanks for sharing!
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