facebook advertising

[AniaR]

So- I am testing out FB advertising with a small budget to see if it can help me target local fans. I have a lot of international fans, 85% of my fans on FB are international. I thought I'd share some feedback.

Figuring out how to do it took FOREVER FB is not very clear on how to make an add, set it up, pay for it etc. But I eventually figured it out and figured out you could set a daily or lifetime budget for how much money you're willing to pay for your add for a select amount of time. It works like an auction and your add gets shown based on how much you're willing to shell out. I tried to test with only 20$ lifetime (meaning when 20$ ran out the add stopped) but it told me too low! So I set it up for 30$.

So my add will run for a month and I can set specific demographics of profiles I want it to reach. I specified wanting the add to run in Canada, you can also select gender and age range but I just left it at Canadian.

I've had the add up for a day- it charges you based on how many people like your page through the add (so not for anyone who just likes it). It'll keep charging me per new fan through the add until the 30$max. In 1 day 5000 ppl have seen my add, I've gained 4 new likes through the add, the add received 14 clicks, and so far it's cost me 1.11$

So, I can't tell you whether or not this is worthwhile yet. I know certain other mermaids use the system (hence seeing people who only just started with thousands of fans VS ppl been on for years) but Im mainly interested in trying to target more local fans so I can book things. I'll continue to post about it through the month and we'll see what happens, but right now it's like.27cents a fan (you're not actually buying fans- it's just the fan who has followed the add to find you) so I think that's kinda reasonable for add space. I have paid 30$ to have an add run in a daily paper and gotten NO new fans and few new website traffic, and paid to have it run in a weekly paper as well with similar results. Online classifieds both free and paid seem to bring only slightly more, so so far 4 ppl a day isn't too bad!

[Spindrift]

Would you be able to further specify the ad for locals, or are you only able to determine country? I thought you wanted to target more people in your area? I mean, Canada is huge. :|

[Odette]

neat! thanks for sharing the experience. your like one of those people who save you from buying a bad product. your a savior! ^^

[AniaR]

you can put in key words and interests but I failed to see what they actually connected to so so far it's just canada. I can travel within Canada- I cant travel easily to the states. It's all an experiment anyway to see how well this system works and if it's worth investing in. Figured I spent 30$ here and there on diff advertising might as well try it.

[AniaR]

Here's what the add info looks like from my perspective.

[Mermaid Lorelei]

This looks like a great idea. I've never been one to follow ads on facebook, but then again, I've never gotten an ad about a professional mermaid...

[AniaR]

So I guess this is working out well for me so far. Unless I do a fair bit of posting on youtube, DA, or share my link non stop on FB I usually only get a handful of likes. I seem to have done pretty okay so far.

I get nervous that its charging me for likes I would have gotten without the add- but the whole point of this 30$ budget was to experiment and see how useful the system is. I will say that it's curious because not all the new likes I'm receiving are from Canada...

I'll keep you posted as the month goes on!

[AniaR]

another check in

[ide]

Totally awesome, thank you so much for keeping us well-posted & including images of your stats. I'm seriously considering doing the same thing.

[AniaR]

Okay! After a month I finished my FB add experiment. I ended up with a total of 30$ spent and gained 60 likes. (these likes are only counted if someone clicks my add then likes my page, not regular likes I would normally get) I got a LOT of views and that translated to more official website traffic and views. I booked 3 gigs in the time this add was running.

So my final thoughts:
This certainly did improve my traffic to my page though I was not exploring many other free avenues to do so at the same time. Im not sure if I could have been able to secure those extra 60 fans had I been actively promoting my page or not, but Im leaning toward I could of. In the end however it was worth it to me to gain more Canadian exposure as well as have more canadians visit my site since the majority of my traffic comes from the states. I booked 3 gigs as a direct result of the add (people mentioned the add upon booking) and I procured a few possible more. That alone was worth the 30$ as far as Im concerned.

In the end if you're serious about being a professional mermaid I think having an add like this is very helpful. Especially with the new FB changes and news feeds no longer being chronological it's really easy for your status updates to get lost and people having shared your page also have their message lost. It's good too because you can simply sit back and let the add roll.

I attached my add to my fanpage, but you can attach your add to your website or a website. When I have more of a budget I may consider running a campaign of adds (you can have more than 1 running at a time)

FB will charge your account 1X a week and you'll get an email notifications of this as well as all your stats. It only ever charged me small increments at a time until the 30$ ran out.

[Odette]

this was very useful. thank you for sharing this. i truly appreciate it.