I am not sure when those of you who have not had success with facebook used it last but recently(in the last few months) they have made some pretty neat changes.
Now let me preface the following with if you are putting all your eggs into facebook you are going to be greatly disappointed as it is just one avenue to market, but it is a tool.
First you have to understand that when you have fan page that only a percentage of your posts are going to reach your followers/fans, as it is a part of the facebook algorithm. In fact only around 10-16% of your fans ever see your posts regularly unless you pay to promote them. The only other way to increase your exposure is by getting shares, like, comments, and check-ins to your business from your friends, and that would be considered organically reaching your audience. Popular posts will be brought up to the top of the newsfeed, and that is important to remember when you are promoting a specific post. The idea is to get other to do the promoting for you so you can spend less(or none) on ads.
Randy is on the right track with his strategy. The first ad you want to do is to increase your fan base with likes which he has seems to have done well with.
Next he will want to do a conversion(think the same as google analytics). It is a way that facebook allows you to track your efforts/campaigns. You do this by creating a Pixel, and after creating the Pixel it will give you a code to copy and paste into the
part of your site. For anyone using the Genesis Framework with Wordpress there is an option in the theme SEO settings to copy and paste tracking/conversion codes in, and that is where you would paste the code facebook gives you. A few other Frameworks have this option as well. Otherwise as mentioned you can copy and paste it into your
tag, or if you're using a different framework in the
header.php file in the
section of it. This would allow him to track his efforts if he were trying to promote a special or created a squeeze page of some sort to gain email addresses or whatever the purpose of the squeeze page.
Now that he can track his efforts he can create another ad. There is an option when you create an ad to place a check mark in a part that says "Track conversions on my website for this ad" and then it will give another option to select which method to track and you will want to select the pixel that you named when you created it.
The last thing I would mentioned is to pay attention to the facebook insights like Reach. Your insights will give you data to determine days and times that your reach is the highest because it will vary. It will give you an idea when your target audience is on facebook the most so that you are maximizing the dollars being spent on ads for exposure.
I recommend that you allow your ad to spread organically for a day or two if you are getting consistent likes and comments, and when it starts to fade then consider putting money into an ad to promote. If you have a blog it is a nice place to promote specials and discount offers, and create an ad that will land them on your blog page. Be sure your blog is set up with the appropriate information so you can be contacted and make sure it isn't hard to find that information.
That is a basic understanding of how the facebook ads work, how to set up tracking on your website so facebook can tell you if you are converting any of your newsfeed ads to clicks. There are also other options for ads. You can promote a facebook page, a page using a post, a website, an app on facebook, or even a facebook event. You can also target by age group. There are some other strategies with ads that appear in the sidebar that at a later date I may talk about.
, I offer a video on the topic put together by a really sharp owner of a "maid" service that also built Maid software. I mean real maid software, not some guy who through together forms and has a couple of months of programming behind him. I thought the video was very well put together. If you don't - don't yell at me.
