Facebook is still the Grandaddy of social networks, but it is no longer a purely organic channel where you can build a community and expect that they will be engaged with your brand. Not without paying for ads anyway.
For the public relations professional, this can be a really bitter pill to swallow, but the truth is that if you don’t pay for at least some of your posts on Facebook, people won’t see it. The good news is that you don’t have to put a huge budget against it to get fairly good results, especially for smaller Facebook pages.
There are currently three types of Facebook ads which smaller pages and organizations should consider using:
- Page Post Ads: These are used for engagement and traffic generation to a webpage outside of Facebook
- Page Like Ad: These ads are used to drive new Facebook page likes, and often include social proof that shows you which of your friends already like that page
- Promoted Posts: Promoted posts, which can be accessed from a pull-down button at the bottom of the post, allows the post to appear in the feeds of more of your current Facebook fans.
Arik Hanson, principal of ACH Communications, who specializes in using Facebook ads to drive these types of campaigns in Facebook, shared some of his campaigns success for smaller businesses ad Facebook pages at the recent SoloPR conference in Atlanta, GA.
Arik suggests that smaller businesses try doing quick two-day campaigns and spend $50-$100 a day. He also suggested laddering up by starting with promoted posts and then taking the best performers into the more expensive Page Post Ads. Here are several examples he shared.
Health Powered Kids
This Girl Scout Badge Facebook Page Post Ad on the Health Powered Kids Facebook page brought 16K reach, 46 Likes and 67 Shares for only a $50 advertising spend.
The Green Line
On the Green Line was was a campaign for businesses along the Green Line rail in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Results With Facebook Ads
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| 120 Like, 9 Shares | 3,413Likes |
Results Without Ads
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| 104 saw and 1 Like | 85 saw and no interaction |
Have you run ads on Facebook? How well have they worked for you?
I ponied up a whopping $5 a day to get Facebook ‘likes’ for my page. I did this for six days and got about 35 new likes. To me, that didn’t seem like a great deal–but since I did that, I’ve gotten about 60 more new likes from people I don’t know–so even though I only paid that one time (and was really stingy with my budget since I don’t really have one), it seems to have paid off.