We have been successfully using Facebook as the main user acquisition tool for my startup Wanelo.com. I’ve been finding myself in frequent conversations with entrepreneurs about how to get the most out of Facebook ads and fan pages, so I thought it was time to summarize my experience and advice.
Note that I’ve decided to not share the specific numbers behind our ads, such as the cost per click, our daily budget and the specific ad that works really well for us. I’m happy to share this information, but would rather do it over email or Twitter. Feel free to send me a private message or email me if you want to know our specific numbers.
1. Expect different results.
You should expect different results from Facebook depending on the nature of your business and your target audience. “Shiny” mass consumer offerings, such as anything related to fashion (shoes in particular do great) or home decor, do much better on Facebook. If you’re looking to capture busy enterprise decision-makers expect to pay more. They are likely to be less interested in clicking on ads than a college student looking to pass time on Facebook while in class.
2. Drive traffic to your Facebook page, NOT your website.
There are a couple of important reasons to drive traffic to your Facebook page over your website. One important reason is that it’s less effort for the user to “Like” your Facebook page, rather than sign up for your web service or fully explore your site. Once you acquire the “Like”, you now have a relationship and a tie to that user. You can now continue communicating and offering little bits of value to your fans, hoping to build the relationship over time until they have enough interest in what you offer to convert to using your site. A continuous slow building of a relationship makes a lot more sense than a sudden love-at-first-sight connection.
3. Experiment until you find THE ONE.
It’s been my experience that finding the one ad that works is really worth it and can make a huge difference in how much you pay per click. In our case, this came down to finding a photo of a product that people find so appealing that the click-through rate is pretty high and the cost of the ad is much lower than anything else we’ve tried. The text of the ad matters as well, but seems to be less important than the image. The image is what grabs the attention initially.
One thing to keep in mind is that Facebook allows you to create multiple versions of an ad withina campaign, but then what happens is that if the Facebook algorithm finds an ad it thinks is performing well, it won’t even give enough impressions to the other ads for you to see if those could be more successful. So it’s ok to start with a handful of ad versions within a campaign, but utlimately you’ll want to test out your favorite versions in separate campaigns to ensure they get an equal chance.
4. The effectiveness of your ad is likely to go up over time.
Another important reason to focus on collecting “Likes” is that over tme your ad will become more effective as it builds up the social juice. As people “Like” a page, their friends will start seeing text that says “Deena and 12 other friends like this” and will be more likely to check the ad out and possibly “Like” your page.
Another reason this may happen is that people are likely to click on an ad after seeing it for a few times, rather than the first time. Actual Wanelo users have told me that they clicked after seeing our ad several times.
Lastly, and I don’t really have a good explanation for this, I’ve seen an ad really spike all of a sudden after running for more than a month. I don’t know why this may happen - perhaps it reached some sort of critical mass? - but it’s possible to see an ad become significantly more effective after some time.
5. Create a landing tab.
Facebook lets you choose where people go from your ad, so that you can send traffic to your Wall, or to a landing tab. I recommend using the landing tab as the first page new visitors land on. This tab should tell people what your site is, have something fun and visual to look at and explicity tell your visitors to click the Like button at the top (designs with arrows pointing to the Like button do well). One of the reasons this works, is that direct calls to action (“Like this page”, “Buy this,” etc.) are frequently more successful than indirect ones.
6. Maximize the visual appeal of your Facebook page.
Even if you send new visitors to the landing tab first, many of them will check out your wall first to see if they want to connect to your page. This is why it’s important to have a fun, visually appealing page that shows recent content and an active community.
There are different types of content you can post on your page: links, photos, text. In our experience, photos as content do best, even if you just want to send people to a page on your site. There are several reasons for that. Photos result in the largest images in your Facebook page stream. Links give you images too, but they feel more spammy and they are smaller in size. Photos feel more like you’re providing a value to the user because you aren’t looking for them to immeidately go somewhere outside of Facebook.
I recommend organizing photos into thematic albums to reinforce the consistency and the categorization of your content (on the Wanelo page, we have albums for Home Favorites, Fashion Favorites and Valentines Day Gift Countdown). If a user likes a particular photo, he or she can browse through all the other photos in that album as well. Make sure to think through all the relevant pieces of information accompanying each photo as well, and, of course, include a link to the content on your site.
7. Post content frequently and regularly.
As I mentioned above, people will evaluate your page based on the quality, quantity and timing of your content when deciding whether to “Like” your page or not. What they see at the top of the page is important because it makes the first impression.
Think of your Facebook page as a micro-newsletter. Train your fans to expect entertaining content from you on a regular basis. You don’t want to overwhelm your users with content either, so keep your posts at least 3-4 hours apart. Our rule of thumb has been to make 2-4 posts per day.
8. Provide consistent positive reinforcement and encouragement.
Make sure people who post on your page understand that someone is listening to them and appreciating what they say. Not only should every single comment get a response, but you can “like” almost every comment made a by a user on your posts. Your fans should feel that your page is a safe and positive environment for them to share their thoughts.
