Advertising on social media platforms is a tricky business.
At first it seems as simple as setting up some ads and letting the platform do the rest. People see the ads, they click, some of them convert, and that’s the end. Right?
Successful ad campaigns on various platforms certainly rely on this technique, yes, but when you start looking into long-term success and reaching customers that are tougher to influence, things get more complex.
Ana Gotter took a dive into what makes up a successful long-term Facebook campaign recently, and it’s worth a review for anyone interested in increasing momentum over the course of months or years with little monetary investment.
Creating “Like” Campaigns
Due to issues with bad players “buying” likes with fake profiles, they became somewhat devalued. Things, however, have begun to change with new algorithms and a crackdown on those fake profiles.
Nowadays, it’s important again for your business to focus likes. But, focus on where they are coming from, instead of the amount.
There’s a couple reasons for this:
- Users who like your content will see more of it on their feed.
- Some of those users will end up following your page, which means even more engagement from those users and people who follow them.
- These users can then be re-targeted on additional future campaigns.
When you’re choosing a target on your campaign through the advertising interface on your page, the obvious choice is to pick “engagement” and “likes” as the target.
However, a “contest” advertisement tends to create more engagement as it gives users a solid incentive to interact with your page if you offer a decent prize.
Promoting Your Facebook Group
Facebook groups are an excellent way to grow a community of followers around your product and create some of the best organic engagement available.
The problem is, Facebook Groups doesn’t actually offer an advertising tool. Furthermore, if you create an ad that simply links to your group, Facebook may nix it.
What you should do is create a well-written post, which hyperlinks to your group somewhere in it, that touts why users should join your group. Good images and actual meaningful content will go a long way to increase conversions.
Boost Your Email List with Lead Magnets
Create an ad campaign that offers a user something beneficial to them, that you can email to them. This is known as a lead magnet.
It’s fairly simple, yeah, but it’s totally ingenious.
Users who opt into this email are pretty much forced to engage with you, even if they’re only in it for whatever your lead magnet is offering.
Over time this will increase your exposure and slowly ingratiate yourself into the mind of the email recipients.
Going Live
The reach Facebook Live has cannot be understated. It’s a very powerful tool to authentically engage with your base and it’s very worthwhile to learn to use it appropriately.
A cool thing about Live is users who watch your stream, even if only for a moment which is often the case, will be re-targeted to your campaigns on their wall.
You should let users know ahead of time for Live streams, and show them something of substance.
Furthermore, it’s going to give you information on what interests your followers. Create ad campaigns based on the interaction you get for different streams.