facebook advertising

nino1

I have a pharmacy business and I am thinking about getting involved in facebook advertising.
We have a facebook page where we advertise our special offers etc.
There is an option to boost our posts which says for €18 can reach 10,000 people.
What does that mean?
Does it mean it comes up on this many peoples news feed, but that they may not scroll down that far or that they have actually scrolled down and seen it?

It costs me €700 to print out 10,000 leaflets and deliver it to 10,000 households so if i can get my message to 10,000 people for €18 I would be very happy.

I suspect it not that simple though?!

jimmii

If it shows on their screen at all that counts as a view even if they don't even notice it or just scroll straight by it. We use it a lot and it works for us but it doesn't work for everyone its worth giving a try and see what the response is like its important to have a strong image to go along with it to try grab peoples attention as they scroll through pictures of cats and babies of people they met once in 1997. Special offers work well with it we've had some very good returns using it.

Shaymoboy

I have been trying facebook ads, still in the process. I have spend a lot to date with little return. It's like all advertising, you need to spend a bit of money testing what works for you. Definitely when your teating try offer something that grabs attention. Spend a bit of time on building the ad. Test lots.

delahuntv

I switched to only using facbook for advertising early last year and won;t be switching back anytime soon to paper or radio.

It depends on your target market. Facebook is particularly good for female 20-45 demographic.

However for best value it needs work and concentration.

What i recommend is first for you to build up your "likes" - you can do this by "promoting" your page (they charge you).

To promote your page, follow their instructions and then create your target audience (age, gender, area they live in etc), then say how much you want to spend and how long you want to run the page promotion.

For a fiver a day, you should get 20-30 extra likes per day.

Once you build up to 1000+ you can start getting value from your main post promotion.

Post promotion - get the most interesting photo you can. Add a little text (make sure text does not cover more than 15% of photo). Post the post and then "boost" it.

On the boost you have options. - People who like your page only, people who like your page and their friends and also target area/age group and a combination aswell.


For a local business, you would choose either just people who like your page (best and cheapest form to start with), or people who like your page and their friends, but in combination with your target gorup and target area.


It can be trial and error, but I would also recommend looking at using a digital agency - I've just started with one, despite having a good knowledge of how it works, I think I can get even more out of FB as I have about 60,000 likes. The agencies however would not be for small local business, but plenty of small home based operators out there that would offer good value.

Facebook themselves also have very good tutorials - if you have the time and interest in it.

martyoo

I think Facebook advertising can be good for building "likes" and increasing awareness but not for driving direct sales. Not in experience at least.

delahuntv

martyoo wrote: »

I think Facebook advertising can be good for building "likes" and increasing awareness but not for driving direct sales. Not in experience at least.

My experience is directly the opposite - but it has taken almost 2 years of learning to get to a stage that I can do all marketing through FB.

It is good to note that in addition to the actual cost of boosting and getting likes, you do have a time element to add - I would spend probably 6-8 hours a week on facebook between answering comments, devising posts and coming up with images. If I did radio, I'd spend an hour or 2 creating the script and everythig else is left to the radio people.

So in essence, make sure you have time available for FB

jimmii

delahuntv wrote: »

My experience is directly the opposite - but it has taken almost 2 years of learning to get to a stage that I can do all marketing through FB.

It is good to note that in addition to the actual cost of boosting and getting likes, you do have a time element to add - I would spend probably 6-8 hours a week on facebook between answering comments, devising posts and coming up with images. If I did radio, I'd spend an hour or 2 creating the script and everythig else is left to the radio people.

So in essence, make sure you have time available for FB

Completely agree we have put a lot of time into making Facebook work for us much like you it is now our main route for marketing now. We still do the odd bit of print when they get desperate and offer crazy low prices but in general its Facebook & AdWords all the way. You have to put in the effort to attract people and then spend the time interacting with them as that is the key to turning them into customers. Its such a great tool to be able to communicate directly with customers it would definitely be a shame to let it go to waste.

jimmii

For anyone reading this who might want to know where they can improve their FB game then there is a site called likealyzer that will go through your Facebook page to see where things can be improved.

Hanley

martyoo wrote: »

I think Facebook advertising can be good for building "likes" and increasing awareness but not for driving direct sales. Not in experience at least.

Strongly disagree.

One of the primary streams of revenue for my biz (gyms) is thru FB Ads.

You have to know what you're doing tho.

From a direct sales perspective you need to know your numbers (client acquisition cost) and lifetime client value.

If those numbers are agreeable, you invest, but you gotta experiment.

For a pharmacy here's what I'd do;

> Create a facebook clicks to website ad

> Send the ad to a content capture page where you offer to give someone a free information video (or report) on how they can save money on their pharmacy bills (buy generics etc)

> In order to watch the report, they must give you their email address

> Every week email them with some helpful information that will improve their health, and link it in with a relevant offer that they can ONLY get over email, so that when they come in and claim it you know exactly how many people are coming in as a result of the ad

"Likes" are practically worthless. Only about 10% of your audience will ever see your posts, so if you add 1,000 people, maybe 100 of them will see your stuff.

Even at that, the 100 will prolly only see it the odd time. If you can get their persmission to send timely relevant information to their emial, you'll be laughing.

PLUS, and this is the big thing that screws people on FB advertising, if you place a link in your FB update / post and DON'T pay to promote it, then facebook won't show your post to as many people.

...and why would it - you're taking people away from FB.

Facebook marketing is one of the strongest, most cost effective and trackable marketing channels out there, but as you probably just saw, there's A LOT more to it than people realise.

And I only just scratched the surface there.

BattleReady

Hi,

Just wanted to check what you mean

> Create a facebook clicks to website ad - IS THIS THE PROMOTE YOUR WEBSITE OPTION?

> Send the ad to a content capture page where you offer to give someone a free information video (or report) on how they can save money on their pharmacy bills (buy generics etc) - WOULD THIS BE SOMETHING LIKE WWW.MYWEBSITE.IE/GREATPRODUCTSAVING

> In order to watch the report, they must give you their email address -

SOUNDS LIKE A GOOD IDEA

identer

With facebook outreach, your ads only reach the side bar of this 10k but they themselves are likely not to notice it at all.
So like it better to build your page like and popularity so with that you have a sure group of people to market to.

Bazdonegal

I use facebook marketing for my own business and also offer it as a service for small businesses starting from €150 per week. I create content, adverts, graphics etc.

It is pretty time consuming but is an extremely cost effective way of advertising in Ireland. Results can be mixed, low returns some weeks and wildly successful other weeks it takes a bit of experimenting.

One of the major stumbling blocks is the actual graphics for the adverts, many small businesses try to do this themselves to cut costs or are simply too tight to pay a professional then they complain that facebook advertising is useless as it has no results from there own crappy graphics they use and 90% of the time they don't set the advert up correctly either.

Hanley

BattleReady wrote: »

Hi,

Just wanted to check what you mean

> Create a facebook clicks to website ad - IS THIS THE PROMOTE YOUR WEBSITE OPTION?

> Send the ad to a content capture page where you offer to give someone a free information video (or report) on how they can save money on their pharmacy bills (buy generics etc) - WOULD THIS BE SOMETHING LIKE WWW.MYWEBSITE.IE/GREATPRODUCTSAVING

> In order to watch the report, they must give you their email address -

SOUNDS LIKE A GOOD IDEA

"Send People To Your Website" - you can do it with the standard FB manager, though if oyu know how to use the power editor it would be better because you can use longer copy

Bingo. Here's an example of one of mine; http://revolutionfitness.ie/alphastrengthdownload

It works really well.

The better you can target it, and understand the needs and wants of your customer, the better you'll do.

Jon Loomer and Gary Vanyerchuk have some great stuff on facebook marketing.