I recently read a fantastic article in ‘Hospitality’, you guessed it, a hospitality industry magazine. Though focusing on hospitality marketing it is on the money (no pun intended) on Facebook marketing for all industries. Times are a changing and if you don’t stay up to date with the ever changing landscape of Social Media marketing your competitors become your conquerors!
Below is Ken Burgin’s original article, also available here.
Just as you thought you were getting your head around social media, Facebook has made it more difficult for you to target prospective diners. But spending a little will deliver big returns writes Ken Burgin.
People are frustrated that ‘free’ promotion on Facebook doesn’t work anymore. But most of your Facebook fans never saw your posts. Until last year, about 20 percent of what you put on your page was seen by them, but now it’s just a fraction of that. In 2015 and going forward, if you really want to be seen, you’ll have to pay. In fact, the options for targeted ads to reach exactly the people you want are much more exciting than the random results of free posting.
Want to just reach local mothers with young children, for a mid-morning promotion? You can do that with precise targeting that won’t be seen by anyone else, and the ad will only show on a weekday. How about a special offer for males over 40 within 20km, who like wine? That’s easy to organise. Even better, if you have an email list you can run ads that just show to these people, and create another much larger list of people who ‘look like’ them but have probably never visited. This is powerful stuff!
We’re not talking about the Boost button that appears on the bottom of each post, tempting you to spend $20 to reach more people. It’s not totally ineffective, but resist that and go to the Ads Manager, where a whole world of opportunity opens up. Use ads to get people to click through to your website, respond to a particular post you’ve put up (eg announcing a coupon or menu change), get more page ‘Likes’ or promote an event.
The Ads Manager also gives options to set up special Custom Audiences by uploading your email or SMS list – another reason it’s important to keep collecting contacts. Facebook compares your list with the profiles it has, and if they match, adds them to your Custom Audience. In my experience, you’re likely to match 40 to 50 percent of your own list. You can then use part of this list for targeting your ads, for example young males on your list for a football night, or women who say they are engaged. You can also use part of your list to create a special Custom Audience, like club members who have not renewed; they can be targeted with a special renewal offer that no-one else would see, and at much less than the cost of a mail out.
Another Custom Audience is one based on people who’ve visited your website. Facebook has a method for you to add a ‘pixel’ (a piece of code) on your website that is activated every time someone opens a web page where the code is installed. This piece of code sends general, hashed, information about the actions people take on the website to Facebook to help the advertiser target ads to the those people. For example, people who visit your Functions page could become another Custom Audience that starts to see ads related to your event packages.
Once you’ve created a Custom Audience, you can build a Lookalike Audience. Facebook explains ‘We look at the common qualities of the people in your source audience, such as demographics and interests, and then find the people who “look like” your source audience the most.’ If your email list is 5,000, this could give you a matched Custom Audience on Facebook of say 2,000. From this, you could build a local Lookalike Audience of maybe 20,000 to 40,000 (proportions based on my own use of this tool). From this new and much larger audience you’ve now got a solid number of leads to use for very targeted Facebook advertising.
Excited by this? I am! With 13 million Aussies using Facebook, most of them daily, the options are fantastic. Look around your venue – more than 80 percent of your customers use Facebook, and some of them are on it right now. It’s time to explore this new advertising frontier.
What’s all this cost?
- If you want to build fan numbers, you’ll probably pay 60 to 70c each, using the ‘Promote your Page’ option in the Ads Manager.
- A carefully targeted campaign with a link to your web page offer could cost as little as 20c per click, using the Boost Your Posts option. Once people reach your website, it’s up to you to have an offer good enough to buy.
- Start with a campaign that costs $10 per day and watch it over a week. Track the results and compare to the $70 you spent. If it’s a good return, rinse and repeat!