05 May Why Paid Traffic and Fans to Facebook Pages Beats Organic Traffic and Contests
This is a guest post by Brian Carter. I was intrigued by his assertion that paid Facebook fan growth trumps organic fan growth, so asked him to sum his approach up in a blog post for TheSocialWeb.
If you want Facebook traffic or a Facebook fan base that actually makes your company money, read this post to ensure you don’t make the same mistakes many are making.
Organic v Paid Fans and Traffic
Many companies try to avoid spending money on Facebook ads. That’s understandable if:
- they’re in the PR department and there’s no budget for it, or
- if they aren’t skilled at digital advertising, or
- if they don’t know you can get fans and clicks as low as $0.05 apiece.
The weakness of organic traffic is that usually it’s either:
- Word of Mouth: unfortunately, friends of friends may only share one interest or trait, they’re not clones of the person who passed you on. Or it’s
- Contest-Incentivized Traffic: usually contest prizes aren’t chosen to qualify the entrants, but just to excite them. An iPad prize leads to unqualified fans who are less likely to buy from you than targeted fans from advertising are. So either choose better Facebook contest prizes, or start using Facebook ads.
If you’ve been in Social Media for the last three to four years, you’re well acquainted with the controversy and skepticism surrounding Social Media ROI: lots of debate about what it is, does it exist, etc. Skeptical business owners say things like, “It’s fine for Dell or Ford to make money from Social Media, but what about my small or medium sized business? Who has succeeded besides Fortune 1000 companies?” And though we’ve seen Twitter ROI case studies, there hasn’t been much reported from the Facebook realm.
Here are three examples of positive ROI from Facebook marketing that I presented for the first time in February 2011 in Boston. What I like about them is that they’re all small businesses.
Baseball Rose: 400% ROI
Mark Ellingson runs a website call Baseball Rose that offers artificial roses made from real baseballs and softballs. He spent $200.00 to grow his fan base, and has made $1,000 in Facebook revenue from that investment.
Vamplets: 300% ROI
Jaryl LaMort spearheads the Vamplets website which markets and distributes baby vampire dolls. He is spending $250.00 per month on Facebook ads (direct to the website, not a fan acquisition play) and bringing in $1,000.00 revenue per month from Facebook.
Rosehall Kennel: 6500% ROI
Eliot and Emily Roberts of Rosehall Kennel breed German Shepherds. They spent just $61.00 growing their fan base before they sold three puppies. Each puppy goes for $1,350.
What do these companies have in common?
- They’re all students in my FanReach course
- They all spent money to get actual prospects via Facebook ads
- They all made profits on those ad spends
How did they do it? Some of it may have been beginner’s luck. Some of it is the right audience for the right offering. In FanReach, we taught them:
- How to get cheap Facebook ad CPC, cheap clicks, and target the right prospects while doing that; then…
- How to engage those fans and keep your Facebook posts visible to a high percentage of your fans.
Like This Post? Subscribe to TheSocialWeb
