Part 2 of 3
Facebook’s Promoted Posts — in tandem with your consistent and well-executed content — will help you grow your reach of prospects.
Facebook’s promoted posts drive more engagement with your business, thereby developing brand affinity. While more Facebook fans doesn’t necessarily correlate with more revenue, a recent Syncapse study shows that a Facebook fan is worth $174, based on product spending, brand loyalty, propensity to recommend, media value, cost of acquisition and brand affinity. But having the right fans is important, and Promoted Posts let you tailor and target your content so your money isn’t wasted.
Do promoted posts work?
If a bootstrapped small business is contemplating putting money behind something, they want to know that it works. After your Promoted Post campaign ends, Facebook emails an itemized receipt that indicates how much of your budget was spent on fans and friends of fans, respectively, as well as how many clicks and impressions were driven by the promotion.
Of course, Facebook doesn’t promise engagement, but the idea is that putting your content in front of more people within a relevant demographic is likely to drive engagement.
The Admin Panel at the top of your Facebook Page shows organic reach compared to paid reach, so you can see that impact of your promotion. It’s important to note, though, that $10 will go a lot further for a business with 7,000 fans than for one with 22,000 fans.
Experiment with budgets, and if a piece of content is really resonating with your audience, you can dump some fuel on it in the form of Promoted Posts and watch it take off.
Results from several local businesses (courtesy of Facebook) indicate that Promoted Posts do indeed grow audience and even revenue. If your brand doesn’t yet have a Facebook Page, set one up — it doesn’t take long. The hard part, of course, is posting content on a consistent basis and engaging with the community daily. Once you build a core audience, Promoted Posts can help your content have a greater impact.
In my 3rd and final post on FB sponsored campaigns, I will get down to details on exactly what to do and what to stay away from when running your ads.