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1st FB Ad Campaign - Trying to Get Likes for Fanpage - Would Love Your Help! :) (17)

03-08-2014 03:29 AM #1 nomadgirl (Member)
1st FB Ad Campaign - Trying to Get Likes for Fanpage - Would Love Your Help! :)

Hi everyone,

Ok, so given that my campaign is for an amount of money that is peanuts to most of you, I hope you don't laugh. But, I'm trying to learn, and would be so grateful if any of you can share your wisdom with me!

I've been lurking for a while, and was wondering if anyone here might have some advice for me. I currently have 450 FB fan page likes (165 from this ad campaign so far, I've spent $11.70 in total), and would like to get my page to 10000 page likes.

I set my budget at $3/day. I'm hoping to reach my goal of 10000 likes on a budget of $500 in total.

I've attached a screenshot of my FB like ad campaign.

Click image for larger version.  Name: FB_Likes_campaign_March7.jpg  Views: 122  Size: 42.6 KB  ID: 2008

I set up the ad to target page likes. Potential Audience for this ad: 7,600,000 people

Under bidding, FB gave me a choice of bid for page likes, bid for clicks, or bid for impressions. I've been using bid for clicks, and choosing to manually set my max. bid at whatever FB recommends. I did very briefy select bid for page likes, but it caused my price per like to triple (granted, I didn't leave it at "bid for page likes" long enough to get a statistically significant amount of data)

If you take a look at the above screenshot, you'll see that for some reason, FB isn't showing image 1 and 6 very much, considering that they are showing my lowest cost per page like. Should I force FB to show these lower cost per like ads by pausing the other 4 images? Or wait it out a bit longer to see what happens...

Based on this post (http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...he-Winning-Ads), I'm thinking maybe I should wait a bit longer until the ads for images 1 and 6 reach 5000 people and then decide?

Any advice?

Thanks in advance to all who read this! Any advice from those more experienced than myself would be so much appreciated!

03-08-2014 03:40 AM #2 zeno (Administrator)

It would be better to test these ad images in separate campaigns. When you have them all in a campaign together FB tends to funnel much of the traffic to one or two ads, choking the rest. Unless you raise the budget a lot it's going to stay like this and so your data for the ads with fewer impressions isn't the fairest comparison to the dominant ad.

If they are all in separate campaigns the ads at least get a similar chance of gaining traction. To put it in other words, your dominant ad could actually be reducing the performance of your other ads.

After splitting the images into their own campaigns you can run them at low budget if you want, e.g. $1-2 a day each but you really want to push it up a bit - then just pause the campaigns that aren't working well. Your page likes are cheap so you won't go to sleep and wake up to losing $200.

03-08-2014 01:38 PM #3 caurmen (Administrator)

Are you running on the News Feed or the Right-Hand Side for these ads? I'd definitely test both - newsfeed ads can be particularly good if you're pushing something a bit off the beaten path.

Definitely go for Zeno's advice too - run your ads in separate campaigns to get the best data.

03-08-2014 04:06 PM #4 nomadgirl (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by zeno View Post
It would be better to test these ad images in separate campaigns. When you have them all in a campaign together FB tends to funnel much of the traffic to one or two ads, choking the rest. Unless you raise the budget a lot it's going to stay like this and so your data for the ads with fewer impressions isn't the fairest comparison to the dominant ad.

If they are all in separate campaigns the ads at least get a similar chance of gaining traction. To put it in other words, your dominant ad could actually be reducing the performance of your other ads.

After splitting the images into their own campaigns you can run them at low budget if you want, e.g. $1-2 a day each but you really want to push it up a bit - then just pause the campaigns that aren't working well. Your page likes are cheap so you won't go to sleep and wake up to losing $200.
Ok, will do this today and report back!

Quote Originally Posted by caurmen View Post
Are you running on the News Feed or the Right-Hand Side for these ads? I'd definitely test both - newsfeed ads can be particularly good if you're pushing something a bit off the beaten path.
re: off the beaten path or not
The FB Fan page is for my travel site - basically an on-line travel guide for this one island. So I guess not really an off-the-beaten path type of thing. (My goal is to diversify my traffic sources by funneling traffic from my FB fan page to my website eventually, so I'm not solely dependent on Google's search traffic.)

To be honest, I'm not sure if it is running on the newsfeed or the sidebar.... I suspect it's newsfeed though since the image size FB recommended was 600 x 225 px. Will pay more attention when I set up the new campaigns via zeno's suggestions.

Thank-you guys so much for taking the time to help me out - I can't tell you how much this newbie appreciates it!

EDIT - I checked, and I was running the ad on both newsfeed and sidebar

03-10-2014 10:42 PM #5 waylander (Member)

For likes run mobile only, newsfeed only.

03-10-2014 11:30 PM #6 ridley (Member)

goodluck and have you figured out your monetization strategy yet?

03-10-2014 11:43 PM #7 jabbawonga (Member)

Dont forget, unless you paying to show your content even to your FB fans, FB limits how many viewers can see it.

Its great however, if you have niche targeted those fans, so you have a high chance of converting them when you do a paid message to them all-and then of course you get the benefit that any of your fans who interact with it, would also advertise that to their friends etc.

Sometimes it can be cheaper to create interactive competitions for likes(throw out a freebie for those that share) or even sneakier? Get your friends to invite everyone off their fb lists. Then, head to your local University library or Apple Store. Search for FB on each computer and be amazed at every single pc has a FB account still logged in...
Then use those accounts to add everyone to their page.
Slightly dodgy...possibly, but much better than if someone else found their account and changed all their pics to those of dongs etc

03-11-2014 12:07 AM #8 nomadgirl (Member)

Hi guys! Thanks so much to all who have replied! Here is my update...

So I set up 6 separate campaigns (1 ad in each campaign) - kept everything the same in each except the photo.

Trial#1 - ran the same 6 ads exclusively in the newsfeed, targeted for likes, bidding for clicks - paused it after 5k views or so.
Trial #2 - ran the same 6 ads exclusively in the right column, targeted for likes, bidding for clicks - paused it after 5k views or so

By far, the cheapest likes came from the newsfeed. Ads in the right column were costing me 2-4x as much per like compared to the same ad in the newsfeed.

Next, I took my 2 best performing newsfeed photos and ran the same ads again for them, newsfeed only - the only thing I changed was that I not only targeted them for likes, but bid for likes rather than bidding for clicks.

This brought down my cost per like even further.

So it appears that the most advantageous thing for me to do is run ads in the newsfeed and bid for likes.

I'm going to test with more photos and see if I can get the cost per like down even better. Currently am targeting the countries listed above, except I added Canada and the United States to the list. Lowest cost per like I was able to get is 0.04/like with my best image in the newsfeed bidding for likes.

What do you guys think... am I on the right track? or missing something important? Please let me know!


Quote Originally Posted by jabbawonga View Post
Dont forget, unless you paying to show your content even to your FB fans, FB limits how many viewers can see it.
Yeah, I know. Darn FB!!!!

On the bright side, I'm getting a good response so far though - I have 813 likes, and 371 people "talking about this." Posts to my fan page are currently reaching over 500 people each time I post, the average post gets over 100 engagements (range 80-135).

Quote Originally Posted by jabbawonga View Post
Its great however, if you have niche targeted those fans, so you have a high chance of converting them when you do a paid message to them all-and then of course you get the benefit that any of your fans who interact with it, would also advertise that to their friends etc.
Yes, this is what I'm hoping for - with FB fans, there is a chance to interact with them on a more regular basis so they "know" me (better than some random stranger stumbling onto my site in Google), and that, in turn, will hopefully lead to a higher likelihood of getting them to book stuff through my site's affiliate links when they head there for vacation.

Quote Originally Posted by jabbawonga View Post
Sometimes it can be cheaper to create interactive competitions for likes(throw out a freebie for those that share)
Will keep that idea in mind!

Quote Originally Posted by jabbawonga View Post
or even sneakier? Get your friends to invite everyone off their fb lists. Then, head to your local University library or Apple Store. Search for FB on each computer and be amazed at every single pc has a FB account still logged in...
Then use those accounts to add everyone to their page.
Slightly dodgy...possibly, but much better than if someone else found their account and changed all their pics to those of dongs etc
Sneaky indeed lol I'm going to try to keep this on the up and up for now hehe. I'd like to get real fans, people that have a genuine interest in my niche. Also, I'd be worried that if I get a bunch of fake fans, they won't interact with my page, and that will decrease the percentage of fans that FB shows my content to for free.

The thing is, I know of a guy (verified it's totally legit), who has a niche travel site also. He ran FB ad campaigns to get his page likes past 12000. Fast-forward a year later, and purely organically since hitting 12k, he now has over 180k likes. This is all free - he did not pay a cent to promote his page after it hit 12k likes.

EDIT - I should have rounded down to 170k, not up to 180k, on the number of likes... he has 174k likes... sorry about that!

He now gets more traffic to his website from FB than from google, and income is way up. I'm trying to see if I can duplicate his success by emulating the style of his fanpage posts on my own etc. He posts 5-6 times per week on FB, replies to every single person who comments, and makes his posts personal, so they stand out from stodgy tourist-board-type posts on other fan pages.

03-11-2014 12:37 AM #9 zeno (Administrator)

Quote Originally Posted by jabbawonga View Post
Then, head to your local University library or Apple Store. Search for FB on each computer and be amazed at every single pc has a FB account still logged in... Then use those accounts to add everyone to their page. Slightly dodgy...possibly, but much better than if someone else found their account and changed all their pics to those of dongs etc
Lol I could do that so easily. The amount of daily frapes at Otago Uni is substantial. Your progress is looking great nomad!

03-11-2014 12:43 AM #10 nomadgirl (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by zeno View Post
Your progress is looking great nomad!
Thanks zeno!

03-11-2014 01:34 AM #11 ridley (Member)

nomadgirl, sent you a message. From what's worked for me, I keep image posts at a ratio of 2:1 with link posts.

03-11-2014 10:19 AM #12 carlos (Member)

Your results are really quite interesting to me.

Mainly because I'm witnessing a kind of reverse situation here. I've been running right hand ads at around $0.1 per like at $0.35 oCPM. Then I switched to the news feed and the oCPM wend to $13(!) for the same demographic. Any idea why this might be the case and how to reduce the CPM?

03-11-2014 11:56 AM #13 zeno (Administrator)

How long did you leave the oCPM newsfeed ad running? Sometimes it fluctuates wildly as FB tries to figure things out. If it stays expensive then clearly it's just a competitive demo.

03-11-2014 01:04 PM #14 nomadgirl (Member)

Thanks again to all who have replied!

Quote Originally Posted by ridley View Post
nomadgirl, sent you a message. From what's worked for me, I keep image posts at a ratio of 2:1 with link posts.
Thank-you for sharing your experience Carlos! I do find image posts work the best for sure - what I've been doing is posting a photo, telling a little story about it, asking a question (in an attempt to get some comments), and adding a link to my site that adds value (ex. where people can find more photos, how to get there, my review, etc.) Then I sign off with my name to make it more personal. I'm trying to make sure I do not come across as selling anything, so for now, am just working on posts that are purely informational in nature.

My hope is that if I add value, people will head over to my site... we'll see...

I will definitely check out your message - interested in what you have to say!

Quote Originally Posted by carlos View Post
Your results are really quite interesting to me.

Mainly because I'm witnessing a kind of reverse situation here. I've been running right hand ads at around $0.1 per like at $0.35 oCPM. Then I switched to the news feed and the oCPM wend to $13(!) for the same demographic. Any idea why this might be the case and how to reduce the CPM?
I found a large variation in cost per like from image to image - maybe you just need to find the right image?

Also, in case this makes a difference, my ad text is short and to the point - a 5 word question related to my niche that pretty much everyone would answer "yes" to, followed by "Click Like" - are you telling them what you want them to do when they see the ad? Maybe that is part of the problem?

Another observation I've made - my likes are cheapest with images that leave no room for misinterpreting the point of my fan page or site

ex. a beach image and an ocean sunset image are my 2 best performers in terms of getting cheaper likes - the image I tried of a tropical cocktail and and the one I tried of hula dancers tend to get less likes - my theory is the drink and hula dancers probably attract more people who are interested in partying or looking at girls, and less interested in info on vacationing at the destination (which is what my fan page and site is all about)

Also, I've tried more than one beach image, and 1 is a clear winner over the others when it comes to cost per like - no theories on why this is though. Just mentioning it to encourage you to try more images...

03-11-2014 03:49 PM #15 nomadgirl (Member)

Update: FB updated my "talking about" numbers since I last posted... current stats for my page are 911 likes and 492 people "talking about this"

Haven't had time to test more photos yet (to try to get my cost per like down further)... will update when I do.

03-12-2014 12:48 AM #16 shuttermuse (Member)

Interesting results. Thanks for sharing. I must admit that since Facebook's algorithm changes last year I had kind gone away from the idea of having more FB fans. You seem to be getting a pretty low price though and I've never tried running ads for 'Likes' so I might just give it a try. Thanks again and keep updating us if you do more! Which countries were you targeting?

03-12-2014 01:02 AM #17 nomadgirl (Member)

Update: had some time today to test another image - cost per like is currently averaging $0.05 per like after the ad has reached 2230 people (gained another 28 likes from this one for $1.31 so far) - I now have 1027 FB fans, with 492 people still "talking about this" (it seems that FB updates the "talking about this" figure once a day only - should be a new number by tomorrow morning.

Quote Originally Posted by shuttermuse View Post
Which countries were you targeting?
Here are the details:

United Arab Emirates
- Argentina
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Brazil
- Canada
- Chile
- Egypt
- Fiji
- Indonesia
- India
- Japan
- South Korea
- Mexico
- Malaysia
- Philippines
- Pakistan
- Poland
- Serbia
- Singapore
- Slovakia
- Thailand
- Trinidad and Tobago
- United States
- Vietnam
Age: 18 and older
Not connected to my fanpage
on News Feed on desktop computers and mobile devices
bidding for likes

Ultimately, most of the people I am interested in are in the U.S. and Canada. But, I assume that likes are too expensive there if I target those exclusively - the strategy that worked for that other guy was to target all the cheaper countries since he figured

a) they tend to like and share a lot (anecdotal, I'm not basing this on scientific fact or anything) and

b) they may very well have friends/family in my target countries who will see my fan page in their friend's newsfeed (if they interact with my post) and perhaps find me that way.

Also, his findings were that while initially after the ad campaign most of his fans were in his non-target countries, due to all the sharing/liking they were doing, within a year, his fans were primarily in his target countries - the target countries organically surpassed the others by a mile.

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