Facebook White Hat - Help! (9)
Hey guys,
I have a couple of friends looking to promote their local business and their lifestyle blog on fb and asked for some help on getting started. I haven't touched fb in years but I'd like to help them get started. The local business is one of those escape room businesses, they've gotten pretty popular in North America these past couple of years.The blog is a lifestyle blog, mostly food, travel, fitness - the general theme is doing all of these things while on a budget, they would like to start a mailing list and email affiliate offers through their list after warming it up with content and creating some value and trust with their audience.
I'm mostly looking to help them lower their campaign costs and get the most bang out of their buck and just feedback on general best practices for fb as an ad platform. Any input from you pros would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance!
Questions:
How do you achieve lower click costs?
Is there a way to track their campaign performance without a
Does fb allow sign ups to mailing lists?
Originally Posted by opendoor
Good images and precize targeting!
Is there a way to track their campaign performance without a
If you start a FB lead gen ad to gain e-mails, and this is the only source you get optins, you can check results from FB ad manager (views, clicks etc) and your own database right? In addition your leads will be catched by FB too which you an export to a .csv for example.
Does fb allow sign ups to mailing lists?
Yes, for sure! Check out the lead gen variant for example. But also from FB ad -> own lander/sign up page ofcourse.
Do they have any kind of mailing list already? Even one created from the email addresses of commenters could be useful.
If they do, starting with a Facebook Lookalike Audience would be a great way to go - upload the emails and ask FB to create some lookalike audiences from it, then test them. That should give much better results than almost any blind targeting.
Also worth dropping a retargeting pixel from their web pages, then targeting that audience with an optin campaign (lead gen on FB or separate signup page, as stickupkid says).
Originally Posted by caurmen
Is there another way for them to create a lookalike audience?
Good images and precize targeting!
Is the main factor for determining click costs still CTR? I remember back in the day you used to be able to bid CPM and once you've established a high CTR you would switch to CPC and get really cheap clicks, is this strategy still viable?
Additions Qs:
Which ad formats would you recommend for someone on a budget? I know you should try them all and let the data tell you but is there a more cost effective way for them to test their ads if they don't have a huge budget to work with?
Fanpage vs Their own website, are there any additional benefits to sending traffic to their fb fanpage vs own site?
Thanks for the input guys!
I would imagine that local search + retargeting should be the first channel they should figure out before they tackle social for a product like this.
Lucky for you I have direct experience helping an escape room business 
While the escape room business isn't my usual type of client, a family friend reached out to me about 6 months ago. They are in a smaller area but heavy drawn to by tourists and likewise, he had started an escape room business about a year ago from today.
The population of the area his business is located, is quite small but with a combination of locals and tourists alike, the business is doing very well.
Our initial approach was with Adwords but with very limited search traffic, we eventually stopped.
To give you an idea of our thinking, we targeted the traditional escape room keywords but for a city as small as his, it didn't get far. We also targeting some "things to do" and "birthday party idea" and similiar keywords, required too much educating or not enough of an interest to get a good acquisition cost. If it were in Dallas, TX where I am at then it would definitely have merit to continue with Adwords as PART of the strategy - still costly.
Cutting to the chance, these are the segments that are working well for him...
- Team building events (target corporations, both on Facebook and locally in person which is low cost)
- Birthday events (mild success doing this on Facebook)
- On Facebook, target those who have liked, been to or know about escape rooms already. (Small market and not too easy)
What has worked...
Place a Facebook pixel on the website to build an audience. Reach out to several of the local new stations to get an article written about the business, mention whatever the theme is for the escape room (bank vault, etc), be sure to call out specific purposes for this type of entertainemnt.. like it's a unique birthday experience, a team building event that really supports a team effort, etc
Make sure they link back to the website for a special promo for a free giveaway for 8 people or something (capture emails). Let the Facebook pixel do it's magic and target the audiences on Facebook based on the themes you had mentioned in the article. Rinse and repeat as often as you can. That's about as low cost as it comes.
What we found was many people are still very unaware of what an escape room event actually is, so for some there is a bit of education needed, while others have experienced it or know someone who has - they are the easy sell.
Also, from many of his customer's feedback for those that travel they like to check out escape rooms in different cities. So being listed on "things to do" type websites, Yelp, etc. those are doing well for him too.
Hope that helps.
Andrew
Thanks for all the great advice guys, very much appreciated!
PR definitely sounds like the way to go initially. Forget about paid traffic for a bit - escape rooms are inherently both cool and local, and local news is usually begging for something interesting to report on.
Don't forget about local social sites/groups too. Is there a subreddit for the city they're in? Post there. Offer some free sessions, discounts, whatever. Get involved. Ditto with local Facebook groups, Instagram hashtags for the city, etc. Invite a reporter or group of reports from the local TV station to come and try a short escape room experience.
YouTube too! Do some short videos - don't have to be high production value. Phone vids will do. Just make sure they're keyworded with name of city and "escape room".
And as mentioned, get Facebook and Adwords pixels onto their site stat, then start building a retargeting audience from them. You can also use discounts, promotions, and so on on social sites as a way to build a mailing list.
Good luck, and do let us know how you get on!
Do your friends sponsor a local Meetup group? That might be worth looking into. It doesn't have to be escape room-themed (although for all I know, that could be a good one). It could just be a meetup for watching old mystery movies every month or two weeks (preferably at the escape room location). Or it could be a meetup for an interest that many escape room consumers share, even if it isn't directly related to the business.
I haven't tried this and it's not FB-related (although could easily be promoted on FB or turn into an active FB community in town). For what it's worth, I used to do a lot of SEO & Social for local businesses. Just an idea to throw out there that won't cost much ($10-$15 and a bit of time) to try.
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