Unusual Facebook promotional method with BH offers (10)
Hello everyone!
I’ve been researching how to run different affiliate offers on Facebook through any possible loophole, and I found some weird promotional methods: Pages promoting nutra products using the name of the product as the page, and posting info about the products. These pages don’t run ads from the business manager (It shows they don’t run ads at all in “Page Transparency”, in the Facebook Ad Library). There’s a few different, similar ways they use:
1. One is a chatbot with premade questions that a user clicks and gets an answer, for example: “What is the price?”, and when you click it, it replies instantly with info and a shortened, redirected link to a LP. They make the promotional posts with a send message CTA that goes to messenger to start this sequence. My guess is they boost these posts and avoid the business manager (Not sure if we can run ads without an ad account, just boosting posts?).
The LP is a standard one page, usually Wordpress, Medium, G sites or anything similar, where it tells you to choose your country. When you click on your country, you are redirected to the final offer page to order. Some people iframe it, others use a few js redirects, and some are just linking directly to the affiliate network link.
2. The second is the same but they don’t use a chatbot, just pinned posts with no CTA, but a link on the description and on the page info.
I wanted to ask if anyone here tried this and if this might be a legit way to promote some affiliate offers on FB without getting banned with an ad linking directly to your LPs and then the offer. I’ve seen hundreds of pages promoting male enhancement products, weight loss, skin, even sweepstakes, on FB with quite a lot of followers and with posts with 300+ comments, which means they are probably getting conversions and they must be boosting the posts. To see this on FB, just type the name of any nutra product from an affiliate network and you’ll see many similar pages doing it.
Does anyone know if this could work? I can’t find info on this on any forum. There are a few threads that talk about FB+messenger ads, but there's no info on whether it could work for some banned verticals with this exact strategy.
Otherwise I’ll just stick to using a lead magnet and promoting anything on the backend, which is 100% white hat and works for any niche.
Thanks!
Jelly
Very interesting! 
Thanks for posting your observations!
Unfortunately, you'd still require an ad account to boost a post:
Chatbots are definitely a very under-utilized marketing tool. I'm using them to promote a legitimate service - don't know if promoting banned verticals would trigger account bans.
To get a rough idea though: Those pages you've been spying on - are they old pages or recently created? If old, then it would be an encouraging sign. (However, we won't know whether those accounts are getting "preferential treatment" from FB reps / under protection by being an agency account.)
And the question remains: How are they getting traffic, and how did they build that audience base? Here are some guesses/speculations:
-PPE camps to get page likes - maybe with some good audience targeting. I've never JUST run PPE ads in an ad account. Perhaps FB is more lenient with those compared to say conversion camps?
-Posting in FB groups or in comments.
-Some sort of viral marketing scheme, e.g. "message 10 people to qualify for a raffle ticket" type deal.
-Driving traffic from mailing lists (rented or owned).
I'd be really interested in seeing any additional insight anyone may have.
Amy
@jelly9902 My understanding is that FB is not against nutra offers but against tall claims and bad user experience. "Like 10 kgs in 30 days" etc. For sure they won't like male enhancement supplements or similar as it's against their policies.
Originally Posted by wisdompower
And HOW the product is marketed is key as you've mentioned.
However, because scammy nutra offers are rampant, FB is especially vigilant/sensitive when they come across such offers, and campaigns will likely come under closer scrutiny.
Nutra just has a bad rap, period.
So if you're trying to promote a new or relatively unknown brand, chances of getting an account ban may be higher (than if you were promoting something "less risky" in FB's eyes).
But that's based on what I've heard - I don't run nutra on FB myself. Would be good to see replies from those that do.
Amy
@vortex Agree! In addition the trust level of the account is important too. A highly trusted ads account will escape scrutiny. So, if the ads, landing page, and the product are done right, everything should go well. When a particular ad is disappoved it's best to clarify why such a thing happened and get it to run again if the bot made a mistake (as against forgetting the ad completely). If it does not help edit the ad and create a "vanilla" ad. Worst case delete the ad, even though FB still knows everything.
And yes while mentioning Facebook or any other brand they don't like abbreviations like FB, IG. Best to include the full brand alongwith the super script (TM). Sometimes the ban can happen for some other reason and we can push the blame to the ad promotion like nutra or similar. Something as "innocent" as adding a low trust account to the BM can bring the ban. So, it's best to verify who one is adding to the Business Manager. And better add as a lower team member than as an admin. There are many many other factors as you know. 
Thanks for your insights!
@vortex
I researched a bit more and have seen similar pages in other niches as well, such as finance (loans, debt, etc).
I’ve also seen people using the same strategy but with send whatsapp message, instead of a FB message.
Regarding the pages I mentioned in the first post, they still post from time to time and the pages are usually 6 months to 1 year old, some are older. Some of them have 100+ comments per post from people asking where to order, to which they reply: please send us a message. When you open messenger, a bot sends you a lot of info and a link to a prelanding, asking you to select your country, and then you get taken to the offer, sometimes very aggressive ones (on iframes or weird redirect paths). But the page transparency info says the page is not running ads, so I believe they used to, but their ad account got banned, and not the page itself. I did find a few that are still running messenger ads now, but those are recently created <1month.
I've also read some people pin a post on the page and run PPE campaigns telling the people to go read that post, which contains a link, but I'm not sure that would be effective at all. Most likely it's possible, but not if you want to turn a profit.
Otherwise I guess they are spamming groups, but it's still surprising they manage to get that many comments and likes from that alone.
@wisdompower Sure, FB doesn't like male enhancement, but it seems they choose the words carefully, like "increase stamina", "recover the love of your life" and such stuff. I think it has to do more with the angle and wording than with the product itself.
I am going to try next week some low key finance and nutra offers using this method, just to see the results and how long the account can last!
@jelly9902 Yes, better be safe than sorry.
@jelly9902. Wow - 6 months to a year is like eternity on FB! Can you please share a couple examples of FB pages that are doing this? Maybe some sharp-eyes individuals with good detective skills will uncover more info.
Regarding the hundreds of comments: I know some advertisers will either buy comments or leave comments from other accounts they own, to "set the stage" and encourage other people to post in a similar way. But it seems unlikely for them all to be fake comments...very curious how they're pulling this off.
Amy
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Originally Posted by vortex
Here is one example for a male enhancement page on FB: https://www.facebook.com/MaxupGel/ (Malaysia) and this one for Morocco: https://www.facebook.com/Maxup-Morocco-101662261698579/ . First one has a LP with a link to the uncensored offer, and the second one asks to send them a message with an automated reply that sends you to a LP on Google Sites.
These ones have posts from a few months ago, but still have recent comments. This is another example for a skin COD product: https://www.facebook.com/InnoGialuronPielHermosa/ . The page was created a long time ago, but still has recent comments on the posts. There are many more examples with more recent posts and way more comments, you just need to type on FB the name of any COD product from a CPA Network and tens of similar pages pop up in any country.
They are not running ads apparently, so I guess they either boost the posts (do boosted posts appear in page transparency?) or spam groups. My AM said some affiliates run skin and similar products on FB with the same account for months or years with good numbers, but she doesn't disclose how, of course haha
Jelly
Thanks Jelly for those examples!
In addition to the methods I speculated in my previous post, I think we can add SEO to the list.
For example when I do a search in google for Maxup Gel, I see that FB page come up as the 2nd result:
Worth noting is that the 3rd result is a google site.
I ran both the FB page and the google site in ahrefs to check for backlinks:
And checked that single backlink:
So it looks like the person just created a blog on blogspot (and probably other web 2.0 properties) for posting reviews of a variety of nutra products, and also backlinks to other properties like their google sites.
Google sites and facebook pages can have an SEO advantage just due to the domain strength. And a lot of these affiliate nutra products don't have a lot of competition in the SERPs. We don't know how many sales this type of setups can get, but for such little amount of work it's definitely worth a try.
I'm hoping other members can contribute more insight! I know we have a lot of talented detectives among us!
Amy
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