Once your Facebook fan page or company page is set up and running it can make sense to run a campaign or two specifically for those who follow you on Facebook. This provides two obvious benefits:
- Build your Facebook fans by offering content exclusive to Facebook.(Makes your page more exclusive)
- Build a bridge from Facebook to your email list and generate leads.
Obviously, the first benefit feeds into the second but you’d be surprised how many organizations don’t tap into their pool of fans to generate leads! Dipping into your Facebook fan pool makes sense because they are, for all intents and purposes, warm leads. They know who you are, what you do and have shown some interest because they are your fans.
Campaign planning
To plan out your Facebook campaign it’s key to keep your end goal in mind. Are you running this campaign for sales? Leads? Meetings? Have a clear idea of what any obstacles would be and how you overcome them. Plan on a few cross promotion pieces from other Social Media sites such as Twitter or Google +.
Plan your campaign around a theme that culminates in sharing your opt-in piece e.g. webinar, download, event, etc. as the solution. By bringing awareness of this problem to the forefront, you can generate concern/interest in finding a solution to the problem. This essentially is building interest in your upcoming solution.
Campaign content
Have content created to help overcome obstacles as well as heighten awareness. You can link to new content by linking through crafted anchor text. Create your content ahead of time. Have images, blog posts, questions, fill in the blanks, etc. ready to go – even scheduled (I use Hootsuite).
Content promotion
Running ads to generate traffic to your campaign can be an excellent way to add fans and increase opt-ins to your content. If the leads are collected through Facebook and not collected via a link that leads to a landing page you may be able to promote it more cheaply. Keeping traffic within Facebook benefits Facebook so the saving makes sense. To do this you’ll need to add a tab to your Facebook page and build your opt-in form on the tab. When the ad asks for the URL, give them the internal Facebook tab. I’ve had great success with Heyo.com for contests and Shortstack.com for opt-in forms. For an example you can visit WindWater Marketing’s Facebook page and see the tab I created for my blog opt-in. It’s on the tab “Sign up”. I used the free version and didn’t customize so it’s the very basic version. I integrated the form with my MailChimp account as well so I don’t have to manually enter anything into my subscription list. It requires a minor amount of tweaking, but it’s worth it.
I’ve had more success running ads as part of the newsfeed than a separate ad outside of the newsfeed. However, I encourage you to try different combinations to find what’s right for you. And you should absolutely use an image in your ad.
Campaign Analytics
Pay close attention to the numbers around your ad. Compare how many clicks to how many opt-ins. It’s also good to add a funnel to Google Analytics so you can track incoming traffic through the campaign. And you should track any increase in Facebook followers as well.
Track the entire campaign in detail marking the dates that you post and promote with impressions, clicks, new followers etc. It may also pay to compare these spikes with your website traffic to see if there’s a connection there. I usually track this in Excel on a daily basis so I can track post simultaneously and continuously across the campaign. It only takes a few minutes a day.
