How I Drove 24,747 Facebook Likes At $0.04 Each

I recently ran a Facebook campaign for PPC Ian with the goal of expanding my audience of readers. What started out as a small test turned into a large campaign driving 24,747 incremental page likes for only $1,001.70 (or $0.04 per like). Today, I’m thrilled to share insights from my campaign and also screenshots from my Facebook Advertising account.

Facebook Advertising Insight 1: Always Test

My advertising budget for PPC Ian is really low. That said, I always try to dabble in campaigns of all sorts. It’s this moonlighting and experimenting on my personal blog that expands the knowledge and results I can drive as an overall marketer. If you have a day job in digital marketing, you absolutely need to be experimenting on your own as well. Think of it as an investment in yourself. This is money well spent!

Facebook Advertising Insight 2: Have An Adaptive Budget Philosophy

When I started this campaign, I had allocated a low budget. I don’t recall exactly, but it was probably no more than $10 or $20 per day, with the goal of running for a week. The same day I launched, I quickly noticed that my campaign was driving one of the best cost-per-likes I have experienced. I started raising budgets in increments, observing my cost-per-like carefully. I noticed that it did not increase, in fact it appeared to decrease! I had certainly crafted a scalable campaign, one worthy of investment. I adapted to the market conditions and doubled down on my investment.

Facebook Advertising Insight 3: Experiment With Non-Standard Audiences

I thought I knew my audience fairly well. PPC Ian is targeted towards digital marketing professionals. Most of my readers are US-based, typically in their 20s and 30s, building fast-paced careers.

When running this campaign, I expanded my target audience to include anyone over the age of 18, and also included a bunch of tech-savvy countries such as India. I was delightfully surprised to discover that the PPC Ian target audience is truly global, and can skew younger/male. I’m impressed that younger generations are building digital marketing careers internationally, as they are surely setting themselves up for success in life! I feel like I tapped into a truly responsive audience by challenging my tried-and-true marketing filters.

Insight 4: It’s All About Mobile

If you have been advertising in social media for a while, you probably already know this one. Social media is a truly personal, mobile experience. It seems to be even more so with the international professional. This campaign drove most of its success from mobile devices.

Insight 5: It’s OK To Take Pause

$1,001.70 is a big budget for me! This is my personal blog, after all. As you can see in the first screenshot (top of this blog post), I paused my campaign a few times. I actually reduced my daily budget to $1 and then paused to be extra safe I wouldn’t spend more money. I wanted to test my Facebook page to make sure my new fans were legit and responsive to my social media updates.

I was pleased to find that my new fans were very responsive, I was affordably building a new source of traffic to the PPC Ian brand. Upon un-pausing and raising my budgets, I watched my cost-per-like closely. I found that pausing my campaign did not hurt my results. I was able to continue with a similar cost-per-like and did not hurt my results by pausing. Lesson: Don’t be scared to take pause.

Insight 6: Pictures of Me Speaking Work Well

If you’ve been in digital marketing for a while, you know that creative is one of the most important elements of any successful campaign. I didn’t test multiple creative in this campaign, but I did at least discover a winning creative. I featured a picture of myself speaking publicly at Programmatic I/O, and encouraged those viewing my ad to contact me with any question. I’m always here to help. Based upon the success of this creative, I’m now rolling similar creative out to my PPC Ian retargeting campaigns.

Insight 7: Be Scrappy and Leverage Pockets of Downtime

I don’t have a ton of free time. That said, I live a no excuses lifestyle. I actually launched this campaign on my mobile smartphone while at a family get-together. I had a few minutes of downtime, and just went for it. Even if you’re not in front of your computer, always test. Leverage those small chunks of downtime to launch campaigns. There are no excuses if you have true dedication to digital marketing.

Insight 8: $0.04 Likes Are Possible At Scale

I used to think that $0.30 per like was reasonably good. This campaign certainly challenged my thinking. $0.04 is now going to be the golden benchmark to beat. The moral: Always optimize and challenge yourself for increased efficiency.

I hope these tips help and my sincere thank you to all of my new readers!

Does Facebook Advertising Assist PPC?

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 27 0

Do you advertise on Facebook? How about PPC (Google AdWords and Bing Ads)? If you’re a digital marketing professional, the answer is most likely a huge “Yes!” Both channels (Facebook/social) and also PPC are great on their own. However, have you ever wondered, does my Facebook advertising impact and assist my paid search? Many of us believe so, but have never performed a formal study to prove the correlation.

Thanks to Kenshoo, the leader in Bid Management Software and Social Advertising Platforms according to Forrester, I’m thrilled to share some answers. Kenshoo recently published a free whitepaper that proves a correlation between Facebook and PPC: Facebook Advertising Boosts Paid Search Performance.

I’m a huge fan of Kenshoo; They are all about tracking, analytics, technology, and innovation. Long story short, they are perhaps the best company to do this type of study. They have deep roots in this type of analysis, and that’s something I respect incredibly about Kenshoo.

Some high level findings (download the free whitepaper to learn more about the particular experiment, and how it was conducted):

+30% ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)
+24% AOV (Average Order Value)
+7% CTR (Click Through Rate)
-4.5% CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)

Figuring out budgets and media allocation for 2014? Make sure to set aside some extra funds for Facebook advertising (knowing the positive impact it has on core PPC), and don’t forget to reserve funds for amazing technologies such as Kenshoo!

My Twitter Challenge Is A Success

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Feb 24 7

About a month ago, I announced my Twitter Advertising Challenge. What was my challenge all about? In a nutshell, I decided to follow no more than 200 people, redesign my Twitter background, and start advertising. About a month ago, I was following 16,826 people, with 17,060 following me. I’m now following only 68 people, with 14,417 following me. The strategy worked! I did lose some followers, but that’s ok. I lost fewer than the 5,000 I projected and now it’s so much more fun to use Twitter.

I also got a really cool new background. Head on over to My Twitter and see for yourself! I’m super happy with how it turned out. It’s really consistent with my blog! I have not started advertising on Twitter yet, but that’s still in the pipeline.

I was so thrilled with how my Twitter challenge worked out, that I also did a mini-Facebook challenge. Basically, I went out and got a new Facebook banner and also landing page. The landing page is interactive. If you like me, you get to download my eBook for free. Head on over to the PPC Ian Facebook Fan Page and check it out. (I also have a screenshot of my new landing page below.)

Big thanks to Collabo for reaching out to me and inspiring today’s blog post. I’m more excited about social media than ever before and am glad my challenges helped me take my social profiles to the next level. I hope you challenge yourself to make your social media campaigns amazing!