18 Super Easy, Highly Effective Tips to Grow your Fans via Facebook Ads

Unless you have a large existing fan base or newsletter base, the best way to grow your fans is via Facebook Ads coupled with a promotion (e.g. contest or coupon). In fact, the #1 way that Facebook users find out about fan pages is via Facebook advertising so it is extremely important to your overall social media success that you know how to run Facebook ads effectively. Simple things like the image you choose or the title you use can make the difference between success and failure when it comes to advertising. We’ve compiled a list of practical, easy-to-implement and highly effective tips to help you maximize the performance of your Facebook ads.


What  Images Should You Use?



Tip #1: Ads with people, and especially close ups of faces and eyes tend to get a higher click through rate. In other words, give your ad a human touch!



 


Tip #2:  However, don’t use an image of a person if this doesn’t fit with what you’re promoting - ads with an image that’s relevant to your advertisement tend to be most successful.

Tip #3: It's best to upload horizontal (landscape) images to ensure you're maximizing the space available, which is 110x80 pixels

Tip #4: Include branding in your image. Only a tiny percentage of people exposed to your ad will actually click on it but lots will see it so it’s important that you maximize your branding. The great thing is that you can opt to ‘pay-per-click’ for your Facebook advertising so if someone learns about your brand by looking at your ad but doesn’t click, you just got brand exposure for free!




Tip #5: Scale your image as large as possible. Meaning, zoom into your image so that it extends as close to the edge on all 4 sides as possible without losing the sharpness of the image. For example, an image that contains one close up of a face will be more appealing than one that contains full body shots of multiple people, all of whom will appear so small in the photo that you wont be able to see any details.


Tip #6: Another trick you can try after your image has been created is take a large step away from your monitor and see if you can still make out what the image is from far away—if you can’t tell, the image isn’t as clear as it could be for a good ad.



Tip #7: Eliminate unnecessary surroundings around your main image, either by giving it a transparent background or a white one. You don’t want to distract people from what you want them to notice.


Tip #8:  Use colors in your image that contrast with Facebook’s shades of blue— they command more attention and stand out from the rest of the website.


Tip #9: Be creative! You want your ad to stand out from the millions of other ads your audience is exposed to every day.

What Title Should You Use?



Tip #10:  Ask questions. People who read questions to themselves are often sub-consciously answering them also. If your question is compelling enough, they will want to click through to see the answer.



Tip #11:  Limit titles to one line.
Tip #12:  Try titles that will elicit some kind of reaction from your audience, like making them laugh.




What Text Body Should I Use?



Tip #13: Be clear with your message – what are you offering and why should a user care?



Tip #14: Give a compelling reason to click: access to promotions (deals, coupons, sweepstakes, contests, giveaways) is the number one reason people become fans.


Tip #15: If you’re targeting users based on certain “Likes & Interests” or demographic information, tie that information into your copy. For example, an ad targeting users living in Palo Alto, CA, can fare better if the words “Palo Alto” or “Bay Area” were in the copy, making the ad appear more relevant to the viewer seeing it.


Tip #16: Ask people to like your brand— telling your audience exactly what you want them to do is a surprisingly effective methods of getting users to do what you requested. For example, “Fall is here and so is our seasonal pumpkin cupcake. Click ‘like’ if you think this sounds delicious!”


 


Tip #17: Don’t forget a call-to-action! Try messages like “Click here!” or “Enter now!” to let users know exactly what they’re supposed to do within the interaction.


Tip #18:  Try not to sound like a large corporation in your body message. Speak to your audience like people.

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5 Creative Suggestions for Engaging your Fans and Selling More During the Holidays


Holiday season is soon upon us and there’s no better time to motivate your loyal customers and acquire new ones through fun, seasonal promotions. Based on numerous research reports, it seems that Facebook fans get especially excited about fun, holiday-themed promotions so if you haven’t done so already, it’s time to start planning your holiday promotions for October, November and December.


November in particular is a big month for holiday themed promotions in the United States. While the most widely known holiday for Americans is Thanksgiving, November is also a popular shopping month, with Black Friday and Cyber Monday prompting users to get excited about huge discounts and great deals.

Here are some creative ideas for promotions to run for Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday.

IDEA #1: Encourage word of mouth and social spread by giving away the “Ultimate Thanksgiving Dinner”


Run a sweepstakes to give away the ultimate ‘Thanksgiving Dinner’ – enormous frozen turkey, pumpkin pie, the works! But to make it more ’social’ and to encourage word-of-mouth spread, why not offer up two Thanksgiving feasts - one for the winner and one for the friend that referred the winner to the sweepstakes. Track these referrals by including a text field in the entry form asking the participant, “Were you referred by a friend? If so, what is your friend’s full name? You could both win the grand prize!”.

IDEA #2: Drive engagement and sharing among friends with a Recipe Contest


Doesn’t everyone think that their family’s Thanksgiving meal is the best? Why not encourage this friendly rivalry by running  a Thanksgiving Recipe Contest! Allow users to upload both photos and text as their submissions but set the photo upload minimum to zero when setting up your Wildfire photo contest — that way those who don’t have a photo of their recipe easily available can still enter (i.e. you’ll get more submissions by keeping the effort required to enter lower).

IDEA #3: Combine Thanksgiving-Themed Virtual Gifts with Charitable Giving


Create a virtual gift campaign to enable friends to send each other free Thanksgiving themed virtual gifts like funny images of Turkeys, or a family around a dinner table, or the iconic cornucopia. Combine this with an opportunity to ‘give back’ by offering to donate $1 to a hunger-relief charity of your choice for every gift sent.

IDEA #4: Drive Sales with a Black Friday Coupon or a Group Deal!


Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year! Many people have grown accustomed to enormous sales and huge discounts as merchants try to drive customers into a buying frenzy in preparation for Christmas. Take advantage of this expectation by creating a specially themed Black Friday coupon of your own, granting your fans a high value discount on one of your products! Or even better, offer up a group deal — i.e. provide your product or service at a big discount but only if a certain number of people commit to buy the deal before it expires.

IDEA #5: Create excitement for Cyber Monday by giving away ‘Mystery’ Coupons


This Epicure promotion is a great example of a timely, holiday themed promotion— a photo contest of family Thanksgiving feasts!

Cyber Monday developed as online merchants responded to brick and mortar stores and their steep Black Friday discounts, which drove users into stores and away from computers, by offering their own steep discounts on internet orders the following Monday. Get creative with your own online coupon codes— by using Wildfire’s unique codes functionality, you can create a set of “mystery” coupons, where each coupon’s value is unknown until the user claims it on your fan page! For example, some coupons may give you free shipping, others 10% off and a limited number might be lucky enough to get a 70% off coupon. We’ve found this kind of ‘mystery’ coupon format creates lots of excitement, strong ROI for our clients and great word of mouth spread because consumers are so excited to share this campaign with their friends.

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What is the #1 way to Grow your Fans? Here are 8 Tips to Maximize yourSuccess…



The number one way to draw a crowd of users to your fan page and turn them into fans is to run promotions. Social media studies have repeatedly shown that the top reason users fan and follow brands online is to gain access to exclusive deals and discounts— so use your fan page to give users what they’re looking for. However, all promotions are not created equal.  At Wildfire we have observed and assisted in the powering of thousands of campaigns where, over time, we have noted  that there are specific strategies to follow when creating promotions that greatly increase the success of fan campaigns. Here is the complete 8-tip post detailing the top advice we’ve learned from observing the tens of thousands of promotions that have been run via the Wildfire social media marketing platform.




TIP # 1: CHOOSE YOUR PRIZE CAREFULLY


When you’re running a sweepstakes or a contest, the prize you choose plays a big role in the success of your campaign. Your prize does not need to be very expensive to attract users and fans to your promotion. Two things to consider:

  • We have found that prizes that generate the most excitement are the ones that “money can’t buy,” — for example, tickets to a sold out concert, backstage passes, limited edition merchandise or the chance to be featured by a company on their website or in their stores. For example, Facebook is running a fun contest with us right now where the winner will have their artwork featured in the new Facebook office in India, which you can check out here.

  • Be sure to choose a prize that is relevant to your brand so you can attract consumers who are genuinely interested in your company. For example, if you are a restaurant, give away free dinners or a gourmet food basket— an iPad giveaway is far less relevant to your brand, and may attract users who are interested in electronics, not your restaurant! Dunkin Donuts is currently running a contest, for example, in which the winner will get five years worth of free coffee. Only true DD coffee lovers will want to win this prize!




TIP # 2: RUN REGULAR CAMPAIGNS

One of the biggest mistakes we see companies make is putting a lot of effort and money into doing a 'big bang' launch campaign for their fan page, but then having no plan to keep their fans regularly engaged once their initial campaign is over. In our experience, companies that run regular promotions (e.g. "Fan appreciation days" or "Friday Flash Deal") are much more successful in building up an engaged and growing fan base than those that do not. For example, the fans of the Swell.com Facebook Fan Page rally around the surf clothing retailer’s weekly apparel giveaways, called “Win it Wednesdays”. Likewise, tying campaigns in with upcoming holidays (e.g. Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Halloween) is a great way to provide regular, calendar- based engagement your fans can get excited about.





TIP # 3: MAKE BUYING FUN

Unlike with Google, consumers generally go to Facebook to engage with friends and have fun, not to buy products. To change this dynamic and encourage fans to actually make purchases, therefore, we've found that the best method is to make the buying process fun and social! For example, Haute Look, a “members-only” designer clothing retailer ran a campaign with Wildfire that offered up 'lucky coupons'. Consumers had to become fans in order to get a coupon, but they didn’t know whether they'd get a high value or a low value coupon until they filled out the entry form and claimed it. The coupons ranged in value from free shipping to 50% off high value items like designer jeans. The campaign resulted in a 5x ROI for Hautelook and 20% of buyers were first time purchasers. To see more great examples of how to make buying fun and drive sales with promotions, click here for more campaign examples: http://bit.ly/bkk1MO





TIP # 4: OPTMIZE YOUR FACEBOOK ADS TO SEED YOUR CAMPAIGN

Unless you have access to a large existing base of fans or newsletter subscribers, you’ll need to use Facebook ads to help drive users to your promotion. There are many things that you can do to dramatically improve the performance of your Facebook ads. Some of these relate to the actual design of your ad (see our 18 Super easy, highly effective tips to grow your fans via Facebook Ads. blog post to learn more) and others relate to the way you target your ad (see our 4 Tips to Nearly Double the Performance of your Facebook Ads blog post for highly targeted advice) but in both cases you can hugely influence the success of your ads if you follow our easy tips.






TIP # 5: MAKE IT SOCIAL
The power of Facebook and Twitter is that they enable users to share your brand with their friends. So to really make the most of Facebook and Twitter, you should look for ways to make your promotions inherently social. For example:

  • If you’re running a user generated contest be sure to allow the public to vote. Entrants will contact all their friends to encourage them to vote and thus help spread the word about your brand.

  • If you are running a sweepstakes, make it social by offering a Group Prize (e.g. "concert tickets for you and your 5 best friends") and ask entrants to invite the 5 friends they'd want to share the prize with or offer a Referral Prize (e.g. award a prize not only to the winner but also to the person who referred the winner).


TIP # 6: KEEP IT SIMPLE & EASY

In our experience, the simpler and easier you make it for consumers to engage with your promotion, the better your results will be. For example, if you’re running a sweepstakes, don’t ask for any more information from users than you need - the shorter the entry form or the less steps required to engage, the more people will enter. If you’re looking to collect user generated content, ask for things that consumers have readily available like vacation, pet, hobby or family photos. And if you run a video contest, be aware that these get far fewer entries than photo contests because of the effort required to create and upload a video. On the flip side, generating a few great video entries may serve your goals better than receiving hundreds or thousands of photo entries - especially if your goal is to create customer generated content that you can use in your marketing materials.
Pictures of a user making a funny face are easier to take and submit than creating a whole video.


TIP # 7: TAP INTO PASSIONATE COMMUNITIES
We've found that campaigns that tap into people's passions and interests play a greater role in determining the success of a campaign than do factors like the value of a prize or even, in many cases, the size of an advertising budget. Campaigns that involve pets, children, charities, hobbies (e.g. surfing), music, and other interests are consistently among the most successful we see. For example, we had a non-profit run a pet-related photo contest that got over 10,000 photo submissions in one week with no advertising budget and a tattoo parlor that got thousands of submissions to their 'best tattoo contest' with limited marketing. Target your ads to your specific demographic for best results.


TIP # 8: COMMUNICATE!
Once your promotion is up and running, don’t forget to publicize it to your existing fans, followers and newsletter subscribers on a regular basis. At a minimum, message your fans once when you launch the promotion, once during the middle of the promotion and once a few days before it ends. For highly successful tips to ensure that your fan updates get maximum exposure, click here: http://bit.ly/bOYnE8
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Facebook Launches its Hyderabad, India Office with a Sweet Mural Design Contest!

Facebook will celebrate the official opening of its brand new Hyderabad, India Office on September 30th with a Mural Contest powered by Wildfire. The winning artist will receive a $2000 prize and have their work prominently featured in the new office, covering a big wall! The contest will be Facebook’s 9th promotion powered by Wildfire.

The Mural Contest will create buzz for the new office and facilitate positive engagement with India’s quickly growing number of Facebook users. Participants will have the opportunity to share their vision of Facebook’s future in India and what impact it will have on the Indian community.


Optimally located in India’s technology hub, the Hyderabad office will be Facebook’s first in Asia and help further fuel the company’s already explosive growth in the region. Recently, Facebook surpassed Google’s ‘Orkut’ and is now the number one social network in the country with approximately 13.5 million users. With India’s population being 1.1 billion, the Palo Alto based social network expects the number of Indian Facebook users to continue to grow rapidly. The Mural Contest will further build on this momentum and help create a lasting relationship with Facebook and its users.

Indian artists can upload samples of their portfolio from September 30th to October 22nd. Voting on the finalists will commence on November 1st and end on November 14th. For official rules and details click here.

[caption id="attachment_1032" align="aligncenter" width="396" caption="Congratulations, Facebook!"][/caption]
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