This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclaimer for more info.
One of the biggest challenges to Facebook marketing is paying too much per click. This is one of the most common rookie mistakes people make when they try their hand at marketing on Facebook. They focus on coming up with “the best looking ad”, but they get their interest targeting wrong.
They end up paying $0.75 cents to even $1 or more per ad click. As you can imagine, this can get really expensive quickly. This is where demographic user interest profiling comes in. You have to figure out the right mix of interest, age, gender, and other demographic data points so you can reach the right people who engage with your ad the most.
Facebook will show your ad a certain amount of times and then, it would automatically price your clicks based on an auction model. If it turns out that a lot of the people seeing your ad don’t want to click through, your per click rate goes up.
But if it turns out that for every 100 exposures of your ad, a lot of people click through, your ad gets shown more and the per click rate remains low. This is why demographic and user interest targeting are so important.
How do you get this demographic information?
Well, people who fail with Facebook marketing simply make up demographics. They make educated guesses as to who their target audience members are and they just run with it. These people usually end up with very little results.
The better approach would be to build a Facebook fan page, promote it organically, and let it attract a natural amount of organic likes. These are real people. You did not pay for these likes. These people were not forced to like your page.
After enough time has passed, you use the page demographics of your user base to launch lookalike audience campaigns to promote your website or promote your link. The key here is to find the most active and engaged demographic. Using your Facebook page audience insights will definitely clue you in on which subgroup of users to target the most.
The worst mistake you can ever make on Facebook
While you can afford to screw up on content selection or engagement strategy on FB, there is one thing that you cannot do. It is simply off limits to you. Don’t even think about it. What am I talking about? Do not buy page likes or post likes. Seriously. No joke. Real story.
You probably have heard that you can get lots of ‘social proof’ if you buy fake users or fake likes. You probably have heard from hypesters and other hucksters on online marketing forums that if your account has enough likes, others will be drawn to you. Real users will be drawn to you. Well, that may be true but you will be paying a high price for this fake social proof. Your engagement levels will suffer and most of your page fans will never get to see your content. If you think that is bad enough, wait, it gets even worse. If you were to pay for an ad campaign on FB, chances are your lookalike audience profile will not work.
What is the quick solution? Just don’t use fake likes or buy followers in the first place.
