Social Media Sandbox: Don't be afraid to "play"

Entrepreneurs and small businesses are leveraging social media to generate awareness for their products and services but most don't realize how easy and affordable it is to reach potential customers.

One of the best ways to learn, understand and generate ideas around the impact of social media is to play with the tools that are out there.  Most of them are free but don't be afraid to "play in the sandbox" and spend a few dollars all in the name of "learning".  Today, I'll be sharing my experience with Facebook adverts.

There have been reports that Facebook has surpassed the 400 million subscriber mark.  What most small businesses don't know is that they have access to this global pool and it doesn't cost a cent to query segments of people that they feel would be interested in their product.  The great thing about the query tool is that it updates the population of your target audience in real-time as you update the criteria.  In addition, once you have determined your target, you can then reach out these potential customers with a daily maximum spend of $1.00.  Okay, spending $1.00 a day is not going to have any impact but you see where I'm going with this.

I thought I would run a Facebook advert over the course of one week so I can see daily trending.  I set a daily maximum of $10 over 7-days which included the following assets and targeting criteria (the image on the right is a screenshot of the simple campaign set-up in Facebook):

Creative/Copy:
Header - Open Rate Consulting
Image - Open Rate Consulting Logo
Short Copy - Toronto based independent consulting company specializing in permission based email marketing strategies, complemented by social media.

Targeting:
- Who live in one of the countries: United States or Canada
- Between the ages of 23 and 50 inclusive
- Who like email, marketing or small business
- Who are not already connected to Open Rate Consulting

Campaign Results:
- Over 800,000 impressions
- Over 150,000 unique impressions
- Over 125-clicks to the Open Rate Facebook page (geo and demo data of "clickers")
- Page-views of the Open Rate website
- Handful of Facebook "likes"
- 2-emails from small-medium businesses SMB's

In reviewing the results of my test campaign, it was great to be able to introduce my brand to over 150K eyeballs... but the 800K impressions, 150K unique impressions, 125+ clicks, website page-views, Facebook likes were not that important to me.  It's the 2-emails that I received from real people with real businesses of which one, I am in the processes of helping, is the real value of the test and social media in general.

I may get a small piece of business from a test campaign that I put together in less than 5-minutes but that wasn't the point of my test nor this post, the point and purpose was the "learning" from this exercise.  I wonder what type of results I will get when I actually run a "real" campaign leveraging "smart" targeting and increased budget.  I'll let you know how it goes...

Bottom line, social media (in this case Facebook adverts) is not only for Fortune 500 companies to leverage and build relationships with their potential and existing customers, it's a channel that should be used by entrepreneurs and small-medium businesses who are looking to connect with real customers.  Invest a few dollars to "play" with the social media tools out there, not just for the purpose of finding potential customers but in the spirit of learning!

Drop me a comment and let me know what you learn from playing in the Social Media Sandbox.

Colin Bhowmik, Digital Marketing Consultant, Open Rate
colinbhowmik@openrate.ca
http://www.openrate.ca

My article is published on the Email Institute website:
http://www.emailinstitute.com/social-media/social-media-sandbox-dont-be-afraid-play