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How an internet marketer makes Facebook pay.
- 02/07/2010
- Categorized in: Social Media
You’ll remember our blog about four months ago, when we pondered how to use facebook. We’ve been sure for all this time that there has been a way to take a facebook presence and turn it to something that supported the business, or strengthened us, or the holy grail, turned a profit.
We couldn’t get our heads around it, indeed I tried for quite some time and couldn’t make it work. I don’t think I’m stupid but I couldn’t get it. So we thought we’d ask you guys. No joy there I'm afraid. No one replied or posted a comment, so I’m guessing that the answer hasn’t been all that obvious to lots of you.
Then we attended the affili@syd conference and something obvious fell into place for us. One of our benchmarks has been to look for reasonable sized sales. Social media has as it’s base the ability to talk with people and bring them on board due to making a connection with them. These people will, over time learn that we are really taking an interest in them. While it will be quite a time before most of them are ready to make really large purchases, most of us are ready to take those tiny actions that will generate small amounts, all the time.
Cost per action campaigns came back into focus for us. In the new, facebook enabled environment, it now makes sense to go after those campaigns that only make $1 per process. In this world, when the cost of the traffic comes down to taking a genuine human interest in our visitors, it really is easier to get 10 000 people to spend a dollar, than it is to get 100 people to spend 100 dollars.
So to facebook. The simple process was to find our CPA opportunity that makes $1. They’re not all that hard to find.
The next was to set up a facebook page. Our new guy, Mark, had avoided facebook to date so we pressed him into service, charged with building a list and establishing relationship as well as the list. For several days he followed friends of friends and was starting to talk with people and become something of a facebook personality. Still, that was slow going. It’s a two stage process, our CPA process has a fan page attached to Mark’s account.
Then, less than a week after he’d started but once he’d had a moment to find his feet, we found ourselves a reasonable incentive. The giveaways we used were worth about $9 each to us, including delivery - but would be more valuable retail. Same thing, if you’re ready to buy 100 of something, the numbers can tumble. Using one of our own sites to mail a bunch of people, we asked them all to friend Mark, then recommend our CPA campaign to all their facebook mates.
This only happened yesterday. As at a full day’s work, we’d seen Mark’s friends number grow from about 20 to 110. More than that, the CPA page had 591 fans. Given that we’ve had about 90 people befriend Mark in a day, and more than 500 new fans for the CPA page, we’ve got more than 5 fans per new friend. Some of the friends were not on our list, so they’ve been referred in less than a day - we’ve gone viral, though to a small extent.
Early days says that the CPA campaign had made more than half a percent of a BoM. That’s in a full days trading. What we’re counting on is that the campaign can lope along from here making something every day. It will owe us 11% of a BoM or thereabouts by the time the giveaways are done, so we are pretty hopeful that we can have the thing not owing us anything from the promotion in the month. It will continue to grow, but in a day, we’ve made a start.
Facebook is a great opportunity, and we are convinced that social media will play a massive part in the future of internet marketing. Sign on for our newsletter, because we’re going to figure out who does the best training and develop some more insight of our own, and you really want to know about it as we make this baby work.
*** One more day in to the promotion, Mark's numbers are at 118 friends and 648 fans for the page. Yesterday's sales were very encouraging, today's are much less exciting, but are still about 3 times the average of last months daily sales.
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I'm actually skeptical that Facebook is a good platform to build business. I do not feel that many Facebook policies are business friendly, the tools are weak and there's a lot of restrictions. I have seen some commercial pages that seems somewhat successful, but they are mostly sponsored by large companies who I suspect get a pass with regard to FB's rules. I think Facebook is mostly a personal thing -- friends and family posting random thoughts and silly vacation pictures. Businesses would be better off developing a good website, blog and perhaps something like Twitter where there is more freedom.
Hi Michael, thanks for your response. We're in this to make a sustainable business and we're watching the Facebook process, but from the inside. We've begun to make the process work by genuinely trying to take an interest in those people who we make a mutual connection with, and this month it's been about 500. The people are involved in our CPA campaigns at a level they want to be, and that's not $1 each per month yet, but we'll see.
We don't imagine they'll replace our website and blog, but they are a significant source of traffic and they arrive with a level of faith in who we are, because we took an interst in their boyfriend's kitesurfing. I got to recommend a product that I don't sell there, but it's still a commercial inpout and I get a feel for how it works.
Anyway, for these 500, there's a small flow of cash and a process in place to gain trust.
"In this world, when the cost of the traffic comes down to taking a genuine human interest in our visitors, it really is easier to get 10 000 people to spend a dollar, than it is to get 100 people to spend 100 dollars."
I'm not sure what you mean by this (esp. the part how traffic comes down to a genuine human interest), but it is intriguing. It reminds me of the old saying "It's better to have one fast nickle than one slow dime." But here, you are really saying, "It's better to have 10000 fast pennies than one slow $100 bill" since you assume the same revenue in the end and micropayments.
But I wonder if that really is better? There would be other substantial transaction costs attached to servicing 10,000 people versus 100. What if 10% of those 10,000 people sent you an e-mail and asked a question, now u got to answer 1000 e-mails. If 10% of a 100 sent you the same e-mails, it would be no big deal. Your entire enterprise would need to be ramped up to hire that kind of traffic on a regular basis versus the slow $100 guy. And how can you take a genuine interest in 10,000 people versus just 100? It would be very challenging to say the least.
Judy, thanks for the comment, I think you've got the concern right, but I'm interested in how this is going to work. At present I spend a limited time on facebook, and log on a couple of times a day. My account links to a number of pages for sites. On these sites I get to see people have certain concerns and if I've got anything to add to their concern, I respond, sometimes even disagreeing on matters of politics.
Anyway, the twice daily log on keeps me in touch with a list of people and over time we'll see if your perspective on how hard that is rings true. You'll be interested to know I have a facebook log in with a much smaller number of people that I catch up with on a genuinely human level, family etc. This is important and you're asking the right questions. I'm just trying to answer them because I'm finding the experts a little difficult to pin down on it. The answers will come out on our blog. Watch for the July monthly report and see whether there's any progress.