Facebook apps still drive results if you run ads to boost them

Meet Amanda Brazel, a social media consultant who is promoting her new Instagram training course.

She’s promoting the course on her Facebook page via a couple tabs, amplified with ads.
These drove 14 sign-ups to the free group. Depending on what products/services you offer, calculate what a lead or new customer is worth to you.

2,477 fans is decent for a social agency, while the 94 PTAT (weekly active users) and 34 ratings (average of 4.4 stars) means she’s actively engaging users.

Now let’s take a look at their Facebook insights to trace what happened.
You can download the page and post level CSV files from your page, by the way.
No special software needed.

Starting with the “key metrics” tab on the page-level file, we see 65 average engaged users and 602 daily reach each day prior to the campaign.

An engaged user is someone who is clicking on our content, which can be a photo view, like, share, comment, or navigational click.

Daily organic reach is how many people saw your post that day, minus ad-driven reach.

Look what happens when she spends a few dollars a day on ads (yellow highlighting).

Of course, the paid reach and total reach numbers go up, as do the number of engaged users.

But what’s interesting is that organic reach increases, too.

As engagement grows on the page, Facebook’s algorithm rewards her with more exposure in subsequent posts.

Her “social proof” increases, meaning that there is more engagement to amplify. The newsfeed is all about context (what your friends are doing), so Amanda is driving both reach and engagement.

Mike Gringerich from TabSite shared his thoughts on Facebook’s recent changes, and the strategy behind Amanda’s campaigns:

Social Media marketers need to adapt their Facebook strategy in 2014 to keep current and achieve results!  Facebook has made changes to their algorithm on what type of posts people see, frustrating some brands and marketers.

The fact remains, however, that Facebook is a great place to reach a highly specific audience at an affordable cost.  The combination of engaging organic posts and some specific Facebook Ads can be a great combo that helps achieve real business results.

Amanda Brazel is a business and social media consultant serving small and medium sized businesses who are wanting to improve the effectiveness of their social media marketing.

The Problem:

How to cost-effectively grow her email sign-up list related to groups and training she offers.

The Plan:

To use Facebook organic posts and ads to drive sign-ups for the Instagram Business Success Group.

The Posts and Ads:

Amanda is personable and engaging.  She naturally interacts and uses posts that are a blend of business and personal to increase engagement.

To demonstrate how Amanda engages her audience with media-rich content:

She always has a link to a “wait-list”:

Which helps drive people to her email list:

Which allows for further interaction opportunities through Custom Audiences, and email campaigns.

Thanks to Amanda Brazel and Mike Gingerich for their data.