Spellmann

The Five Dollar Viral Marketing Strategy That Works

Description

Getting the word out on the Internet has always been challenging. Between your website and social media, how do you know the most effective channel to reach the most people for the least amount of money? Facebook’s “Promoted Post” is one of the tools you ought to consider, especially at its starting price point: $5. In this video, Eric shows you how to create incredible amounts of engagement with customers and prospects using this method. And no, he is not getting paid by Facebook to talk about this. He uses these techniques himself and has seen amazing results.

Transcript

Note from Eric: Below, you will find a word-for-word transcript of this video. I provide this as an aid for the hearing-impaired and for those who might just want to read it rather than watch the video. This conversational style is not reflective of how I write. Be nice! The Five Dollar Viral Marketing Strategy That Works by Eric Spellmann

Hey I’m Eric Spellmann with Spellmann & Associates at EricSpellmann.com. And today I’m going to talk about the five dollar viral marketing strategy that works. Now I know that sounds crazy, but really it’s true. So let’s get right to it.

When Facebook went public, they started selling stock to the general public, obviously the investors wanted returns. They wanted financial returns. In other words, how was Facebook making money? Well the problem was that Facebook wasn’t charging anyone anything, except for a little bit of advertising that they were doing.

Facebook, in order to increase its viewership, wanted higher value feeds. Now it’s important for you to understand what that means. A lot of people when they post something in their feed, you know that stream of information going on Facebook, you really can’t control how many jerks out there are posting garbage.

And so Facebook wanted to allow some of the stuff to move closer to the top and to show up more. And so what they did was they made it possible. Also, since more and more people were subscribing to fan pages and adding more friends, peoples’ posts were being seen less. And that’s important to remember.

Someone with 3 friends is basically going to see every post done by all 3 friends, but someone with 300 friends, if they don’t check in everyday or in some cases twice a day, they’re probably going to miss some posts. And just think about those people with fan pages, you know they go and “like” a fan page. Well, those pages aren’t going to be seen by that viewer if they are a fan of a whole bunch of things.

So, Facebook wanted to make an incentive: A cut to the front of the line on having your post seen. And the way they did that was by creating The Promoted Post. Now you’re probably thinking Eric you’re making this sound really bad. No! This is wonderful. And in fact it’s something I do.

Basically you pay to have your post seen more. It stays at the top more! It appears higher in every user’s news feed. I call it the stream but they call it the News Feed. So whenever you pay Facebook to promote your post, basically whatever it is you posted shows up higher. So if even someone doesn’t check until tomorrow your stuff may show up even if it wasn’t in the order in which it was posted. So you get more viewers. And that’s what you’re actually paying for.

Basically it starts at 5 dollars. It starts at 5 dollars for you to promote a post and you’ll get a number of “impressions”. Now that’s terminology you need to know. An impression is someone seeing your post. Not necessarily interacting with it like clicking on it but at least seeing it. Now the more people who see your post are more likely to interact with it.

So it’s a promoted post and trust me, for 5 bucks it works. I’ve tested this on my own pages. You know I have Computer Tips 101 and I also have the Spellmann & Associates Small Business Tech Tips page. And in both cases whenever I’ve done a promoted post, I’ve had a lot more interaction on my page. So if you’re looking to use Facebook for business, this truly rocks. And one of the reasons I’m so excited about it is that your post not only goes to your fans of these pages, but it also goes to their friends! That’s right. It even goes to those people who are yet to “like” your page.

That’s where the viral comes into this. And I’ve gained a huge number of “likes” to my pages doing just these techniques. And by the way I’m not being paid by Facebook to say this and if you do this, I’m not getting any commissions or anything like that. I’m just telling you I used this myself and saw the results. If you’re interested in online marketing, this is very cost-effective. Especially if you’re one of those who want it to do yourself and not pay someone to do it.

What are the rules? Well in order to start doing this you have to have at least 100 “likes” on your page. And until you get to that point you won’t even see the option to promote a post. So one of the things you need to do is immediately start inviting your friends to “like” your page.

You’re going to see a little block up there and it says Do you want to invite your friends to like this page? Yes. So step number one is to invite all of your personal friends to like your page. That’s easy, that’s low hanging fruit.

The price you’re going to pay, because you heard me say 5 dollars quite often in this video but it’s a variable price actually. Five dollars is where it starts and for a lot of people it will stay 5 dollars for a while. But once you start growing, and depending on where you live and the density of the population and how many friends you have and how many fans you have, that price is going to go up. Now I don’t know the actual equation that Facebook uses to come up with that, but basically just know it’s going to go up. Most people I run into, promoted posts are running anywhere between 5 and 10 dollars. And I’ve seen some people who have a lot of likes, for them it is in the $30-$40 range.

You can target people on this. What I mean by that is, you don’t just have to send it to everybody. You can send it to just males, or just females. You can actually point it a little when you promote the post. Now this is helpful especially if you’re trying to sell something say on Mothers’ day. You would want that to go to all the males so that you you’ve got a targeted audience. So, you can target it to a degree.

Let me give you an example. Basically the first step is to make a post. And when you do, you’re going to notice that at the bottom of the status bar, you’ll have another option that you didn’t have before. You have the post button which you’re used to seeing, you have the public button but you also have the promote button.

And that’s what you would click on. When you click on that, that’s where you go in and enter your information. Now you’re probably saying Eric what do I put in that status? How do I do it? Well folks I’ve already made a video that teaches you exactly what to write. It is “The Perfect Facebook Business Post”. Look for it.

Once you click on promote, you’ll notice a little pop-up that comes up. And it will tell you how many people you’re probably going to reach and the amount you’re going to need to pay. You can choose more options. You can click on that public item and that’s where you can specify I want to send this post to this group and this group etc. They make it very easy.

Well folks as always, you can ask me a question, drop me a line. This is something; this is a feature I use with a lot of my clients. And they are seeing huge benefits from it. But you have to do it right and you have to know what to post in your Facebook post. So if you have questions, let me know. Or if it’s something you want to do with your business but aren’t quite sure how to start, let me know. I’ll be happy to help. I’m Eric Spellmann with Spellmann & Associates. I’ll see you in cyberspace.