As a Facebook ads strategist I am often asked whether it’s a good idea to run a Facebook ads campaign to grow the number of likes on your fan page.
The opinions on this are divided and although I’m not extremely against it, I do believe there are better ways to spend your money.
First things first, why do businesses run like ads and why do they work?
- Most businesses want to increase their fan base because it creates social proof. It shows that the business is liked by many people
- They give a business instant exposure to new fans
- They’re easy to set up and they’re the least expensive way to advertise
BUT, there are a few things to pay attention to because things can go wrong.
Likes are not just numbers. If you just want to increase your fanbase because you want to tell your friends how many likes your page has, I suggest keeping your money tightly locked up.
Facebook page likes should always be real users who are interested in your business and who may become customers or even raving fans, not just numbers.
Your goal as an entrepreneur or social media marketer is to engage your fans with high quality content, provide value and increase the number of clicks, comments and shares. The aim is to have highly engaged fans; real people who comment, click and share, not millions of likes from people who barely know your name.
Attracting the wrong people means that you’re not cultivating engagement, which will make your page look like a ghost town and Facebook will punish your real likers by showing less of your content because it thinks that you don’t post valuable content.
So whilst there is some merit in running ads to increase your likes, it is important to advertise to the right audience so that you attract the right people to like your page.
Why do I believe there are better ways to spend your money?
You may have seen me go on about building an email list, and I still stand by that strategy.
Facebook isn’t yours and we all know that they frequently change the rules so, even though I love it, I don’t recommend building your business on rented land but instead build your own customer database.
My prefered way to spend money on Facebook is to build my mailing list, and my clients’ lists. What I’ve often found is that using Facebook ads for list building has resulted in more likes for my page. So the main goal of getting people to join my mailing list has a by-product of increasing the number of likes on my page.
For me this is a win-win. It’s kind of a two for one deal.
So, should you run Facebook ads to grow your likes?
It’s entirely up to you. I’m not against it, but I find it harder to quantify the results of running a Like campaign.
When you use Facebook ads to grow your list, you can use tracking tools like the Facebook Pixel to measure conversions. This means that you can track who actually joined your mailing list and how much you paid in advertising spend for that person to join your list.
When someone becomes a fan of your page you have less control over tracking that person and it’s harder to know whether they become a customer. So you could be spending a lot of money on growing your page likes but not know whether they ever become customers, whereas with an email subscriber this is easier to track.
Will you be using Facebook ads to grow your likes?
