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May 15 2014

I’ve recently been moved to try Facebook advertising for my clients and for Fluent. I have always been impressed at Facebook’s spookily accurate targeting. Have you noticed how all the ads on the page are all about YOU? My Facebook wall features clothes I like, diet advice, relevant book information, even services available in my village and features aimed at “women of a certain age” (enough said). Just like Amazon, Facebook knows me better than some of my closest friends.

To demonstrate my new-found love of FB advertising, let me explain…

I run a campaign to make the public aware of the importance of healthy gums – I do this for the British Society of Periodontology, one of my favourite clients as they are a) really nice people and b) passionate about what they do. The message we’re promoting is that having a healthy mouth will help you to have a healthy body. It’s really simple when you think about it – your mouth is the gateway to your body and many systemic diseases like diabetes, cardio health, Alzheimer’s etc are being increasingly linked to gum disease. It’s important people know this.

Anyway we have a Facebook page for this campaign (https://www.facebook.com/PerioHealthAwarenessUk) that stood at 600+ members after a few months which is fine, not amazing, but we were pleased with its steadily growing numbers. We recently had a small stand at a dentistry trade show and boosted our numbers by a paltry 11 likes. Not good (although that wasn’t the only reason for being at the show). I tried Facebook advertising at just £3 per day at its simplest level. I chose men and women over the age of 35 (perio health affects older people more) and typed in a few key words that are relevant (healthy, gums, dental, mouth, etc – you get the picture). After 2 weeks of this trial we now have 1050+ likes which I am really chuffed about.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there are social media experts out there who work at it all day every day and get these kinds of results and much more. However, most of my clients are in the real world with real world budgets so we use social media as a small part of complete campaigns that involve lots of different activities.

I manage Facebook pages for most of my clients and love how it provides a platform for engaging with people and communicating informally whilst being able to promote products and services at the same time – it’s friendly selling! There is such a lot to know I think the best approach with Facebook is to try new things, one at a time, to see how they work and learn from them. One thing I do know is that no business should be a slave to its social media as it’s just part of the whole marketing mix. Invest a bit of time (or ask me to) to find out what works for you!

This entry was posted in Communications, Marketing, Social media, Inspiration and posted on May 15, 2014


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