Social Media Thursday
During the month of November, I participated in a campaign sponsored by American Express called “Small Business Saturday”. It occurred on the Saturday after Black Friday and before Cyber Monday. It was a push to draw the consumer to invest some of their holiday spending in small businesses. Part of the campaign included $100 (one hundred dollars) of Facebook Advertising. For FREE. I applied and my little ad was accepted and then, quite honestly, I forgot about that part of the push. I put up information on my Facebook fan page, business page and my personal page. Tweeted about Small Business Saturday and placed signage about it in my booth during the Christmas Wonderfest in Detroit.
I have had an increase in sales (slight, but still even one new sale is better than no sales, right?), but I still didn’t make any connections to AmEx and their campaign. Yesterday I received the following email (excerpted here) :
We are happy to report that with your $100 in free Facebook advertising, your campaign reached 134,036* potential customers. (*Reach is defined by the number of unique impressions delivered within your geo-targeted area.)
To keep the momentum going, American Express OPEN offers a variety of helpful resources on OPEN Forum®, including social media tips and tools for businesses like yours. It is all part of our ongoing commitment to the success of small, locally owned businesses.
Wow!!! The ad ran on Facebook for approximately 15 days (I got in on the deal late) which meant I was able to spend more per day than I ever would be able to afford (almost $7 per day)on a regular basis. At the same time, Facebook offered a 50% match of AmEx’s $100.00, again FREE, so that meant I was virtually spending $10.00 per day in Facebook Ads- YOWZA!
Of course, I am, indeed, a small business and so obviously could not keep those ads running. I cancelled my ads, but I have had an increase in my Facebook fans and more specifically, a request from an international company to possibly market one of my products!!! Double YOWZA!!
Check out the open forum and think about saving some of your advertising dollars for one or two times a year to invest in Facebook Ads. You never know how the results will pay out in the end!
See you tomorrow ^_^
That's great that you got so much traffic...and that it was FREE! And how cool that they sent you stats so you'd know if it was worth it.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking at more ways to advertise in 2012 and will keep FB in mind.
That's really cool! To be able to be seen by 134,000 new potential customers - for free - is fantastic. Congratulations on the company looking to market your item!
ReplyDeleteSounds great - hope it works out for you!!
ReplyDeleteThe request from an international company to market one of your products is the best that could happen after a free ad campaign, isn't it? Awesome, I wish you luck with that!
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