Beginner's Guide to Increasing Facebook Reach - Reach more customers through Facebook Ads, targeted promotions, and interactive contests
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Beginner’s Guide to Increasing Facebook Reach Reach more customers through Facebook Ads, targeted promotions, and interactive contests
CONTENTS
Meet Our Author p. 3
Meet Growers Edge p. 4
Creating A White Paper p. 5
Creating A Facebook Ad p. 7
Create a Promotion p. 11
Conclusion p. 13
Who Are We? p. 14
FreakyFreshMarketing.com | 515-371-5973
2
MEET OUR AUTHOR
THOMAS LASHIER
@ThomasLashier
- Des Moines, IA native
- Graduated from Iowa State University
Thomas is Co-Founder and Creative Captain of Freaky
Fresh Marketing: the freshest marketing team in the
Midwest. Thomas works with local businesses to reach
their customers through social media. This includes
spreading engaging content like wildfire across the most
effective platforms, designing viral promotions, and
creating benchmark-crushing ad campaigns. Thomas is a
regular contributor to the Freaky Fresh “Fresh Take” marketing blog and
helps other customers with HD video creation and the most talked-about
live events you’ve ever attended. Thomas is a Capricorn, he’s engaged,
and he loves burgers with grilled pineapple on them.
FreakyFreshMarketing.com | 515-371-5973
3
MEET OUR CLIENT
Growers Edge was founded in 2007 to be a one-stop
resource for farmers across the United States. The team
at Growers Edge wanted every farmer to realize their
greatest profit, so they decided to put useful tools at
farmers’ fingertips. From profit analyzers to market
commentary to crop-specific weather patterns, farmers
have access to real-time information that affects their
operation every day. And they get it all for free.
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4
The team here at Freaky Fresh wanted to establish
Growers Edge as an industry thought leader. We
wanted farmers and their families to turn to Growers
Edge whenever they had decisions to make about ings
t h e w ettest spr t.
their farming operation. To do this, we worked with s one of Midwes
2013 wa thro ugho ut the create d
d d
the team at Growers Edge to create a white paper on recor lize d on this an evente d
ca p ita ou n d pr
We paper ar attention to th
e
focused on prevented planting in the very wet, very w h ite
o ur s p a y n ce is
Alway au die
wild spring of 2013. planting. nces yo ur target
a
circu mst dealing w ith
cur re n t ly
Prevented planting brings up some very tough
decisions; decisions that can make or break a farm.
Since we are marketers and not expert agronomists,
we teamed up with a guy who knows farming like we
know Facebook. Jay Bottoms, respected agronomist
and a friend of the Growers Edge team, agreed to
write up a draft of our report. His draft outlined what
prevented planting is, how to decide if you should file
a claim, and who to talk to if you need to file. He even
created a custom flow chart to help farmers in their
decision-making process.
{
For you city slickers, prevented
planting occurs when a farmer
can’t plant his/her crops due to poor
weather. Farmers with crop insurance
can file a claim to cover their losses
from prevented planting, but there are
strict deadlines farmers must follow to
file this claim on time. This decision
can be a serious gamble if the farmer
calculates that they could replant or
plant a different crop to make up for
the losses as the weather improves.
{
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5
Jay had given us the goods. Now it was our job to make them visually appealing and easy to understand
for all those readers that didn’t have Jay’s level of expertise (which was, umm, all of them). We took his
draft and edited it to make it more succinct. We wanted farmers to get the information they needed, and
we wanted them to get it quickly.
Prevented
Planting We added formatting to make the report more
Guidelines
reader-friendly. This included eye-catching
Spring 2013 headlines, sub-headlines to break up the text,
and lots of white space to keep the report
clean. We used Jay’s fantastic flow chart and
we added several hyperlinks that the reader
could click from within the PDF. This allowed
Prevented Planting in 2013
Spring 2013 has been an unexpectedly wild and wet ride. The Midwest has seen
the reader to immediately access the sites
we were discussing with just one click; no
record rainfall, including the wettest spring on record for the state of Iowa. Parts of
Iowa and Minnesota saw over 20 inches of rain in the month of May alone. With this
much rain during planting season, some farmers across the region are worried that
they won’t even be able to replant this year. Due to the weather patterns this spring,
need to log on to a browser or do multiple
there has been a lot of concern towards prevented planting for the 2013 crop year.
Prevented planting is being driven by wet field conditions.
Google searches.
Because of this concern Growers Edge has put together a 2013 Prevented Planting
Guidelines document to help explain the procedures for a Prevented Planting claim.
Note that the RMA Handbook is 121 pages of detail. To help our Members better
understand the decision making process we have created the following flow chart.
Please contact your Agent on your exact situation. Our goal is to provide you with a
much better understanding of the process.
info !
agr icul ture
more gre at you !
Foll ow us for ity of far mers just like
mun
Join a com
Flow-Chart: Crop
Was Planted
Facebook Twitter Blog Videos
We included links on every page to the Growers
Edge website that users could access simply by
clicking on the Growers Edge logo. For readers that
wanted to learn more about Growers Edge and the
company’s free resources for farmers, they were
only one click away on every single page they read.
We recommend this strategy: always make it as
easy as possible for people to learn more about your
company. (You’ll notice you can click on the Freaky
agric ulture info!
Follow us for more great
farmers just like you!
Join a community of
Fresh name on the bottom left of this page!)
Facebook Twitte
r Blog Videos
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6
This process was completed in 48 hours from writing to formatting to publishing. We
then decided to give this report away for free in order to increase our reach. In
order to expose people to the idea of Growers Edge as an industry thought leader,
we needed as many people as possible to see this report. We didn’t even require a
name or email address to gain access to the report!
We had our free report. It was chock-full of helpful and timely information. It even
looked nice. Now we needed to target the people that would see it.
Facebook Ads Targeting
Facebook Users who...
• Who live in the United States
• Who live in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas,
Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska,
Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota or Wisconsin
• Between the ages of 25 and 64
• Like Farming, #Dairy farming, #Wheat,
#Soybean, #Pig farming, #Maize, #Farm
or #Agriculture
• Speak any form of English
= 2,800,000 users
We put together a Facebook Ads campaign to increase the visibility of this report. Our first step was
targeting the audience for this campaign. Growers Edge has members all across the country, but
the majority of their users are in the Midwest. Since our paper discussed flooding that took place in
the Midwest, we only included states in that region in our targeting.
As you can see, we targeted a wide age range. We wanted to include the young farmer who might
be more active on Facebook, but we also wanted to target the decision makers on the farm who
are typically in their 40’s and 50’s. The interests we targeted are pretty self-explanatory. They are
common Midwest farming interests, so we wanted to make sure we were reaching those Facebook
users who mentioned those interests.
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7
f any
p o r ta nt part o impro ve
an im can’t
Testing is g campaign. Yo u d social
in a n
a dvertis can’t measure, of the easiest
u
what yo g ives yo u so me ys to test
g a
marketin cost-effective w e what works
t s e
an d mos ferent a ds to
if
several d
Now with our target audience set, we set up two slightly different ads (for
testing purposes) to run for two weeks on a cost-per-thousand-impressions
(CPM) basis at a maximum budget of $20 per day.
Running
y
that yo u o ur a ds on a CP
M basis
seen by pay ever y time m
1,000 vie yo ur a d eans
whether wers, re is
they clic ga
k on it o rdless of
r not
Ad #1 Ad #2
Ready. Set. Go.
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8
We had two ads running, but we noticed that the one with
the picture of flooded fields was much more effective. So,
we quickly paused Ad #2 and rolled with Ad #1. (Test your
ads so you don’t waste money!)
In the nearly two weeks that Ad #1 was running, it earned
our page 541 Page Likes (39 per day). With our budget, it
{ What is “click-through rate”, you ask?
ended up costing roughly $0.44 per Like. The ad enjoyed Clickthrough rate is the percentage of
a 0.749% click-through rate, which is 16x better than people who actually click on your ad,
compared to the number of people who
the Facebook average of 0.05%. It also was responsible see the ad. If your ad is visually
for an additional 129 Likes on our Page posts. appealing and contains a strong call-
to-action, people will naturally be more
In all, our campaign reached 53,888 people an average of inclined to click on it to learn more. These
1.9 times.
ads earn a higher clickthrough rate. {
Total for the entire campaign:
$261.35
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9
53,888 people saw campaign
541 new Likes
This simple ad campaign reached 53,888 people and it earned us 541 new Likes before it ended.
But more than that, it gave us continued exposure to those 541 people. And since the average
Facebook user has 229 friends, this campaign gave us continued access to around 123,889 new
Facebook users (541 Likes x 229 friends). All of these people now have the potential ability to see
our messaging and interact with our posts right from their Facebook Newsfeed. If you divide the
money we spent by the new audience we can reach, it comes out to $0.002/person.
123,889 new Facebook users reached
$0.002 per person reached
FreakyFreshMarketing.com | 515-371-5973
10Not every Facebook Ads campaign is based on gaining new Likes.
After all, we don’t just want a huge number of followers, we want
followers that are actively engaged with us! Quality over quantity, right?
To increase interaction on the Growers Edge Facebook page, we
developed a 4th of July photo contest to showcase how different
farmers celebrate the holiday. Farmers are a particularly patriotic
bunch, and we knew that tying a promotion together with the 4th of
July would speak to that American spirit.
To participate in the promotion, farmers and their families submitted photos
of their 4th of July celebration, and the winning photo (as selected by our
committee) won a box of Omaha Steaks. The prize from Omaha Steaks
was important, because as you know, Midwest farmers love their beef.
Why a photo contest? Well, photos are easier to contribute than videos,
and they are easy to engage with. Photos catch your eye and people
quickly connect with them in ways that statuses, links, and even videos
can’t compete with.
We wanted to show the “human side” of Growers Edge with this contest.
While barbeques, fireworks, and swimming don’t directly contribute to
Growers Edge’s core business, these activities do contribute to their
subscribers’ daily lives. These photos helped the Growers Edge followers
feel like they were part of the Growers Edge community in a fun way. It
sparked a lot of great interaction on the Facebook page with photo
submissions, photo Likes, and comments on photos. Over 31 photos from
all over the country were submitted, including one from Afghanistan!
FreakyFreshMarketing.com | 515-371-5973
11As the photo contest ended, we announced our big winner (Kim N.). To highlight Kim and really
make her feel special, we changed our entire cover photo to feature her winning photo. We also
posted to the Growers Edge Facebook page when we sent her the Omaha Steaks a few days
later. This post worked for several reasons: it brought up the photo contest even after it ended,
it validated our contest with proof that we rewarded the winner, and it encouraged anyone who
didn’t participate in our contest to look out for our next one.
The contest ran for 1 week and gained the Growers Edge Page 1,017 Page “Engagements”
(interactions) through a few different page post boosts. This means we took one of our Growers
Edge Facebook posts and we “boosted” it to a wider audience than just the followers who have
liked the Growers Edge Page.
57 new Page Likes
1,017 Page engagements
We boosted our contest announcement post to “Friends of Fans” at 1.385% click-through rate (over 27x
the Facebook average) at $.26 per engagement. We also did a post boost to only Growers Edge fans,
so all of our followers would be sure to see the contest. This boost received a 4.415% click-through rate
(over 88x the Facebook average) at only $.04 per engagement.
We spent a total of $200 on these various post boosts. While the money was not evenly distributed
between the boosts, you can see that they each were a very cost-effective way to attract more follower
engagement. Although not the direct goal of this promotion, we also garnered 57 new Page Likes for
Growers Edge.
FreakyFreshMarketing.com | 515-371-5973
12Conclusion
In a span of about 3 weeks, we managed to increase Growers
Edge’s Facebook presence and validate their Facebook Page as one
that Midwest farmers wanted to follow fo relevant information and
entertainment. We gained 598 new Facebook Likes, improving our
reach to over 60,000 Facebook users during that time. We also ran
a successful photo contest which saw 31 different photos and over
1,000 interactions on the Growers Edge Facebook Page.
FreakyFreshMarketing.com | 515-371-5973
13Who Are We?
We are a small two-man team in central Iowa. We love working with local businesses and
helping them interact with more prospects and customers through social media. We live in a
very digital, very transparent age and that can be a very exciting thing for your organization
when it is managed correctly. We help local Iowa businesses do just that. Click the logo below
to learn more about us and who we’ve worked with.
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to your inbox. Give us a shout on Twitter and let us know what the next report should focus on.
And as always, stay fresh.
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@FreakyFreshMktg
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