I’ve been experimenting with running some Facebook ads to promote DeclareMedia’s local business directories. I won’t discuss here whether it’s worth it or not since the data aren’t all in yet, but there are certainly ways to stretch each dollar spent.
At the moment, I’m experimenting specifically driving traffic to a national SEO firm directory. It would be easy to say “Gee, I hope everyone who clicks on my ad signs up for a $50/month listing,” but this is unrealistic, and to stop thinking there would be to miss out on other opportunities. What other opportunities? There are actually several things I would like someone clicking on the ad to do:
1. Sign up for a featured listing
2. If not #1, then at least sign up for a free listing
3. Go from the SEO directory to DeclareMedia.com and sign up for every other directory that’s a fit.
4. Sign up for the DeclareMedia affiliate program.
5. Tell all their friends, competitors, etc. about DeclareMedia.
6. Sign up for our monthly email newsletter.
7. Like our Facebook fan page.
8. Follow our twitter account.
9. Suggest any new directory categories they think we should add.
What am I doing to ensure that someone clicking on a Facebook ad does as many of these things as possible?
1. Trying to improve the 3-second-glance value of the directory so that it’s immediately obvious why they should get a featured listing or at least sign up for a free listing.
2. If they sign up, they receive a confirmation email inviting them to visit DeclareMedia.com to find other directories, as well as check out our affiliate program.
3. After the confirmation email (the next day, to be more exact) they receive another email with links to the other directories that are relevant to them, based on the category they already signed up in and their location. For example, if they signed up on our national SEO directory in Arizona, then chances are they’d also like to sign up on our Arizona SEO company directory. Since all our directories are assigned a category (such as “SEO”) and a location (i.e. “Arizona”), when someone signs up in the Arizona section of the national SEO directory, we can automatically send them an email containing other links to other directories that are also part of the SEO category and are tied to Arizona.
4. We are in the midst of integrating our email newsletter signup into the directory account creation process.
There are a few things we’re missing, like pushing people to our Facebook fan page, our twitter account, etc., although that’s mostly because I just haven’t thought of it…ok, fixed. I just updated the confirmation email to include those links, as well as some other stuff. Thank goodness my programmer set all this stuff up so that it’s easy for me to make these types of modifications.
The point is that if you’re not thinking about all your objectives and how they can be tied together, then you’re not extending your Facebook advertising dollars. Of course the same could be said for any other form of advertising as well.
Got any ideas about how I could take it even further? Chirp away.
