INTRO Do you want to know the secret to doing this yourself? The secret is YOU. Pretty cheesy, huh? Well, I ll show you some cool tools and a trick that my boss taught me in this case study report. I m going to detail how I launched a brand spanking new Facebook page, and managed to get pretty awesome traction on Facebook, without spending much money. Hopefully you ll find it valuable and be able to use this information in your own business, but in the end it s YOU who have to take action! First, let me start by telling you my story and how I got started My name is Alexandra Lu and I am Rob Rider s personal assistant. Before working for Rob I had a pretty hectic worklife. I worked full time to support myself and my family. I got pretty used to fighting hard to make things happen for myself. Long hours, crazy shifts, little compensation and even less enjoyment for life, work and everything in between. Then my life changed... I saw an ad on a job recruitment newsletter for a job as a personal assistant. Luckily enough, I got an interview and Rob saw enough potential in me that he hired me after a few days. I was so excited! I have always felt that new opportunities are amazing, and that s exactly how I felt when I got this job! If you don t know who Rob Rider is, let s just say that he is one of the most successful internet marketers I know of. He is not as famous as some but that s because his focus has been less on selling make money online products and more on doing real business online. Rob has sold tens of millions of dollars worth of products and services online, and has accumulated a net profit of $6 million +. I love learning about online marketing, and nowadays going to work is fun! As I said, I love new opportunities and this is exactly how I felt when I got the chance to start my own Facebook page!
Hopefully the information in this little case study will ensure that your life as a successful digital marketer is just around the corner. If Facebook has been hostile to you and you haven t really succeeded to get traffic, then you re in for a BIG change. How a newbie assistant built a Facebook page from scratch, reached 1,5 million people and built a targeted email list of 917 people in 2 weeks, spending only $42 bucks However, you might need to change some of your thinking in regards to HOW to use Facebook to drive traffic to your offers. Straight up ads can be expensive with Facebook, unless you re able to connect the perfect offer with the perfect audience. The tricks I m going to reveal in this case study will show you a different way to approach traffic and advertising on Facebook. I will give you the exact steps I took to get 917 new subscribers in just 2 weeks, spending only $42 on Ads. Traffic is the essence of any online business, and Facebook clearly has A LOT of it... Facebook is boosting about how you can easily and cheaply target and sell to people all over the world. Is this really the case though? For most online marketers the answer is NO, and it seems it s only getting harder! Regardless of the niche, Facebook is killing the reach you get with your posts and ads. And this 2.6% figure isn t something I made up
This is from social analytic and research firm Locowise. Here is a link if you want to check it out: http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/locowise-march-2015/619104 I came to understand pretty quickly from Rob that the art and science of getting results on Facebook involves strategically delivering content (yes, content!) that get people excited enough about, to take some form of action. Be it liking, sharing, subscribing or buying. NOW LET S GET DOWN TO BUSINESS! Facebook s algorithms have reduced the reach of posts, and this is especially true for posts with links and monetization intent. If you want to drive people to a squeeze page, make them an offer, give an ebook for free or anything like that, you re pretty much s**ewed in terms of organic reach, (or so most people think anyway...). Being successful with anything on Facebook these days, you HAVE to give Facebook what Facebook wants: Content that Facebook users like and interact with. You need to know what to post, and what to do with your posts once they get traction. Once you do understand the right strategy though, you ll be surprised how quickly you can grow your page and get traffic from Facebook. The crazy trick you will learn in this guide will blow up your traffic stats, I m sure of it! Not only that but you won t be spending fortunes on Facebook ads with lame results. A DIFFERENT APPROACH TO TRAFFIC Rob mentioned that he wanted to market some products in the anti-aging niche. There are some products for women that actually produce great results and make you look younger, (even if the results are mostly short-term). Some of these products have great mark-ups and Rob asked me to research this niche. One main problem with this niche is that Facebook does not allow before and after pictures in their ads. This makes it more difficult to advertise these types of products directly. So Rob suggested that I find another niche with middle age women who are passionate about looking and feeling great, and have a similar DEMOGRAPHIC as the anti-aging niche. I came up with the idea to start a Facebook page for proud grandmothers. Proud and happy grandmothers who love their grandkids to death, and Rob gave me the go ahead.
PICKING THE RIGHT NICHE... If you re going to build a new Facebook page from scratch, my advice is to always pick a passionate niche. It s all about testing what works, but finding the right niche of PASSIONATE fans can prove very successful. This was the case for me with our Proud Grandmothers niche. I was interested in this because the younger grandmas in this niche fitted the DEMOGRAPHIC really well for the anti-aging products. On Facebook you ll have the most success if your niche is passionate about their subject, (grandmas are always going to be passionate about their grandkids, right?). This niche also made it easy for me to find and create nice, funny, heart-warming pictures. This way I was able to promote posts with this kind of pictures, which made it easy to get likes and shares. Once you have your niche and your demographic it s time to promote your posts. You should think targeted posts that appeal to your niche. Something that will truly resonate with a passionate audience. Create an audience of at least 1 million, and make sure it s focused on your demographic. An audience of this size will help keep your cost per engagement low, and large interests are good for scaling. Building a Facebook fan page and an email list from that page is great, but you need to start by thinking about monetization first. How are you going to make money from your fan page and your email list? For my particular page the goal was clear: Build an email list, start establishing rapport with them and build up the trust factor. Only later on start promoting offers using my relationship with the list.
The goal of my page is to start promoting CPA offers and high quality anti-aging products to my list, but only after I have built up the trust factor and relationship with the list. The offers should obviously be highly suited for the demographics of my Facebook page, and this is the basis of this alternative traffic method. You can use Clickbank to find some relevant products for your niche in the beginning, but most likely you ll need other products to maximize your returns. Sort of against Rob s recommendation, I started some light monetization of the page early on. I had seen others do well with Teespring and I wanted see if we could sell some t-shirts on there. I started selling a baby onesie, (my reasoning was that grandmas like buying things for their grandkids but they probably LOVE buying things that make them feel good about being grandmas. My colleague and I came up with this design: Cute, right? Well, it didn t sell well. I had several hundred clicks on the link but I think only 5 people bought this onesie. As disappointing as it was, I learnt a couple of important lessons from this. 1. When selling t-shirts the quality of the design on the t-shirt/onesie is really important! 2. It is better to focus on building and nurturing your email list in the beginning, and focus on monetization once you have reached a certain level. This is what Rob had advised, but since this project was my baby I wanted to experiment.
RUNNING CONTESTS: TOOLS AND LANDING PAGES The idea was that I would use this Facebook page to try and build an email list with the right demographic, and that we could then market anti-aging products and CPA offers further down the line, after I have built up some trust. Even though I hadn t sold many of my baby onesies I figured it might still be a good prize for a contest, and that it could help me get some subscribers. At this point the page was still very young, (only a few days old). For the contest itself I used a tool called Upviral and connected it with our Aweber list in a few easy steps. Well, truth be told, it wasn t that easy. It took me some time to realize that the API integration was messing things up and I had to ask Aweber to set the API to single opt-in. It wasn t enough to do it inside the Aweber account because that doesn t affect the API. After a few tickets to Aweber I had the contest up and running properly on Upviral. The great thing about Upviral is that once you set it up, it monitors all your leads and sends them emails with trackable sharing buttons. It s an amazing tool for running viral contests! You can also create your landing & thank you pages from within Upviral and for our viral campaigns, it proved to be perfect.
Rob has been experimenting a lot with Lead Form Ads on Facebook over the last few weeks/months, because the conversion rate can be really good. This is because the Facebook user never has to enter their name and email address. They just click a Submit button and their name and best email address (the one they use to login to Facebook with), is automatically passed to your lead form from Facebook. It s really a game-changer compared to the traditional squeeze page/sign-up form. However, to use it effectively, (without having to download.csv files from Facebook and upload to Aweber, and in order for the user to get their first email immediately after subscribing), you need to use a connecting software like ConnectLeads, (this software is made by the same guys that created Upviral and I highly recommend it). For this contest I created a very simple landing page using Upviral: The Thank-you-page is just as simple and clean:
An important aspect whenever you re running contests or giveaways on Facebook is to always, always add a disclaimer in the ad/post. Something as simple as this will do: This promotion is not in any way sponsored, endorsed, associated with or administered by Facebook. This will greatly help in keeping your Facebook Ad account safe...
TESTING AND GETTING TRAFFIC Now, with the contest set-up and ready to roll, I only needed a way to drive good, targeted traffic to it, (this is where things will start to get interesting, so keep reading... ;)). I already had a couple of posts that I was boosting. I was using a budget of around $2-3 in the beginning, a couple of times for each post, and monitoring the results. The key here is to look for posts that have the potential to go viral if given a boost. With a brand new page you need to throw a couple of bucks at your posts to see what sticks with your audience. I had made 6 or 7 posts on the page that I was playing around and testing with. What I wanted at this point was a post that people would like and share (A LOT!). At this point the post didn t have any mention of the contest or links to the squeeze page etc. That would have IMMEDIATELY killed the potential for it to go viral. After three boosts of $2 or one of the posts was starting to behave quite nicely. People seemed to enjoy it and liked to share it. The organic reach was about 100,000 at this point. The other posts weren t doing as well so I started increasing the budget and soon after I implemented the CHANGE that brought in 917 subscribers in the span of a couple of days.
PREPARING FOR THE MAGIC TRICK Post content that you think is good enough, (funny, cute or share worthy in some way), and then give it small boosts. I would recommend that you start with $2-$5/post to see what people like and are willing to share. At this point it is CRUCIAL that your post doesn t have any links in it to squeeze pages etc. As soon as your best post starts to get shared on Facebook it s time to get that snowball effect you are looking for. How? If your post is good enough you simply need to add some more money to the boost to get it to spread more virally. Try adding around $20, or maybe even up to $100 if you are comfortable with that. The key here is that the post should be doing well in the wild and spreading virally amongst as many people as possible, BEFORE you implement the magic trick. This way you actually force Facebook to take your money and promote your post massively. Facebook s algorithm favours posts that gets hundreds of shares, likes and comments quickly, and if you add a boost to a post like this, (that doesn t have links or monetization intent ), then Facebook will pump it out big time, giving you a great reach! THE MAGIC TRICK Well, you might ask yourself what is the whole point of having funny pictures or videos going viral? Likes, shares and comments, although great for your page s authority, don t mean nothing. You can t monetize likes, right? RIGHT, BUT WHAT WE ARE GOING TO DO NOW IS EDIT OUR VIRAL POST ONCE IT START HITTING THE VIRAL CURVE. THAT is the secret or the magic trick! You feed Facebook with content that has the potential to go viral. You may have to test the waters first to find what s catching on, and what people like to share, but it s not hard. Then you edit your post and include your squeeze page!
WON T FACEBOOK NOTICE? Of course Facebook is going to notice, but by now it s already too late! Your post is already running wild with viral organic reach, and Facebook can no longer stop it! People are going to continue to share your post, even after you have changed it to include the link to your squeeze page! So what should you say in your edited post? It can be anything really that will drive people to your squeeze page, or perhaps even your CPA offer, (as long as you have cloaked the link). What I did was create a contest. My best post was just the picture of the cute baby on the phone with my funny message when it first started to spread virally. There was no description and obviously no link, otherwise Facebook would never have ALLOWED it to spread virally! After all, Facebook wants you to PAY for ads if you want to promote links to your website!! It was just a cute/funny picture, the typical thing that loads of people like and are happy to share with their friends and family. After it went viral I edited the post and included this text and link: FREE contest to win 3 awesome baby onesies. Grandma will love to see this on her favorite grandchild! Click here to win now: http://t-shirtinsider.com/onesie-contest This promotion is not in any way sponsored, endorsed, associated with or administered by Facebook.
So what could you use for your text and link to your squeeze page? How about something like this: Do you love {your keyword}? Then this is for you! Get this awesome and unique {insert cool freebie/item} here -> link. You can also start monetizing your page right away by driving traffic to your store or directly to a CPA offer, if you prefer that to building an email list. You will obviously have less trust with your fans, but you WILL get clicks, and if the offer is good enough you will make money. Once you go viral, not even Facebook can stop you (in the short-term), it s that powerful! You just have to be quick and edit your post at the right time, when it is still rising in popularity. BUT WAIT! YOU CAN T EDIT A BOOSTED POST, RIGHT!? Well it s both yes, and no.
But in reality, YOU CAN! Facebook doesn t allow you to edit a post once you have boosted it, for this exact reason! But there is a loophole! This step isn t as obvious as you might think and there s a certain trick to making it work. Very few people actually know how to edit a post that s already been boosted... What you need to do is Delete the ad. Don t worry, it s not going to delete your actual post, but you WILL lose some of your data from the boost that you just made, (not your likes, shares or other post data, but only your advertising stats). But do you really care? You are here to make money and build an email list, right? I thought so! You boost your posts from the timeline at the start. Then once you have given it enough of a boost to go viral you delete the boost and edit the post. Simple as that! Only you can decide when that is enough virality for your particular post. Ok, so how do you do it? 1. You go to View results (or it will be the amount left if your boost is still running):
2. Click on the little Cog settings wheel in the left bottom corner and simply pick Delete ad from the menu. As I mentioned earlier, this will also delete all the associated data of your boost, (such as the reach, post clicks, link clicks, actions, budget, audience and so on) BUT YOU CAN NOW EDIT YOUR VIRAL POST AND START MONETIZING IT! 3. Now you simply edit your post like you would have done with any post that you hadn t boosted. By clicking the drop down menu in the top right hand corner.
NOW GO DO IT! I am going to tell you the secret to doing this yourself, and you may be annoyed at my answer, (but I hope not). The secret is actually much simpler than you might think. The secret is this GET OVER YOURSELF! Yes, that really is the secret! If you are going to succeed with this you have to stop worrying and JUST GO DO IT! GET OVER YOUR FEAR GET OVER YOUR EGO GET OVER YOUR PRE-CONCEIVED NOTIONS GET OVER YOUR LIMITATIONS MAKE A DECISION AND JUST DO IT! I am always worried about what people will think, (and I m still worried what you ll think of this case study of mine!). You see, before I started this project I was worried that my work would suck. I m a newbie...who would want to listen to me? But I know that my results were better than most people who start a Facebook page, and I understood how valuable the magic trick is to someone spending too much on ads, but I was still afraid to fail. But I went ahead anyway, and I hope you will benefit greatly from my case study!
Just focus on what is it that you truly want? Financial Freedom? Time Freedom? Whatever it is you want, you have to start somewhere Just follow what I did in this case study and join me on the BRIGHT side of Facebook! Alexandra Lu In case you missed it NEW FACEBOOK AD TRAINING HELPS YOU GET MORE QUALITY TRAFFIC FROM FACEBOOK... (93% DISCOUNT)