Facebook Primer: How To Use FB To Find New Students

Many of you have embraced Facebook advertising, seeking out your avatars and actually having fun finding people who love to be your students, before they even know it. Amazing! To-day's blog is a basic primer, mixing together different concepts I've already covered, but putting them all together in a simple road map to manage your learning curve to greater understanding, skill and joy. First, if you intend to spend money - and not use social interaction as your primary method to gather folks - then you will need a Page. Make sure your Page represents your USP (Unique Selling Point) which means it says something in it's title that leaves your avatar thrilled (s)he has just discovered a new home. Second, do not invite anyone to the page who could not be your student! How many people Like your Page is meaningless. How many people Like your page who could be your student is meaningful. Make sure all your Likes are from prospective, or past, students. Ideally your Page could be a place to engage your students, but it doesn't have to. Third, the reason you collect students to Like your Page is giving you a custom audience to whom you will later communicate (advertise) with. This is your new "flyer" of years ago - your newsfeed post about whatever you are doing/offering. Facebook will let you target just the people from your Page, for less than a few cents each. Such laser precision, almost costless advertising has never been available before… …so start collecting 1,000s of them! Remember - Before Your Start Therefore, if you intend to take Facebook advertising seriously, start by: 1. Defining your avatar(s) based on your current practise or wish; 2. Making a Page with a good USP for that avatar; then 3. Getting your avatar to Like your Page. A simple message such us "Want less Back Pain? Like Me!" is an obvious example. Be obvious. Be simple. Be outrageous - try many different kinds of ads and notice which are effective. Some Basic Technical Advice When Making Ads IMAGES When making your Like ad, ignore the option to make 6 different images for the one ad. You need to test the effectiveness of each Like ad, but with 6 rotating images, how can you know which one was most effective? Better you make 3 different ads, each with a different image but the same text. It all depends on your time, but I recommend doing at least three different Like ads to the same audience, but changing the image and/or text so you can find out the most effective message. NEWSFEED/RIGHT COLUMN Remove the "Desktop News Feed" option (look for the "Remove" link nearby) on your Like ad. Remove the "Mobile News Feed" option also. All that is left is the "Right Column" add. Click on that and your RC add will be shown. Like ads work best from the RC (Right Column) of Facebook on Desktop. Mobile is something else, leave that for later. (How many Like adds have you seen on your smart phone?) A CLR (Click Through Rate) of 1% or more is a good result i.e. for every 100 people who saw your ad, one person clicked on it. When your CTR is under 1% cancel the ad and try another way. In our Yoga campaign, we have reached a CTR as high as 8.696% i.e. 8 in every 100 people Like our Page. Starting from zero 2 months ago, we now have 1,084 Likes. That cost around 50cents each, total spend of around $400. Two students joining our Yoga campaign would pay for that. ORGANISING YOUR ADS Facebook has created a system to organise your work. At the top level is Campaigns. One campaign is all about getting Likes for your Page. Another Campaign is all about engaging them in this particular kind of content. Another Campaign around another kind of content. Like that - organise around intentions/content type. The next level within each Campaign is Add Sets. Never put more than 3 adds in one Add Set. And each of those 2/3 adds should only be variations on the same ad. The reason is so you can easily isolate the performance of one kind of add. Throw too different kinds of ads in one Ad Set, and you can meaningfully compare their performances against each other. You've Got 1,000 Likes - What Next? Continue your Like campaign. Forever. Eventually you will have soaked up every local avatar who is on Facebook, and you will know because your Like ads won't get many Likes. Until that day happens, continue with it! However, at a 1,000 Likes it's worth starting to engage them in your story/content. Getting In Front of Your Avatars Now you can start on News Feed adds that are only seen by people who Liked your Page. Start a new campaign add. Choose "Post Page Engagements" when selecting your ad type, then select your Page from the drop down menu that will then appear (if you have more than one Page). Are you getting the idea? Now you going to be putting a message into the newsfeed of all the people who Liked your page! Forgot about all the demographics now, just scroll down to "Connections" and click the radio button next to the one that says "Only people connected to [your Page]." That's it basically, now make your News Feed. You can choose a post that you have already made organically - which will be good because it already has Likes, even comments, associated with it. It does NOT appear as a sponsored story, it just appears like a newsfeed along with everyone else. Of course Facebook can change this any day (maybe they will if people start to protest) but for now that is how it works. What Is My News Feed Post Going To Be About? You know what your Avatar wants to read - put that there with a simple CTA (Call To Action) to go to your website (which is niched to them, right?) You do not want to directly sell on Facebook. Do that on your website. The purpose of your website is to collect their name and email - if you have done your homework, Facebook has done the job of getting them to look at your website. Now your website takes over the job of getting them on to your List. To engage them, start feeding them good content. Even before your website CTA yet, just give. They need to welcome you in their feed - they won't if you start by demanding they must work for your content. Be generous to start - this is a long game plan. That is why a serious step in my 12 Point Plan is your ability to write about what you do. This is where Aho-Alexander comes in: dumbed down Alexander, which is actually genius Alexander because you can deliver something effective through words alone. This is one reason why niching is so critical to your success - because when a person has a highly skilled activity that you understand well, they can absorb sophisticated concepts from you (at your website) and apply them effectively to what they do. Their sensitivity is high - they can detect small changes that can be significant to them. Are you able to deliver content like that? For the back pain people - for example - constructive rest is an Aho-Alexander exercise. Get the idea? Start thinking about content like that, and start delivering it through newsfeed ads on your Page. People will start to be curious, people will remember you. You can use the statistics both on your Page, and in your advertising account, to see what headlines grab the most attention. This way you learn more about the proclivities and needs of your avatar, and so hone your message to increase your attractiveness to them. Good luck - print this one out and keep it handy. Keep sharing your successes and failures - we love them both - on our own Facebook page. Basic Members click here. Pro Members click here.