Well, we are about 8 months into FaceBook at this point. We are up to just about 1100 fans (not bad for a town of 10,000) allthough insights tells me that a quite a few are from out of town. Who knows how they find us other than a few members of this board that follow us.
We have also been advertising on FB pretty consistently. We do get a lot of lookers and some things we have tried have generated comment around town and from customers so I know it gets seen.
Here are a few conclusions and thoughts:
- It is crucial to be in this space… BUT you have to participate in it… not just put up a page and let it sit there.
- FB does NOT drive transactions very well. It is more of a “top of mind” tool.
- To the extent it can drive transactions, it has to be really killer deals to get any traction at all.
- Include pictures in your posts as often as possible.
- Connect with and talk about local people and other local businesses on your page.
- You have to work to drive up your fan base. Until you have a fan base, your posts on the page are just shouting in the wind. FB ads do work very well for building the fan base.
- Giving away free pies once in a while on FB will get your fans to read your posts.
- Giving away a $100 pizza party for the Superbowl got more people to click on our ad, become fans, post on our page than anything else we have done.
- Offering $10 off your first on-line order to fans generated the highest click rate of any FB ad we have done.
- Running an ad targeted at non-fans with a picture of the pizza and a description with no logo or store name also generated a ton of clicks which took those people to our page.
- Paying for clicks rather than impressions will generate a lot of impressions if your ad is one that gets clicked.
- If your ad gets clicked a LOT, it is cheaper to bid really high for impressions.