Advertising on Facebook… For Free!
Posted on : 28-04-2009 | By : Lyndon | In : Advertising
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OK, I bet the post title grabbed your attention. And now I have your attention I’ll explain how just 2 minutes of my time netted more sales than a £250 targetted Google Adsense campaign.
I’ve been a member of Facebook for a while now and have amased the completely average total of around 250 friends. Not bad for a 30-something guy, but not great either. But these 250 (real-life) friends helped me achieve something that all of my online marketing nouse couldn’t… Allow me to explain.
For a while now the wife and I have made a little extra income from making custom cakes and a while ago I hit upon the idea that we could generate more business by making a simple website with a small gallery. This coupled with a Google Adsense account, geo-targeted to our local area seemed like a winner of an idea. Unfortunately this idea proved fruitless and left us over £250 out of pocket, which was about the same as we currently charge for around 5 cakes! OUCH!
Fast forward a few months and I realised that for some reason I had neglected to put any cake photos onto Facebook. I just assumed that friends knew we made cakes, but as the famous saying goes “Assumption is the mother of all mistakes”. I simply added a few of my favourite cake photos to my profile and thought no more of it.
Within hours of posting 3 photos, I had received 5 firm orders for cakes along with 2 possibles and an enquiry as to whether we could cater for a buffet for 600 people.
The moral of this story is never underestimate the power of your own personal friend base, or network and never ever be afraid to show off.
Thanks to facebook we have now recouped the cost of the failed Adsense campaign and have learned to keep updating my profile with new cake and food pics as they are created.
Sometimes we have to get smacked in the face when the answer to marketing is right there. If used properly, Facebook and Twitter can be a primary source of free advertising with about 30 minutes of updating a day!
Good Luck with your business1
Sofia Hogan
I agree, Face book is a really great opportunity to rake in some money.
You are so right! Having friends do make a differance in sharring what you do and offer something that they want. You also will receive word of mouth from those friends. I have a myspace, facebook and some others. I do need to update my networking sites and get more friends. Thanks for reminding me how this could be a important tool.
Hello Lyndon,
I was just e-mailing my writing partner that we should start advertising our work from home blog, now that it’s up, running, and full of content! Looks like you and I are pondering the same things (just about 3 weeks apart)!
Andie and I are two work-from-home freelancers and our blog is http://www.pajamasatlunch.com. We cover topics like building one’s business and work/life balance. Please surf over and give us a read! I’m interested to read more from you too!
Take care,
Cheryl
Hi Lyndon, I have recently taken the time to learn more about FB and have found some great ways to promote yourself and your business withing FB. However this tip was not mentioned in the training, thanks, I think it’s a great point and could help many people, something else to update me FB with, Pics of the products I sell. Deon Hoffmann
PS, I like your blog, you have some real honest posts.
In my opinion there is 3 best advertisement tips: facebook, tweeter and social bookmarking.
I really enjoyed reading this post. I have in fact started a fan page on my face book for my website. It’s just new so I’m still in the throes of working out what works. This was great. Hopefully as my website gets bigger I can start to help others like you’ve helped me.
wow congrats gotta love the social networking friends. You prob learned a valuable lesson on the powers of social networking lol good story!