Daniel Kemp (Natural England‘s National Website Manager) recently managed a Facebook campaign for Natural England. I was lucky enough to have a chance to catch up with him recently. To learn more about running Facebook campaigns yourself take a look at our training workshop. Here is his account of how the campaign went.
Proposal
6 campaigns targeting 5 of our key audiences:
- People interested in walking
- People interested in health/fitness
- People over 65
- Families with young children
- Potential walk leaders
Plus, another advert targeted just at friends of people who already like our Facebook page.
Action
We targeted these groups using Facebook’s segmentation capabilities, here’s an example:
Potential walk leaders – estimated reach: 69,320
For the adverts targeted at friends, Facebook adds some information about a friend who likes the page, so you’re more likely to click on it and like the page too.
Clicking on the ads
We set up dedicated landing pages on our website to try and track what people did once they had clicked on an ad. We tried to use strong calls to action to get them to do one of the following things:
- Search for health walks near you
- Find out how to join a health walk
- Follow us on Facebook
- Sign up to our e-newsletter
An example landing page: http://www.wfh.naturalengland.org.uk/fb3/walking-for-health
The results
- 6 campaigns ran from 1 January to 18 March 2011 (77 days).
- The adverts were displayed on Facebook 23,583,561 times during this period.
- Across all 6 campaigns, we paid an average of 33p per click. In that period, we received as many clicks just from this campaign as we would normally receive in a whole month from all other sources. During this period, 22% of our total traffic came from Facebook.
- Fans of our Facebook page at the start of the campaign: 254
- Fans at the end of our campaign: 2,130
- After clicking on adverts, what the user did next:
- Liked our Facebook page = 37%
- Searched for walks with WalkFinder = 23%
- Found out about becoming a walk leader = 19%
- Found out how to join a health walk = 6%
- Clicked on the ‘subscribe to our e-newsletter’ link = 0.3%
Evaluation
We deem this trial of Facebook ads to be a success, based on the volume of traffic it created (in itself, the equivalent of nearly 1 month’s “normal” traffic to the site). We know that this is quality traffic too, because of the targeted nature of the adverts. This was good value for money as a targeted advertising campaign.
The growth of the ‘fan base’ via our Facebook page is phenomenal compared to many standard NGO/public sector Facebook pages. We now engage with our followers on a daily basis, and there are frequent requests for information about health walks. This is truly the online equivalent of spreading the message by ‘word of mouth’.
More information
To learn how to run Facebook campaigns yourself take a look at our social media marketing training.
Facebook Ad webinar
If you’re interested in learning more about how to use Facebook Ads to engage inactive people from hard-to-reach groups then you can sign up for our free webinar. In it we’ll cover these steps in more detail and give you a step-by-step guide to setting your ads up.