Facebook Ads

My strategy for Facebook advertising is to get fans. It's that simple. I want my ads to interest people enough to want more information from me in the form of following my page. I'm willing to spend money to obtain this because I know people who are engaged with my store, by becoming fans, are vastly more likely to respond to a call to action than traditional advertising. We're fast approaching 1,000 fans, and much of that has to do with this marketing strategy.

Clicks per day, based on each ad campaign

The key to advertising on Facebook is lots of trial and error, done as frequently as possible. If you think posting information on a page twice daily is hard (the recommended amount), I've seen marketers recommend new ads once a week or more. I'm not that devoted to the process, but I do check my ad stats to see what's working and what's not. For example, looking at the above chart, our kids games ad that I recently created appears to be a dud. Likewise, a birthday special is just too hit or miss to snag an interested person at the exact moment. As ads begin to peter out and produce fewer results, I'll start a new ad campaign.

My most successful ads are simply those targeted at people in my area interested in the games we sell. These are awareness ads for the most part. Hey, there's a game store near you!  I'll also target friends of fans. This second tier ad draws as many people as the first one. These two categories fall under "My Ads" in the chart. After that, I create ads that highlight what I offer and differentiates my store from my competitors.

What do I have that they don't? There's an ad for the Dresden Files RPG, since our competitors are not into role-playing games. We advertise our two Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Terminals, since we're the only store in the Bay Area with two and the only store in Contra Costa County with any. Another ad touts that we carry every Pathfinder product. Finally, we have the occasional event ad, if it's likely to draw across all our departments, like our quarterly auctions.

I don't bother with ads for standard events that everyone has, like a Magic release. I also don't attempt to sell something direct to a customer or send them elsewhere, like my web page, or an online store (which we don't have). I also don't put any effort into targeting other stores or their customers. There's just no need and Facebook thankfully makes this difficult.