EXCLUSIVE: New Case Study Shows Exactly Why You Should Invest in Facebook Ads

This case study was conducted on the ConnectingDirectors.com Facebook Page by DISRUPT Media utilizing the Funeral Social program they have designed specifically for funeral companies.

The new truth is, if you want to grow your funeral business through Facebook marketing, you will have to pay for advertising.

In years past, many pages on Facebook could do all right in terms of driving sales and traffic to websites without using advertising. But now, as more pages become serious Facebook marketers, you’re battling for diminishing space in your audience’s News Feeds. Demand for impressions, views and clicks is higher than ever, while the supply of News Feed space hasn’t grown to keep up.

So while Facebook is financially free if you want to grow your audience and business, advertising needs to be part of the plan.

Organic post reach on Facebook has plummeted to around 2% for pages with less than 10,000 likes. In recent news feed algorithm changes Facebook directly addressed the decrease in organic post reach:

Competition for each News Feed story is increasing. Because the content in News Feed is always changing, and we’re seeing more people sharing more content, Pages will likely see changes in distribution. For many Pages, this includes a decline in organic reach.

Facebook goes on to provide guidance on how to page owners should create content to maximize the post reach given the new algorithm changes:

Page owners should continue using the most effective strategy to reach the right people: a combination of engaging Page posts and advertising to promote your message more broadly. The fans you have matter. In addition to being some of the most loyal customers, fans also make the advertising on Facebook even more effective.

You can read the entire announce from Facebook here.

To test Facebook’s suggestion of finding the perfect mix of great content, boosted posts and advertising we did a 60 day case study with ConnectingDirectors.com

Why use, specifically, Facebook advertising for this test?

Well, the obvious reason is to test the new suggestions from to help battle the huge drop in organic reach. Do their suggestions work or is it a ploy to suck advertising money out of small businesses? The other reason comes down to how granule we can be with our ad targeting. Funeral companies are needing to reach a very niche facebook audience: funeral directors. Facebook provides excellent targeting options and the ability to use their ad tools to create ‘custom audience’ targeting lists.

Targeting Options

Facebook utilizes a number of worthwhile audience targeting methods. “But – Twitter, Google and a thousand other sites use audience targeting, too!” I hear you say. And yes, of course, they do. But the information that Facebook uses for its targeting makes it rather unique.

Facebook users build a fairly comprehensive profile about themselves when using the platform, and this can all be used to fine tune your target market.

Some of the data Facebook uses for targeted marketing includes:

• Location
• Age
• Gender
• Interests
• Education
• Job
• Life events
• Likes – brand connections, book/music/sport/film interests, etc
• Apps
• Groups
• Mobile device use
• Purchase behavior
• Travel

This is not a comprehensive list; just a few examples. It is the combination and cross-referencing of this spread of data that gives Facebook’s marketing its value. Arguably, no other social platform uses as unique a combination of information to target its users. This is what makes Facebook particularly useful for funeral companies targeting such a niche audience like funeral directors.

Custom audience targeting

Facebook’s Custom Audience features are virtually unrivaled by any other social medium. A Custom Audience is one a company can create on Facebook, by picking and choosing which targets to include. Custom Audiences comprise clients that a business already has a relationship with elsewhere. For example, a funeral company could use the e-mail addresses of their clients to create a Custom Audience on Facebook or they could even create a custom audience from website visitors.

The audience is compiled of people a brand already has a relationship with elsewhere, as they will need access to the following details to create the Custom Audience:

• Emails
• UIDS (Facebook user ID)
• Phone numbers
• App user IDs.

Users compile and upload this information, then Facebook matches it to the information its own users have input on their profiles. Successful matches are compiled into a list, and thus, a Custom Audience is created.

Case Study with ConnectingDirectors.com

For this case study with ConnectingDirectors.com we utilized the ‘custom audience’ targeting option and created a custom audience from ConnectingDirectors.com readers. ConnectingDirectors.com has a monthly reader base of 35,000 funeral professionals. Over a 60 day period we were able to create a custom facebook audience of 31,500 ConnectingDirectors.com readers. (Facebook was able to match 31,500 CD readers with their Facebook profile – FB then placed those users into a custom audience and we targeted ConnectingDirectors.com Facebook Like ads at that targeted audience of funeral professionals.)

At the start of the case study ConnectingDirectors.com only had 3,700 Facebook fans. A custom audience of 31,500 CD reader meant that a majority of ConnectingDirectors.com readers didn’t engage with the publication on Facebook.

Parameters of Case Study

Total budget for 60 day test: $600 ($10/day)

Total actual spend: $570

Spend for Page Like ads: $451

Spend for Boosted Posts: $118

We set 4 specific measurable goals for this case study:

• 100% Increase in Page Likes while paying less than $1.00 per Like
• 100% increase in per post reach and per post engagement
• 100% increase in click traffic driven back to ConnectingDirectors.com – as an online publication this is highly important
• Increase email subscribers

Click Here to See The Full Results of Our Case Study

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To learn more about Facebook ads visit: http://funeralsocial.com/ads/

Interested in how Funeral Social can help you successful embrace social media and Facebook advertising? Click here to see how our social media design process works.

Click here is schedule a demo and learn about how we could partner with you.

About Funeral Social

FUNERAL Social is a strategic, goal oriented approach to social media created by DISRUPT Media and designed specifically for the funeral profession. Learn more about our Social Media Design Process.