Who else should I be targeting on facebook? Financial advice sector.

[whiteeclipse]

Hi everyone, finishing up with my website which is for financial advice. I'm getting ready to launch ads on facebook. I'm thinking of doing impressions first then I'll try CPC. Did you have better success with Page Post Engagement or Clicks to Website to drive traffic to your website?

So I'm trying to target people who have interest in Suze Orman, Dave Ramsey, Howard Clark and Mint.com. I'm also thinking about targeting people who also like lifehacker.com. Since my website is a financial advice site, who else can I target?

edit: Not selling a product or service, want to drive traffic to our website so users can explore and engage within our free website.

 

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[OnlineGodfather]

What is the purpose of your ads? Just users click and come to your website and then what?

Do you have a product or service there you are selling as part of your financial advice site?

I would suggest that you start building email list.

 

[whiteeclipse]

What is the purpose of your ads? Just users click and come to your website and then what?

Do you have a product or service there you are selling as part of your financial advice site?

I would suggest that you start building email list.

Our website is free of use, we hope to drive enough traffic and create income from ads on our website. The purpose for the facebook ads is to drive traffic to our website so users can engage and explore within our website. (We and our means me)

Not selling a product or service.

Thank you for your advice for building a email list but I don't think this will work for our vision. I think we will try facebook ads first and then try google banners.

 

[OnlineGodfather]

Ok so content on the website is what should attract the user. Now when the user lands from your ad onto your website, do you have website made in such way that someone who is new knows what to do next.

Relying only on that user will come to your website and explore is not something that i would personally do.

Building email list is good because when you have new content you can remind your followers that you have new content and they should check it out. I think that is powerful and something you should definitely think about if you want to build a business around content.

Good luck!

 

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[whiteeclipse]

Ok so content on the website is what should attract the user. Now when the user lands from your ad onto your website, do you have website made in such way that someone who is new knows what to do next.

Relying only on that user will come to your website and explore is not something that i would personally do.

Building email list is good because when you have new content you can remind your followers that you have new content and they should check it out. I think that is powerful and something you should definitely think about if you want to build a business around content.

Good luck!

Thanks for your advice.

Yes the content on the website is what will attract the user. Yes based on the ads and when they land on the website the user will know and understand what to do next.

Yes many websites take different routes for their business model, our vision is creating a product like fmylife.com, textsfromlastnight.com, twitter.com so basically a website based on users coming to explore, create content and make comments.

Most of the content will be user created content based.

 

[Nik Krohn]

If you are not selling a product or service and are just getting them familiar with your site, I would NOT drive them to your site. I have spent over 100k on FB ads last year alone.

Here is what I would do: Get people to like your FB page and then engage via newsfeed and promoted posts. I would rather drive the same person to the site 10 times and get them engaged that way then to have them come 1 time to your site just to have them likely bounce.

Then launch a FB ads retargeting campaign. If they come to your site because they like your page and they engaged that way, it will be significantly easier and CHEAPER to get them there through the retargeting. This is how you build your "love group" or brand advocates!

PS - Post your link so I can confirm this strategy

 

[whiteeclipse]

If you are not selling a product or service and are just getting them familiar with your site, I would NOT drive them to your site. I have spent over 100k on FB ads last year alone.

Here is what I would do: Get people to like your FB page and then engage via newsfeed and promoted posts. I would rather drive the same person to the site 10 times and get them engaged that way then to have them come 1 time to your site just to have them likely bounce.

Then launch a FB ads retargeting campaign. If they come to your site because they like your page and they engaged that way, it will be significantly easier and CHEAPER to get them there through the retargeting. This is how you build your "love group" or brand advocates!

PS - Post your link so I can confirm this strategy

Great advice, thank you. Yes it makes more sense to have users like the facebook page, have them engage with your ads through newsfeed and promoted posts.

I post a link later on, I'll keep you posted.

Thanks again.

 

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[Boo Blizzi]

If you are not selling a product or service and are just getting them familiar with your site, I would NOT drive them to your site. I have spent over 100k on FB ads last year alone.

Here is what I would do: Get people to like your FB page and then engage via newsfeed and promoted posts. I would rather drive the same person to the site 10 times and get them engaged that way then to have them come 1 time to your site just to have them likely bounce.

Then launch a FB ads retargeting campaign. If they come to your site because they like your page and they engaged that way, it will be significantly easier and CHEAPER to get them there through the retargeting. This is how you build your "love group" or brand advocates!

PS - Post your link so I can confirm this strategy

This is a brilliant strategy. I spent quite a few dollars on FB over the last year as well, but I didn't use retargeting. I built up a fan page and posted links to the website from there. I know I am getting organic traffic from my efforts so dropping a cookie on them to get them back only makes sense.

 

[MayaMagpie]

I think building a fanpage is a great strategy and much cheaper in the long run. From what I understand, you're basically trying to do an ad arbitrage - Driving paid traffic to your site in the hope people will click on your ads and bring more money in than you spend. For this model to work, your traffic needs to be quite cheap (unless your ads pay really, really well).

As for targeting, you can use Audience Insights to determine your perfect website visitor and see if you can sharpen your targeting from there. I don't know if you only use interest targeting so far - It might make sense to use gender & age targeting as well, at least for specific campaigns. Financial advise is such a large field, you may have more success if you use different campaigns specifically targeted to certain demographic groups.

It's incredibly easy to lose a lot of money with FB ads when you don't know what you're doing, but there's also a lot of money to be made if you do. If you're unsure, test with a small budget and scale up later, and try to learn as much as possible. Good luck!

 

[Joe Cassandra]

If you are not selling a product or service and are just getting them familiar with your site, I would NOT drive them to your site. I have spent over 100k on FB ads last year alone.

Here is what I would do: Get people to like your FB page and then engage via newsfeed and promoted posts. I would rather drive the same person to the site 10 times and get them engaged that way then to have them come 1 time to your site just to have them likely bounce.

Then launch a FB ads retargeting campaign. If they come to your site because they like your page and they engaged that way, it will be significantly easier and CHEAPER to get them there through the retargeting. This is how you build your "love group" or brand advocates!

PS - Post your link so I can confirm this strategy

Agree with Nik, Ive spent money on ads and its MUCh cheaper to keep the users on fB than directing them off (Fb wants its users to stay on the site).

Ive found that you want to be specific in who you target and monitor the type of likes you get (many spammy likes from india). Check engagement and adjust as you go along.

There is a lot of trial and error involved.

Check out Amy Porterfield and Rick Mulready who do alot of FB ad posts and presentations.

 

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[Boo Blizzi]

When I first started, I ran "like campaigns" for my business page. Then FB started reducing organic reach. They want you to pay to get fans to your page, then pay again to send them messages.

I stopped running "like campaigns" and only focused on getting clicks to my site. What I found out is, if you have really good ads... you'll get likes to your fan page anyway.

 

[JasonR]

Our website is free of use, we hope to drive enough traffic and create income from ads on our website.

This model will not work.

Here's why.

Facebook is a GREAT place to advertise, as it's a native ad platform. Ads on your website will have a much, MUCH lower CTR, and no one is going to be willing to pay more for them than FB ads.

You're in the financial sector, which is extremely competitive (not necessarily a bad thing).

I wouldn't waste time building up a Facebook page either, after Facebook did the whole 1% organic reach thing.

Source: In the last 6 months I've ran over 6 figures in Facebook traffic, and know guys who have spent millions in quarter one alone.

Find a new model.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

This model will not work.

Ditto.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Ditto.

Just to clarify this and what @JasonR mentioned...

You cannot secure traffic at 50 cents a click and hope to resell it at 10 cents a click at 1% conversion. The model is ridiculous. Of course if your content is unique and valued, that's not to say you cannot grow traffic organically or virally which is in essence is what upworthy does.

 

[whiteeclipse]

Just to clarify this and what @JasonR mentioned...

You cannot secure traffic at 50 cents a click and hope to resell it at 10 cents a click at 1% conversion. The model is ridiculous. Of course if your content is unique and valued, that's not to say you cannot grow traffic organically or virally which is in essence is what upworthy does.

Of course the model is not perfect. The idea is that the content is interesting enough for people to return to the website and the idea is that people will tell their friends/family too to spread the word. Also I don't plan to do a CPC which could lead to a 50 cents a click cost, I plan to use CPM with the idea that my ads on facebook will catch users attention which will lower my cost per click using the CPM model.

 

[sle3pyguii]

Outside of relying on advertising, do you plan on having a second source of income, like digital products or services?

 

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[Gale4rc]

Of course the model is not perfect. The idea is that the content is interesting enough for people to return to the website and the idea is that people will tell their friends/family too to spread the word. Also I don't plan to do a CPC which could lead to a 50 cents a click cost, I plan to use CPM with the idea that my ads on facebook will catch users attention which will lower my cost per click using the CPM model.

Your core strategy is backwards, find what works with CPC then refine them with CPM

Also you need an e-mail list, people won't come back unless you get them back with an e-mail list/ retargeting/ or have a strong Facebook fan page following. Organic reach not strictly 1% it's based off the quality of the content you're sharing.

Your model will work fine if you reach the right amount of traffic, this is how Upworthy is run and all of those copy cat sites.

 

[Dan Da Man]

I love how this guy is avoiding the obvious.

Your idea sucks. You are thinking that you are not being greedy, therefore people will come to your site, click your ads and tell their friends.

Therefore spending 1 dollar on FB, you will accumulate 5 clicks and therefore those 5 clicks will turn to 50 from people referring people and so on.

You aren't offering any product therefore you don't really have anything to offer.

There is nothing wrong with offering free content but since you are giving it out for free and you have nothing in your backend to sell, you are going to have one heck of a time trying to recoup the cost to aqcuire that visitor.

Notice I said visitor, not customer. You will never know what the cost is to acquire a customer & what that customer's value is to you if you just go out there buying traffic, hoping people will click ads.

& as MJ said, why would an advertiser pay you more for ads being clicked, then FB would?

Before you waste money on this, I would try and learn more about traffic first.

Horrible horrible business model. Offer a product, a service, ANYTHING but ads.

Good luck