I recently launched a holiday Facebook campaign for my family’s business, La Bella Vita, a pair of fine gift retail stores on the east side of Cleveland. We had already had our big events of the holiday season, but still had a couple of weeks until Christmas, and we wanted to keep the buzz going during some of the most lucrative weeks of the year.
The Facebook Campaign
We used a common story-tell framework that everyone who celebrates Christmas can understand – 12 Days of Gifts at La Bella Vita. We found 12 great Christmas gift ideas, priced them to sell, and shared a new deal every day on our Facebook page up until the 24th.
I formatted each of the images in a template with La Bella Vita’s logo at the bottom and the campaign name. As to comply with Facebook ad guidelines, we kept the text on the images minimal and let the images of the gifts speak for themselves.
Each post was carefully crafted to include which day of the promotion it was, the name of the gift, the sale price and a short description. I scheduled each post to publish at 8am on the day of the promotion.
We supported the campaign with an e-mail to our database, networked posts with other relevant Facebook pages and a Facebook Sponsored Post budget of 20 dollars a day for the 12 days.
Since we do not have an e-commerce store, we listed at which store the gift was available with a bitly link to our locations page.
The Results
Over the 12-day campaign, our Facebook posts received over 28,000 impressions. That’s more than the Facebook page sees in months. Here are all the stats we tracked –
- 3,973 Organic Impressions
- 24,730 Paid Impressions
- 206 Engagements (likes, comments and shares)
- 1,048 Clicks (photo views, link clicks, see more clicks, etc.)
- 69 New Page Likes
- 44 Clicks to Our Location Page on Website (34 from from mobile)
- $235 Total Ad Spend
Best of all, the people viewing and engaging with our posts were a perfect match for our target customer – educated adults, 21 and older, with interests in boutique shopping and luxury items that live within 25 miles of Cleveland.
Sounds like a success, right?
Wrong.
Why It Was a Failure
While we were happy with the exposure the campaign had to our targeted audience in Cleveland, we considered the campaign to be a failure.
Why?
It was a failure because we didn’t have a clear goal or objective starting out. “Keeping the buzz” alive is hardly a concrete goal. There was no objective way to tell if anyone actually came in as a result of the Facebook posts. We had no call to action in the posts, no coupon that needed to be redeemed and no in-store support other than our clerks being briefed about the campaign and being instructed to ask where the customer heard about us from.
Let’s be honest. What we really wanted was more sales, and the campaign we setup and executed failed to deliver.
What we could have done better
I’m sure we saw some sales, and I might be a little harsh on ourselves, but there are definitely some things we could have done differently to make this a more successful campaign.
- Stronger Calls To Action: The strongest calls to action we used in all the posts was “The Gift is Available at both locations.” There are some times to add value and create community with your Facebook audience and there are times to sell. This campaign was (or should have been) designed to sell and could have benefited much stronger calls to action.
- Exclusivity: We emphasized in our email to our customers that only people who like our Facebook page would see the daily gift, but did little else to make these deals feel exclusive. A time limit on the offer or a limited quantity could have created a better sense of urgency.
- Facebook Offers: While pictures are one of the most engaging forms of media you can share in Facebook, I think this campaign would have benefited from the Facebook Offer feature. Facebook Offers are an easy way to share a deal with your audience, process and track the offers that are redeemed.
At the end of the day, in addition to the impressions and extra page likes, I don’t consider the campaign a total waste, since experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.
Have you launched a Facebook campaign and felt like a total buffoon after the fact? Share your experience below!
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