Low Cost Facebook Campaign for Small/Local Businesses

This article is one of the “Simple do it yourself guides”. As a prerequisite, you should have your company Facebook page created. Ideally your page is not empty, there are a couple of posts you published and the page has organically gained a few followers.

The following example is describing how low-cost campaign are made for local business owners (in my case usually friends). They do not aim for hundred thousand of fans, they would like to attract local community a get close connection with it.

Before you start building your campaign think about 3 things:

·     Specify your target audience (To whom do you want to talk?)

·     What can you offer (Voucher, gift, takeaway, etc.)

·     How much you want to spend (if set up correctly, tens of euros can reach thousands of potential customers)

The following campaign was made for a tanning studio based in Galanta (15k city in south-west Slovakia)

Create a post and offer something to win

Our campaign is simple and honest: “Join our contest! Like our page, share this post and win a tanning voucher”. The post featured a video showcasing the newest sun-bed in the salon.

Boost the post

In this step you define the location, target audience and the budget. We defined Galanta +10 miles radius, male/female, 18-45 years old. Note you can very precisely specify your audience on Facebook (targeting specific demographics, interests, jobs, etc.)

We set up the duration for 4 days (campaign started on Monday, finished on Friday) and the budget was 20EUR.

Draw the winners

Simply copy your fans and use an online tool to randomly pick a name from a list.

 

 

Results

The campaign reached more than 7000 people. The post gained 92 reactions, 61 people commented on it and 47 shared it. The page gained 150 new followers. The most important metric is cost per acquisition (CPA): 0,13EUR. Not bad for 20 buck, huh? 😉

Please remember, that this is the simplest promotion you can do, but you can do it easily without a need of an agency. There is a lot of potential for creative campaigns, where you can benefit even more.

(Un)happy New Year Playstation!

What a (NOT) nice surprise! I ended 2016 with an Error message on my PS4 (CE-34878-0).

I wanted to surprise my son for Xmas and bought 2 games he wanted eagerly: Uncharted 4 and Mirrors Edge Catalyst (disc editions). To make it short, these games are unplayable. After a couple minutes I get the error message and both games crash (Uncharted right in the first part, Mirrors Edge gives you at leas 10-15 minutes of gameplay) .

Ok, so lets call the seller. Progamingshop.sk told me both games are brand new and genuine, the problem lies in my console. They offered me a contact to Sony’s support, but forgot to share it. Never mind I found it.

This is where the misery starts. The call-in queues are 10-15 minutes, the email feedback is 1-2 days. At the end I tried everything (reinstall the games, renew licences, rebuild database, system initiation) and the problem was here to stay.

It lies in the console. I bought my PS4 among the first ones in Slovakia. This is my warning to all early adopters: the first PS4 consoles might be buggy especially with new games.  Sony does not provide information whether its the graphic card or the disc reader. Their solution is to offer a replacement console for 189 EUR, because the warranty for the first consoles is long gone.

My last hope was to complain on the Playstation Facebook page. Of course the complaint was not shown on the wall (I was not expecting this), but what was really shocking: Sony din not even bother to write me on messenger, saying they are at least sorry for what happened.

Once I checked the developer’s site bug forum I saw this issue is VERY real (almost 500 user comments) and it lies in the early consoles.

To summarise my experience in one word, it would be: FRUSTRATING.

 

Dear Sony, I design software for living and work extensively in the field of User Experience. I know sh*t happens, but there are ways how to deal with it. What your customer care is doing could be the case study for how NOT to do it.