There is a lot happening on Facebook these days. Between the friends, apps and brands that users follow, add and “Like,” Facebookers only see a small amount of the content that is shared with them. In fact, most brands’ posts are only seen by up to 16 percent of their fans—leaving (depending on the size of your fanbase) hundreds or thousands of people in the dark about what you’re posting. (Can I get a “Bueller”?)

Enter Facebook Promoted Posts. Only available to brands with more than 400 Likes, Promoted Posts are a way to promote a specific status update on your brand’s Facebook Timeline. This allows brands to pay to (potentially) reach the other 84 percent of fans they’re not getting in front of organically.

Promoted Posts work by making paid posts show up directly in users’ News Feeds. The only difference from a non-promoted post is the small “Sponsored” label in the bottom left corner. Here’s an example (thanks Jon Loomer):

 

So the question is, does it work?

Check out the two tests that we ran this month, and then decide if you think it’s worth trying for your brand:

June 4 –  $10 Testimonial Promoted Post

In an attempt to gather customer testimonials for a client, we promoted a post that was asking users to share their stories. To further grab attention, we used an image and pinned the post to the top of the Timeline.

At the end of three days (the allotted time for any Facebook Promoted Post), we’d used $9.97 of the $10.00 budget and reached a total of 981 people, or 15 percent of our fanbase. The Promoted Post put us in front of 588 people—9 percent of fans—and we organically reached 6 percent. Based on Facebook’s note that we should be able to reach up to 16 percent organically, this wasn’t exactly a good showing.

The post did, however, get one comment—which was an awesome testimonial. However, according to Facebook’s Insights (that you see above), the comment came organically.

So another test was necessary.

June 18 – $10 Homepage Link Promoted Post

In light of the four-year anniversary of the movie WALL-E, we posted a photo of the robot in a pile of waste—and reminded people that if they don’t recycle e-waste, our world may someday look like WALL-E’s. We included the client’s homepage in the post as well, in hopes of driving traffic to the website.

At the end of this Promoted Post’s three days, we’d used the entire $10 budget and reached a total of 2,663 people, or 26 percent of fans. The Promoted Post accounted for 1,934 of those people, or 16 percent of total fans. Without promoting the post, we would have only reached 10 percent of our fans. Instead, we more than doubled that reach.

By promoting the post we also generated 93 photo views, 26 likes, 2 shares and 1 comment. The other comment and remaining 10 likes were attributed to organic. However, this likely happened because the post was promoted, therefore increasing the interaction with it, and in turn, increasing the virality of the post. Also, since the post was linked to the client’s homepage, we saw 43 direct referrals from Facebook to the homepage over those three days.

The Domino Effect

Another interesting note during the second Promoted Post was the increased interaction and reach of another post on the Timeline. The Promoted Post was pinned to the top of the page, however the next post below it was about a special offer the client was offering. That post—that wasn’t running a promotion—actually had a higher virality than the promoted post (in fact, the highest of the month). While it only reached 686 people (as opposed to 2,663), those users were more likely to engage with the post and create a story about it to share with their friends.

Since these test result varied greatly, it’s hard to draw any concrete conclusions about Facebook’s Promoted Posts—however, if we’re able to pay to promote one post and see results on multiple posts, then it’s definitely intriguing.

Have you tried Facebook Promoted Posts for your brand? What kind of results did you see? Do you plan to work these ads into your marketing budget?

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