Facebook Advertising Noob Question

[AsadMemon]

Hello Mozzers,

I have a noob question for which I have not been able to find a clear answer on the internet.

When a client asks you how much would I have to spend on FB ads to get 100,000 fans how do you go about making a "media plan". I can understand you can calculate clicks using your budget and CPC but fans?

Also, ad impressions on Facebook? FB doesn't even give that metric anymore on its default ad dashboard where you have campaign reach, social reach, CTR etc.

So if a client wants 1Million Facebook Ad Impressions (I know, I know), how do you tell them how much its going to cost them.

In a nutshell, clients want to know how much they should be spending to get x number of fans and impressions and vice versa, how many fans and impressions will $XXX get them. So how does one go about making a media plan for Facebook advertising, what do you include in it and well, anything else that I should know?

Thank you,

Rishad.

[AsadMemon]

Hey,

What I mean is what I've said in the question. Client asks how much should I invest in Facebook ads and what can I expect in  return? So you have to provide them with a number, say $1000 and then how many likes, clicks etc will I be able to get. I believe there are a number of variables involved here so was just trying to figure out how others go about it.

Regards,

[BrianJGomez]

Facebook doesn't show impressions but rather 'reach' which is the different because impressions include the same person seeing your ad multiple times whereas reach is the number of people who see your ad - regardless of how many times they see it.

When you say media plan, what do you mean specifically?

[AsadMemon]

Hey,

Thanks for your advise. I agree with what you say about getting clients out of the caveman mode but sometimes you're dealing with such large organizations and where I come from, digital is last priority and no way to to go up the ladder and convince the higher ups to "think strategically". Although that's what I try to do most of the times, there are times (sadly) where you have to respond to "How many fans can I get for x dollars".

My specific question is: How do you go about making a media plan for Facebook advertising based on a) Number of clicks/likes and b) Number of impressions.

I understand you can calculate clicks if you know your budget and CPC. But what about impressions? Does FB even report impressions?

Thanks!

[BrianJGomez]

What has helped me a great deal in creating social media strategies for clients is when I get questions like 'We want 2000 twitter followers' or 'We want 1000 fans', I ask them very basic questions like, 'What are you hoping will result from having 1000 fans?' Questions like that get them thinking strategically. I always throw it out there that if their looking to get to a certain number of fans, there's sites out there like fiverr that allow you to buy thousands of fans or twitter followers that are mostly bots - and that they don't need me to do that.

Having that conversation will get the client focusing on the proper long term strategy.

In my experience you really have to get the client out of caveman mode ("ME WANT MORE FANS!") and once you do that you can position social media services with the proper expectations.

Obviously you know that the costs for fans will be all over the place depending on your CPC. In my experience for traffic I send to the clients FB Page (most of this data is pre-timeline though) the rate of clicks to 'fan conversion' is in the 15% neighborhood. So once you identify your CPC, you can use that number to give a ball park idea of what a cost per fan acquisition is going to look like.

If they balk, you can share articles like this:

Understanding the Value of a Facebook Fan

Which will help you show your clients how facebook and twitter can be a platform to drive conversions rather than simply a way of collecting fans and followers.