We’ve all heard that dreaded phrase from our boss: we need more Facebook followers! But how do you actually achieve fast organic growth without buying fake followers or pestering your own Facebook friends with invitations? The answer is simple, but not cheap: Facebook Engagement Ads! In this article, we’ll show you how to go from 0 to 5,000 followers in just a few months.
A good plan is half the battle! Create a monthly posting schedule (editorial plan) for your Facebook pages with a posting frequency of 2 to 3 times per week.
Keep in mind not only what content would be exciting for your target audience to read, but also what content would make a good ad. In this step, you will initially only create organic content for your FB page, but go a step further in your thinking. In other words, look for attractive colors and images.
Also, try to make the content not only interesting and educational, but always sprinkle in facts about your company, links to your website, or some attention-grabbing product USPs. Remember: you will use these posts as ads later.
The question you need to ask yourself here is: Who should follow my Facebook page? Create this audience in your Ads Manager and give it a name, such as Engagement Audience. Try to make sure that the barometer for your audience is in the green zone – the sweet spot depends on your budget.
Create an ad campaign with “engagement” as the goal, set the audience you created above as the target audience, and select 3-5 of your top performing page posts – those that had the highest organic engagement rates.
If your Facebook page is brand new and hasn’t had any engagement yet, don’t fret! Just choose the posts you think would work well as ads, or even the ones you see as most relevant to your target audience.
And now it’s time to start running ads! We recommend running your campaigns for at least two weeks before making any concrete statements about the success of the campaign. Ideally, however, these engagement campaigns should run the entire time. The only thing you need to update is your ad sets. Always add new creatives here, i.e. the new organic post you publish on your site every week.
CAUTION! The placement of your ads is very important in this case. You want to make sure you only run Facebook feed ads (1st placement), because that’s where you’ll see the likes for that particular post.
After you’ve been running your engagement ads for about a week, invite people who have liked your posts to follow your Facebook page. Here’s how to do that: Open the Ads Manager, go to your Ads Overview, and open the Facebook feed ads that were live.
Then click “All previews and sharing options” on the right side of your ad, then choose “View post” → “Facebook post with comments”. The promoted post will then open in a separate window.
Click on the likes below the post and a window will open with all the users who have liked the post.
Now you can invite these people: Click on the Invite button next to each of the people.
Et voilà: You’ve just invited high-value users to follow your Facebook page. These are the users from your ideal target audience. Plus, they’ve already shown an interest in your brand by liking your post. The likelihood that these people will follow your page is significantly higher than with a “cold call”.
Repeat this for every ad you run. Do this weekly and watch your follower base magically grow!
Tip: Facebook limits the number of people you can invite to like your page per day. This number is around 100 invitations per day, so keep that in mind.
Conclusion: Building a following can be incredibly tedious and lengthy.
However, with smart ad targeting, you can boost your follower count in a matter of months – without fake followers! You still have questions? Then feel free to contact us, we will help you!
