Welcome to your Monday Morning cup of buzz – my name is Mike and I’m the owner of MJTrends. I’ll be broadcasting every Monday morning at 6am bringing you news and information related to small business, ecommerce, fashion and crafting.
First up I want to talk about small business marketing – specifically Facebook. We recently jumped on the bandwagon and put up a site on FaceBook – faceboook.com/mjtrendsCreate.
To kick things off we ran a marketing campaign to offer 1/2 off shipping for anyone who ‘liked’ us on FaceBook. Users had to like us and then message us – because FaceBook only allows for us to reply to a message – and we would send the coupon.
What I didn’t know is that FaceBook likes can be set to hidden. Our goal was to spread the word. I had to politely ask those users whose ‘likes’ were hidden, if they would be willing to share our link on their timeline. Luckily, the majority of users complied.
We didn’t the planet on fire, but we converted about 10% of our existing customer base, which I think is decent. Futhermore, we track where our users come from and over night FaceBook started showing up in those reports – meaning people were visiting our page on FaceBook and coming directly to our site.
I’m happy with our first campaign, although if I had to do it differently I would have made it explicit what the goal of the campaign was – to grow our FaceBook users, and let customers know that we required either a public like or a link to our site on their wall.
Right now we are continuing to post our blog entries to FaceBook and also post some of our promotions to FaceBook – usually a few days after announcing it via our newsletter. Our newsletter subscribers get 1st priority because we have found them to be our best customers.
Do you have a great FaceBook marketing story? If so, I’d love to hear from you by submitting a comment below.
If you liked this video – please subscribe by clicking the subscribe button on YouTube.
You can also sign up for our newsletter for exclusive sales / discounts / possibly more FB promotions:
See you next Monday.
The note about only being able to reply to messages on Facebook is a good reminder of platform constraints that shape how promotions need to be structured.
Your approach of combining blog posts and promotions on Facebook keeps the page active without overwhelming followers with constant sales messaging.
It’s interesting that you prioritize newsletter subscribers over Facebook followers, suggesting email still converts better despite all the social media hype.
Offering half off shipping for a like feels like a strong incentive, but I can see how requiring a message afterward might have confused some users.
Getting about 10% of your existing customer base to engage sounds pretty solid for a first Facebook push, especially without clearly stating the sharing requirement upfront.
The hidden likes issue highlights how relying on platform features without fully understanding them can affect outcomes more than expected.
I appreciate the honesty about not setting the planet on fire; a 10% conversion from an existing base is actually a meaningful starting point.
Posting promotions on Facebook a few days after the newsletter is a smart way to reward loyal subscribers while still leveraging social reach later.
Having users message you to receive the coupon adds a personal touch, but I wonder if automation would scale better as your audience grows.
I like how you tracked referral traffic and actually saw Facebook show up overnight; that’s a tangible way to confirm the campaign wasn’t just vanity metrics.
Seeing direct traffic from Facebook in your reports must have been encouraging, especially for a first campaign that required some manual follow-up.
This feels like a realistic first experiment with Facebook marketing, especially learning about hidden likes and refining the process for future campaigns.
The idea of asking users to publicly share your link as part of the requirement could have been clearer upfront and probably boosted visibility faster.
Your reflection about being more explicit with campaign goals is spot on; unclear instructions can quietly reduce participation even when the offer is attractive.
The workaround of asking users to share the link on their timeline was clever, though it does add friction that probably affected how many people followed through.
Interesting that hidden likes became an issue for your campaign; I hadn’t considered how privacy settings could limit reach even when people technically participate.