Out of curiosity of how well it would work, I recently boosted a Facebook post. Specifically, this Facebook post, linking to this article:
So how did it go? Let’s look into it.
Expectations
It is probably best to first start with what I expected from this boosted post.
After doing some extensive research I found that for the financial segment, the average boosted post gets about 0.6% click-throughs[modern_footnote]A “click-through” is a way to describe someone who clicked a link in an advertisement[/modern_footnote][modern_footnote]
[/modern_footnote].
With that said, Facebook estimated that my post would be seen by 2,200 – 4,500 people (more on that later).
With all of that taken into account, I set my expectation to be 22 people clicking through (1% of my lowest estimate).
The Ad
So, if you’ve never looked into boosting a Facebook post (most people haven’t; don’t worry) then here are the options you’re presented with:
You can change both the amount you’re hoping to spend and the length of time your ad will be up.
For my ad, I just to spend only $10, and leave it up for 4 days.
This combination, after playing for a while with my slide bars, appeared to have the highest potential for views.
Initially, I had the demographics set as anyone with “Financial”, “Savings”, or “Savings Account”. I then re-evaluated and targeted my ad to any Canadian whom Facebook had grouped under the subject of “Savings Account” (approximately 11,000 people)
The Results
So how did my ad do?
I tried to track several metrics overall as well as during each dollar, to see if there were any notable trends that emerged as the ad went deeper into its budget.
As you’ll shortly see, there definitely were differences!
NOTE: All of these screenshots were taken from my phone, as I found that information was presented much better on mobile than on desktop
NOTE: Due to some of the dollar amounts being hit while I was eating or sleeping or otherwise living I screenshotted the closest I could get to each dollar amount, which may have skewed the effects slightly.
Don’t care about the dollar-by-dollar breakdown? Just jump to the overall results here!
$1 in
For the first dollar, which took approximately 4 hours to spend, the ad was seen by 92 people, with only 2 clicking through. This amounts to a 2.17% click-through rate.
Overall I was happy with these results but this was just the beginning. It got a lot better!
$2 in
Getting from $1 spent to $2 spent took a very long time. 17 hours long time. In that time an additional 87 people saw the ad, of which 3 clicked-through. This amounts to a 3.4% click-through rate.
This already far exceeded my expectations of 1%, but things were only getting better from there.
$3 in
$3 in is where things really started to explode. It took approximately 6 hours to spend the additional dollar, and in that time an additional 104 people saw the ad, with 5 people clicking through. This amounts to a 4.8% click-through rate.
So, while this was amazing, I had unintentionally re-evaluated my expectations and decided I wanted to maintain approximately 5%.
Because of this change in expectations, I decided to change my audience to be more specific.
So this is when I decided to change my audience to only Canadians with “Savings Account” as a search term.
$4 in
It only took approximately 4 hours, an additional 116 people saw the ad, and 6 of them clicked through. This amounts to a click-through rate of 5.1%!
Simply by changing my audience, I got my click-through rate all the way up to 5%!
$5 in
Things began slowing down for the next $1, but I believe this is because it was during the overnight hours across Canada.
So during these 11 hours, 131 people saw the ad, with 4 of those people clicking the link.
This means that 3.0% of people who saw the ad clicked on it.
Although this had dipped below my 5% goal it was still much better than the estimated 1%.
$6 in
In the approximately 5 hours between the fifth and sixth dollars, the click-through rate definitely improved. an additional 115 saw the ad with an additional 6 clicking through.
This amounts to a 5.2% click-through rate!
$7 in
This is the first of two statistics that may be slightly skewed as the closest amount I saw to $7 was $7.70. However, in this 7 hours, a whopping 181 people saw my ad! 181!
Of those 181, 10 people clicked through, resulting in a 5.5% click-through rate!
$8 in
The $8 mark was also an approximate amount as it ended up happening overnight and when I woke up at 5 am it was at $8.64.
However, in the 8 hours since the previous amount an additional 106 had seen the ad, with 10 people clicking through.
This would prove to be the highest click-through rate of the entire campaign with 9.4% of people clicking through!
$9 in
In the short 3 hours between $8.64 and $9.03, 56 people saw the post with 3 of those people clicking through.
This amount to a click-through rate of 5.3%.
Still very good, even with my revised goal.
Total
In total 1,122 saw my ad, with 54 clicking through.
This amounts to an overall click-through percentage of 4.8%, so just below my revised goal.
Overall Results
As noted below my ad was seen by 1,122 people with 4.8% or 54 people clicking through.
In terms of cost, this amounts to 8/10 of one cent per impression[modern_footnote]Impression is a term meaning every time someone sees the ad on their screen, whether they click or not.[/modern_footnote] or approximately $0.19 per click.
According to various sources[modern_footnote] This is a chart that best describes what multiple websites have said
[/modern_footnote] the average cost-per-click for the financial sector is $3.77! So $0.19 per click is absolutely amazing!
For demographics that my ad reached they are as follows:
61% of the clicks were by women, 39% by men.
31% of the clicks were from people aged 55-64, 28% from people aged 65+, 16% from people aged 25 – 34, 13% from people aged 35 – 44, and finally 11% from people aged 45 – 54.
100% of the clicks came from Canada (I had it set that way) with the following percentages coming from each province:
28% from Ontario, 22% from Alberta, 15% from Saskatchewan, 11% from Manitoba, 6% each from New Brunswick, PEI, and Quebec, with the remaining 7% coming from all of the other provinces.
Final Thoughts
The demographics that the post reached I found somewhat surprising. Over half of the clicks came from individuals who were over the age of 55. I’m not sure whether that shows that there’s a trend among the older population to click advertisements more or if it shows that older people are looking to begin delving into their financials more in-depth.
I’d love to know your thoughts in the comments.
The regions also surprised me. For anyone who doesn’t know, the most populated provinces in Canada are Ontario, Quebec, and BC. Yet Alberta had the second highest amount of clicks, with BC not even making the top 7. I’m again not sure if this is a regional thing that they click more, or if Albertans are simply more in-tune with learning about their financials.
Also, let me know your comments on this.
Is it worth it?
Overall I think if driving traffic to your site is important to you then boosting a well-written post on Facebook is worth it. Short of having every link be an affiliate link or getting paid large amounts per page view I think it would be rather hard to make a profit off of this strategy. However, if all you’re looking to do is build your audience and increase your brand awareness you can’t ask for a much better price than $0.19 a click!
If you’ve had a different experience let me know, maybe I just got lucky. Without doing this multiple times I really have no way of knowing.
And finally, if you haven’t done so already give me a follow or like on the social media platform of your choice. It really means a lot and I look forward to writing more posts in the future for you guys!
Main source for statistics:
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/02/28/facebook-advertising-benchmarks
