I ran a social media experiment last week with a Facebook post targeted to business leaders in high-growth markets, such as India, China, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. I budgeted just $20 for this campaign and the results are fascinating.
I targeted a list of countries, a slightly older audience than normal (30-65+), and some interests that should focus on business leaders (as well as you can with Facebook targeting):
The results have been quite different from posts that I’ve targeted to the U.S. Reach is strong, but reasonable. However, the percentage of likes to reach (engagement) is about 4x a normal boosted post. This might be related to ‘click farms’ in some Asian countries that Copyblogger complained about when they decided to kill off their Facebook page.
The other interesting result is that link click-throughs are not nearly as high as likes (~60 link clicks), and there are NO comments. Zero. The post doesn’t really ask a question though, so I am not too worried about that.
Finally, I found this graph fascinating. It comes from Facebook analytics, and I am unsure if it is a percentage breakdown of impressions or of likes. Either way, Algeria being at the top is pretty interesting, and probably not where I want to be spending money compared to India.
I am currently setting up a similar promoted post on LinkedIn, and one immediate glaring difference is that it’s minimum CPC is $4.00! Their social interactions are free (likes/comments/follows), but click-through costs are through the roof.
Your advice in targeting high growth markets while not wasting money is always welcome!
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