We are all beginners at something
Published: Mon, 04/13/15
Five days into my first Facebook pay per click advert test. It seems that it has been shown to 3492 people and there have been 47 site visits as a result at time of writing. Two more days to go and then I can analyse the stats properly. I know that I didn’t initially make the landing page hand held device friendly, it seems that the majority of people do access Facebook using devices such as Iphones so if you site does not display properly on such a device the click is essentially wasted. So I changed the layout on Saturday and got it tested by people from a couple of groups I am on (including the Ice and Fire Group).
The main thing that is missing is a direct response action for visitors. I knew that when I started but I just wanted to test the system and see what happens. The answer is it works in the sense that people will click on adverts. Hopefully it is a self selecting audience, they only click because something about martial arts appeals to them and then it is up to me to get their interest when they arrive. The action I am interested in visitors taking is to come to the classes. The advert is only supposed to be displayed in Crewkerne and a radius of 20 km so everyone seeing it could be in reach of the Stav Centre so lets see what happens this evening.
Two definite results have come from the FB advert though. One is that the neighbour across the road from the Stav centre told me Saturday that I needed an analytics programme so that I could track visitors and their actions once on the site. So, on his advice, I installed Piwik from http://piwik.org and this is already showing that I get visitors from all over the world, including South America. (I hope those are not coming from the local FB advert but that is something I need to investigate.) The second thing was that a young film student who lives in Crewkerne wants to use Somerset Stav to make a promotional video for a college assignment. He gets to complete his assignment, I get an expertly made video for the site. Okay, I can make a video at a pinch but I am very happy for someone else to do it for me.
So that is where I am at the moment. Will see this evening and tomorrow if the advert actually gets anyone to a class. Later this week I will try another, more targeted campaign with an autoresponder optin offer. It is all a learning curve and no one gets everything right first time.
In a sense I am setting an example to future students of Stav by trying something new myself. So, if you are wondering about training in Stav stop thinking about it and test it, that is the only way you will know for sure. We all have to be beginners sometime, whether it is in Stav training or learning how to use pay per click internet advertising.
Courses at the end of the month in Crewkerne http://somersetstav.co.uk/stavcourses.html or Sweden if you like on the 23rd and 24th of May http://stav.angerboda.se/ .
regards
Graham