Beardbrand: fb is maddening, however We could Shift Our AdWords funds There

Beardbrand co-founder Eric Bandholz. photo credit: Todd White

Beardbrand looks as if a super candidate to be a fb marketing success story.

An evangelist for the bearded way of life, Beardbrand produces a gentle circulate of quality content aimed at men “who are passionate not simplest about their facial hair, but their style, their careers and their independence” as co-founder Eric Bandholz advised the panel on Shark Tank last year.

the company sells beard oil, mustache wax and other grooming supplies, but it surely’s also making a robust pitch to create a neighborhood for men with beards. That ethos has helped it build a big following on facebook, with more than 57,000 likes on a fb page brimming with pictures, video and tales celebrating bearded males and advising them learn how to maintain their facial hair.

lots of the content comes from city Beardsman, the company’s slick weblog that’s helmed by means of a full-time editor. It’s precisely the type of fine quality subject material that facebook recommends companies share on the platform. No exhausting promote; no spammy come ons; no click-bait. Beard oil, no longer snake oil.

So why is Bandholz grumbling?

as a result of despite what looks like a really perfect facebook match, Beardbrand still struggles to reach an target audience on the social community. On average its posts are considered by means of 3,000 to 7,000 individuals; ceaselessly it’s a lot much less, losing under 1,000 — not up to 2% of its fan base.

“And that’s simply irritating,” Bandholz said, “for anyone who has invested a lot to understand that there are 50,000 individuals who have expressed passion in seeing your content and simplest 900 folks see it.”

Bandholz’s feeling just isn’t unique, in fact. Falling natural reach for facebook Pages has change into something of a truism in social media marketing. everyone is seeing it; everyone complains about it, however virtually everybody continues to devote tools to feeding their facebook Pages.

It’s just too large a potential target market — now greater than 1.4 billion robust — to ignore.

Bandholz stated his expectations for facebook are low, at least for the brand’s organic content. promoting may be some other story. closing month, Beardbrand began to advertise on fb again after a two-year absence, experimenting to see if concentrated on lookalike audiences and pursuits may also be efficient.

Early outcomes have been certain, just right enough to continue checking out and spending about $2,000 a month. Bandholz mentioned they goal for a 5x return on their digital merchandising dollars and are taking into account moving cash from Google AdWords as a result of competitors is making that platform more expensive.

as a way to shed more gentle on how entrepreneurs are tackling fb, advertising and marketing Land is checking in with companies the usage of the social community. Beardbrand — which now has 10 staff and annual income of extra $1 million and continues to be unbiased after leaving Shark Tank with none investors — is the first in an occasional sequence. We caught up with Bandholz via telephone and email to discuss how his company is coming near the fb conundrum.

marketing Land: What came about when Beardbrand first began merchandising on fb?

Bandholz: Our first go-spherical with fb was once once we just began out most likely again in 2013 when it gave the look of shall we get tens of millions and thousands and thousands of impressions for only a nickel, and we used it as more or less a prime of funnel advertising strategy. however we saw a gradual decline of outcomes with facebook and subsequently just pulled it out all collectively. We most certainly had been in there for about three to 6 months.

We moved that finances to AdWords as well as some nontraditional advertising strategies, or conventional depending the way you look at it. We invest rather a lot into our PR campaigns, we put money into seo corporations and content introduction and content advertising.

advertising Land: are you able to extend on your content material advertising technique? You hired an editor to run the city Beardsman blog in October. Why place such excessive wager on content advertising?

Bandholz: What’s actually necessary to us is making a transfer to own our traffic and we are doing that though generating content material on urbanbeardsman.com. the final word purpose is to construct our community there and stay in front of our target market extra often.

Any of our rivals can go on facebook and purchase more commercials than us. Or Proctor & Gamble can are available in with a beard oil product and just start spamming ads on fb and in a roundabout way drive up the cost of advertisements and we’ve seen that; we’ve considered the price of ads get more expensive on Google AdWords as more opponents hit the market. So we are actually striking quite a lot of resources into building our content material advertising so we’ve bought a bit bit extra keep watch over over our target audience and the cost of buying them.

ML: So how does fb fit in now?

Bandholz: fb modifications on a daily basis so the fact is we never comprehend if it’s going to be a excellent platform for us or not. Some months it could be; while other months it may not. We’ve tried doing paid with fb up to now with success, then no success, and try it once more with reasonable success. It’s actually a hard beast to handle and that makes lifestyles irritating.

I’ve bought kind of a love-hate relationship with fb. I hate how they repeatedly shift. the issue is that i will see it happening, and i feel it’s moving somewhat bit more back in prefer of organic. It’s simply laborious to develop the industry when you are coping with an organization that modifications a lot so abruptly. You don’t comprehend if this month it will be just right for you and next month it doesn’t.

It’s not a platform the place which you can just set something on autopilot let it run its path and then focal point on a special facet of your enterprise like improving operations or developing new merchandise or there’s 1,000,000 things it’s important to do as a business owner.

It’s irritating from that standpoint. but it surely does have a chance out there in case you are keen in invest in it. each entrepreneur has their doubts and their questioning how you can construct a business, find out how to market your business. As so much as I’d wish to, you just can’t rule out facebook all collectively. There’s lots of people on the platform.

ML: it would seem that your content material-advertising focal point would play particularly smartly on fb. where’s the disconnect?

Bandholz: We’ve received something like 50,000 likes our our web page and we put up original content material that’s good and actually 900 folks will see it. That’s simply irritating. I’ve looked at redbull.com on fb, they produce original content and you may have 30 likes on a submit and they have 1,000,000 individuals who like the web page.

From my standpoint if a person likes a web page it’s because they need to see the content, and in the event that they don’t wish to see the content then they’ll unlike the page. Whereas facebook is like ‘like a web page and we won’t exhibit it to you until you might be super engaged and tremendous right into a brand.’ That to me doesn’t make experience. now not everyone goes round liking issues realizing that that’s what they need to do to look extra content material from it.

It’s facebook’s firm, then can run it how they want, that’s just the frustration of it as a brand supervisor.

ML: what sort of submit has worked on facebook?

Bandholz: Passionate writing has executed well for us. when we put up with emotion, we’ve found that that kind of content material generates a lot more engagement with our target audience. things which might be very inspirational almost or simply invoke emotion do very smartly on facebook.

ML: So good content material will get noticed?

Bandholz: excellent content is all relative. Memes all the time seem to explode like wildfire. I’d put up a beard meme after which I’d get a thousand shares however the thing with our brand is that our model isn’t constructed on memes and gimmicky kind of advertising. For our target market it takes a bit bit more engagement to read a piece of writing, whereas with a meme you simply learn it in five seconds and click like. Is that in truth just right content? I for my part don’t suppose so, but fb says this is because people immediately click on on it.

It’s a bit frustrating to listen to facebook say just put excellent content out. neatly, that you could put out lots of good content and nonetheless not get the engagement that’s applicable.

but when you play on somebody else’s field, you need to practice their ideas. So it’s just a bit little bit of a risk in building a trade. but that you would be able to’t completely keep away from fb because there’s opportunity there.

ML: a kind of alternatives for you seems to be promotion. What triggered you to imagine the usage of more facebook advertising?

Bandholz: We’re spending about 7K a month on AdWords, after which about 1,500 bucks on Bing. fb’s rather a lot less; we’re just exploring and have began with an attractive modest price range. We’ll scale up [if the experiment is successful]. AdWords has just gotten a little bit dearer for us so we actually could be switching numerous that budget from AdWords to fb.

My AdWords guy got here to me and talked about one of the new instruments fb released, the ability to truly dial down into your target market list and way people with the aid of matching them to their interests. in addition there’s the elevated costs of Google AdWords. If Google AdWords was once nonetheless rocking and rolling for us as they at the start had been, I more than likely wouldn’t be having a look at fb.

about the author

Martin Beck

Martin Beck is 1/3 Door Media’s Social Media Reporter, covering the latest news for advertising Land and Search Engine Land. He spent 24 years with the los angeles times, serving as social media and reader engagement editor from 2010-2014. A graduate of UC Irvine and the college of Missouri journalism college, Beck began started his profession at the instances as a sportswriter and copy editor. follow Martin on Twitter (@MartinBeck), facebook and/or Google+.

(Some pictures used underneath license from Shutterstock.com.)