If you’re an author, speaker, or coach, here’s the math on why you should LOVE or HATE Facebook advertising.
Let’s say you have a decent video that has an average watch time of 20 seconds (the average on Facebook is 6 seconds, so your skill gets people to stick around longer.
And because you know your audience, you get a high Relevance Score of 10 and a high view-through rate, so your cost per view is a penny.
That means an hour of attention is costing you $1.80.
Two days ago, I gave the opening keynote address at a conference of 1,000 people. My hour talk generated 1,000 hours of attention.
Those 1,000 hours would cost me $1,800 to generate on Facebook.
Granted, not all 1,000 people in the ballroom were paying attention nor were they in the right audience for my topic. But the same is true on Facebook.
So while I’d generally say that the 1,000 hours of attention from 1,000 people in one-hour chunks at the conference is worth more than the fractured attention of 100,000 people in 20-second chunks, there are a couple of key differences in social:
– I’ve assumed that 100% of my Facebook traffic is paid. If my post is awesome, I might get a 20-30X multiplier in organic reach/engagement. I explained how the Russian hackers could have reached 70 million people with just $100,000: thedailybeast.com/russias-facebook-fake-news-could-have-rea….
– Your video might suck. If your average watch time is the normal 6 seconds and you have an average 3-cent cost per view, then you’re looking at about 10X the cost– so $18/hour.
– But Facebook counts views at the 3-second mark, so many of these were accidental and not long enough to make an impact, despite “research” that 3 seconds is long enough to influence people.
– At a conference, you get to meet people, and being on stage is a far higher authority than being a talking head on Facebook. We all know that deals get done in person– not because of a tweet or like.
But rather than argue “great taste, less filling”, why not enjoy the benefits of both?
If you’re a speaker, keep speaking, but choose only the best conferences. And amplify video snippets of your talk to that conference’s audience. For example, I speak at Social Media Marketing World, so I boost my posts to fans of the conference.
Yes, you need a videographer to be at the conference if they don’t provide this for you– and you need someone to edit.
If you’ve been able to advance from being a free speaker (that’s easy to get) into being a paid speaker, consider using your speaking fees to pay for boosting your posts.
That way, your conference travel is self-funding your lead gen and brand building.
But this assumes you have a funnel– a lead magnet, book, consulting package, and so forth.
I’m fortunate to know many of the professional speakers like Robert Scoble on the circuit. And we want to help them monetize attention.
The demands of travel on folks who don’t have a support team behind them means they are generating awareness and fans, but aren’t converting that attention to consulting packages and courses.
I’d estimate conservatively that if you’re selling consulting services, then the value of your audience’s time is north of $50/hour.
So if you can buy attention from the right audience, have compelling content, and have a funnel to capture it, then every time you’re on stage or post on Facebook should be moving your people through your funnel journey, putting money in your pocket.
Would you spend $1.80 to get back $50?
