Using Facebook Ads is a great way to sell your fine art and photography services, and if you set them up correctly, you can ensure that you will pay less for each click than you earn from each visitor on average. That means that your advertising campaign will make you direct ROI and you can keep investing more into your daily budget and get more out of it.

There are many different ways you can use Facebook Ads. Another example is to use them to build a mailing list and this can work incredibly well when it comes to selling your photography services. Here’s how…

Work Out Your CLV

The first thing to do, is to work out your CLV. This is your Customer Lifetime Value and it basically tells you how much each lead that engages with your brand is going to be worth to you. The idea is that someone who subscribes to your mailing list is likely to be a fan and therefore is likely to buy  from you. Moreover, they’re likely to buy from you again and again. If you have a subscriber who buys 10 prints or books multiple sessions from you over the course of a year, then they’re worth a lot more than they might appear on paper.

In order to calculate how much your subscribers are worth to you then, you need to work out what the average amount each subscriber has earned you so far is. Add up the total and divide it by the number of subscribers. This is your CLV.

Use CPA

Now comes the next acronym: CPA or Cost Per Action. This basically means that you’re paying for a particular action to be carried out, other than a click. You can choose from a variety of actions but the one we’re interested in of course is people subscribing to your mailing list. Using CPA in this way, you now only pay for subscribers, rather than paying for people who click and then may or may not subscribe to your list.

If you have previously calculated your CLV then this becomes a very simple formula for profiting from your mailing list. All you need to do is ensure you pay less for each subscriber than their CLV and that way, you’ll keep increasing your profits over time without any drawbacks!

Learn More About Facebook Ads

We’ve put together an easy-to-understand, step-by-step guide that takes the mystery out of Facebook Ads. With our online training you can go through the course at your own pace anytime, anywhere, from any device.

You’ll learn all of the technical aspects of Facebook Ads, and you’ll see how to get started with your own campaign.

Trevor Current

Founder of Current Photographer, co-host of The Digital Photography Cafe Show, Designer, Photographer, and overall tech geek.

currentphotographer.com

Social media is one of the biggest tools that photographers have to promote their brands. It’s a direct, targeted, and personal means to connect with an audience. It lets you do this in a way that is persuasive and purposeful, and it allows you to create a real synergy between your marketing and your website or blog.

And when it comes to social media marketing, nothing beats Facebook!

Facebook is not only the biggest social media network by far, but it’s also the best suited to marketing with the widest selection of highly powerful tools and the most data for you to use to find the right audience.

Facebook has become one of the main reasons that we go online. Its users outnumber the population of any country on Earth and those members are more highly engaged than they are on any other site. Because of this, Facebook remains the single most attractive advertising opportunity in terms of native ad presentation, targeting, demographic data, active users, and a host of other factors.

A Few Facebook Facts

• There are over 2.01 billion monthly active Facebook users
• There are 1.32 billion daily active users
• There are 1.74 billion mobile active users
• There are 1.15 billion mobile daily active users
• Five new profiles are created every second
• Highest traffic occurs mid-week between 1 to 3 pm
• On Thursdays and Fridays, engagement is 18% higher
• Average time spent per Facebook visit is 20 minutes
• One in five page views in the United States occurs on Facebook
• 42% of marketers report that Facebook is critical or important to their business

All this paints a very clear picture of a social media network that has become a huge part of our lives and that is embedded as a cultural phenomenon. At a party, you are just as likely to ask for a stranger’s Facebook name as you are their mobile phone number. Facebook is used to plan weddings, to organize parties, to share holiday photos and to catch up with old friends. Even employers use Facebook to conduct background checks on future employees.

What does this mean?

It means that if you want to find a channel that will allow you to connect with a huge audience, then Facebook is the best place to do that. In short, if someone uses the web often for shopping, then there’s an extremely high chance that you will be able to find them on Facebook. If they don’t, then they’re not a particularly useful lead to begin with!

What are Facebook Ads?

What’s really great about Facebook as a business owner, is that it gives you the tools to reach that audience directly. Better yet, it gives you the tools to reach a specific sub-section of that audience and the ability connect with exactly the right kind of person who will want to buy your photography. It then allows you to convert those leads from cold leads, to warm leads, to customers – and to keep them highly engaged with your brand along the way.

Facebook Ads are one of the most effective ways to do this, allowing you to hone in on the perfect type of person that will want to buy your photography services. It allows you to do so in a manner that lets you tightly control your spending, ensuring that your advertising falls within budget and that you can scale it as you grow your business.

Then there are all of the advanced features – like CPA – and the amazing external tools that allow you to get even more from your advertising campaign, and to grow your business all the more effectively and quickly.

Like any tool, Facebook Ads are only as effective as the person using them. The campaign you design is what will ultimately impact your success or failure.

Introducing… Facebook Ads Exposed!

To help photographers take their businesses to the next level, we’ve put together an easy-to-understand, step-by-step guide that takes the mystery out of Facebook Ads. With our online training you can go through the course at your own pace anytime, anywhere, from any device.

You’ll learn all of the technical aspects of Facebook Ads, and you’ll see how to get started with your own campaign, your own page and your own brand.

But more importantly, you’ll see how to make sure that all those things are designed well and that they will give you the best chance of success. You’ll learn the ‘what’ but also the ‘how’ and the ‘why’. You’ll see that the most important place to start when creating your Facebook marketing plan is with the right brand and the right product and perfect synergy between those things. You’ll learn how to generate fans and followers and turn them into excited customers!

Topics Covered in Facebook Ads Exposed

Throughout this training course you’ll learn:

Don’t waste another minute, start growing your photography business today with
Facebook Ads Exposed!

Trevor Current

Founder of Current Photographer, co-host of The Digital Photography Cafe Show, Designer, Photographer, and overall tech geek.

currentphotographer.com

Facebook is constantly making changes to the News Feed to improve the user experience. Their latest effort hopes to reduce the number of links to low-quality web page experiences and to show more informative posts instead.

We’ve all experienced it, you’re scrolling through your News Feed and you see a great headline or photo that catches your eye. When you click on the link you’re presented with popups, offers, links, and general SPAMMY goodness. Frustrating isn’t it? Facebook has heard the complaints and now they’re taking even more steps to fight it.

Facebook is rolling out an update to show fewer Posts and Ads in the News Feed that link to these low-quality, misleading, disruptive or malicious sites. Similar to the work they’re already doing to stop misinformation, this update will help reduce the economic incentives of financially-motivated spammers.

There is a policy already in place to help prevent advertisers with low-quality web page experiences from running ads on Facebook, but now they are also taking into account Posts in the News Feed.

“With this update, we reviewed hundreds of thousands of web pages linked to from Facebook to identify those that contain little substantive content and have a large number of disruptive, shocking or malicious ads. We then used artificial intelligence to understand whether new web pages shared on Facebook have similar characteristics.”

If they determines that a post links to those types of low-quality web pages, it may show up lower in the News Feed and may not be eligible to be an ad.

How will this update impact your marketing efforts?

If you offer quality content through your Facebook Posts and Ads, you should see a small increase in traffic, but if you’re one of those SPAMMERS, expect to see a decline in traffic over the coming months. This update is only one signal that Facebook uses to rank the News Feed, so the impact will vary by publisher and their overall activity.

Trevor Current

Founder of Current Photographer, co-host of The Digital Photography Cafe Show, Designer, Photographer, and overall tech geek.

currentphotographer.com

We’ve been using Twitter since 2009, and what started out as a social network for early tech adopters has turned in to a main stream communication platform for everyday people, celebrities, and politicians alike.

When Twitter first launched in March 2006, there was nothing else like it online. The 140 character limit was designed to allow updates to be pushed to your phone through text messaging. It forced people to keep their thoughts short, sweet and to the point.

Facebook launched to a limited user base in 2004 and later opened to the public in September of 2006. Twitter already had a jump in the public space and continued to grow as the general use of Facebook slowly caught on.

Fast forward to March 2017, Facebook is now the clear leader in the social space with 1.94 billion monthly active users. YouTube comes in second at 1 billion, Instagram third with 700 million, and Twitter fourth with 313 million monthly active users.

But things are looking up for Twitter with the addition of 9 million new monthly active users in the first quarter of this year. Twitter now sits at 328 million monthly active users, still well under Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, but an increase of 14% from the previous year is significant.

Twitter credits this increase in new users to tweaks made to the news feed and notifications system, marketing efforts, and seasonality. But what wasn’t mentioned is the frequent use of its platform by our President, Donald Trump.

Whether you agree or disagree with President Trump’s views, there is no doubt his Tweets are creating increased activity on Twitter.

I view this as good timing on Twitter’s part. As they struggle to grow their user base and increase revenue, their marketing efforts and product tweaks coincide perfectly with all the free advertising they’re getting daily as the media (and the world) reference President Trump’s tweets.

While Twitter’s user base may be on the rise, their first quarter sales are on the decline. Last year this time sales were $595 million, but a year later they fell to $548 million. This marks the company’s first year-over-year sales decline since going public in 2013.

In a letter to shareholders, the company wrote “We continue to expect revenue growth to meaningfully lag audience growth in 2017”.

Twitter has been hard at work trying to grow the company with a mix of live streaming offerings, displaying more relevant content for users, and working to fight harassment and abuse on its network.

Looking at the big picture, Twitter isn’t going anywhere and is still a big player in the social networking space. While its user base may be smaller than other networks, it’s still a place that you should be spending some quality time. In relation to your business, their audience is huge, and with a proper strategy put in place, it’s a great venue to find and connect with potential new customers.

If you don’t already have a Twitter account for your business, now is the time to create one. Start sharing relevant industry information and follow the movers and shakers in your field. Once you’ve established your Twitter presence, use the tools and resources available to search for and connect with your prospects. Being Social requires effort and 2017 is the time to invest!

Trevor Current

Founder of Current Photographer, co-host of The Digital Photography Cafe Show, Designer, Photographer, and overall tech geek.

currentphotographer.com

A little over a year ago Instagram updated to an algorithmic feed rather than the chronological feed we all knew and loved. This change caused an uproar in the social marketing community, and left many photographers scratching their heads wondering how they would reach their audience.

Well this move appears to have payed off big. The platform’s “growth rate spiked, sharing per user increased, and Instagram has added 200 million monthly active users since to reach 700 million.” said TechCrunch’s Josh Constine.

The algorithmic feed was designed to show viewers content that is most relevant to them based on browsing habits. If you comment or like a user’s photos frequently, then the algorithm will show you their content more frequently. If you stop commenting or liking their content, that user will slowly disappear from your feed.

The algorithm also takes in to account popularity and timing. If a user you follow posts a photo that receives a lot of comments and likes quickly from the time it was posted, the algorithm will make the assumption that this is popular content and will show it to more of their followers. This of course has a snowball effect with the algorithm showing the photo to more and more people sometimes squashing other posts from being seen at all.

This tactic is taken directly from the Facebook playbook. When they rolled out their algorithmic feed, the change in user experience was met with some resistance, but has now become the way of life. It has also become hugely profitable to the company, so why not apply it to the other property they own, Instagram.

From a photographer’s perspective, it has become a pay-to-play ecosystem. If you want your posts to be seen, you’ll either have to create amazing content that goes viral, or pay for placement.

As you can imagine the algorithmic feed is not popular among photographers. What was once a level playing field where all individuals, celebrities, and brands had an equal opportunity to get their content seen by their followers, has now become a battleground between popularity contests and big budgets.

The algorithmic feed is here to stay, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube all use it and the pay-to-play model has become an intricate part of their businesses.

Don’t let the ever changing landscape of social media discourage you from using these technologies. With a little effort, creative content and some strategic planning, you will see results for your business.

Trevor Current

Founder of Current Photographer, co-host of The Digital Photography Cafe Show, Designer, Photographer, and overall tech geek.

currentphotographer.com