Case Study on budget lead generation event - 2000% ROI

Events are a great way to get in front of many people (prospects!) at once. Even if you're a small business, hosting an event can be an extremely cost-effective way of generating business leads- and demonstrating your business expertise. It's also a great way to share expertise so that all attendees benefit and think well of you.

I was speaking with a web development company the other day. They run events every month, on various topics relative to the digital space.

They promote the events to their own database and to people they're currently trying to do business with. They get around 15-20 people to every event. They get great feedback and interaction. They get at least one lead from every seminar. And it costs them the huge sum of....$150!

Yes, $150.

They've done a deal with a pub close to their office to get the space, tea and coffee for $150.

Now they tell me they get a sale EVERY time. And a sale for them isn't just a one-off. There's upsell opportunities and ongoing maintenance and development work.

Let's be conservative and say a website with them is $3000.

That's TWENTY TIMES the investment cost to make the sale. Even if they only got a sale every 2-3 times this is still a great zero budget marketing activity.

Of course there is there time in promoting and running the event. But as zero budget marketers know, sometimes time is easier to supply than cash.

Can you apply this to your business? Do you have knowledge to share that people want or need to know more about? Then taking the plunge and running some free educational events could be a big win for all involved.

PS. Free tools you can use to manage registrations:

-Eventbrite - Free for free events (which I'm using for a free event on social media marketing and the law right now -and I can report it's great. Come along if it's relevant.)
-Wufoo - Great form tool that's free to use in most cases

Networking still has the same principals - even if it's social networking

If you've ever seen me talk about networking, I maintain that GOOD networking isn't going out to "get" something. Good networkers look for opportunities to help people - to EARN the right to ask a favour.

My marketing hero, Seth, talks about this in his own way in the context of social networking. It's worth a couple of minutes of your time to watch (and thanks to Mark at The Fortune Institute for sending me the link).

PS. If you can't see the youtube box above, use this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=r0h0LlCu8Ks# ! 

What is your 'cost per fan' on Facebook?

With the "average" Aussie spending up to three hours a day on social media, and most of it on Facebook, the zero budget marketer needs to understand whether they can tap into this bounty of online attention. So today we've got a guest post on the issue of "Cost per fan". You may also want to check out some thoughts on what makes an effective Facebook advertisement.

GUEST POST: What is the Cost Per Fan and how Does it Affect You?

As you have probably noticed by checking out the competition on Facebook, practically every business around has some sort of Facebook fan or business page. Hands down the largest social network around, Facebook attracts millions of unique users every day, and a large percentage of those will become recurring users. If you could somehow make them fans of your business, your brand would exponentially explode and you’d be dealing with massive success.

Marketing successfully on Facebook takes a lot of knowledge. You probably already understand a lot about online marketing in general, as in how to determine your niche, how to create materials, how to promote your brand, and how to drive conversions. But once you start dealing with Facebook, an entirely new set of metrics open up. Take the cost per fan for a quick example. This is something that only exists on Facebook – CPF. So let’s a look at CPF in greater detail.

Understanding CPF Metrics and How They Relate to Your Success

The term is fairly self-explanatory, although it can be confusing in the context of Facebook. Obviously, it all has to do with what you’re paying per fan – per an individual you convert who likes your ad material. Yes, this does cost money. It isn’t something you get for free on Facebook. It comes from what you’re paying for CPC or CPM Sponsored Stories or another type of marketplace ad. It includes what you’re paying for your overall campaign versus how many visitors you actually convert.

The Two Steps to Measuring Your CPF

Step One: Conversions Report

Words like “metrics” and initialism like “CPF” make things sound a lot more complicated than they need sound. To put it simply, you can open up Qwaya (or whichever advertising management tool you’re using) and check out your conversions report. In plain English, a conversion is a fan, and a fan is a conversion. It’s the same logic, only a different name. You want to view your conversions report and figure out what you’re paying for a fan.

Step Two: Advertising Performance

You deduce how much you’re paying per fan by viewing your advertising performance within your conversion report. How much does your ad campaign cost? How many views are you getting? What’s your CTR? This is how you figure out how much you’re paying per any one fan.

With the Sponsored Stories features and other unique features on Facebook, you can always find ways to drive the costs down. Of course, you first have to realize what you’re spending money on and exactly how much you’re spending.

Author bio: Craig Robinson is the Editor for Qwaya and works with Social advertisement and how social context works within online behaviour today.