I have always had a healthy scepticism when it comes to using a platform like Facebook to advertise, notwithstanding the fact that I am not very keen to put more money in Mark Zuckerberg's overflowing pockets, but last week I managed to get our necessarily prudent Treasurer to earmark a small budget in order to test the social media waters.
And I have to say that I have been very pleased with the results. Setting up an "advert" is very simple; it is just like writing a post. However, instead of just hitting send and having it on the page, you click on the "Boost" button instead. This allows you to target a very specific demographic - gender, age, location, interests - meaning that the people who get to see the post are the very people you want to be seeing it. You can then choose a length of time to push the post, and, more importantly, you can decide on the maximum budget.
And in our case, seven days of very targeted advertising will cost no more than €14.
The post needs to be approved - this takes a few minutes - and then off it goes, directly on to the pages of the very people that you want to be appealing to. And if you manage to pique their interest and they click on the post, a few cents is taken from your budget. As the days tick by, you can monitor the performance of the advert on the "Publishing tools" section. Our very first attempt, a fairly generic type of advert, was seen by over 4000 people, and gave rise to 150 direct clicks. Our club page likes increased by 25, but what was important about these likes is that they were from local people who will now see everything we post.
We also got a couple of direct messages from interested parties.
The final bill was just shy of €13, and it feels like that was brilliant value for what we got out of it.
I have changed tack this week and targeted a very specific demographic:
https://www.facebook.com/BagenalstownCricketClub/posts/1219223844861358?notif_t=like¬if_id=1490173103302558
...and a mere five hours after publishing, the post has been seen by 500+ people, and we have had 60 direct clicks.
I am not expecting us to be turning people away because we have reached capacity on the back of a couple of Facebook posts, and see this as a longer game, developing the local profile of the club as head towards our 175th anniversary next year. The cost means that even if we don't manage to attract new players, then we have lost very little, but if we even get a single new player, then the whole exercise has been worthwhile.
If your club hasn't dipped its toe in the water, then I would suggest it gets it shoes and socks off straight away! It's an hour of someone's time, and a mere few Euros. Really. What do you have to lose?