I'm going to share some tips that helped me reach over 177,000 fans on one page and many other pages with anywhere from 1,000 - 30,000 fans.

Let's slam it down easy first.

When I began Facebook marketing I had no knowledge of what was right or wrong. In fact I just threw up some advertisements without reading any tutorials or guides. That ended up turning into one of my best ideas.

Instead of following what everyone was teaching, I just tried what made sense.

First off my page Halo 4 Fans is pretty massive, in fact it's the largest in the Halo 4 industry, including versus YouTube channels, twitter pages, websites, and everything else. It's so large that I've been able to acquire sponsorships, partnerships, and am now in direct communication with the developers of the game.

Even more into it, the page has helped me sponsor other gamers who have since then been offered jobs by major corporations, including Microsoft, 343 Industries, Gamma Gamers, and other companies. These gamers are now working for large corporations that I myself am a fan of, giving me direct communication with each one and inside looks.

But... let's back up.

Where the hell did all of this start?

May 16, 2011 (I may be off by a few days)

One month before the official announcement of Halo 4, I randomly had an idea... Instead of creating pages for products and brands, how about create a page dedicated primarily to the people that are "fans" of those products/brands.

The idea turned into Halo 4 Fans, at the time I didn't even think the game was ever going to be released, but being a fan of the Halo series I knew there was a lot of speculation going around, especially since e3 was right around the corner.

The plan worked. The interest that people had just in the thought of the game possibly came out was more than enough to give the page a burst of fans, but of course, I had to get the page out there first.

I tested 5 campaigns, all at $2.50 each (max spending per campaign).

Each campaign started with the same principles, same demographics, same description, everything. The only difference was the image being used.

One the test was over, I found that something, so damn basic and general was perfect. The image I used was simple just text saying "Halo 4" and that's it. Nothing special, nothing robust, nothing even graphically beautiful. It was junk.

Mind you, I was paying for impressions (HUGE TIP) and hated paying for clicks.. the higher the click through my campaign was, the cheaper my clicks were, so I found it worth while.

Next, I used that same image with a different description. Using the same strategy of 5 campaigns at $2.50 each (that's only $12.50 btw). The best description was the shortest of the bunch, simply saying...

"Press like if are ready for Halo 4"

Now remember, Halo 4 wasn't even announced, it was all speculation and that's it. Nothing more.

This extremely simple campaign with the junky image and simple text ended up only costing me $0.03 per click.

So finally, I narrowed the campaigns down a bit further with one more test.

I used the same image and description as before, but this time I tried out different techniques. Here are the ones I tested.

• Linking directly to the page.
• Linking to a fan-gate which made people click like before accessing the page.
• Linking to a post.
• Linking to a poll that lead to the page.
• Linking to a offsite URL.

The most successful of the 5, was linking directly to the page.

I was now receiving clicks for only $0.01!

I wondered why.. and then I realized that when you link directly to a page, there is a like button in the advertisement. Instead of going to the page, someone could simply click on the "Like" button and continue whatever they were doing. They could then later look at the page when status updates were posted.

And that's how I've done it since then. The same strategy, except a few different changes here and there to see what works best... but I've found the cheapest and most converting methods were by using these 14 tips (in no order + a bonus tip)...

0. Not mentioned above, but important. If you can get a Facebook ad coupon, get one, they can save you $50 - $100 right off the bat
1. Create a community, people like people
2. Do multiple campaigns changing small things each time
3. Link directly to the page (and test other variances too)
4. Try junky images
5. Create something unique, screw what you've been told and just try things out
6. Be active on your page.. no one wants to like a page that is stale
7. Go after topics that are trending or could potentially trend in the future
8. Pay for impressions.. many people will disagree with me, but they are also paying $0.70 per click while I'm paying under $0.03
9. If you spend too much money on a project.. stop and try something different. A problem I see often is people are so invested in something they won't open their eyes to new ideas
10. Stop trying to cheat the system.. Everyone is "buying" likes from all of these junky services.. if someone says "people will like your page more when it has more likes" they don't know what they are talking about, I've seen pages jump from 0 fans to 5,000 fans overnight and then slow down in growth
11. Aim for high click-through rates, the higher your CTR, the better (with impressions)
12. If you use up all of your good content early on, don't worry, you can repost the same content later once you have more fans, your inital content should be setup to get fans interested
13. Stay consistent, post often, don't spam, and don't always include a link in your status updates.. that's a huge one right there and the reason most pages SUCK, who wants to be promoted too? Not me..
14. Just because I said to do something... be yourself and try your own techniques

There you have it.

That's my platform to success with Facebook advertisements and it works. But remember, there is no strategy that is going to work forever, platforms change, people adapt, and progress is made. If you want to get started with Facebook advertising or Facebook pages in general, get started right now and stop giving excuses.

Here are 3 quotes to get you rolling...

"The only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing." - Socrates
" If you are not willing to risk the usual you will have to settle for the ordinary." - Jim Rohn

And how could I not include a quote that hits the spot...

"Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it." - Maya Angelou