How to advertise effectively on Facebook

Boso is a fantastic UK startup that acts as an auction site for university students - it's like a hybrid of Facebook and eBay.  If you trade with people within your university there's a number of advantages over conventional auctions, including greater trust, the ability to exchange the goods in person, as well as more relevant items for sale e.g. text books from the same course or whatever. 

The co-founders of Boso, Kulveer and Harj, are both recent Oxford grads, and, given the target market for their site, they have built up some great experience of advertising on Facebook.  Kulveer was good enough to share some of their know-how and reveal some of their Social Media Marketing methods.

"We mainly use Facebook flyers, and have a group on there to give us some added visibility.  We try to tap in to what's hot at the moment, and consequently, get loads of click-throughs, and manage to generate a bit of buzz."

The day after this happened during the World Cup final...

They ran this ad on facebook...

They ran this one after a BBC documentary about bribery in the FA Premier League.

The most successful Facebook ad run by Boso really taps into the way pop cultural memes are amplified in the campus environment - check it:

"We ran this one 2 weeks ago, linking directly to http://www.boso.com/item/3492/My_Wife/ and it became our top viewed item within a day (and most commented!)."

So if you are looking to target students and are planning some Facebook marketing or advertising the advice from Boso crew is as follows:

"After experimenting a bit with the format of the flyers, we've found them to be very successful. Including images help, short snappy messages are important and tapping into something that is hot at the moment will also provide extra attention. We've had very high click-through ratios which have helped spread our message to students."

It's not just about creativity though, Boso also follow the McKinsey way - "What you can measure you can manage":

"Be prepared to experiment with the format of your flyers and use Google Analytics to track the results. We've gathered information on where people go to on our site after clicking the flyer and therefore can optimise the first impressions visitors get. The Google Conversion University is excellent."

The Boso crew are off to the Startup School at the US incubator YCombinator early next year so we'll see if they pick up any new Social Media Optimization tricks out in Silicon Valley.  In my experience of hanging out with the Xuqa crew, the kids in the US really know how to work Facebook - so hopefully Boso will bring back some of these techniques with them... Good luck guys!  Props due to Anjool of Alpha Parties for hooking us up and a hat-tip to Peter Nixey at WebKitchen.