We’ve all been there before. Your boss is breathing down your neck to boost the business page with more likes. “Our competitor has thousands of likes!” they say, and you know they want results fast.
So you give in to the temptation, even though you know it’s wrong—you buy Facebook likes.
Can people be blamed for wanting more likes? Of course not. When users see that a Facebook business page has a lot of likes, it signals that the brand is worth exploring.
But buying Facebook likes is an outdated and ineffective strategy for creating social proof.
Not to mention, buying Facebook likes is damaging to your brand in the long term. Facebook will surely catch on to your misdeeds and take action against any fake accounts.
We’ve put together this article (+ an experiment with Facebook likes) to dissuade you from taking the shortcut of buying Facebook likes.
To truly reap the benefits of Facebook likes, you need to put in the work and gain them organically. That means connecting with Facebook users and providing so much value they can’t help but like your page.
There is no turnkey solution.
And social media users today are smart enough to see a scam when they encounter one.
Why Buying Facebook Likes Hurts Your Brand
Facebook officially took action against buying likes in 2015 by updating its algorithm to automatically recognize and remove suspicious engagement activity. Since then, they’ve removed millions of fake or inactive Facebook accounts.
Beyond this Facebook policy, buying likes has a larger negative impact on your marketing and advertising efforts.
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It Damages Trust:
Buying likes damages the credibility of your brand. It signals to your audience that you’re not willing to put in the work to build an actual relationship, which can cause decreased engagement over time.
When you buy likes, it erodes the trust followers have in your brand, skews the results of your advertising, and lessens your understanding of your audience.
Buying fans is like paying people to be your friends. What do you think is going to happen when you’ll stop giving them money? They’ll go away to the next person that will give them money. There are things you can’t buy, like friendship, trust or genuine interest in what you do. These things you have to earn.
What make Facebook ads way superior than buying fans is that the ad is proposing to become fan, they have a choice. That makes a big difference. As these ads can be laser targeted (like to your website visitors), the people who “opt-in” to become fans are a gazillion time more likely to engage with you.Emeric Ernoult – Agorapulse
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Your ad spend will drive little value:
Likes you purchase traditionally come from fake user accounts, which will never actually engage with your content beyond that first like.
Not only does this drive down the popularity of your content overall, it means you’re potentially paying for ads that will have no possibility of conversion.
I had a disagreement with one of my former clients (a multi-million dollar company) who decided to buy fake Facebook likes. WAfter purchasing fake likes, their Facebook page’s interaction plummeted. There was (and now still is) pretty much zero engagement. The only comments are from the employees or family. Their last comment (in Feb 2016), was ‘Looking Great [name]! I am [employee]’s Mom!’.
Josh Rubin – Post Modern Marketing
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Understanding your audience becomes impossible:
Buying Facebook likes floods your audience with fake user accounts that will skew your analytics and make it impossible to build effective custom audiences.
You’ll never be able to get an accurate account of who your followers are or what their interests might be.
And if these accounts are caught by Facebook, there goes your like count as well.
Our words are not convincing enough? Here’s what Facebook Ads and Social Media Guru Mari Smith has to say:
I have a *strong* aversion to purchasing Facebook likes (or any social followers). The vast majority are fake accounts and it’s just unethical that companies are selling such a service. Besides, Facebook is fairly relentless about periodically deleting fake accounts.
However, even if there are a few bona fide brokers offering genuine fans for sale, then who exactly are these fans? Are they people with nothing better to do with their time that they’re signing up with the brokers and getting paid a micro fraction per Page they like? Or is there some software program that magically ‘forces’ people to like Pages without them knowing it? Hm. So then you’d be building a Facebook audience with people who were paid or forced to like your Page. It makes no sense to me.
These factors come together to make your life as a marketer and advertiser much more difficult if you decide to buy Facebook likes.
You’ll waste time and money trying to figure out who your audience is, which means the content you create will never truly meet the actual audience’s interests or needs.
And Facebook likes might be getting a big update in the near future.
2019 Updates for Facebook Likes
In May of 2019, Facebook announced that they would start testing the removal of all like counts on the Instagram platform in an effort to combat envy and self-censorship in users.
This action removes the number of likes on a post, replacing it with the most common reaction types.
In September, Facebook announced that this experiment would move to their platform as well.
Hidden Facebook like counter via Jane Manchun Wong.
With this potential shift away from the public like counters, buying likes makes even less sense as a long-term strategy.
You’re better off thinking about how to build a social media strategy that works towards fostering strong and long-lasting relationships with your audience.
What Happens When You Buy Facebook Likes (An AdEspresso Experiment!)
We put together an experiment to see if buying likes actually had any positive impact on advertising and marketing efforts. Let’s start with the methodology.
How We Built Our Facebook Like Buying Experiment
Back in 2014, we created three Facebook pages. And yes, we created cat meme pages! Not just because cats are fun and adorable, but because we needed a topic that would generate measurable engagement even with low numbers.
Page 1 was supported by traditional Facebook advertising and page 2 and 3 were boosted though purchased Facebook likes from two different companies.
Each page is more or less identical, just with a slightly longer name. We published the same kind of content on the pages at the same exact time for a month-long period.
- Meow Cats – Likes generated with Facebook Advertising
- Meeow Cats – Likes bought online from seller n.1
- Meeeow Cats – Likes bought online from seller n.2
We won’t name the companies who sold us our likes to make sure we didn’t give them any free advertising. They were the two Google results when searching for “Buy Facebook likes” on Google. You’ll still see five different platforms on the first page if you do this search today.
What Happened in our Experiment
For the traditional advertising page, we targeted 20 different countries with different economics and cultures and included interest targeting from the beginning of October to the first week of November. For the other two pages, we purchased 500 Facebook likes from each company. We were told these likes would come from anywhere around the world.
Before we get into the results, a quick disclaimer—company n.2 was slow at delivering likes, so users only saw 135 of the 164 total posts we made on each page.
Here’s what we found:
Meow Cats Facebook Ads |
Meeow Cats Seller N.1 |
Meeeow Cats Seller N.2 |
|
---|---|---|---|
Initial Likes | 748 | 858 | 595 |
Final Likes | 816 | 799 | 492 |
Likes Organic Gain/Loss | 68 | -59 | -103 |
Cost | $65.76 | $11 | $42 |
Avg. Post Reach | 229.75 | 23.82 | 33.69 |
Avg. Post Impressions | 411.41 | 63.64 | 63.31 |
Tot. Post Reach | 36,989 | 3,859 | 4,548 |
Tot. Post Impressions | 66,237 | 10,309 | 8,547 |
Avg. Post Comments | 0.94 | 0 | 0.04 |
Avg. Post Likes | 26.35 | 0.12 | 0.54 |
Avg. Post Shares | 2.80 | 0.01 | 0 |
Tot. Post Comments | 152 | 0 | 5 |
Tot. Post Likes | 4,243 | 19 | 73 |
Tot. Post Shares | 451 | 1 | 0 |
Total Engagement | 4,846 | 20 | 78 |
Cost per Action | $0.01 | $0.55 | $0.54 |
Cost per Like | $0.08 | $0.01 | $0.09 |
Our ad campaign for the Meow Cats page ran for one day and delivered us 748 initial likes. Like buying company n.1 delivered 858 and like buying company n.2 delivered 595, both over the 500 likes we purchased. Let’s look at the cost per like across the different pages.
- Facebook Ads for Meow cats: $0.08
- Company n.1 for Meeow Cats: $0.01
- Company n.2 for Meeeow Cats: $0.09
At first blush, Meeow Cats is the winner with a grand total of $11 spent for 858 likes. But let’s dig a little deeper. When you look at the engagement metrics, Meow Cats (the only one to use ads, not purchased likes) comes out ahead as the most successful page. Every post created was seen by 229 users on average and the page itself generated, on average, 26 likes per post, 2.8 shares and one comment.
Both Meeow Cats and Meeeow Cats had a weak average of less than one like per post. Meeow Cats didn’t get a single comment and Meeeow Cats had 0 shares as well. Overall, a very poor showing. If you want to dig into the data yourself, take a look at the full report here.
The page where we used traditional Facebook advertising saw high engagement from followers, whereas the pages with purchased likes saw little to no real engagement.
We wanted to see how buying Facebook likes contributed to long-term engagement as well. So we came back in 2016.
Tracking Long-Term engagement
You might think that purchasing likes could give your business page the kick-start it needs to build a more engaged audience over time. But that couldn’t be further from the case.
On revising these pages in March of 2016, we found that Facebook had deleted a lot of the likes we purchased.
That said, there was still enough there to test overall follower engagement. Without purchasing any additional likes or running additional ad campaigns, we published an identical video across all three pages at the same time, boosting it on each page for $5 (a total of $15).
Here’s what we found:
Again, the results speak for themselves. Even after almost two years, Meow Cats received an 8.5% engagement rate with 41 likes, clicks, comments, or shares. Both Meeow Cats and Meeeow Cats saw NOTHING!
So there you have it. Buying Facebook likes doesn’t help you boost engagement or build an audience for your Facebook page. Sure, you’ll see a momentary bump in likes themselves, but what does that really get you?
What You Can Do Instead of Buying Facebook Likes
As you’re building an audience, there are a number of different strategies you can use to gain a legitimate page, likes, and followers.
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Find the right time to post content to your Facebook page.
People spend approximately 35 minutes on Facebook every day, so the window of time to attract them isn’t very long. Track when engagement is highest on your current content and look at audience metrics from Facebook Insights to see when people are actively using the platform.
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Use ads to boost awareness of your brand and of your content.
We saw how well this tactic performed in our experiment. Even after close to two years, the followers we gained through advertising campaigns continued to engage with our content. If you haven’t created a Facebook ad before, check out our Facebook ad templates to build your first one quickly and easily.
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Create interest and lookalike audiences for your campaigns.
Followers and customers are some of the most valuable resources you have for understanding who your audience is. Targeting Facebook users with similar interests or shared qualities helps you get more bang for your buck.
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Encourage conversations by commenting, reacting, and engaging with posts from your target audience.
Facebook is a social platform, so you need to make sure that you are actively participating in the conversations your followers are having.
Put in the work to build an audience that’s genuinely interested in your brand. The users you attract will be eager to engage with your content in the long term, unlike the fake accounts that deliver purchased likes.
You Don’t Need to Buy Facebook Likes to Build an Audience
When you buy likes for your Facebook page, it doesn’t do your business any good. Instead of focusing on strategies that can grow your business, you’re spending money on “followers” who will never engage with your content or purchase your product.
Building an audience the right way takes patience and hard work, but the payoffs are that much better in return. You’ll find that these followers are more engaged with and interested in your products and your brand.
Spread the word!
Found this data useful? We’ve made it super-simple for you to spread the word and embed them in your blog.
Here’s an awesome infographic that you can use, just copy and paste the html code after it!
Embed code (just copy and paste in your blog):
Great post and infographic Massimo – will be sharing. Really good to see Facebook starting to clamp down on these type of companies, although it took them long enough.
Thanks Clive! Glad the post was useful! Totally agree on the late response from Facebook on this issue but anyway… better late than never 🙂 Hope they’ll also start more aggressively to identify and take down fake accounts!
You are right! Also Just don’t buy them from spammers and scammers is favorite notable point i see.
LOL? Y what’s the difference now? A page with 200k genuine followers have no likes, because Facebook block them to see your content, making you pay adds for your own fans to see your page…
Can’t see the difference.
That’s not true Martina 🙂 While Organic reach is decreasing and is at an all time low, if you have a good Social Media Manager and publish engaging content, they’ll still generate results if your fan base is real and interested in your topic. Also if you advertise to your page fan you’ll be able to reach them at a very cheap price while if you bought your page fan you’ll pay ads just to reach fake / non engaged users.
If your audience is localised…Surely you can just pay for ads to target your real users and not the fake one by refining your audience to not include the countries your fake likes come from?
Well planned and delivered post Massimo. And the infographic is a nice layer of icing on the cake.
I’ve read similar studies before and every one has demonstrated that buying likes is less than worthless.
It amazes me that it’s even considered as an option when trying to grow a Facebook audience or online presence.
Ciao for now!
Stuart =)
Thanks Stuart 🙂 I’m amazed as well by how many businesses are still attracted by buying likes… let’s hope they’ll soon be gone for good.
Buying Likes is a total waste of time and money. Especially since there are sites you can use to get free likes if you’re willing to do some legwork. Not that these sites are any better/more ethical than buying.
You guys actually spent some money to get hold of some real data and prove that it’s worthless – kudos to you guys! I was pretty surprised to even see “reach” if I were to be honest, but I guess it’s just posts displayed to these accounts when the fake account operators log into them. Initially, I thought that they wrote some code to automate the “like” process quickly.
Thanks and keep up the great content – I’ll definitely share this on my page next week!
Thanks Jason! We had so many Agencies using AdEspresso and complaining that their customers wanted to simply buy likes, we wanted to help them providing some data-driven material to counter their customers’ crazy requests.
The reach from fake likes was also more than we expected but as far as we understood was mainly within the first few days of activity while they were still sending fake accounts on the page to click like.
We tried to dig deeper but Facebook nowadays doesn’t allow much scraping. As far as we could see manually most of the accounts were clearly fake. People in India liking and sharing local businesses in US or UK. Too bad we were not able to do some pattern analysis on those accounts!
Indeed! If we could spot some patterns it might help us all in the fight against fake likes! What a bummer though.
Love, love, love your post! Thank you for all of your hard work and all of the time you invested. Thank you for sharing! 5 Stars!
Thanks Maya!
Very informative! It felt that way when I tired it a few times. I noticed no connection or continued conversations on my art! I need and want that. Buying likes will not get it done! Thank again!
Great post!
It’s an age-old question that plenty of us generally know , that major consensus is buying is never effective, but I really appreciate the attention you all put into this post – especially with the infographics and stats. Thanks for running this experiment to teach the rest of us!
You’re welcome Tim, glad the post was useful!
Hai massimo, you article is so great and I absolutely agree with your post. Great job, hope to read more from you.
Thanks, However I’ve removed your profile’s link as it’s pointing to a website selling likes which, as you know having read the post, are just crap 🙂
LOL!
That’s just hilarious! 😀
I’m a customer and I can say that you guys are truly awesome!
Thanks Robert!
This article is fantastic! I have recently begun a new job and found that the facebook pages of the company have been infested with a large number of fake likes, this is reflected in the fact there is zero engagement with any of our content (even though it is quality). Any tips on how to get back on track (apart from manually removing the thousands of fake page likes?).
That Sucks Nic. Facebook recently killed a lot of inactive Facebook users, so maybe some of them were already removed by Facebook. Otherwise the process is extremely painful. You should use Facebook as the page instead of your user (use the arrow on the top right of Facebook “Use Facebook As”).
This way you’ll be able to see fans as the user’s friends and remove them. But it can take forever and I’m not really sure if it’s worth the pain.
-Max
Thanks for the tip! I’ve begun manually removing them one by one. You’re right, it is incredibly painful and takes up time I could spend being productive elsewhere. I fear that the only option may be to remove the page and start fresh.
Great! Thanks for this advice! I admit that I was tempted to by likes but I gonna work on it. No likes buying for me!!!
I agree that Sometimes buying a Facebook like can be on your nerves. But it is also true that if you get maximum likes your publicity grows. The only issue with the likes is that it is from true customers or fake autonomous sites.
Alina, a like is worthless if it’s not from an engaged user that can convert into a customer. Probably out of 1000 sellers, one is selling true likes and not fake ones, yet the vast majority of them is just selling crap.
Even if the likes are coming from real users, I’d be concerned how those users were driven to the page. Many companies use javascript hacks that trick users into liking something they don’t care about or spam so hard everywhere that the value of their likes is near to 0.
PS: I’ve removed the link to your website selling likes 🙂
I was about to buy likes on some site and then felt I should do some homework on the side effects. Now I am back on facebook setting up my ad. If you want to stay in business for long time, its better to target the right audience. Nice article, appreciate the effort and info!
Yeah! I’m glad it was useful and convinced you not to Buy Likes 🙂
Just saying, band wagon marketing works. It’s like propaganda. May be false but it has influence. 10,000 fake likes is over kill. 700-1200 is the sweet spot. If your content is good, the bought likes may be a tipping point for someone who feels comfortable joining the crowd. Their are more followers out their than leaders. You’ve gone through allot of trouble making your point. Makes me wonder. Did Facebook hire you?
Thanks for weighin in Robert. We’re not paid by Facebook, tho’ that would be nice 🙂
I don’t agree with your points and I think the numbers are pretty clear. Will people like more easily a page with 1,000,000 likes than one with 10 ? Probably yes…. but you won’t reach any of those new, legit likes, because Facebook will consider your page less than 0 due to total lack of engagement compared to the size.
And moreover Facebook is finally getting really pissed off with this crap and lot’s of page admin are receiving notifications that their pages are full of fake likes and Facebook is gonna remove them. They also published a page about this recently: https://www.facebook.com/business/a/page/fake-likes so likely you’ll enjoy 1,000,000 fake likes for some weeks and then go back to 10.
Of course everyone is free to buy likes if they think it fits with their strategy 🙂 And it can make sense… as long as their strategy is to brag about the number of likes rather than building traffic and sales from Facebook (which is anyway very tough nowadays due to low organic reach).
I think the gem here is in the expenses laid out. I operated a few celebrity entertainment blogs that would “autopost” to FB/TW. I would by routine, but 1000 likes on both and then use FB ads from there. My assumption was that people would give these pages more authority. However people, as we all know, must be engaged. This can only happen through a voluntary arrival and interaction.
Well, your article is very informative. Enlightening!
There’s an option I can share to make those ‘Fake Likes’ fade and to determine ‘Real Likes’ that engage: and this is it: Apply a ‘captcha’ to validate a ‘like’. And Facebook should think of it?
Celso, thanks for sharing! The captcha can be useful but can be applied on very few places. Most of the people nowadays only like pages through posts etc. and it would be too invasive to ask for a Captcha.
Facebook’s approach to the problem is more focused on algorithmically detecting behaviors of fake accounts and kill them!
Buying Likes is a total waste of time and money. Especially since there are sites you can use to get free likes if you’re willing to do some legwork. Not that these sites are any better/more ethical than buying.
after reading this post, i remember a great saying “there are no shortcuts to success”
I was ready to buy links, but after reading article I won’t. For longterm it isnt worth it
p.s. infographic is blank ;(
Wonderful, your article has been of great inspiration to me!
I wrote an article trying to refute this false belief that lately has increased, I mentioned at the end of my article and I want to thank you once again! http://alexsupertramp.it/index.php/2015/07/27/comprare-like-i-grandi-numeri-che-non-contano/
You are great!
But what if you have no likes?
I started with 0 likes on Twitter and Facebook. I post interesting content about tech, gadgets, reviews and more on scheduled moments to reach the highest audience, however, I’m getting maximum 1 like a week on twitter and maybe one a month on facebook… Then I decided to buy 2k followers on twitter, after doing so and having 2k+ followers, if I then posted something I got one favorite, retweet per post and abt 1/2 followers per day… then I advertised a video on facebook with abt 30 followers (my friends and family) and payed 40$ on advertising to get 100 likes, (legit facebook advertising) and NONE of the people who liked my page actually comment or like any of my posts… now buying likes for my page costs 29$ for 250 likes, if I am more credible as a good page by having 350 rather than 30 likes, organic people will be more keen to like my page when they see my add because it’s a page with already a few likes…. so in this way it makes sense…
Sorry, you are all almost right! One exception. If someone has a music or acting based FB page, you better buy as many Facebook ” likes ” as you can. If someone is using Facebook and Youtube together, as a musician and or film person… In the end, all that other will care about is how many people are hooked on your creative projects! Period! More “likes”, more positive for a band or actor…. All others, I agree, buying FB likes may not be good…. If I launch a new CD or Film, and have 200,000 fans or 20,000 likes, ALL BOUGHT, it makes the project look attractive… Who cares about buying or not….
Excellent post. І am experiencing some of these issues aѕ well..
This info is relevant to Facebook likes but Facebook as an advertising medium is relatively worthless anyways. Likes on other platforms can be beneficial and can create general interest to get a posts started. We have helped many clients grow a successful presence on Instagram.
Just to clarify Neal:
1) You comment to spam your website where you sell likes (I’ve removed the link of course)
2) You label Facebook Ads & Facebook Likes as worthless (even tho’ that’s what you’re selling … so all your customers so far are dumb? )
3) You try to sell something even more worthless as Instagram followers. Which I guess will follow the trends of this post: 0 engagement and disappearing very soon.
Solid business 🙂
NAME : sourav
Subject/Purpose : Social Media Panel
Content : Hello Sir Am Social Media Service Provider, Am Running One Panel —– Please Register Here !
Am Providing Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Soundclous , Youtube Services At Very Cheap Price !
My Quality Is Always Superb And Most Important Thing I Stay Online 24×7 So All Time Support Available !
For Further
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PS: AdEspresso editorial team removed all the contacts and link from this spam comment 🙂
Sourav, you are a spammer 🙂
You didn’t even read the content of this post just used a stupid bot to add a comment trying to get a link to your site where you scam users selling them worthless social proof.
So … for everyone else reading the comments… this are the kind of crap you’re buying when you buy likes from these guys. Spam and bots. Nothing more. Don’t waste your money please!
Thanks for this post! I’ve been trying to convince my boss not to buy Facebook likes forever and this has been super useful to show him real world data backing my thesis!
Previously he had already bough 20,000 likes for a page who had merely 500 organic likes. It’s been a blood bath. All our posts there now have no engagement in the best case. In the worst they get a lot of spam comments from the likes he bough promoting stuff in other languages (likely indian).
Still he was happy because he had more likes than our direct competitor 🙁
Thanks for sharing your experience Amy. What you described is a very common scenario in many companies unluckily. We’re doing our best to break this pattern 🙂
Massimo,
Just another great post – thanks!
We actually do the opposite. We are still building our initial fan base and since we are a niche app, we remove all non-relevant likers.
Of course, then, the Page Insights shows all removed fans as unlikes. Wondering if this has any impact on FB Page internal algorithms like EdgeRank? Does FB also keep track of who did the removal – the user himself or the page admin?
Thanks! 🙂
SOOO NOT TRUE! IF you buy followers and likes you ENGAGE REAL followers cause thats the hidden rule in social media. If you have 10 000 insta followers you gonna get more real followers faster than if you only have 500 followers. You have not done your social media homework and buying fake followers is not ONLY bad I can tell you from my own succes 🙂
Maria, do you have numbers to back your claims? 🙂 I think we did a pretty good job in showing with real numbers why you should not buy Facebook likes. What you’re talking about is Social Proof. Yes, a user is more likely to like a page that has 10,000 likes than a page with 5 likes. The problem is, if those 10,000 likes are all fake, you’ve already screwed up your page and engagement so Facebook will consider your page as low quality and you won’t be able to reach even the real likes because the overall engagement is near 0.
WAIT Max, what’s wrong with Viagra?! 🙂
JK – great stuff, loved it!
Thanks so much, this was a very detailed article!
I have a few questions:
1) When you say “paid advertising” to generate likes, are you referring to the ads targeted to a specific audience (cat people), or to just boosting posts?
2) If you have a website that your Facebook page is created to promote, is there a FB Ad option to send people to your website from the ad and still get a like on your FB page, or do these two types of intent for the ad have to be bought as separate ad types?
Thanks in advance!
Kenny
Hey Kenny,
1) We did Facebook Ads specifically targeted to cat lovers to promote the page, not posts.
2) They are two different ad units. However when you promote your website, ads are published as a post from your Facebook Page, so as a collateral effect you’ll likely gain also some page likes.
wow… i almost bought fake likes for my glarmada.com facebook page.. but after i read this.. i ran lol
That had to be one of the most well planned and well written experiments in “buying likes” we’ve ever come across. While we have never bought likes and don’t recommend it to any of our clients, can’t say that curiosity hasn’t been tempting, and in your case looks as if curiosity killed the cat (pun intended). Guess if you want to “look” good go out and buy likes, but if you actually want to engage and have a great Facebook presence then run away like the plague. Thanks for all the effort.
If I have no intention of wanting organic reach with my posts and only need a page for paid ad purposes (darkposts – to reach cold traffic, not existing page fans), then would this still hurt my paid ads performance?
I have been told by a guy spending +$1M/year on Facebook to immediately go out and buy 5,000 likes for a new FB page and then grow organically from there, as (1) people will be more response to the ads as they see a page has some likes and (2) he said a more established page with 5000+ likes will be favorable for ad performance in terms of ad impressions. He doesn’t want/need to market to existing page fans.
I’d be really interested on your thought on this?
Thanks,
Jake
Hey Jake,
Thank you very much for the comment! This is Tim (from the video).
“he said a more established page with 5000+ likes will be favorable for ad performance in terms of ad impressions” – I have not seen evidence on this nor have I tested it, so I can’t say in terms of ad performance (assuming you EXCLUDE page fans of course).”
Hypothetically, as mentioned, you could EXCLUDE your page “fans” (bought likes) in your advertising and only target real people. But you’d still be playing a gamble – 1) don’t know if this could hurt your ad performance without testing, 2) some users might see your 5,000 likes and think “oh its popular” and 3) some users would look further at your page (as I would) and see the low to zero interactivity on your page (or complete lack of posts) thus raising high suspicion and creating an irreversible bad first impression for your business.
Overall, the QUALITY of page likes will create an ASSET for your business. A Facebook Page is one of those assets. While you might be able to run ads (and POSSIBLY get a social proof benefit for those who just click over and glance ONLY at your # of fans), you’re destroying any chance of organic or engaged Facebook Fan Page in the future.
In general, you’re making a gamble – and that’s not touching the ethics of “fake fans”, just the impact on your business assets and brand awareness.
Appreciate you commenting and raising this point. Most people just go ahead and buy likes (or not) without offering a unique situation like the one you propose.
Hope that input contributes to your decision process.
All the best,
Tim (from AdEspresso)
Wow, talk about amazing data to prove something all the best marketers have been saying for a while! It simply does not pay to pay for likes.
Thank you for writing this amazing guide, can’t wait to share with my audience.
Great, your article has been of great inspiration to myself and may be all.thanks for all and your hard work too.
This just saved me a lot of possible lost money. I was always wondering if paid likes really amounted to actual interaction and sales, seems my suspicion was correct. Paid ads maybe the smarter option!
Great article with valuable conclusions. My question would be though what kind of advertisement setting could generate close to 800 likes for 65$? If you target relevant countries (US, UK, Canada) I do not think you can get this amount of likes for that money. Am I wrong? Anyone has better experience with it?
Yes I aslo agree with you. it was very valuable. too many people know about it. Thanks you for share it..
thanks
Thank you for this article!!
But if I buy from facebook isteslf. Then it’s o.k?
Will be happy to know
Thank for article! Why and for what purposes need likes everyone decides for himself! I think that in a small number of likes required for beginners.
I’ve been doing some testing for a few pages I manage. I had some specific targeting, picked about 17 countries all through the FB Ad Manager. Really defined the audience to about 4.8M people, which is pretty defined.
What I saw looked like click-farm activity through FB ads!!
Day 1, 5 hours in I had 40 new likes, ALL from South Africa. I know that we have followers in that country, but really, none of the other 16 countries liked the page?? So I removed South Africa and the next day, 33, ALL from the Philippines, so I let it run, 83 likes from only that country. I had a $5/day budget. So I turned off Philippines and then I started to get Brazil ALL 30. So I started to look at who these people were, and most of them were not our target market, they had 1000’s of likes and no apparent life in their feeds.
So the question is Facebook paying people to click LIKE all over the world?? Meanwhile my page has had 2 impressions in the US where the primary targeting is for people who live here. So I created the exact ad, modified the delivery to be only 1st world, US, CA, AU, NZ, UK, Israel and Singapore. English speaking target. Now the only place I’m getting likes is Israel. What gives? I’ve bumped it up to $10/day and all day today I got 11 likes from Israel, which is fine, they are a target as well. I have it on automatic, impressions. How do I reach the US with quality fans?
What about buying a small amount of ‘likes’ for a startup business. When you have 5 likes or less, customers may get the impression that you are not genuine, not trustworthy?
Then by the time your fake ‘likes’ have been deleted you will hopefully already have established a decent amount of genuine likes?
Thank you for the informative post,
Ryan
Ever since Facebook’s latest algorithm our FB page reach has really dropped much. It is very hard to reach 100 people with similar pages with 5000 plus likes so I agree on that buying a few a week could help us gather real and organic likes much faster in the long term.
great article many thanks
Hello,
Thank you for the informative post,
I think you have mention all the correct details about the likes which is useful or not for the facebook page , But buying a facebook likes is much easy but it does not harm the branding I think, its easy process rather then so much money spend on regularly doing social media.
Great post and thank you for sharing. I was considering that option and found this post so changed my opinion.
Thanks for posting this interesting and clear information on why buying Facebook likes is not a good idea. I think that many users who thought about this tool will refrain from this idea now.
If you’re starting from 0, buying a small amount of followers and likes WILL in fact help you pick up more followers. I’ve managed about 50 different accounts from 0 and it has been proven to work. People just don’t trust brands that don’t have a following or likes. That’s a fact. So the moral of the story is, buy likes and followers in the beginning, but you still need to engage with other accounts to grow.
Hey Jeff
But doesn’t it make more sense to ‘buy’ those likes from Facebook advertising. You still get the likes off the ground and with increased user engagement… even if you have to pay for the boost to achieve that engagement?
Just a bit question here: I’ve just bought likes from some services, can I request facebook to remove all of these likes from my fanpage?
Thanks so much for the great post! Quick question. When you say you ran Facebook Ads, I’m assuming that you ran an engagement campaign for likes. Is that correct? Just want to make sure that running an engagement campaign isn’t going to hurt my Edge Rank since the likes would be coming from actual Facebook users who chose to like my page after seeing the ad. Thanks again for taking the time to write such an in-depth post!
Very interesting read indeed. And very convincing. Still I’m batteling against my better self. I’m in a situation where I pitch intellectual property to potential clients. To these might be-clients it doesnt really matter where the likes on my fb-page has come from. They just want to see numbers, the more the merrier.
I’m not gonna get into the murky waters of buying likes, but apart from self respect, could you tell me why I shouldnt under the circumstances I’ve described!
Can I get the campaign data you use to promote the Organic Facebook Page Ads “Meow Cats”?
And if possible can I own the page “Meow Cats”?. Thank you in advance 🙂
This so true, anyone who buys likes is just wasting his time and money. Its just like throwing your money into a waste bin.
Only facebook ads can provide real likes to your fan page. We all know that buying followers from other place is fake and they are not real followers but we purchase to show the community, we are popular!
Facebook firstly is a platform by which you build a customer or friend base. It does not do much when you pay it to promote your business. All it does is to engage its algorithms to “assist” in dong it “right”. And most of the time it does not work. Thats why it engages people who give testimony as to why you should not buy likes.
Bullcrap. People are suckers for popularity and numbers. Thats why advertising and hype works. Do you really think the spice girls or Justin Beiber make music or Millie Cyrus for that matter. Of course not. Do they have talent. No way. What they have is hype their privates and they pretend promise they will sleep with you. Thats what sells.
I have used fake likes. I mean does your wife really love you or is she saying so because of your car and to stop the other woman getting to you? get real.
Facebook can’t have it all. I join but I use the fake likes and I do well. And it is cheap. Facebook hijacks and stores your personal information and that of your friends. Do they pay you for it? No.
I’ve read somewhere that Facebook somewhat encourages paid promotions because they also need business from their Boosts.
Is that true?
Buying fake likes sucks. I agree
Hi there Massimo, a great article over there that you have written. There are definitely points where I can agree with you, but also there are also some points, I need to disagree with!
Have you ever heard of bots that are working on your facebook profile? These help you find your target audience and invite them to like your page, which can increase your engagement drastically, as a big part of the invited followers actually like your page. I would definitely give it some more research and you might find 2-3 fitting products, but pay attention: they might be expensive.
The second point, I want to introduce to you are social media marketing websites that not only sell you likes or whatever, but that actually create you a long-term plan to sustainably push your website. That might be more detailed work you need to do, but in the end it will definitely pay out! All you have to do is formulate your goals and when you want to reach them, and there are websites which actually help you do that. So far i have found 2-3 of them, which kind of helped me, but standing out from them was definitely BuyCheapestFollowers. They have a live support and they offer you not only to buy facebook likes, but you can also increase your engagement organically by many different methods. I would love to see an article by you over one of these 2 methods I have introduced to you and see how your opinion might change!
Regards,
Renko
it is very interesting and useful. i like it so much.
Hi Massimo, what do you think about buying comments for a post that you later boost?
This is so true, anyone who buys “I like it” is wasting their time and money. It’s like throwing your money in a garbage can.
A quite good article. This is very helpful for newbie bloggers. If we would like to increase Facebook like, only using Facebook Ads for right Facebook Fans
Nice article about buying Facebook likes
i agree with all of this…but I would really like to customize my facebook page. The new stupid requirement of 2000 likes before you can do this is ridiculous. Much more tempting to pay for likes in this case. I have 403 likes…it will take me a long time to get to 2000 likes
When I started out my blog, a lot of people used to say to me that your page has very fewer likes. But I never shied from replying back to them with my facebook page engagement statistics. Today I have grown my blogs facebook page followers organically to 2000+ followers by regularly sharing informative content and engaging with my page followers.
It is August 2019, yet this post still speaks volumes!
Thank you for the great content that has stood the test of time.
Hi, A great article.
From your perspective,is like for like for facebook page cause the same damage too?
I had ran some ad to get more followers,exchange likes in some fb groups. The organic reach of my page decrease from 200 to 2 suddenly,I am at a loss what to do.
I read your blog. It’s a very nice and useful for social media. Thanks for sharing useful information with us.
Yes as per the article it is true and very clear buying links destroy the brand and their business growth in Facebook.
Is it okay for me to share this post with my students?