Advertising on Facebook: An Idea...

[Ashley_Price]

I've bought a copy of The Facebook Era by Clara Shih and am seriously thinking about advertising on Facebook to see what happens.

Then I remembered, lots of people on here wonder if ads on F.B. actually work. So I had the following idea.

I'll place BananaOffice adverts on Facebook and if you are interested in the results you can pay me a commission for the statistics.

What do you think? You get the information you want, and I get financial help towards my ad campaign.

Sounds good to me...

 

[garysumpter]

Surely the stats are only useful to you? All ads are different, all industries are diferent....?

Gary

 

[stone love]

been there £25 a day for 3 weeks....... nowt, zilch, zero,

 

[Ashley_Price]

been there £25 a day for 3 weeks....... nowt, zilch, zero,

How well did you target the advert (unlike Google, you can "super" target to age, gender, business occupation, etc.)?

Was £25 a day enough?

Were you using PPC or PPI?

Three weeks does not sound like very long to me for a decent ad campaign - should it not have run longer?

Was your ad linking through to your site?

Did you get any click-throughs? If so, is your site up to scratch (if you're getting click through but no enquiries something may be wrong with the site)?

If you didn't get clicks then did you change the wording of the ad, etc.?

There's a lot of factors over why an ad doesn't work...

 

[mubin]

3 weeks is more than enough to see if a campaign will be successful or not.

facebook works on ctr, the higher your ctr the cheaper your ad.

Facebook is good if you can get behind what people of a certain demographic are thinking. It is much harder than ppc because whereas in search marketing you know what they are searching for with facebook you are targetting what you think a certain demographic MAY be interested.

Very good if you get it right, you really need to practice on something like this.

Personally I think the service that you offer would not be a hit on facebook.

How well did you target the advert (unlike Google, you can "super" target to age, gender, business occupation, etc.)?

Was £25 a day enough?

Were you using PPC or PPI?

Three weeks does not sound like very long to me for a decent ad campaign - should it not have run longer?

Was your ad linking through to your site?

Did you get any click-throughs? If so, is your site up to scratch (if you're getting click through but no enquiries something may be wrong with the site)?

If you didn't get clicks then did you change the wording of the ad, etc.?

There's a lot of factors over why an ad doesn't work...

 

[Ashley_Price]

facebook works on ctr, the higher your ctr the cheaper your ad.

Actually, you can pay in two ways: Pay Per Click or Pay Per Impression.

with facebook you are targetting what you think a certain demographic MAY be interested.

Yes, but that can be super-targeted. On Google anyone could be typing secretary, pa, typing, etc. It could be somebody just looking to have a CV typed, or someone looking for a job, etc...

Whereas I would be targeting people over 18, in the UK, who have listed themselves as "business owners", "proprietors", "managing directors", and several permutations of that (there's even lots of people listing themselves as "The boss"). I haven't actually paid for an advert yet, but I did go through the initial steps and it turns out that there would be just over 22,000 people in the UK that fulfil the criteria I'm looking for.

The way I see it is that advertising like this on Facebook is only a step or two removed from direct mail. You are targeting only those people who may require in your service.

 

[directmarketingadvice]

Then I remembered, lots of people on here wonder if ads on F.B. actually work. So I had the following idea.

I'll place BananaOffice adverts on Facebook and if you are interested in the results you can pay me a commission for the statistics.

What do you think? You get the information you want, and I get financial help towards my ad campaign.

Sounds good to me...

I've got a better idea. If you pay me, I'll tell you if facebook advertising works.

(though, to be fair, that information is probably available for free in the archives)

Steve

 

[Ashley_Price]

Yes, that is quite a good idea... but I still think I prefer mine, Steve.

 

[thedesigntailor]

We recently negotiated an advertising deal on facebook for a client.
We got them:

500,000 click throughs (that's right click throughs!)
for $10, about £7-£8

They didn't bother as they said it was "too cheap!"
We told them we could get it for more money if they really wanted but they settled on a traditional billboard campaign which cost about £4000 a month.

I nearly paid it myself just to see if it worked.

 

[thedesigntailor]

We recently negotiated an advertising deal on facebook for a client.
We got them:

50,000 click throughs (that's right click throughs!)
for $10, about £7-£8

They didn't bother as they said it was "too cheap!"
We told them we could get it for more money if they really wanted but they settled on a traditional billboard campaign which cost about £4000 a month.

I nearly paid it myself just to see if it worked.

 

[born2becool]

That quote is from our Facebook account manager - not me.

Of the 3 options (PPC 'social' ads, CPM Homepage ads and CPM banners) for a budget of £25 a day stick with CPC if you're testing F'Book. If you can't afford to spend £25 'testing; with no expectation of a return stick with Google - it will work harder for you (unless you've reached optimal spend - which can happen).

Display banners are incredibly poor performers - and have only basic demographic targeting - so they're cheap. We buy these throug MSN on a 'make me an offer' rate (below £1 per thousand impressions). Wre only use them to supprt our PPC activity with brand advertising. It takes deep poickets to do this as F'Book will burn through the inventory in no time!

Homepage ads are 'solus' and high visibility - most users will see them as they log-in - but we have found that for direct response campaigns (driving applications, sales etc) then the smaller CPC ads are much better value. Generally the CPC rates are admittedly lower than Google BUT they don't convert anywhere near as well. F'Book limits ads because they are wary of upsetting users (which, anecdotally, seems to be an issue FB avoid discussing with us!). PLus you need to think about the motivations of the Facebook user vs the Google user.

Google is a destination tool for getting soemthing 'done' - and keyword targeting allows you to tap-in to the 'point in time' need or motivation (i.e. 'find freelance typist' says a hell of a lot about that users need!). 'Secretary' is less specific - typist? African bird - you get the idea.
Targeting on Facebook doesn't leverage thius relevance factor - you buy profile data - as you would from a DM list broker. So, knowing the demographic profile of your ideal prospect and seeing how many F'book users have registered this data on their profiles (suspect) defines your campaign strategy.
An excellent example of how to do this well is the guy selling Ronnie BArker T-shirts. He's targeting not just by demographic, but by interest - 'fans of - Porridge, BBC comedy, Open all hours and of course the man himself.
Tapping in to the interests of the community is an important part of any Facebook campaign to derive real value for you money.

 

[cwildman]

I have used facebook PPC advertising to promote Yorkshire Dales Meat and Paganum Online Farmers Market and it works! As this form of advertising and specifically Facebook can be very very targetted. If you can define your target audience to your specific product then facebook advertising should work well, wrong target = wrong result.

If you were selling rugby sportswear in the UK you can target a specific male age group who quote rugby as an interest, sport or hobby and just in the UK therefore very targetted. Had some good results.

Cheers
Chris

 

[JackMaurer]

Yes, that is quite a good idea... but I still think I prefer mine, Steve.

If 1 person 'pays for your statistics' I'll eat my hat, I don't think anyone cares what your statistics are and would much less pay for them

 

[Ashley_Price]

If 1 person 'pays for your statistics' I'll eat my hat, I don't think anyone cares what your statistics are and would much less pay for them

And that is humour is it? Not even a smiley after the sentence.

 

[Copestake]

When you sign up for facebook advertising you get $100 free coupon to test it out.

It worked wonders for a product I was selling but the cost in the end was too much

 

[mitch@volume]

It worked wonders for a product I was selling but the cost in the end was too much

So did it work wonders or cost too much?

surely its one or the other? it either generated enough sales to cover costs or it didn't?

[or am i talking poo?]

 

[shirtdessert]

...everywhere I look, we're told that social media marketing is the way forward - but I'm unsure.......
tried pay per clicks on google and that was expensive for the return.

Linda

 

[Ashley_Price]

So did it work wonders or cost too much?

surely its one or the other? it either generated enough sales to cover costs or it didn't?

[or am i talking poo?]

No, you're right. Copestake manages to contradict himself in the same sentence! :|

 

[mubin]

We recently negotiated an advertising deal on facebook for a client.
We got them:

50,000 click throughs (that's right click throughs!)
for $10, about £7-£8

They didn't bother as they said it was "too cheap!"
We told them we could get it for more money if they really wanted but they settled on a traditional billboard campaign which cost about £4000 a month.

I nearly paid it myself just to see if it worked.

Was this on the actual Facebook network or was it on a application?

 

[pcssystemsuk]

I have just post my first add on Facebook, would be interested to see how others are getting on.

 

[aaamusements]

If 1 person 'pays for your statistics' I'll eat my hat, I don't think anyone cares what your statistics are and would much less pay for them

What sort of hat?

Dangerous thing to say really, I feel the purchase of some statistics coming on...

 

[Mel72]

Do not, do not, do not waste your money going on someone else's site.

You must think about what people are doing - 'the environment' whilst looking at adverts.

On Facebook they are very young and talking to their mates. I told a client the other day that was she was made to have one of these local gym Tv advertising campaigns as a restaurant. Who goes to a gym and thinks about booking a dinner?

If you are a business you need ACCOUNTABILITY.

You have a website, look on Google and get their tools to help you with what words you should pay for, for people to find you.

Pay just for warm leads and the people looking for you.
Imagine a dating website where you were only charged if people were interested in you - same with PPC rather than a payment upfront.

If advertising models know they are guaranteed to bring you business, they can charge with no upfront outlays - think Google just charges £5ish to set it up - no more.

Good Luck

Mel