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Do Facebook ads work for you?

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antropy

antropy

Business Member
    • Business Listing
    Aug 2, 2010
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    West Sussex, UK
    www.antropy.co.uk
    We are thinking about running a Facebook ad to get more traction on sales. We are an OpenCart development and hosting company and have got to that point where we are looking to get to the next level. We have recently hired a new sales guy which is helping things push forward but we are also looking at running a Facebook ad alongside the work he is doing. We wanted to see what people's experience with running a Facebook ad has been like and more importantly has it worked?
     
    We have tested Facebook accounts across various industries and some do work and some don't. For example, a client of our in the travel industry does well with FB ads and they are good value and cheaper than Adwords. However, a client of ours that is an HR sofware supplier, it's not worked at all for them after 6 months of testing different set ups and we are closing the campaign.

    It's one of those things that you need to test and see how it works for you. We've seen such differences in campaigns across different industries. It seems that B2C works better than B2B with Facebook but that's not always the case.
     
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    Reactions: Paul FilmMaker
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    In our experience this is not a good idea. Use intent-targeted or place-targeted ads instead.
     
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    I've had excellent results for my online game, probably helped by the fact the game is available through the Facebook platform.

    For my last business, a web hosting business, Facebook ads didn't perform well. I struggled to target the right audience and the results were subsequently very poor, although to be fair advertising / marketing is not my area of expertise.

    In summary, my experience is the same as above - has worked well for B2C but not B2B.
     
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    Give a try with FB ads as it works for many businesses approx 2 million small to medium businesses. Though it can be pretty hard to predict what kind of ad design will work better or which demographic audience will be more likely to buy your product. Facebook allows you to test your ads so that you can improve the content of your ad and gain valuable insights to what works and doesn’t work. It offers advertisers the ability to A/B test their content through their new split ad testing tool allowing you to find the best audience for your ads.
     
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    antropy said:
    We thought as much, but then again we know many of our best clients are facebook users.
    Click to expand...
    Yes but you aren’t selling to them. Lots of people use Facebook, that doesn’t mean they want to see adverts for opencart development. Even mentioning OpenCart in the advert is a wrong move.
     
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    I would definitely test it. There are some good interest targeting options like ecommerce, web hosting, Shopify, WooCommerce, GoDaddy etc etc.

    If you have a good offer then there is certainly an audience there to target. I would recommend running Conversion or Lead objective ads.
     
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    Do Facebook ads work? Yes, absolutely. They're still underpriced compared with Google Ads which is a more mature advertising platform now, but here's the rub—the success of the ads rely entirely on how good the creative is. By that, I don't mean how fancy the ad is, but:
    • How well the message fits with the target audience
    • How easy the interaction is to make a sale
    • How well you've created the audience within Facebook that aligns with your landing page or store.
    • How much effort you're prepared to put into testing, testing, testing.
    Most people try Facebook ads, don't get huge results during their first attempt and then assume the platform is not very good. You've got to commit to trying Facebook ads over a longer term and be prepared to put a lot of effort into various ads, audiences and CTAs to see what works for you.
     
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    Reactions: Victoria_V
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    So far, no, although I've just set up another two to run concurrently to see whether that makes any difference, but I've also tried Google Ads for the past two months and they haven't been that successful either. Ironically, my first customer found me via my free ad on Yell. I guess its just a case of your ad being in the right place at the right time?!
     
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    The trouble with Facebook is that it only allows you to reach a target audience of up to 70 km away which, in the case of what I do, really doesn't reach far enough.
     
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    Penelope Dunlop said:
    The trouble with Facebook is that it only allows you to reach a target audience of up to 70 km away which, in the case of what I do, really doesn't reach far enough.
    Click to expand...

    That's not quite accurate. We ran FB campaigns for a hosting company project in which we grouped certain countries together, with global coverage (except the excluded countries).

    Facebook works well for both B2B and B2C if you have the 4P's sorted, understand your USP's and have a clear idea of what itch it is that your product/service is scratching (and can put that into ad format well).
     
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    Penelope Dunlop said:
    The trouble with Facebook is that it only allows you to reach a target audience of up to 70 km away which, in the case of what I do, really doesn't reach far enough.
    Click to expand...

    What type of ads are you running?

    You can reach people worldwide through Facebook Ads. I've never ran into any such restriction although perhaps there are specific rules when advertising brick-and-mortar stores?
     
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    arnydnxluk said:
    What type of ads are you running?

    You can reach people worldwide through Facebook Ads. I've never ran into any such restriction although perhaps there are specific rules when advertising brick-and-mortar stores?
    Click to expand...

    Just the general ones that are available from my page. I've got a lead ad running at the moment and a post engagement one which I've placed on hold, but each time 70km is the maximum radius it offers?
     
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    Our company tried Facebook ads, but I can not say this was a success. Perhaps the reason is that we are a B2B business and Facebook is more consumer-goods oriented:(
     
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    I second pretty much everything Tameday said - it is the creative that makes all the difference, and you should be willing to test different approaches. Generally speaking, video ads tend to show better results compared to static ones; this, however, depends on both the product and the audience.

    The algorithm generally favours the creatives that don't have much text on them, so keep it under 20% of the image. This tool is far from perfect but is a good start nevertheless.

    Facebook ads are very data driven, and you should invest a lot of time and effort in analytics. On a regular. Keeping an eye on the campaigns is almost a 24/7 job as you may need to tweak things here and there depending on performance. Seeing any good results? Spend more money on this ad set. Not seeing any results whatsoever? Stop it immediately or give it a few days to optimise, depending on what your budget is. You may also want to experiment with the attribution window, again, depending on the audience you are trying to reach.
     
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    We found FB paid ads to be a waste of money but the free ads that you can do through FB marketplace produced amazing results.

    We targeted all the buying and selling groups within a ten mile radius. Some have rules about what you can and can't advertise but others have no rules or don't prohibit business ads.

    Nextdoor is also a very useful and free local advertising platform.
     
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    I think it probably works for marketing to direct consumers, B2C, as when I need to promote wedding packages, it works, loads of Facebook posts from brides on our wedding page, and so we get about one fifth of our wedding venue request / leads from FB - a guesstimate asa I have not queried this on dbase for a while. Also good for Dog Friendly B&B breaks. A post to all our followers can be boosted and works for hotel trade.
     
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    As a small business owner, I have found Facebook ads to be quite effective. I would however keep two things in mind.

    Never waste valuable money on running endless adverts. Some marketers are unaware of how frequently their ad has been shown to their target demographic, and they fail to manage the lifespan of the advert in the Ads Manager - in other words they don't turn the advert off once it has been shown to the target demographic many times. The net result of this is an increasingly ineffective advert costing lots of money

    Avoid using text-heavy images. These are more expensive and are not necessarily guaranteed to reach a greater audience.

    I hope this helps.
     
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    If you want to know if it'll work for you then you have to benchmark it against something.

    What you need is your goal cost per acquisition figure i.e. lets say someone who clicks through a facebook ad and signs up on your site you're willing to pay $60 per sign up and you know that the potential lifetime value of that sign up could be $1000.

    Basically, what I'm saying is benchmark it and that way you'll know if its worthwhile or not. If you can't define what a good result is you'll never know. It's good to then compare all your marketing channels with these numbers to see if they're worthwhile or not.

    I know that's not a direct answer to your question but its more important that you know how to define and asses whether it works for you. My suggestion is start with a small amount for a month or two knowing your benchmark numbers and see if it pans out, if it does increase the amount a little.
     
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    Facebook is a favorite place for most of the people,You get the benefits by advertising on facebook.No doubt, you can advertise based on the people's taste, behavior and location. It immensely reaches in huge.
     
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    Facebook ads work if you know how to use it, if you target it in the right way, if you have attractive ads and if you analyze your target audience.
    In general, it works if you know how to use it.
     
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    As above Facebook Ads is pretty much a joke for B2B - even if someone is the decision maker of a business you want to target, if they're on Facebook, they're not really there to buy.

    I don't think the intent is there.

    I've been testing Bing Ads because Google Ads is just getting ridiculous in terms of the CPC.

    Don't get me wrong, the traffic from Bing Ads is incredibly low vs Google Adwords but then again so is the cost.

    n56nomO.png

    I have a particular ad which seems to hit the spot when it comes to CTR and also conversions.

    Out of 40 clicks this week, 17 went through and made an enquiry - 7 of them seemed like no-goers.

    Sent out 10 proposals in total, anywhere from £15k to £35k each - for this to be a "success" only 1 needs to accept - because I've spent pennies on CPC.

    I know everyone only talks about Google, but there are businesses and people searching for stuff on Bing as well.

    In the B2B space, I'd rather show an ad to someone searching for what I offer vs just showing an ad to someone based on what I think they might be looking for.
     
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    Building a social media strategy for your business begins with choosing the right platforms.

    You need to consider a lot of factors while picking the ones that most suit your brand and marketing requirements - including the target audience you are trying to reach, your business objectives, available resources, and much more.
     
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    antropy said:
    We are thinking about running a Facebook ad to get more traction on sales. We are an OpenCart development and hosting company and have got to that point where we are looking to get to the next level. We have recently hired a new sales guy which is helping things push forward but we are also looking at running a Facebook ad alongside the work he is doing. We wanted to see what people's experience with running a Facebook ad has been like and more importantly has it worked?
    Click to expand...
    Yes , My business is growing with facebook advert option
     
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    With 2.42 billion people I'm pretty sure your target market is on FB whatever industry you operate in. How you approach FB is key.

    FB is good on the 'front-end', so for getting cheap clicks or maybe getting their initial details such as name & email address in exchange for a lead magnet.

    The real magic happens on the 'back-end' which could be either your follow-up emails or re-targeting ads.

    Your aim is to build trust so you can eventually pitch them your main offer because once you've gained their trust they're more likely to buy.
     
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    cdr10 said:
    With 2.42 billion people I'm pretty sure your target market is on FB whatever industry you operate in. How you approach FB is key.
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    Not mine. Mine are exclusively WordPress users. Visitors sources are 70% Wordpress.org, 30% Google. My clients are looking for a very specific product - and won't be using FB do to so.
    saythisinstead.co.uk said:
    He has a website that should quickly ascertain whether fb ads will work in your particular industry.
    Click to expand...
    I scored 2.3/10!
     
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