Facebook Ads

[bridges]

Hi all,

This is my first visit here for a while! I have been looking into doing some advertising through facebook and I was wondering if anyone here had any experience of using them? And if so was it good/bad?

Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Vicky

 

[SparkMediaIndustries]

Hi all,

This is my first visit here for a while! I have been looking into doing some advertising through facebook and I was wondering if anyone here had any experience of using them? And if so was it good/bad?

Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Vicky

Hi Vicky,

Its good to use for advertising your company but does take along as you have to get everyone to like your company page, Never done this but talk to a developer of FB and look up there advertisements...

 

[bridges]

I did take a quick peek, but just wanted people's opinions really as to how helpful it really is. Thanks for the response.
Vicky

 

[bargainmania]

Some of our research

It is now well recognised that Facebook offers a useful marketing channel to promote your business. However, many companies struggle to develop successful company pages and fail to attract high volumes of visitors. The simple tactic of “build it and they will come” does not appear to work.
According to a recent survey conducted by DDB Worldwide and our Research:

75% of Facebook fan page followers visit a company page as a result of an invitation or advertising from the business
59% become fans of a company page as a result of a recommendation from a friend or colleague
49% become fans of a business page as a result of online research into the company.

 

[I Love Spreadsheets]

For B2B it is useless, expensive and has very little support in my opinion

I placed a series of Adverts based on the most successful ads I run in Google AdWords, what I got was

(1) Zero ROI
(2) Facebook saying that had had a lot more clicks than my logs were showing (approximately 4 to 5 times as many)
(3) When I suspended my adverts and asked them to explain why they say I have had so many clicks and my logs say different I got zero response.

For B2C it maybe be a different story, but for b2b I would keep clear

 

[Parrot Hosting]

I did this for a month and besides them running through a few bots to run up some added income it was absolute rubbish. I messed about with different headlines, images and text but in the end I just killed it before the campaign ended because it was a #FAIL It wasn't for my Hosting company nonetheless I won't do it again.

 

[Simply Clicks]

Vicky,
I have a B2B client that has been advertising on Facebook for the past three months. He does get traffic. However I have yet to see one online conversion.

 

[bridges]

It seems that although it can be useful it wouldn't be worth my time at the moment.

Are there any alternatives that any of you would suggest?

I have tried with Google before now without any joy whatsoever. Perhaps I was using the wrong wording or whatever.

Any thoughts on Google advertising or anything else would also be helpful.

Thanks again for all the comments - very useful!

Vicky

 

[Normansmith]

Vicky,
I have done a lot of Facebook advertising, for customers as well. b2C does much better and items aimed at the under 35's with technology, ie games,iphones or free apps do very well. Need a strong fanpage with reveal pages to get them viral.You then at least build a list.
Adbrite might be worth a try depending on your product or service or even the Google display network, you can then select competitors or relevant sites !

 

[Jerry-Sindamag]

We wanted to do some advertising through facebook too, but as our analysis, it is not very suitable for our products. Our magnets are supplied to industries. I think B2C business would be better to advertise through facebook.

 

[David Earle]

To be honest I think there are better ways you could be spending your money. You might find you can make more sales simply by going for a walk in your town and speaking to local business owners (networking) than throwing money at Facebook.

That's what worked for me, anyway.

 

[mikegerrish]

I done not much but we are make plan for facebook and google advertising

 

[zaidi]

vicky,
try google adwords again, run a campaign focus on making good quality score ads. that would bring the cost down to land on the 1st page, & you will get traffic

 

[marketingquotes]

Hi Vicky,

We do not use the advertising on FB - but from experience mostly click on the ads by accident (via iphone etc).

They seem to be good for brand exposure (from companies like Natwest, Vodafone etc.) but if you are looking for orders, then you may find it quite expensive.

Just talking from personal experience.

Regards,

Marketing Quotes Support.

 

[garyk]

As others have said B2B is a different beast to B2C. That said you need to break it down. You are very unlikely to go from ad to landing page to sale.

What you are better off doing is building a page with perhaps an added bonus if someone likes your page (called a reveal) and growing a fan base and *then* putting up some useful content and *then* throw in an occassional offer.

This is what the big brands are recognising, its about building a following first. However B2B is hard because it doesn't excite people, if people are passionate about something you can get better response.

Gary

 

[bridges]

Thanks for the reply, I think you're right, although I think I'm going to get my creative hat on if I'm going to get people excited about admin! Haha!

Vicky

 

[dagaul101]

Some have had good and bad experiences with Facebook ads, the consensus sugests it's a little difficult to turn a profit with it than say Adwords

 

[scentedserendipity]

I've done some FB ads.....good for getting fans on my fanpage but not much follow through in recruiting consultants

 

[marketology]

yea i think its very good to advertise anything through facebook, it works a lot and much better but it will take a while that anyone will know u and what you promote

 

[chevron]

I have tried FB ad's to a site and to a fan page I think there are much better ways to spend your money. Direct to a site was not effective at all, I did manage to build a fan page to a reasonable size which I thought would be like having a decent email list but with FB filtering users home pages I get about 50% exposure to the fan page fans.

In my opinion any search engine ad's are much better for a similar price you can get a visitor with intent.

 

[SillyJokes]

Some of our research

It is now well recognised that Facebook offers a useful marketing channel to promote your business. However, many companies struggle to develop successful company pages and fail to attract high volumes of visitors. The simple tactic of “build it and they will come” does not appear to work.
According to a recent survey conducted by DDB Worldwide and our Research:

75% of Facebook fan page followers visit a company page as a result of an invitation or advertising from the business
59% become fans of a company page as a result of a recommendation from a friend or colleague
49% become fans of a business page as a result of online research into the company.

That's some amazing research - 183% of the people responded?

 

[CSBob]

Is that supposed to be a 'silly joke'?

The figures given are obviously not mutually exclusive. They rarely are in this particular type of survey.

 

[SillyJokes]

Is that supposed to be a 'silly joke'?

The figures given are obviously not mutually exclusive. They rarely are in this particular type of survey.

I guess it's a glib comment on research and statistics

 

[CSBob]

Seriously? You mean you would have been able to sleep tonight without ever knowing that "49% become fans of a business page as a result of online research into the company"...? But that fact could change your life!!

 

Joking aside guys and gals. Facebook is available to small and large businesses through their ads platform and has over 500 million members. Come on, thats pretty good. You can target people who live in a small town who like horse riding in a flash, or people who like a specific band and are under 30 or people who like Lady Gaga and are over 50 (im sure its possible there are some).

Its very unique. Not the cheapest, but great if you want to target very specifically or on a large scale to thousands of people. Their ad platform is rather simple and easy to use too.

Personally, had little success though.

 

[Andrew Baker]

I have tried with Google before now without any joy whatsoever. Perhaps I was using the wrong wording or whatever.

Any thoughts on Google advertising or anything else would also be helpful.

Thanks again for all the comments - very useful!

Vicky

I wouldn't even consider trying Facebook Ads if you've not had success at AdWords...

I would give AdWords another try, I'm not sure what your goals are, if it's lead generation, e-commerce or brand awareness but right from the off you need to decide your main (or macro) conversion for your campaign(s), assign a monetary value to the conversion and ensure your tracking code is installed on the right page of your website.

This allows you to accurately track success through ROI and if you link AdWords up to Analytics you will also get site engagement information and whole array of reporting that will help you identify keyword opportunities and ones that don't perform.

Once your goals are sorted out consider what you are targeting and build tightly formed themed ad groups with a handful or highly relevant keywords that match the search queries you are targeting, make sure you write a compelling ad creative, include your headline (use DKI), your USP & a clear call to action and importantly make sure your destination URL is the most relevant page for a prospect to land and convert on, make sure your landing page mirrors your ad promise and that the call to action is clear on the page and it is free of clutter, no banners, links off to social media sites, etc.

Use ad extensions like location extensions, site links to make your ad stand out.

Run search query reports regularly to identify irrelevant keywords and add these to your negative keyword list.

Campaigns can always be optimised, keep doing this and you'll get, great CTR, great quality scores meaning cheaper bids to get your required ad rank and importantly great conversions...

There is a lot more to it than this but I hope this gives you a basic guide.

Cheers,

Andrew Baker

 

[bridges]

Thanks, that's wonderful.

Vicky

 

[CSBob]

Just a thought, Vicky, but have you looked into sites such as PeoplePerHour (dot) com and similar? They tend to be fairly competitive but it's possible to pick up some good, long-term contacts. I've found some quality people on there, including one I still use use regularly for appropriate work.

 

[bridges]

I have actually, for what I do though I seem to be constantly under cut by people outside the UK, usually only wanting a couple of pound per hour, so to be honest I gave up on it really, might be worth checking out again though, thanks.

Vicky

 

[kennyservice]

I have just started the ads on facebook just within this week, from 31 clicks I get 16 fans, that sounds people like my page.

I am new to FB too, but do some research and found that fanpage is better than direct to company page, fanpage can be spread one by one, worth than just getting a traffic for the company page.

First, I just start five countries: Australia, UK, USA, Poland, The netherland, these are the main country that I service for my business, I use fb to adv for my service as sourcing agent in China, I post both sides for my fanpage, one is company and the other is my personal blog, mainly I focus on my blog, as I wrote many article about doing business with Chinese company, this may helpful to many people worldwide. people will see many useful articles when they click into the fanpage.

 

[marketingquotes]

I have just started the ads on facebook just within this week, from 31 clicks I get 16 fans, that sounds people like my page.

Sounds goodl but do likes add anything other than kudos?

Did you get many orders?

Regards,

Marketing Quotes Support

 

[kennyservice]

Sounds goodl but do likes add anything other than kudos?

Did you get many orders?

Regards,

Marketing Quotes Support

Not yet, as I said I just started by this week.

 

[Danny Blair]

Vicky

With your business you'll find limited, if any, success looking for work online. You're far better-off writing to companies in sectors that are likely to have the most need for your services (pharmaceutical, legal perhaps). You'll know this best from your existing client profiles. No easy fix though.

It'll take online research and phone calls to find the companies and get contact details. (Sorry, if I'm teaching 'grandma' to suck eggs here). Only send enough letters at a time so that you can comfortably follow-up ALL the letters a few days later by phone. The phone follow-ups are critical. Although everyone hates making them, they offer the best chance of success.

There is no great secret it's all about developing a system (ie writing sector specific letters highlighting skills, companies worked for, and including a testimonial or two and sending 50 letters a week, making 20 calls a day etc.), sticking to the system and being persistent, persistent and persistent.

Good luck.

 

[kennyservice]

Vicky

With your business you'll find limited, if any, success looking for work online. You're far better-off writing to companies in sectors that are likely to have the most need for your services (pharmaceutical, legal perhaps). You'll know this best from your existing client profiles. No easy fix though.

It'll take online research and phone calls to find the companies and get contact details. (Sorry, if I'm teaching 'grandma' to suck eggs here). Only send enough letters at a time so that you can comfortably follow-up ALL the letters a few days later by phone. The phone follow-ups are critical. Although everyone hates making them, they offer the best chance of success.

There is no great secret it's all about developing a system (ie writing sector specific letters highlighting skills, companies worked for, and including a testimonial or two and sending 50 letters a week, making 20 calls a day etc.), sticking to the system and being persistent, persistent and persistent.

Good luck.

Definitely agree.

 

[kennyservice]

Can't login facebook in China.....

in China, you need to use SSH or VPN, or APP to visit facebook. same for twitter.

 

[John.Tritor]

Facebook advertising kind of works like AdWords whereas you compete in bidding for keywords to have ads displayed on pages.

If you're looking to advertise your company with a business page then FB will help it get around. People usually like or subscribe to a business page if it has useful content such as:

• Tips on how to make things easier or more effectively with your product or service.
• Import your blog entries

 

[kennyservice]

Facebook advertising kind of works like AdWords whereas you compete in bidding for keywords to have ads displayed on pages.

If you're looking to advertise your company with a business page then FB will help it get around. People usually like or subscribe to a business page if it has useful content such as:

• Tips on how to make things easier or more effectively with your product or service.
• Import your blog entries

Yes, you are right, I import my blog into FB, and all articles on my blog is useful if anyone want to do business with China.