Paid Facebook advertising

[4little1s]

....thinking about it, anyone using it and any comments / suggestions / tips etc ?

 

[fisicx]

Before you do....

How well is the site performing? Are your conversions creeping up to to the 10% mark? Are you getting lots of return custom?

The reason I ask is that about a year ago I stopped one on my clients from worrying about the number of visitors and to concentrate on how many brought stuff. By refocussing we doubled the earnings from the site. And by using some very targetted adwords we generate over £5000/month for an outlay of under £500.

Of course if your site has gone bonkers and you can't keep up with demand then by all means run some trial ads on facebook.

 

[This Charming Girl]

I used it from November to December last year with a budget of $10 a day. It brought a lot of traffic and a lot of that resulted in sales. I found it to be very effective for my business, I like how you can target ads by sex/age etc. I've just recently started running the ads again, but with a smaller budget and it's still generating a worthwhile amount of traffic.

I'd recommend it.

 

[MorrisChesterfield]

Do you think facebook would be worth while for my storage & removal business? we target all ages including students?

ben
Sorry to hi-jack your thread 4little1's

 

[4little1s]

Think I might give it a go then and see what happens.

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

Successful marketing is all about testing and refinement. Providing the initial cost isn't too expensive it's always worth trying different methods out so give it a go.

 

[Ozzy]

For B2C I've found Facebook adertising to be very effective if you can isolate the demographics of your target market, but found it less than useless for B2B markets. However I'm keeping an eye on things in case that changes.

 

[Travelling Sam]

I guess it varies from industry to industry.

I like the fact we can target 'engaged' people for our 'honeymoon packages'. However we've generated very few enquiries, and even fewer bookings.

However, I need to spend time fine tuning, so not completely convinced we are doing as well as we should be.

 

[Ozzy]

Some people are doing very well with their Facebook advertising, but for it to work you really need to know the demographic of yoiur target and then have a sure fire way to get them to your site. Once on your site then its down to the performance of your website to get them to order.

Thinking of your market, yes it should be easy to get people "engaged" to engage with your business. If you are not getting the clickthru's then have a look at your advert. I set up a few different adverts and compared the performance of them, I also found setting up a fanpage instead of getting people to leave Facebook and visit your website more successful. Once they become fans of your business you can start promoting to them within Facebook with the updates facility.

 

[sjt]

http://www.facebook.com/apps/applic...fc623df3670486551cca3f35&id=24249628048&ref=s

Apparently by joining this group (Visa business network), you get $100 free advertising credit.
Not done it myself yet, but it's worth a try!

 

[fisicx]

I guess it varies from industry to industry.

I like the fact we can target 'engaged' people for our 'honeymoon packages'. However we've generated very few enquiries, and even fewer bookings.

However, I need to spend time fine tuning, so not completely convinced we are doing as well as we should be.

But are you targetting the right keywords? Are your target audience actually looking for 'honeymoon packages'. In any case the site doesn't work. There isn't any indication that you actually arange holdiays! Where are the details of tha packages, the prices and call to action? And the load times are horrendous (sorry for the thread hijack).

 

[mattk]

As a Facebook user I seem to get a lot of dating, make $$$ from Google and get rich quick ads. Which means I am pretty well used to ignoring them completely.

 

[matt.chatterley]

We've run a couple of experimental facebook campaigns. The primary purpose of these was literally to experiment with facebook advertising, rather than anything else.

It's OK. It's pretty good as these things go, though a little bit clunky to use - especially when you want to try and clone adverts and otherwise manipulate them.

The results were reasonable - you can get traffic pretty quickly (although there is a bit of a lag on initial advert approval), but it works in a slightly sneaky way and if you aren't careful, you could burn a load of money - especially when using vouchers.

That's true of most PPC systems, though.

In short, I'd go with what Fisicx said above - possibly slight paraphrased.

If you have a good conversion rate, sure, pump some cash into facebook ads - and target them on a demographic which you know to be good for you. Heck. Assuming your conversion rate gives you a good enough ROI, pump cash into every advertising stream going!

If you are getting traffic but making no sales, then getting more traffic is probably not the answer.

 

[sjt]

As a Facebook user I seem to get a lot of dating, make $$$ from Google and get rich quick ads. Which means I am pretty well used to ignoring them completely.

Ditto here.

 

[fisicx]

In short, I'd go with what Fisicx said above - possibly slight paraphrased.

If you have a good conversion rate, sure, pump some cash into facebook ads - and target them on a demographic which you know to be good for you. Heck. Assuming your conversion rate gives you a good enough ROI, pump cash into every advertising stream going!

If you are getting traffic but making no sales, then getting more traffic is probably not the answer.

Exactly. Fix the site, get the conversions up then lookaround for new place to market.

Another thought, are facebook members the sort who have young children? 2008 demographics have over 50% in the 18-24 age group and I'm not sure that that's a good target.

 

[emma1985]

I have had a lot of success with my Facebook ads. I make my own jewellery and my target market is females between the ages of about 17-26 (usually students) so happily Facebook is perfect for my business.

As This Charming Girl said, it's great that you can target to age, sex, interests etc. Obviously if your target market is 40-50 year olds this isn't going to be a good way of getting new business.

I have tried Google Adwords with no success. I have a great position on Google (position 4, page 1) for my main keyword but the majority of my sales do still seem to come through Facebook.

I did pause my ads last week and sales have been very slow since then. It would be great to get some business in 'for free' but as they say if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

 

I think the main concern about Facebook now is their inability to police some of the really vile and offensive groups that are being set up (hatred, racism - you name it).

There is one in particular about Jade Goody which just makes my blood run cold. I have advertised on Facebook before now (the results were interesting) but there is no way I would risk having my company name or logo displayed on a page such as the Jade Goody one

 

[whitenmarketing]

We've found facebooks ads to be very effective but it does depend on what you are promoting.

We wanted to push a regional specific social networking site, Kent.co.uk so facebook was an ideal market, and we were able to use the geographic targeting which I think is more accurate than Adwords geo-targeting.

The CTR has proved quite low, I think because in the past so many Facebook ads have been really poorly targeted. And i find the Control panel a little flaky and without all the features of adwords.

But then the conversion rate of facebook visitors has been tremendous - up into double figures. And even though the ctr is low we get enough visits because of the sheer volume of facebook users. We are using a PPC campaign.

I am now going to experiment with advertising some much more localised businesses who also share the same market to see if it can work as well.