Facebook Adverts - to do or not to do?

I just had a sales call plugging Facebook Adverts. 

So far as I knew these were something you could do yourself if you have a facebook page, although I will admit to finding pay-per-click pricing confusing!

I am curious to know what other people's experience has been, whether they work and if some approaches work and others don't.

Many thanks

Debbie Stogden

Photographer

Never buy something from someone who does that!

You can set it up yourself.

And there are a range of people who can help you set it up and depending on the budget might be worth the ROI on a well-planned campaign. The guy I'm thinking of who does this is Michael Bush.

Hi Debbie I'm no expert on PPC but I'm currently trialling a campaign on Facebook for a retail client as well as running an existing Google Adwords campaign.
What we're finding is the cost per click is higher and impressions is a lot lower however a key difference with Facebook is the demographic targeting. We've targeted women 18-45 in the Cheltenham +40 Km area. With Google we could only target the geography.
As with any marketing my advice would be dip your toe in the water and try it.  With Facebook you can set a daily or lifetime budget. So as long as you don't go crazy and spend a fortune, maybe see what results it brings?

 

Like Julian suggest, just try it and see. You might waste £20, but you've gotten the experience. The most flexible paid for form of advertising around.

I'm no expert on this and haven't tried using it, so I'm happy to be told I'm wrong. However, my thinking has been that although you can target specific demographics more accurately with Facebook than you can on Google Adwords, those individuals won't necessarily be looking for your service. Google Adwords may only allow you to target geographically but, by the nature of the fact that the user will have typed in their search terms, there is more likelyhood they'll be looking for your service at that time. That's not to say Facebook advertising won't work but your campaign will need to be constructed with that in mind. As Julian says, it may be worth trying out both and monitoring the results.

HI

Ive used facebook ads before to a small degree for events in Manchester - my personal experience is they didn't particularly convert clicks into sales - in the same way other marketing methods did

Also, photographers I tend to use via word of mouth and seeing the work they have done for others i know

A testimonial strategy linked with social media (rather than paid for advertising) would work better

Alex

Thanks for thinking of me Jon, although as you can see from my sig we only take on PPC clients who have a budget of at least £4000+ (usually only for very large companies). 

My advice would be to give it a try yourself, and also if I can find it I have an eBook which contains everything you need to know about Facebook pages, marketing and advertising.

Feel free to PM and I will try and send it across.

So, this guy rings you up out of the blue and tries to sell you something.
One question, how did he find you?

If you want to go Facebook ads route I would suggest either DIY or ask one of the guys on 4N but, whatever you do, don't go with these guys.

Thanks everyone.  I did ask the caller directly why I couldn't just do it myself and it did seem to throw them, so there wasn't really any incentive for taking up their offer!  I now have a £25 voucher from facebook so think I will give it a go and see what happens.

When I tried Facebook Ads, facebook was telling me I was getting far more clicks than my logs showed and charging me for them!

I have asked them time and time again to explain but they havent even bothered to respond to reply to my emails.

Hi Debbie,

Just thinking about this, I had the following thoughts...

Anyone using facebook is using it (mainly) to chat to friends, network, flirt, upload pics etc. as opposed to actually looking for something.

With google, people are looking and PPC is a great way to get on page 1 for those searching.

With FB, you may well be reaching the right audience, but 99% of the audience will not be looking - but with PPC about 70% of searches will be looking.

Just a thought, I personally would never use FB advertising as it is all to easy to click accidently.

Regards,

Marketing Quotes Support

I have been using Facebook for a while now and I cannot actually tell you an advert I have seen that is memorable and I have thought I will give them a ring - sorry

If you have not already got a business page on facebook then, I would think seriously in adding one as we are, business pages can also have a shop feature that lists your items and when the client clicks the buy button they either buy through papypal or go direct to your own website landing page - could be good for us however; we are just placing our feet into the water so, I cannot honestly tell you if it is good, bad or ugly - does anybody have these feature?

Hi Debbie

First things first, when it comes to online marketing NEVER base your decisions on the experience of others. What works for one business in one sector does not necessarily work for another and vice versa. Even if they are in the same sector it is no guarantee that you will have the same results, there are too many other factors involved such as the content of your website, your pricing structure, the geographical area you operate in and your competitors in that area, all of which will probably be different to the person who's experience you might base your decision on. As a couple of people have already quite rightly said, try things for yourself.

So then we come to DIY vs paying for experience. As PPC is what I do for a living, I'm obviously going to vote for the latter. Part of the problem with diy is that unless you are going to take the time to learn how to do it properly and then keep up to speed with any changes to the platform (be that adwords or Facebook), then you are never going to have as effective campaign as you might. In some case that's the difference between it working and not working and in others the difference is less obvious. I've come across many campaigns set up in house (to be fair more Adwords than facebook at this stage, because Adwords is more established), where the client thinks they have an effective campaign, because they are getting business at an acceptable cost and we've found they are still wasting hundreds of pounds per week because they haven't learned all the fine detail of campaign management.

The trade off is the amount of your time to learn how to do it properly vs the cost of some professional advice. Often the latter works out both cheaper (assuming your time has some value) and more effective. 

I know it would take less than an hour of my time to discuss your target audience, advise you on how effective Facebook ads are likely to be for each sector of that audience and create a campaign/or campaigns for you. Unfortunately even that might look expensive if you're only going to spend £25 on clickthroughs. So give me a call if you wish and I'll give you some advice for free.