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View Full Version : We ran a facebook ad - Results



Haup9
02-18-2012, 10:35 AM
We just finished a two week run of a facebook ad for our yard card company. I thought I would share some information from our experience with you all.

Our target audience was anyone over the age of 18 that did not already "like" us, within 25 miles of Milwaukee, WI. This amounted to 632,440 people. The ad was shown to 42,191 people, on average they saw the ad 8.6 times in the two weeks (about 362,850 impressions). Of those 42,191 people, 157 of them had friends that already "like" us. Eighteen people clicked on the ad and were taken to our facebook page. One person actually clicked the "like" button.

We were being rather cheap with this ad as it was our first one. We set a daily budget of $2.00 and a bid price of .20 per 1000 impressions. For the two weeks we spent $27.98 to get one person to "like" us on facebook. We haven't heard from this person to order anything but that may come in time.

The ad itself said that if you mention seeing the facebook ad, you would get an extra day for free. So far no one has told us they saw the ad. Again this could change.

I have mixed feelings about the results. The pros are 42,000 people saw the ad. I'm guessing most of them had never heard of us before so that is good. That would be a fraction of a penny for every person that saw the ad. Obviously most of them didn't do anything with the ad.....so either they didn't want to click on it or they didn't notice it. So lets go with the 18 people that did click on the ad....it is more realistic to believe they may actually do something in the future. That is cost of $1.55 per person which is really cheap advertising in my opinion.

The cons are only 1 "like" and no calls (so far). But a friend in the business explained it this way "Face book ads do not work like Google adwords at all. They get your add out to your target audience and it gets seen. If they just see the ad then you have made a big break through. Everyone wants to see results like visits to your web site and sales over the phone. That is not going to bring you as many sales as the Google adwords. The difference is Google is where people go to find your business because they are looking for you and that usually is a sale. Facebook is where they see you but they may have a hard time finding you there the next time they need you so they go to Google instead."

Would we do it again? Yeah I think we will but more of a very targeted campaign. Sure less people will see the ad per day day but they would be more likely to call.

Steve B
02-18-2012, 04:36 PM
Thanks for sharing all that detail. I'm guessing it won't be a big winner for you - but, certainly worth trying at that price.

SteveM
02-19-2012, 09:55 AM
That's an interesting exercise!

I tend to look less at the dollars spent on advertising, and more on the time spent launching and running a campaign. Obviously, the dollars spent-per-customer-conversion is important, but my TIME is extremely limited, and I really hate wasting time on B.S. that doesn't convert. With all the hype concerning social media and it's role in small business marketing, I did some research on it. Here are some stats I found:

"Although a majority of adults get information on local businesses from the Internet, only 1 percent of those consumers rely on social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook. Search engines, such as Google, far outranked social media, with newspapers and word-of-mouth serving as other important information sources. More specifically, the report data showed that:

* Of the 60 percent of adults who reported seeking information on non-restaurant and non-bar local businesses, 47 percent of them said they rely most on the Internet. Of this group, 36 percent rely on search engines the most; 16 percent on specialty websites; and only 1 percent on social networking websites; – 30 percent rely most on newspapers, with 29 percent relying most on the printed versions and 2 percent on newspapers’ websites;

* 22 percent rely most on word-of-mouth from people they know;

* 8 percent rely on local television broadcasts or stations’ websites;

* 5 percent rely on local radio."

I tried text-message marketing a couple of years ago for my gas station, and it failed miserably. I thought it was a cool idea - our "opt-in's" got a text when gas prices were going up, and they had six hours from the time of the text to buy gas at the old price. Over the course of a year, I also sent out car wash coupons, product coupons, etc., and in the end got a less-then-one percent conversion rate. Cancelled.

We have a website, tried newspaper ads, coupon books, flyers, grocery store register receipt coupons, etc.

At the end of the day, the thing that works best for us is me taking 15 minutes to change the message on our boulevard sign, and word-of-mouth. Although that works for me, in your particular situation you'll just have to find the "magic bullet", and stick with it. Maybe a well-optimized website might do the trick!

greenoak
02-19-2012, 07:19 PM
our business is benefitting a lot from facebook....we have over 2200 fans....i wouldnt think most of them found us on facebook....rather they were store customers a nd joined our facebook, and then maybe we spread thru our fans to their friends..or maybe they came from our website...
.i dont think many use facebook to search for things.... .. so i wouldnt compare it to googles searches.... for connecting with people who already know you its really great... IF YOUR PEOPLE ARE ON IT ALREADY... which ours are...our fans are mostly women and we are about homes and shopping...so its really nice for our store...

MyITGuy
02-20-2012, 11:46 AM
I wouldn't give the "impressions" to much value because some/most people are running ad-blockers or have Firewall rules (Corporate environments) that filter this stuff out. These files are still requested by the client which causes an uptick in the impression count, but are not actually displayed to the end user.

Additionally, Facebook throws their ads up everywhere which causes these portions of the pages to be skipped/overlooked.

Personally I would never pay for impressions and would rather focus on pay-per-click. This way you're only paying for results...

KristineS
02-20-2012, 12:09 PM
We've been running Facebook ads for EnMart and the company that manufactures the thread we carry and they've been successful for us. Of course, we're targeting specific interest groups that we already know use the products we carry, so that makes a difference. Click through rates have been good and we just did a sample thread offer that pulled in many more requests than we had thought it would. Of course, now we have to wait and see if the people who requested the samples convert, which is the ultimate proof of success or failure of the offer.

In any case, for use advertising on Facebook has been cost effective and just plain effective. I think being able to pinpoint specific interest groups really helps.