How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads • Hacker News Board

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#21

Post by AlBentley » Tue, Sep 06, 2016, 2:48 PM UTC

dangrossman wrote: post #10

> Even these users churned after a short time. Why is that? We do not really know! You need to know this, and knowing it is as easy as asking. I e-mail every single person that cancels their subscription, and ask why they cancelled today and what we could have done to better serve them. I don't measure the response rate, but I write every mail personally and read every response, so I can tell you it's well over 50%.…

Our experience when trying this approach is 90% reply with 'lack of time' which is not the true reason but basically means the product didn't solve a major problem for them.

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#22

Post by cookiecaper » Tue, Sep 06, 2016, 2:49 PM UTC

I put a lot of money into advertising through the "proper channels" for my business, including Facebook Ads. We were crushed by a competitor who activated a few links within his PBN and spent some serious time astroturfing, both tactics that I had refused to engage in.

The sad reality of online marketing is that people who are buying ads are suckers. The only way to be competitive online is to actively game the mechanisms that the few big traffic brokers use to determine rank.

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#23

Post by lukethomas » Tue, Sep 06, 2016, 2:54 PM UTC

ssharp wrote: post #15

I wanted to call this out: We solved the first problem through a separate tool, which labels the user with the originating source when registering. Yes, yes, yes, and yes. If you're spending any significant amount of money on advertising, you need to be doing this. Don't rely solely on third-party cookies and session unification attempts. If you have a USER table in your database/crm, add the five UTM fields to it! C…

Can also just add a field to signup "how did you hear about us?"

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#24

Post by dangrossman » Tue, Sep 06, 2016, 2:57 PM UTC

AlBentley wrote: post #21

dangrossman wrote: post #10

> Even these users churned after a short time. Why is that? We do not really know! You need to know this, and knowing it is as easy as asking. I e-mail every single person that cancels their subscription, and ask why they cancelled today and what we could have done to better serve them. I don't measure the response rate, but I write every mail personally and read every response, so I can tell you it's well over 50%.…

Our experience when trying this approach is 90% reply with 'lack of time' which is not the true reason but basically means the product didn't solve a major problem for them.

Not necessarily. I solved most "lack of time" issues by improving onboarding. People thought they didn't have the time because the setup steps seemed daunting or confusing, so they put them off indefinitely. Improving the "first login" experience, moving to a more walkthrough/wizard-based setup (only one thing to do on the screen at a time), and building more 3rd-party integrations that eliminated technical work allowed me to retain more customers. I was solving their problem -- once they got past the hurdle of starting to use the product.

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#25

Post by NicoJuicy » Tue, Sep 06, 2016, 3:00 PM UTC

In my experience, facebook is for marketing ( getting your name out).

Google is for results

( We had a facebook page with Pokémon Go, where we had 6 events in theme parks. We did it all with facebook and a website... None the less, i seriously changed my opinion about Facebook considering ads. It's not worth it )

We had a reach of 320.000 people with only 100$ spend on ads ( because of the hype it was really cheap and a lot of people shared everything).

We could only convert something like 300 people per event.. Which is 0,00009% conversion rate, where they pay lower entrance fees then normal for a theme park, in the midst of a hype.

Remind you, the first event was in the first week after the release of Pokémon Go.. So we really jumped on it :)

PS. We spent more on ads for

- like our page

- better position of our likes

- ...

It's just not worth it

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#26

Post by downandout » Tue, Sep 06, 2016, 3:08 PM UTC

There is an enormous difference between a user that is searching for keywords related to your product, and potential customers that probably aren't looking for your product that you have identified through Facebook targeting criteria. The Google user has a problem and is actively seeking a solution; the Facebook user fits what you believe is the demographic profile of someone that might be interested in your product.

Traffic from Facebook ads is notoriously difficult to turn into cash precisely because of this. Most of their advertisers measure ROI in terms of shares and likes, not new users or product sales. Because Facebook has you bidding against such people for traffic, you will never be able to make the numbers back out because your competitors aren't measuring dollars or new users like you are. Advertising products/services on Facebook is a fool's errand for almost everyone, except for those with an extremely broad target audience.

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#27

Post by 1024core » Tue, Sep 06, 2016, 3:17 PM UTC

NicoJuicy wrote: post #25

In my experience, facebook is for marketing ( getting your name out). Google is for results ( We had a facebook page with Pokémon Go, where we had 6 events in theme parks. We did it all with facebook and a website... None the less, i seriously changed my opinion about Facebook considering ads. It's not worth it ) We had a reach of 320.000 people with only 100$ spend on ads ( because of the hype it was really cheap an…

300/320.000 is 0,09%, and not 0,00009% .

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#28

Post by gk1 » Tue, Sep 06, 2016, 3:19 PM UTC

ssharp wrote: post #15

I wanted to call this out: We solved the first problem through a separate tool, which labels the user with the originating source when registering. Yes, yes, yes, and yes. If you're spending any significant amount of money on advertising, you need to be doing this. Don't rely solely on third-party cookies and session unification attempts. If you have a USER table in your database/crm, add the five UTM fields to it! C…

If you're using a tracking tool like Mixpanel, you can get the UTM parameters for each user and enter them as hidden field values into whatever form they submit so that you have them in your DB/CRM/email.

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#29

Post by gk1 » Tue, Sep 06, 2016, 3:24 PM UTC

joannabugreplay wrote: post #18

I'm just about to start my first round of facebook ads for my b2b startup. I was wondering what worked best for you? I read your post and you mentioned users from sources such as Google... what else worked for you?

Don't bother with FB. It's a waste of money for B2B.

Nothing is guaranteed to work. AdWords could be a great way to jumpstart customer acquisition, or a great way to waste money.

The important thing is to _experiment_ and _evaluate_ (using analytics and attribution tracking) because what worked for one company might not work for you, and as a startup you often can't afford to blow $20k just to learn that lesson.

(Speaking from experience. I'm a b2b marketing consultant and I've been through this many times.)

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#30

Post by mrgreenfur » Tue, Sep 06, 2016, 3:29 PM UTC

ssharp wrote: post #15

I wanted to call this out: We solved the first problem through a separate tool, which labels the user with the originating source when registering. Yes, yes, yes, and yes. If you're spending any significant amount of money on advertising, you need to be doing this. Don't rely solely on third-party cookies and session unification attempts. If you have a USER table in your database/crm, add the five UTM fields to it! C…

In truth, you should be doing this and modeling the results via attribution for every source of traffic. What if the facebook audience bounced right away and converted via google two days later?

Disclaimer: I'm working on an attribution modeling tool, attribution.io