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We Spent $1,138 on Facebook in 6 Days: Numbers and Lessons Learned

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Re: We Spent $1,138 on Facebook in 6 Days: Numbers and Lessons Learned

#21

Post by drpancake »

brianjolney wrote: post #17

a point for improvement: facebook's auction system is quite aggressive in picking its favorites. Having that many ads in one campaign, especially one with such a low daily budget, will cause one to get nearly all the impressions and take over. You also can't stop ads after only a thousand or so impressions. Let them run for 50k+ before cutting, as an ad that performs well will take a decent amount of clicks for the b…

Facebook's own guide on A/B testing your ads suggests creating a separate campaign for every single variation, in order to avoid this issue. I've still found that just 1-2 clicks causes one variation's impressions to go through the roof.

http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/FB_Ads_A_B_Testin...

Re: We Spent $1,138 on Facebook in 6 Days: Numbers and Lessons Learned

#22

Post by bane »

mcdowall wrote: post #16

So essentially $1100 for ~600 likes, I certainly wouldn't be happy with that return. It's an informative piece but I think your summary is a bit off regarding the campaign a success generally. I think by simply joining Facebook groups in this sector and engaging with the group you could've achieved 600 likes in the same timescale and saved yourself the money.

Agreed.

We use Google mostly for adverts, and we're showing about a $1 per user acquisition rate. That's not CTR rate, that's

clicked ad->saw site->signed up.

At almost $2 just to get a "like", I would be very hard pressed to justify that.

"we averaged $1.83 per 'like'"

"what's a 'like'?"

"somebody click the like button next to us in Facebook"

"how much money is that worth to us?"

"well, it identifies interested people in our service who we can advertise to later"

"so we now know about people who might be interested in our service if we decide to spend even more money advertising to them?"

"basically"

Re: We Spent $1,138 on Facebook in 6 Days: Numbers and Lessons Learned

#23

Post by kposehn »

Great experiment! Glad to see you got some engagement.

As someone who has run FB ads since the beginning though, I would disagree with one thing: in my experience over the years, people are ok with leaving Facebook, so long as you have a very nice, clean, easy to understand page with a clear value proposition.

My suggestion going forward is this: 1. Take each winning ad and make 3 more variants. 2. Take each interest you were targeting, make a separate campaign for each. 3. Place all variants of your winning ads in each campaign.

The purpose of this is to find which actual interest is responding to your product. Once you find that out, refine it again by breaking up location, age, gender, education, etc.

Get really granular over time. The end result is very good ROI and a solid way of making money on FB :)

Re: We Spent $1,138 on Facebook in 6 Days: Numbers and Lessons Learned

#24

Post by kposehn »

bane wrote: post #20
unshift wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i thought the same thing. i spent a confused minute trying to figure out which units the 20/40 on the google analytics graph represented, given $1100+ in spending. $250/day and on no day did facebook generate more than 40 hits. i would not consider that a success. if facebook ads are good for "brand awareness" would it make more sense to use CPM ads with some sort of logo and/or memorable copy? they seem to be a bit…

Crap, that's terrible performance. We're probably spending $5.00 a day on Google adverts and pulling in about that many clickthroughs. (checking), yup, we had 83 clickthroughs today and a total cost of $4.09. CTR is at about 1.18% (quickly scratches FB off of list of advertising vehicles)

FB and Google CTR is like comparing apples and unicorns :)

Typically with FB, you are doing well if you are finding anything near 0.05% CTR. Remember, these are content ads and not paid search.

Paid search you should be hitting 5%+ CTR on your top search keywords (in position 1-2, around 3% for #3 and 2% or less for anything below). On FB, getting an ad with a consistent 0.077% CTR means they are on to something and should keep going.

Don't knock FB off your list of advertising venues though. Each one is different and has a completely different dynamic, approach to users and value proposition. With paid search you bid on user intent through keywords - what they are looking for right now. On Facebook you are bidding on people and trying to get their attention, a big difference :)

Re: We Spent $1,138 on Facebook in 6 Days: Numbers and Lessons Learned

#25

Post by kposehn »

Serene wrote: post #9
Silhouette wrote: post #2

Am I missing something here? The author seems pleased with the results, but as an outsider who isn't familiar with his company I see an ad campaign that cost over $1,000, achieved clickthroughs well under 0.1% despite targeting, and does not appear to have resulted in any measurable benefit at all. There are some comments at the end of the article about how Facebook is great for brand awareness, but there doesn't see…

The average click-through rate for Facebook ads was 0.063% in 2009 and 0.051% in 2010. Click-through rates used to be about 3% in the 90s, but have been declining since. Current industry standard is 0.1%. I heard that facebook is good for awareness, just to let low- or no-paying people know you exist, but click-through rates are pitiful, indeed.

CTR has declined since the early days but profitability has really increased. Check out some of the ad management tools if you're having trouble - they can really help you get into the data and find results :)

Re: We Spent $1,138 on Facebook in 6 Days: Numbers and Lessons Learned

#26

Post by aisalwaysa »

kposehn wrote: post #24
bane wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crap, that's terrible performance. We're probably spending $5.00 a day on Google adverts and pulling in about that many clickthroughs. (checking), yup, we had 83 clickthroughs today and a total cost of $4.09. CTR is at about 1.18% (quickly scratches FB off of list of advertising vehicles)

FB and Google CTR is like comparing apples and unicorns :) Typically with FB, you are doing well if you are finding anything near 0.05% CTR. Remember, these are content ads and not paid search. Paid search you should be hitting 5%+ CTR on your top search keywords (in position 1-2, around 3% for #3 and 2% or less for anything below). On FB, getting an ad with a consistent 0.077% CTR means they are on to something and…

Which is the Apple and which is the Unicorn?

Re: We Spent $1,138 on Facebook in 6 Days: Numbers and Lessons Learned

#27

Post by kposehn »

kposehn wrote: post #23

Great experiment! Glad to see you got some engagement. As someone who has run FB ads since the beginning though, I would disagree with one thing: in my experience over the years, people are ok with leaving Facebook, so long as you have a very nice, clean, easy to understand page with a clear value proposition. My suggestion going forward is this: 1. Take each winning ad and make 3 more variants. 2. Take each interest…

Replying to myself here to give some info on my experiences with FB:

Here are my stats on the last week for one campaign where I make about $35-$50 on average per lead:

- Spend: $3,345.30 - Impressions: 6,305,765 - Clicks: 2,570 - CTR: 0.0408% (average, some ads are near 0.1% and they make the most money) - Average CPC: $1.30 - Leads: 237 - Average CPL: $14.11 - Revenue: $8,703.70

That's a pretty damn good ROI. Not every campaign does as well as this, but taking the time to find your audience, craft your message and optimize will yield good results.

Re: We Spent $1,138 on Facebook in 6 Days: Numbers and Lessons Learned

#28

Post by kposehn »

aisalwaysa wrote: post #26
kposehn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB and Google CTR is like comparing apples and unicorns :) Typically with FB, you are doing well if you are finding anything near 0.05% CTR. Remember, these are content ads and not paid search. Paid search you should be hitting 5%+ CTR on your top search keywords (in position 1-2, around 3% for #3 and 2% or less for anything below). On FB, getting an ad with a consistent 0.077% CTR means they are on to something and…

Which is the Apple and which is the Unicorn?

They switch places depending on AdWords QS and FB's approval policies :D

Re: We Spent $1,138 on Facebook in 6 Days: Numbers and Lessons Learned

#30

Post by rickmode »

Regarding the ad the worked best, I couldn't tell what the heck the image was, and I'm curious - the image was interesting. Looks like a spiral of some sort. (I didn't see it as a stack of beer until I looked back after reading what it was.)

I suspect the higher click-through rate was more about curiosity about the image.

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