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

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

#61

Post by mchusma » Fri, Jun 24, 2011, 4:08 PM UTC

mscarborough wrote: post #36

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…

They mentioned the campaign stopped on the last day of the conference. Why not let it run for an extra week or three? I don't think demoing new software you learned about during a conference is going to really happen by the last day of said conference. Also if you did not make an impression on attendees enough to merit an @todo item somewhere, Facebook ads seem kind of futile.

mscarborough- This was more of an experiment for us, and we didn't want to burn funds indefinitely without understanding the consequence. Also, our best performing ad was a half joke about drinking beer at the conference, although we could have probably come up with some witty "our founders are hung over" type ad.

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

#62

Post by ig1 » Fri, Jun 24, 2011, 4:32 PM UTC

ultrasaurus wrote: post #59

ig1 wrote: post #54

It stories like this that make me think I should just build an app that does automated Facebook ad optimization, these guys could have done a lot better than they did. I've run ads targeting US tech audience at 0.5cents a click. A few tips: 1) Buy ads on a CPM basis, if you're getting a good conversion rate then CPM is a lot cheaper than CPC on Facebook. 2) Don't target a bunch of keywords together, chances are some…

According to my stats [1], the implied click through rate is .04%, so you're very right this ad group would've saved money on average [.057%] (And almost half if they had stuck with the .077% converting ad). [1] http://euri.ca/2011/04/facebook-advertising-prices-part-2/

Nice model, unfortunately it doesn't work because of a couple of factors:

If you run CPC ads Facebook will show your ads more often to users who are "click happy" (they've said so publicly), there's also an impression among a lot of advertisers that Facebook charge a premium for CPC (which they haven't been willing to confirm or deny)

Also if you're buying CPM Facebook give you a "quality" discount, so if you have a good CTR you actually end up paying a much lower price than the initial suggested bid.

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

#63

Post by abrudtkuhl » Fri, Jun 24, 2011, 6:13 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #41

I don't exactly want to hijack the thread, but let me present an idea of how one could burn $1,000 if one wanted to do it for promotion. Step 1: Install Wordpress. Good, already done. Step 2: Create a big ol' list of keywords which you think are relevant to your business. For example, [sign contract online], [sign document online], [sign contract with iPhone], [sign contract with Blackberry], etc etc. This doesn't co…

I've tested Patrick's scalable content practices and have had much higher return compared to both AdWords and Facebook advertisements. Best part is you spend the time/money up front and it keeps working forever.

FWIW - In comparing these three methods (Content, AdWords, Facebook) based on their impact on the bottom line ($$$ -> that's what counts, right?) Facebook by far was the worst performer.

The only drawback to this is that it takes patience - results are not immediate.

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

#64

Post by abrudtkuhl » Fri, Jun 24, 2011, 6:16 PM UTC

nikcub wrote: post #56

patio11 wrote: post #41

I don't exactly want to hijack the thread, but let me present an idea of how one could burn $1,000 if one wanted to do it for promotion. Step 1: Install Wordpress. Good, already done. Step 2: Create a big ol' list of keywords which you think are relevant to your business. For example, [sign contract online], [sign document online], [sign contract with iPhone], [sign contract with Blackberry], etc etc. This doesn't co…

I have a feeling that this is the type of product that potential users don't think they need or don't know exists, which would invert the marketing method from finding users with intent to finding everybody and then converting them with your story So I would have spent the $1000 on formulating a good story and reaching bloggers and journalists (which is what they did, or aimed at, in a way) (btw what you are advocati…

This research should have been done as due diligence in the lightbulb->launch phase. If nobody is searching for the problem your product solves it's likely not going to be successful at scale.

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

#65

Post by abrudtkuhl » Fri, Jun 24, 2011, 6:20 PM UTC

klbarry wrote: post #55

patio11 wrote: post #41

I don't exactly want to hijack the thread, but let me present an idea of how one could burn $1,000 if one wanted to do it for promotion. Step 1: Install Wordpress. Good, already done. Step 2: Create a big ol' list of keywords which you think are relevant to your business. For example, [sign contract online], [sign document online], [sign contract with iPhone], [sign contract with Blackberry], etc etc. This doesn't co…

Just a quick question, patio - do you make a separate domain for each keyword site, or just put them as pages in a larger domain?

I can't speak for Patrick but I do keyword based landing pages on the main domain where the product is for sale so you can pass page rank from keyword pages to your product pages or TLD.

This is also less work because you can create these optimized topical landing pages programmatically and just add some unique keyword rich content to them.

Also if you are adding domains regularly just for content you will have to wait a decent amount of time to let the domain age and you are always starting over at PR0.

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

#66

Post by idoh » Fri, Jun 24, 2011, 7:14 PM UTC

petercooper wrote: post #57

idoh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's about the market rate for buying likes on Facebook (the company I work for used to offer this as a service).

Targeted likes or just likes in general? There are folks on Fiverr who can deliver untargeted likes at 10 cents a pop (which might be useful for the initial social proof). No idea how they do it but I tried as an experiment and they don't all look like zombies.

That seems really low for me. The only way we could have done that would be to use low value inventory like from developing countries, but usually the advertisers had a certain demo that they wanted to reach and that raised the price.

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

#67

Post by evbart » Fri, Jun 24, 2011, 9:29 PM UTC

ssharp wrote: post #32

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.

Is there an industry standard on $/like? It seems like you can't really judge how much you should spend per like because you haven't yet calculated the revenue and profits per like.

I've heard anywhere from .50 to 1.50, but you can sell them for anywhere from 3-$7 if you're an agency :-)

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

#68

Post by petercooper » Sat, Jun 25, 2011, 1:16 AM UTC

idoh wrote: post #66

petercooper wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Targeted likes or just likes in general? There are folks on Fiverr who can deliver untargeted likes at 10 cents a pop (which might be useful for the initial social proof). No idea how they do it but I tried as an experiment and they don't all look like zombies.

That seems really low for me. The only way we could have done that would be to use low value inventory like from developing countries, but usually the advertisers had a certain demo that they wanted to reach and that raised the price.

Yeah, the demo is probably not good at all. But in terms of building up a few hundreds likes in order to get social proof for later folks, it's an option at least.

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

#69

Post by orijing » Sat, Jun 25, 2011, 4:24 AM UTC

amitagrawal wrote: post #52

orijing wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why CTR should matter (except as feedback for whether their ads are performing or not) if they're paying per click (CPC)?

CTR matters for a couple of important reasons - profits & relevance. Google, Facebook, Bing, etc use it directly to make more money on the same number of ad impressions. Let's suppose there are 2 advertisers - Andy who bids $1/click has 1% CTR & Bob who bids $0.60/click has 2% CTR. When each of the ads are shown to users, Andy's will receive 1 click whereas Bob's will have twice as many clicks (every 100 times the ad…

I understand that the CTR makes a difference to the network, but I am pointing out that a low CTR doesn't necessarily mean that the advertiser is worse off. It means two things: it means the advertiser's ad is terrible, or the targeting is suboptimal (relative to an ad with higher CTR), and that you are actually getting more impressions per dollar spent.

All else equal, you actually want to pay LESS per impression, given the same number of clicks per dollar (your CPC). Of course, in any well-designed dynamic system, the prices of the auction should reflect the different probabilities of being clicked.