I put my family business on Facebook. Here’s what happened.

Facebook's only real profit driver at the moment is advertising to it's captive user base, however the ad's aren't that good to start with. It feels half hearted like they've gone, 'hey we'll stick some ad's....there', that's great they're all in one place at the right where I can ignore them.

I think a lot of people will start revising how much money they want to spend in terms of advertising and pull back from the least effective, which could very well be Facebook.

(interesting side note, the most effective corporate Twitter accounts I've found are the ones that don't bother trying to sell the product every 10 minutes, see Betfair Poker and Waterstones UK for good examples).

Re: I put my family business on Facebook. Here’s what happened.

#5

Post by hessenwolf » Mon, May 21, 2012, 1:05 PM UTC

We had a similar level of traction adverstising nametoolkit.com (shameless plug but we all do it on HN). The visitors we got from Facebook seemed completely lost, but yet the cost per click (CPC) we ended up paying was notably higher than the CPC from adwords.

We tried Bing also, and they were really great at customer service; some guy talked to me for over an hour about various things we could try and they always got back quickly, but the CPCs were absurdly high.

Re: I put my family business on Facebook. Here’s what happened.

#6

Post by jyothi » Mon, May 21, 2012, 1:13 PM UTC

This has nothing to do with Facebook. They just picked the wrong marketing channel. How do you expect a "great" response for a packaging business (that too B2B) on facebook.

There are effective two modes of advertising on the internet: 1. where the user seeks (search ads etc)

2. you push the ad on the consumer (content ads, facebook ads as of now)

#1 is clear and has a good enough match always.

To be on #2 - you got to appeal well to the audience. Facebook works wonders for food, travel, gifts and more. All things that qualify for impulsive buys. It is important to understand the marketing channel.

Re: I put my family business on Facebook. Here’s what happened.

#7

Post by jaysonelliot » Mon, May 21, 2012, 1:13 PM UTC

I can certainly understand the author's frustration with Facebook advertising, and for what he's selling, it does make more sense to use Google than Facebook or Twitter.

I don't think that's an indictment of the site, though.

Facebook and Twitter are mediums for sharing and discussion. Traditional commerce feels a bit off, at best. If you want to use them to promote a business, you have to be participating in them on the same level.

I've used Facebook ads to promote a magazine and a podcast. In both cases, I saw much higher returns than with Google. I was asking people to come to the Facebook pages for the magazine and the podcast, and each page had a healthy amount of discussion and community because there was content for people to coalesce around. In our case, the ads did act as a primer for a more viral expansion, because there was something people could do and share on our pages.

I don't think Facebook is ever likely to become a good place for a 150-year-old B-to-B packaging service to do business. That shouldn't spell doom for the packaging service or for Facebook.

Re: I put my family business on Facebook. Here’s what happened.

#8

Post by mseebach » Mon, May 21, 2012, 1:13 PM UTC

tantalor wrote: post #3

This website doesn't seem to think bylines are very important. The author is named Peter Faulkner. No, a tag blob not a substitute for a proper byline.

At the bottom of the article is a short bio of the guy. A bit further down is a proper "About the author" box with a picture and his Twitter handle.

Re: I put my family business on Facebook. Here’s what happened.

#9

Post by wateverer » Mon, May 21, 2012, 1:16 PM UTC

Ha ! Truth spoken on HN propaganda machine. Unlikely !

This page will probably be taken down to avoid conspiracy theorists like me.

The bubble is coming folks.

Dear Trolls,

Time for a lolocaust on HN.

"Long live the neckbeard. Down with the startup scene."

Copy paste the above !! +1 if you use sock puppets.

Seriously, you are affecting people's life you don't confess about this hideous fad and the devil's nest(VC's).

"Long live the neckbeard. Down with the startup scene."

Re: I put my family business on Facebook. Here’s what happened.

#10

Post by coldarchon » Mon, May 21, 2012, 1:22 PM UTC

This confuses me, he has a family business with a background of 150 years and expects to win the Internet in 4 days?

Why didn't he make a poll about his products and tell his customers about it?