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

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

#61

Post by mpeg »

mbesto wrote: post #47
lmm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without wishing to be rude, have you not been paying attention? This is what facebook /does/.

First, there's two other comments that would say otherwise. Can anyone definitively say whether this is true or not? I'm curious as well. Second, your question doesn't add to the discussion (thus a downvote). Mind your manners please.

I work with fb ads, there is no way to get any information from people who click on your ads apart from the fact they fit the demographics you set on the ad.

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

#62

Post by [deleted] »

lwhi wrote: post #50
ajays wrote: post #48

Something's amiss in the article. First there's this: " Result? Two! €160 quid for two clicks, each of whom looked at two site pages. " Then: " Clearly something is not right, so I decide to view the profiles of all those who clicked the ads. They hit one common spot – they were all in the UK. But they were aged from 13 to about 70, many were unemployed or in education, we even had a Muslim fundamentalist who is very…

The first refers to people who visited the website from the Facebook page.

[deleted]

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

#63

Post by gr2020 »

frisco wrote: post #54

I actually don't think that advertising is Facebook's future. The intent isn't there in the same way it is with a Google search. However, I do think Facebook has a bright future with payments: imagine "Pay with Facebook" buttons throughout the web, with Facebook's business as essentially being the IRS of the internet. They could even require sites that integrate with Facebook Platform (which is very powerful and valu…

I think they've got a ways to go before they can become ubiquitous for payments in general. They have a problem where a ton of people just don't trust them - and IMHO you've got to have trust to become a successful payments platform.

"Yet in the poll of U.S. adults published Tuesday, only 13 percent said they trust Facebook 'completely' or 'a lot' when it comes to keeping their personal information private. A majority, or 59 percent, said they trust Facebook 'only a little,' or 'not at all.'" http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-57437362/lack-of-trus...

That said, Paypal isn't exactly loved by many, and they seem to be doing well, so maybe I'm holding FB to too high a standard...

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

#64

Post by qdpb »

jstalin wrote: post #14

We seem to be getting more of these types of articles. I haven't seen one yet that declares facebook advertising a raging success for a business. All of the responses to these articles are usually "they're doing it wrong," which is more of an indictment of facebook than the multiple users who try out advertising and see no positive results at all.

If I had a lot of success with ads on facebook, I would keep it quiet, so negative reviews (which there are quite a few these days) lower prices.

Another thing to consider is that facebook was (still is?) in a quiet period due to IPO, and once it's over we will definitely see some good examples of how facebook ads work.

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

#65

Post by shiftpgdn »

hessenwolf wrote: post #5

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 go…

Your site is currently displaying a 500 Internal server error.

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

#66

Post by mapster »

He clearly did not do ANY real testing, of refined metrics (target people who like his competitor, age range, etc. etc.). So the counterpoint is someone who is killing it on FB ads - and can they blog about it well enough for said 60yr old business owner to adopt.

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

#67

Post by DanI-S »

citricsquid wrote: post #57
notatoad wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't use facebook so correct me if i'm wrong, but doesn't liking a page have a similar effect to following on twitter, in that people who have liked your page will see your updates in their feed? the number of people who like you is irrelevant maybe, but if they're all subscribed to your marketing updates that's not nothing.

theoretically yes, but in reality it isn't that simple. Through Facebook insights I can see that for a post we made last week (to the page with 100k likes that I mentioned above) was shown in the timelines of 20,000 people and was "engaged" by just under 400 (this means they either "liked", clicked the link or shared or commented on it). So while it isn't "nothing" it's substantially less than you would expected.

Put another way, you got 400 customer interactions for free, many resulting in additional sharing of your content. Isn't that worth something in a world where an Adwords clickthrough can cost $10+?

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

#68

Post by pgroves »

IMO, this experiment would have worked on LinkedIn. The targeted ads I see when I'm in there are way applicable to the "professional me" than FB or Google ads. LinkedIn just makes more sense for a B2B marketing campaign. I'm sure the numbers (of users) are all smaller, but the user characteristics that lead to getting shown an ad are better discriminators in the B2B case.

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

#69

Post by sanxiyn »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #41
jiggy2011 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, case in point: My local sandwich deli has now decided to go all "social media". They have a big sign on the counter saying "please like us on facebook" and when you buy a sandwich the staff ask you if you are on facebook. Something about the whole approach just feels wrong in a way I can't quite put my finger on. It just feels like them asking me to do what is basically a meaningless mechanical chore. I've b…

Auto generate a coupon / QR code for everyone who likes you Then if any of their friends uses that coupon code (by flashing their iPhone at the till) then that original person gets ten points on their loyalty card I think frankly that a social graph is best employed using graphing friendly rewards - mostly that is the social dopamine thing in our brains, but affiliates also work In fact - is this being done?

One of my friends is working on customer rewards program service startup utilizing social graph. (You may contact me if you are interested.)

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

#70

Post by alain94040 »

qdpb wrote: post #64
jstalin wrote: post #14

We seem to be getting more of these types of articles. I haven't seen one yet that declares facebook advertising a raging success for a business. All of the responses to these articles are usually "they're doing it wrong," which is more of an indictment of facebook than the multiple users who try out advertising and see no positive results at all.

If I had a lot of success with ads on facebook, I would keep it quiet, so negative reviews (which there are quite a few these days) lower prices. Another thing to consider is that facebook was (still is?) in a quiet period due to IPO, and once it's over we will definitely see some good examples of how facebook ads work.

"I made $100,000 with Facebook ads in 3 months". Would you like to hear how? (True story by the way.) But like you said, people are reluctant to share successes, by fear of being copied.
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