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How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

stackfield.com

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Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#31

Post by crdb »

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…

You can also ignore UTM terms altogether, and use a single ad ID, then structure your marketing channel/partner/etc. exactly how you like it at DB level.

Aside from being more correct, as you don't duplicate this information with every session, you can update your "UTM parameters" at any time (keeping a history table, naturally) and avoid enormous and growing sets of rules to map previous structures to the newest one.

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#32

Post by gk1 »

This is a valuable lesson in tracking marketing results.

Decide on what would make a campaign successful, and then make sure you can track it.

Don't trust the ad platform's metrics. Not only are they inaccurate, they're usually vanity metrics that don't matter at all.

Tracking outcomes can be as simple as including UTM tags in your ad links (eg, ?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=fall2016), tracking signups/activations/upgrades in Mixpanel (or Heap), then viewing a report of signups/activations/upgraes grouped by the UTM values.

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#33

Post by threesixandnine »

cookiecaper wrote: post #22

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 mecha…

What is supposed to be astroturfing in this case? Infomercials in media?

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#34

Post by Xyik »

This is basic advertising. Google search ads and referral will bring in higher quality users because search is trigger/intent-based and referrals come from a more trustworthy source (usually), vs. FB ads that basically blast everyone. Even if you narrow down your audience on FB with interest targeting and proper demographic targeting, it may not help since many users just 'like' everything. Consider the supply and demand as well, the less competition on FB the cheaper your advertising is. Perhaps competitor also realized FB was the wrong way to go and stopped advertising on FB, that means more auctions for you to win and cheaper users. Of course, that doesn't mean higher quality users.

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#35

Post by wlesieutre »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #4

>Surprisingly, Google Analytics reported only 28.818 visits by users who were redirected from Facebook during this timeframe – i.e. 8,81 percent less. From these users, 3.786 registered on Stackfield. // Hypothesis: Could that be pre-emptive caching - some browsers IIRC will fetch a page ready for display. GA could be showing displayed pages whilst FB are showing followed links? On the general situation, what's the r…

Do browsers really preload pages from random links in advertisements that I have no intention of ever clicking? That sounds like a terrible idea.

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#36

Post by jorgemf »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #4

>Surprisingly, Google Analytics reported only 28.818 visits by users who were redirected from Facebook during this timeframe – i.e. 8,81 percent less. From these users, 3.786 registered on Stackfield. // Hypothesis: Could that be pre-emptive caching - some browsers IIRC will fetch a page ready for display. GA could be showing displayed pages whilst FB are showing followed links? On the general situation, what's the r…

Google Analytics doesn't report exact results (unless you pay for it, around 150k I think), 10% of error could be normal. It should be use to measure trends and not exact numbers.

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#37

Post by tonyedgecombe »

jasode wrote: post #14

>, Facebook may just be the wrong audience for a B2B tool. Well, at least you can say that the 20k € was spent to learn that signups from Facebook have a near-zero retention rate. (That's not meant to be a flippant comment.) A lot of successful websites seem to know (or learned) which market channels bring in the right customers. For Stackoverflow.com: most traffic comes via referrals from google.com searches -- but…

"but I doubt you'd get quality clicks from it"

I don't think it's the quality that will be the problem but the cost in a highly competitive area like project management.

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#39

Post by jon-wood »

lukethomas wrote: post #23
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?"

Or both, I was dubious about a request to add this field where we were doing proper ad source tracking via URL variables, but it led to some interesting results, specifically people coming via Facebook ads and the lack stating word of mouth, or offline advertising, as the source.
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