"Facebook may just be the wrong audience for a B2B tool."
Duh.
How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads
81–90 of 122 posts
Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads
#82>, 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…
I find it amusing that a product focused on privacy choose to advertise on Facebook. I bet that being on the front page of HN is well worth those 20k though, but maybe that was the plan from the beginning.
Are the assumptions here that:
1) Facebook News Feed users don't care about their privacy
2) The OP was more motivated by viral HN marketing than actual direct results on Facebook?
These are interesting claims. Can you substantiate them?
Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our experience when trying this approach is 90% reply with 'lack of time' which is not the true reason but basically means the product didn't solve a major problem for them.
Not necessarily. I solved most "lack of time" issues by improving onboarding. People thought they didn't have the time because the setup steps seemed daunting or confusing, so they put them off indefinitely. Improving the "first login" experience, moving to a more walkthrough/wizard-based setup (only one thing to do on the screen at a time), and building more 3rd-party integrations that eliminated technical work allo…
Absolutely. I'm a picky user who will delete your app in 30 seconds if the setup path isn't obvious and reliable.
Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads
#84There is an enormous difference between a user that is searching for keywords related to your product, and potential customers that probably aren't looking for your product that you have identified through Facebook targeting criteria. The Google user has a problem and is actively seeking a solution; the Facebook user fits what you believe is the demographic profile of someone that might be interested in your product.…
"The Google user has a problem and is actively seeking a solution; the Facebook user fits what you believe is the demographic profile of someone that might be interested in your product."
That's all well and good, but at the end of the day I can Google "Maserati Dealer" and yet have nowhere near the income levels required to purchase one.
"Traffic from Facebook ads is notoriously difficult to turn into cash precisely because of this. Most of their advertisers measure ROI in terms of shares and likes, not new users or product sales."
As someone that works in the industry this patently false. We measure Return on Investment in dollars not vanity metrics. ROAS is going to be your most common topline stat which is used (stand for return on ad spend with return meaning revenue).
"Advertising products/services on Facebook is a fool's errand for almost everyone, except for those with an extremely broad target audience."
Again very very wrong. In fact the most successful campaign I've ever run (3 million+ in revenue that was 300% ROI positive) was a relatively small niche market that was less than 200,000 people.
Now if you want the real reason Facebook seems to not work. It's a few things.
1. The people that raise their hand up to talk about Facebook ads do so because they're frustrated so all the things you read tend to be very polarized and negative.
2. Mostly amateurs are buying Facebook ads. Professionals routinely do much much better even in B2B niches.
3. Just because you're product didn't sell doesn't mean that the platform doesn't work. It routinely works for thousands of advertisers of all sizes every single day. I would encourage you to ask if it's the ad platform? Perhaps your ads? Perhaps your targeting? Perhaps your product just hasn't found product market fit yet.
Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads
#85Pardon me if this is off topic, I'm sure someone will let me know. I run an ad on Facebook for $25 for the weekend. We get somewhere between 2000-6000 "reaches". We get a fair share that like the post, I "invite" them to like the page, hardly any do... Is this normal?
Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not saying it wasn't a succes. But the success was because of the hype, not because of Facebook. We could have pulled this off on other platforms as well, we were 3 times in the news. But the success isn't as big as it should have been. We paid pennies and had something. But I wouldn't want to know how much we should pay when I'm an actual business and trying to get some traction through Facebook
We could have pulled this off on other platforms as well I have to ask: why didn't you?
Because this seemed the easiest way and i was curious about facebook for my ( now already launched) webshop.
Now i just consider facebook as marketing/brand building and not a big part of my sales funnel.
Seems to be correct in my experience so far, most of my sales currently come from offline and 3rd parties ( one friend of mine brought in a huge sale)
+ I only have a limited time :)
Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads
#87Missing one of the most useful metrics and that is CTR.
Take the startup campaign, 5880 Clicks / 716007 Impressions = 0.82% CTR.
That is a pretty poor CTR and explains the high cost of website clicks. If the CTR was up around 2% the cost of website clicks would be halved. Would probably look at changing the ad content if CTR was this low.
Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads
#88There is an enormous difference between a user that is searching for keywords related to your product, and potential customers that probably aren't looking for your product that you have identified through Facebook targeting criteria. The Google user has a problem and is actively seeking a solution; the Facebook user fits what you believe is the demographic profile of someone that might be interested in your product.…
"The Google user has a problem and is actively seeking a solution; the Facebook user fits what you believe is the demographic profile of someone that might be interested in your product." That's all well and good, but at the end of the day I can Google "Maserati Dealer" and yet have nowhere near the income levels required to purchase one. "Traffic from Facebook ads is notoriously difficult to turn into cash precisely…
You seem to be assuming that my comment was the result of some failed campaign. It wasn't.
Surely you would concede that your $3M campaign was a rarity and could not be duplicated in the case of most advertisers. About 30℅ of casino players walk out winners on any given day too - it doesn't mean they are going to beat the house long term. If you are advertising on a medium where useless metrics are the desired goal of your competitors (likes and shares in the case if Facebook), you cannot beat those people if you need a cash ROI and they don't. There are always going to be exceptions to the rule, and I'm glad you found one, but that doesn't invalidate anything I've said.
Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads
#89Missing one of the most useful metrics and that is CTR. Take the startup campaign, 5880 Clicks / 716007 Impressions = 0.82% CTR. That is a pretty poor CTR and explains the high cost of website clicks. If the CTR was up around 2% the cost of website clicks would be halved. Would probably look at changing the ad content if CTR was this low.
It is low but not unusual for Facebook.
Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads
#90Pardon me if this is off topic, I'm sure someone will let me know. I run an ad on Facebook for $25 for the weekend. We get somewhere between 2000-6000 "reaches". We get a fair share that like the post, I "invite" them to like the page, hardly any do... Is this normal?
Liking the page would require effort from the user and most are reluctant to deviate from their current thought process.
Most people are on facebook to scroll down their news feed and maybe like a post or 2. There is no motivation for them to go to your page and just 'like' it, unless you have content that appeals to them.
People are bombarded with advertisement all day every day, they simply feel no obligation to help you unless you can provide them with something of value.
Think about from your own perspective, how you use something like facebook. Do you go and like random pages from people sending you unsolicited invite requests? Probably not, so why would anyone else do it.