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> When I ran an escape room business, my fill-rate on weekends was typically dependent on whether or not I was spending money on Facebook. Google ads were secon

by dwild 7y ago

> When I ran an escape room business, my fill-rate on weekends was typically dependent on whether or not I was spending money on Facebook. Google ads were second. It's funny because I was going to comment on that about the escape room of my SO and about how Facebook in her case was quite ineffective. I was taking care of her campaigns because she isn't tech savvy at all. I was spending 150$ a month on Facebook and the same amount on Google Adword, but we had a much better return on Google. There wasn't much advertising for escape room on Facebook for our area either, so that may explain why. There's quite a bit of them on Google Ads, but we only have ads on Google Adword for now. I'm not the best in advertising though and didn't spend that much time on it, so we could most probably optimize that quite a bit and maybe then Facebook could be better. We are exclusively on Google now and I did optimize it a bit to reach 4.75% CTR. I have an hard time tracking correctly the conversion with Resova (we are going to migrate out of them too, so I won't spend too much time on it either) so for now CTR is good enough.

kelnos 7y ago
This raises an interesting question for me: how do people find real-life things on the internet? If I want to find an escape room near me, I'll do a web search, or possibly open Google Maps on my phone and search for it. It wouldn't even occur to me to use Facebook for this (granted, I've been off FB for a year now, with an account open just for event invitations, so I may not be typical). Do people actually type searches to find things off-internet into FB's search box? Or is the advertising "discovery" more organic, in that escape room ads are just showing up in people's FB timeline or alongside unrelated Google searches (or on sites that display Google ads), and people think "oh, neat, I like escape rooms, I should try this one"?
- dwild 7y ago
  > how do people find real-life things on the internet? Originally I was planning to put them all on Facebook because I was expecting our market to be there (young adult who want to do something with friends). I was only taking ads on Google because even with the exact name, the result was too far. I was planning to remove it but as the CPC was much lower than on Facebook, I kept it with a few dollars per day. > I'll do a web search, or possibly open Google Maps on my phone and search for it. That what seems to be happening. Google Maps is one of our best source of conversion. During the first 12 months my SO asked most people where they found the escape room and a majority were from Google Maps. On Google My Business their stats show that in the past 30 days it was displayed 20k times, which is quite good. The CTR isn't amazing but it's still something and the number of calls is actually not too bad considering that I don't expect most people to use the call button of Google Maps to book. I'll probably try to pay for ads on Google Maps and Waze soon.

by dwild 7y ago

kelnos 7y ago

This raises an interesting question for me: how do people find real-life things on the internet? If I want to find an escape room near me, I'll do a web search, or possibly open Google Maps on my phone and search for it. It wouldn't even occur to me to use Facebook for this (granted, I've been off FB for a year now, with an account open just for event invitations, so I may not be typical). Do people actually type searches to find things off-internet into FB's search box? Or is the advertising "discovery" more organic, in that escape room ads are just showing up in people's FB timeline or alongside unrelated Google searches (or on sites that display Google ads), and people think "oh, neat, I like escape rooms, I should try this one"?

dwild 7y ago
> how do people find real-life things on the internet? Originally I was planning to put them all on Facebook because I was expecting our market to be there (young adult who want to do something with friends). I was only taking ads on Google because even with the exact name, the result was too far. I was planning to remove it but as the CPC was much lower than on Facebook, I kept it with a few dollars per day. > I'll do a web search, or possibly open Google Maps on my phone and search for it. That what seems to be happening. Google Maps is one of our best source of conversion. During the first 12 months my SO asked most people where they found the escape room and a majority were from Google Maps. On Google My Business their stats show that in the past 30 days it was displayed 20k times, which is quite good. The CTR isn't amazing but it's still something and the number of calls is actually not too bad considering that I don't expect most people to use the call button of Google Maps to book. I'll probably try to pay for ads on Google Maps and Waze soon.