7 ms·

So there are quite a few things that Pizza Delicious didn't do right with their Facebook ads. 1. They target people who like Italian food. They don't target pe

by ankeshk 14y ago

So there are quite a few things that Pizza Delicious didn't do right with their Facebook ads. 1. They target people who like Italian food. They don't target people who like Pizza. 15,440 people in New Orleans have liked Pizza on Facebook. 2. They don't target people who like other Pizza Outlets. Or other local restaurants. If a resident likes one local outlet, he is more prone to like other local establishments too. 3. They disregard targeting friends of people who already like Pizza Delicious. And by doing so - they don't use the most powerful feature Facebook has to offer: social proof. 4. That they do any kind of targeting beyond geographic targeting at all is probably erroneous for their type of business. Seriously - if they were running ads offline, would they run an ad in a magazine about Italy? Or would they run it in their daily local newspaper? Pizza is something that has a wide interest. There is no need to restrict based on any kinds of interest. 5. There is no benefit in Liking Pizza Delicious on Facebook. No special Facebook offers. Or discount coupons. And yet they were expecting people to like their page and come visit their place right away. Their call to action is weak. You can't expect facebook likes to convert into orders straight away - when you don't even ask for an order. 6. Their measurement method is very inaccurate. Asking people where they found out about you has been proven to be very very inaccurate. Instead, give them a coupon and track based on that. 7. There was a total mismatch with their online and offline metrics. Do you ever like a page on facebook without knowing about that brand from before? Yet, they are tracking the number of Likes online. But asking people how they found out about them offline.

verganileonardo 14y ago
TL;DR Don't blame the ad platform if you don't know how to market your business and measure your efforts
atacrawl 14y ago
I work at a marketing agency and I wholeheartedly agree with everything on this list. While some people will read the article and think "advertising on Facebook is a bad investment," the real takeaway should be "advertising anywhere will be a bad investment if you have no clue about marketing." And as a side note -- thank you for mentioning social proof. I'm constantly stunned at just how often this powerful concept is ignored or disregarded in marketing!
- easp 14y ago
  That's fine, but then it also reduces the addressable market for Facebook's advertising offerings. And lets face it, things don't look good if both GM and an independent business don't have enough of a clue to do a successful FB marketing campaign at this late date.
windsurfer 14y ago
A few responses: > 1. They target people who like Italian food. They don't target people who like Pizza. 15,440 people in New Orleans have liked Pizza on Facebook. There are literally thousands of pizza places. Pizza Delicious isn't just a pizza place. It fills a niche that's closer to "Italian Food" than to just pizza. > 3. They disregard targeting friends of people who already like Pizza Delicious. And by doing so - they don't use the most powerful feature Facebook has to offer: social proof. No they didn't. From the article: "Their first idea was to target the friends of people who already liked Pizza Delicious on Facebook. But that wound up targeting 74 percent of people in New Orleans on Facebook — 224,000 people. They needed something narrower." > 5. There is no benefit in Liking Pizza Delicious on Facebook. No special Facebook offers. Or discount coupons. And yet they were expecting people to like their page and come visit their place right away. Their call to action is weak. You can't expect facebook likes to convert into orders straight away - when you don't even ask for an order. Their goal was to increase sales, not increase likes on facebook. They considered the likes on facebook to be a metric, and it turned out to be useless by itself.
- artursapek 14y ago
  Their goal was to increase sales, not increase likes on facebook. They considered the likes on facebook to be a metric, and it turned out to be useless by itself. I've never advertised on Facebook, nor do I use it any more, but I thought the whole purpose of getting "Likes" was having a wider audience to which send offers and coupons. In that case it is a metric, it's not useless. This article made it sound like Likes are supposed to be promises of business. They're not. They're just the opportunity to win business.
  - mikeryan 14y ago
    Likes's are a tricky thing to leverage as a marketing tool (despite it being one of the things marketers use as a metric of Facebook success) If I "Like" a brand and they use it to just start sending me offers and coupons I'm very likely to "unlike" it very quickly. I do this every day. I'm not sure anyone has really nailed the formula for converting "likes" to actual sales.
damoncali 14y ago
You may be right, but the problem is that the number of businesses that can take advantage of "the proper way" to use Facebook for advertising is but a small percentage of those who are actually using Facebook for advertising (based on what I see, at least). My friends that work at the big CPG companies and ad agencies tell me one story consistently about their interactions with Facebook (the company) - if it's not working, Facebook universally points their finger at the customer and says "You're doing it wrong". That can't end well. (Or maybe it can. Print ads are pretty awful as well.) Can an ad platform that requires so much specialized marketing skill work at that scale? I tend to think "no". Facebook will wind up selling ads that don't work to people who don't know or care, just like the newspapers do. Look for Facebook's analytics to suck in the future once they come to grips with this.
- gawker 14y ago
  I agree with your last statement. I don't think people on Facebook are looking to buy anything and hence, why it hasn't really been successful. People on Facebook go to have fun and interact with their friends - not buy stuff.
  - mdda 14y ago
    But if they're having fun with friends, and see display ads for Coke (or GM), then the brand gets associated with their lives. This points to Facebook as a marketing platform, whereas Google is a sales platform.
    - gawker 14y ago
      True. But from a business perspective, how can Coke or GM quantify whatever they get back from that particular user though? At this point, I don't think they can unless they can tie in a whole bunch of other data which would probably raise privacy flags.
- ankeshk 14y ago
  Thanks. To tell you the truth, Google Adwords is a lot more complicated than Facebook ads. With Google, you need to: 1. Work on keyword research. Long tail keywords. Negative keywords. If you only rely on keywords Google recommends, you're missing out on quite a bit. 2. Creating ad groups. You can't create an ad group with a 100 keywords in it. They have to be narrowly focused and shouldn't have more than a handful of keywords in each of them. 3. Focus on landing page quality. Create headlines dynamically based on the keywords. 4. Track ROI. And pause the ad groups and ads that result in negative ROI. And this is only for the search network. Not the display network. Compared to this, Facebook is pretty simple. But yes - Facebook needs to do a better job educating folks how to best use their ad platform. Yellow page ad strategies work for Google because people already have buying intent when they run a search. Radio ad strategies work for Facebook. Its more suitable for brand building. If you are selling cars, and an average person buys a new car every 7 years - you won't see a lot of sales in the first 3-6 months. Facebook needs to educate on this.
dclowd9901 14y ago
>6. Their measurement method is very inaccurate. Asking people where they found out about you has been proven to be very very inaccurate. Instead, give them a coupon and track based on that. I've found more often than not people simply take advantage of the offer of the coupon, and rather than "new fans" of your franchise, you simply get one-timers. They're bargain shoppers, not potential repeat customers. This is the same problem that plagued many Groupon clients. So while it might offer you a hard and fast showing of how many people are willing to try your place with a coupon, it doesn't prove a) your ad has reach on its own merit, or b) that you're targeting the right group with your ad.
- rmATinnovafy 14y ago
  Groupon and the host of copies that exist do work. The problem is when businesses confuse the way you use such product. These products are great to gain exposure, and build a customer list. One could use groupon to get the ball rolling and then with other marketing tools work on that customer list. Yet people fall pray to the trap. They keep using such products. All while taking losses in order to "builf their brand". New businesses or dying/slow businesses should focus on expanding their customer list. But more on nurturing it. There lies the key. A business relationship is like any other. It needs TLC in order for it to grow.
- ankeshk 14y ago
  You need a coupon for tracking. You don't necessarily have to give hefty discounts that are attractive to the bargain hunters. Even offers like get a soda for free will work in helping you keep track of what is working. There really aren't that many online to offline tracking devices that work better than coupons. One other idea is to list a unique phone number on Facebook. So you can track which sales come because of Facebook and which come because of your other marketing activities.
evilduck 14y ago
1. They target people who like Italian food. They don't target people who like Pizza. 15,440 people in New Orleans have liked Pizza on Facebook. As someone in New Orleans, the problem that no amount of advertising will fix is their physical location. That surely has to be extremely limiting to their prospects of success.

by ankeshk 14y ago

verganileonardo 14y ago

TL;DR Don't blame the ad platform if you don't know how to market your business and measure your efforts

atacrawl 14y ago

I work at a marketing agency and I wholeheartedly agree with everything on this list. While some people will read the article and think "advertising on Facebook is a bad investment," the real takeaway should be "advertising anywhere will be a bad investment if you have no clue about marketing." And as a side note -- thank you for mentioning social proof. I'm constantly stunned at just how often this powerful concept is ignored or disregarded in marketing!

easp 14y ago
That's fine, but then it also reduces the addressable market for Facebook's advertising offerings. And lets face it, things don't look good if both GM and an independent business don't have enough of a clue to do a successful FB marketing campaign at this late date.

windsurfer 14y ago

A few responses: > 1. They target people who like Italian food. They don't target people who like Pizza. 15,440 people in New Orleans have liked Pizza on Facebook. There are literally thousands of pizza places. Pizza Delicious isn't just a pizza place. It fills a niche that's closer to "Italian Food" than to just pizza. > 3. They disregard targeting friends of people who already like Pizza Delicious. And by doing so - they don't use the most powerful feature Facebook has to offer: social proof. No they didn't. From the article: "Their first idea was to target the friends of people who already liked Pizza Delicious on Facebook. But that wound up targeting 74 percent of people in New Orleans on Facebook — 224,000 people. They needed something narrower." > 5. There is no benefit in Liking Pizza Delicious on Facebook. No special Facebook offers. Or discount coupons. And yet they were expecting people to like their page and come visit their place right away. Their call to action is weak. You can't expect facebook likes to convert into orders straight away - when you don't even ask for an order. Their goal was to increase sales, not increase likes on facebook. They considered the likes on facebook to be a metric, and it turned out to be useless by itself.

artursapek 14y ago
Their goal was to increase sales, not increase likes on facebook. They considered the likes on facebook to be a metric, and it turned out to be useless by itself. I've never advertised on Facebook, nor do I use it any more, but I thought the whole purpose of getting "Likes" was having a wider audience to which send offers and coupons. In that case it is a metric, it's not useless. This article made it sound like Likes are supposed to be promises of business. They're not. They're just the opportunity to win business.
- mikeryan 14y ago
  Likes's are a tricky thing to leverage as a marketing tool (despite it being one of the things marketers use as a metric of Facebook success) If I "Like" a brand and they use it to just start sending me offers and coupons I'm very likely to "unlike" it very quickly. I do this every day. I'm not sure anyone has really nailed the formula for converting "likes" to actual sales.

damoncali 14y ago

You may be right, but the problem is that the number of businesses that can take advantage of "the proper way" to use Facebook for advertising is but a small percentage of those who are actually using Facebook for advertising (based on what I see, at least). My friends that work at the big CPG companies and ad agencies tell me one story consistently about their interactions with Facebook (the company) - if it's not working, Facebook universally points their finger at the customer and says "You're doing it wrong". That can't end well. (Or maybe it can. Print ads are pretty awful as well.) Can an ad platform that requires so much specialized marketing skill work at that scale? I tend to think "no". Facebook will wind up selling ads that don't work to people who don't know or care, just like the newspapers do. Look for Facebook's analytics to suck in the future once they come to grips with this.

gawker 14y ago
I agree with your last statement. I don't think people on Facebook are looking to buy anything and hence, why it hasn't really been successful. People on Facebook go to have fun and interact with their friends - not buy stuff.
- mdda 14y ago
  But if they're having fun with friends, and see display ads for Coke (or GM), then the brand gets associated with their lives. This points to Facebook as a marketing platform, whereas Google is a sales platform.
  - gawker 14y ago
    True. But from a business perspective, how can Coke or GM quantify whatever they get back from that particular user though? At this point, I don't think they can unless they can tie in a whole bunch of other data which would probably raise privacy flags.
ankeshk 14y ago
Thanks. To tell you the truth, Google Adwords is a lot more complicated than Facebook ads. With Google, you need to: 1. Work on keyword research. Long tail keywords. Negative keywords. If you only rely on keywords Google recommends, you're missing out on quite a bit. 2. Creating ad groups. You can't create an ad group with a 100 keywords in it. They have to be narrowly focused and shouldn't have more than a handful of keywords in each of them. 3. Focus on landing page quality. Create headlines dynamically based on the keywords. 4. Track ROI. And pause the ad groups and ads that result in negative ROI. And this is only for the search network. Not the display network. Compared to this, Facebook is pretty simple. But yes - Facebook needs to do a better job educating folks how to best use their ad platform. Yellow page ad strategies work for Google because people already have buying intent when they run a search. Radio ad strategies work for Facebook. Its more suitable for brand building. If you are selling cars, and an average person buys a new car every 7 years - you won't see a lot of sales in the first 3-6 months. Facebook needs to educate on this.

dclowd9901 14y ago

>6. Their measurement method is very inaccurate. Asking people where they found out about you has been proven to be very very inaccurate. Instead, give them a coupon and track based on that. I've found more often than not people simply take advantage of the offer of the coupon, and rather than "new fans" of your franchise, you simply get one-timers. They're bargain shoppers, not potential repeat customers. This is the same problem that plagued many Groupon clients. So while it might offer you a hard and fast showing of how many people are willing to try your place with a coupon, it doesn't prove a) your ad has reach on its own merit, or b) that you're targeting the right group with your ad.

rmATinnovafy 14y ago
Groupon and the host of copies that exist do work. The problem is when businesses confuse the way you use such product. These products are great to gain exposure, and build a customer list. One could use groupon to get the ball rolling and then with other marketing tools work on that customer list. Yet people fall pray to the trap. They keep using such products. All while taking losses in order to "builf their brand". New businesses or dying/slow businesses should focus on expanding their customer list. But more on nurturing it. There lies the key. A business relationship is like any other. It needs TLC in order for it to grow.
ankeshk 14y ago
You need a coupon for tracking. You don't necessarily have to give hefty discounts that are attractive to the bargain hunters. Even offers like get a soda for free will work in helping you keep track of what is working. There really aren't that many online to offline tracking devices that work better than coupons. One other idea is to list a unique phone number on Facebook. So you can track which sales come because of Facebook and which come because of your other marketing activities.

evilduck 14y ago

1. They target people who like Italian food. They don't target people who like Pizza. 15,440 people in New Orleans have liked Pizza on Facebook. As someone in New Orleans, the problem that no amount of advertising will fix is their physical location. That surely has to be extremely limiting to their prospects of success.