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I've spend quite a bit of money on facebook ads for various of my own businesses & clients & I've basically stopped everything for a few reasons. I can't ratio

I've spend quite a bit of money on facebook ads for various of my own businesses & clients & I've basically stopped everything for a few reasons. I can't rationalize playing FB's game anymore. With the recent decrease in page reach, you're basically paying double time for FB. Once to "get" the fans and then again to "reach" them. Sure, we saw an increase in site activity, but it was debatable whether or not that actually increased revenue. I'd rather put my money towards users who are searching for our products explicitly or building up our own email list that we can "reach" anytime we want. The best results we got for FB were through adroll or perfect audience that were utilizing facebook retargeting. [1] http://www.adroll.com/ http://www.adroll.com/ [2] https://www.perfectaudience.com/ https://www.perfectaudience.com/

mattmanser 13y ago
How can it be debatable? Either your sales increased, or they did not increase. If your page views went up but your conversion rate dropped by the same amount, that would be worthless traffic. This is an honest question as why should we believe anything you say if you're not even doing the basic maths? Did you measure anything?
- mfringel 13y ago
  There's also the possibility that uptake was insignificant enough to be indistinguishable from organic growth.
- joelrunyon 13y ago
  I should clarify: It was debatable whether or not it increased revenue enough to justify the costs (both time & monetary) involved. What it came down to was that it wasn't profitable enough to justify the opportunity costs of executing FB instead of other avenues.
  - mattmanser 13y ago
    Good answer, you obviously do measure well, fair enough! I now just challenge anything without numbers, it's frustrating to read wooly posts about SEO or online advertising that aren't explicit. You always wonder if they actually know what they're talking about or just one of those useless 'theory' guys.
- AJ007 13y ago
  The original link is quite embarrassing as well, "By the way, this may not be the case with advertising for Clicks to Website, Website Conversions, etc. - I don’t have experience with those." I would assume these individuals know very little about advertising. This is unfortunate because it masks valid criticism about Facebook's platform. The Facebook "game" is to purchase likes, and then use that as a base to target advertising. At minimum it acts as a filter so that your advertising is reaching people who are active Facebook users (they click like), if done correctly they are both active and have some passion for the topic they are "liking." One of my friends is a consultant who has done extensive work with Facebook advertising and has to clean up accounts that are basically fucked because a previous employee/vendor/consultant purchased a bunch of un-targeted foreign likes. Once those off topic likes are purchased (someone in Pakistan "liking" Las Vegas) the subsequent ad campaign is ruined. If you bother to measure your ROI you can make a logical choice as to whether Facebook makes any sense at all to advertise on. Perhaps the ROI is negative, but close to breaking even. You can then take a very tactical approach not just your Facebook campaign, but your site or app, to tailor to those Facebook visits, and get a positive ROI. Some markets are so competitive, or peculiar, you just will not get a positive ROI. That is not a Facebook unique issue. It applies to all channels. The discussion so far is one of, this makes me angry, and this doesn't make sense, completely devoid of a analytical approach to the issue. Whether or not I want to personally use Facebook is another matter.
samsolomon 13y ago
Today you have to spend money to get any of your posts shown on Facebook. I estimate that 2 percent of my audience ever see a post without paying to promote it. If you don't pay for it, posts have to be "engaging," which is why link bait titles from BuzzFeed and Business insider always make it onto my news feed, but not posts from cool projects that I care about.
- the_watcher 13y ago
  Those make it to your news feed because people share them (which I guess makes them "engaging," but not in the way that engaging promoted posts are engaging). Every time a post is shared, liked, commented on, etc., the person taking the action places that post into the queue of content fighting to get into all of their friends News Feed. I believe that Zuck said there are on average ~1500 pieces of content fighting to get into any given users feed. You can help Facebook serve your feed better by marking posts as irrelevant, uninteresting, as spam, hiding stories from certain people/sources, etc., as well as trying to interact more often with those posts you find interesting (also, share them more). One of Facebook's core competencies is aggregation and analysis of the massive volumes of highly specific data they generate. Improve your inputs and their outputs will improve as well.
- rhizome 13y ago
  The upside is that I see very few sponsored posts in my timeline.
the_watcher 13y ago
Don't worry about promoting from your page to your fans unless you see high repurchase value from that channel. If most of your fans are on your email list, definitely don't bother. Use lookalike audiences and unpublished page posts to try and acquire new customers from Facebook. It's really not a great channel for retention (in my experience), but it is fantastic for acquiring new customers.

mattmanser 13y ago

How can it be debatable? Either your sales increased, or they did not increase. If your page views went up but your conversion rate dropped by the same amount, that would be worthless traffic. This is an honest question as why should we believe anything you say if you're not even doing the basic maths? Did you measure anything?

mfringel 13y ago
There's also the possibility that uptake was insignificant enough to be indistinguishable from organic growth.
joelrunyon 13y ago
I should clarify: It was debatable whether or not it increased revenue enough to justify the costs (both time & monetary) involved. What it came down to was that it wasn't profitable enough to justify the opportunity costs of executing FB instead of other avenues.
- mattmanser 13y ago
  Good answer, you obviously do measure well, fair enough! I now just challenge anything without numbers, it's frustrating to read wooly posts about SEO or online advertising that aren't explicit. You always wonder if they actually know what they're talking about or just one of those useless 'theory' guys.
AJ007 13y ago
The original link is quite embarrassing as well, "By the way, this may not be the case with advertising for Clicks to Website, Website Conversions, etc. - I don’t have experience with those." I would assume these individuals know very little about advertising. This is unfortunate because it masks valid criticism about Facebook's platform. The Facebook "game" is to purchase likes, and then use that as a base to target advertising. At minimum it acts as a filter so that your advertising is reaching people who are active Facebook users (they click like), if done correctly they are both active and have some passion for the topic they are "liking." One of my friends is a consultant who has done extensive work with Facebook advertising and has to clean up accounts that are basically fucked because a previous employee/vendor/consultant purchased a bunch of un-targeted foreign likes. Once those off topic likes are purchased (someone in Pakistan "liking" Las Vegas) the subsequent ad campaign is ruined. If you bother to measure your ROI you can make a logical choice as to whether Facebook makes any sense at all to advertise on. Perhaps the ROI is negative, but close to breaking even. You can then take a very tactical approach not just your Facebook campaign, but your site or app, to tailor to those Facebook visits, and get a positive ROI. Some markets are so competitive, or peculiar, you just will not get a positive ROI. That is not a Facebook unique issue. It applies to all channels. The discussion so far is one of, this makes me angry, and this doesn't make sense, completely devoid of a analytical approach to the issue. Whether or not I want to personally use Facebook is another matter.

samsolomon 13y ago

Today you have to spend money to get any of your posts shown on Facebook. I estimate that 2 percent of my audience ever see a post without paying to promote it. If you don't pay for it, posts have to be "engaging," which is why link bait titles from BuzzFeed and Business insider always make it onto my news feed, but not posts from cool projects that I care about.

the_watcher 13y ago
Those make it to your news feed because people share them (which I guess makes them "engaging," but not in the way that engaging promoted posts are engaging). Every time a post is shared, liked, commented on, etc., the person taking the action places that post into the queue of content fighting to get into all of their friends News Feed. I believe that Zuck said there are on average ~1500 pieces of content fighting to get into any given users feed. You can help Facebook serve your feed better by marking posts as irrelevant, uninteresting, as spam, hiding stories from certain people/sources, etc., as well as trying to interact more often with those posts you find interesting (also, share them more). One of Facebook's core competencies is aggregation and analysis of the massive volumes of highly specific data they generate. Improve your inputs and their outputs will improve as well.
rhizome 13y ago
The upside is that I see very few sponsored posts in my timeline.

the_watcher 13y ago

Don't worry about promoting from your page to your fans unless you see high repurchase value from that channel. If most of your fans are on your email list, definitely don't bother. Use lookalike audiences and unpublished page posts to try and acquire new customers from Facebook. It's really not a great channel for retention (in my experience), but it is fantastic for acquiring new customers.