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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,

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.

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.