Is Facebook a viable advertising platform? Are Facebook Ads effective?
As search engine marketers, we find ourselves when talking about any new ad platform asking: will it be effective? Given the popularity and mass adoption of Facebook, it is logical that there are many conversations about the effectiveness of Facebook Ads. Here is how we’ve focused on this conversation.
Two Common Scenarios
When evaluating Facebook ads’ effectiveness, we consider two common scenarios for people or businesses considering Facebook as an advertising platform:
I have a Facebook Page and I want more fans.
I have a website and I want more traffic.
In regards to #1 the clear answer is: Yes, for driving your desired conversions (fans), Facebook will be the most effective advertising platform.
#2 has a slightly more complex answer. The effectiveness of Facebook ads depends on your target demographic. Facebook is no longer the home of teens, it’s the home of everyone! From teens to men and women in their later 50s, they are on Facebook. You can target on city, education, workplace, language and personal interests! It’s hard to imagine a demographic that couldn’t be effective.
Facebook ads can lead a visitor from one page on the site to your brand or organization’s Facebook page. Or an ad can lead them from a page to an external website. These internal and external ads are both effective and can bring about an effective return on your investment.
Two Questions for Facebook Ads
The greatest question with any advertising campaign is: what is your objective? This will greatly influence the direction your Facebook ad campaigns will take.
Are you looking to build a community?
Are you looking to build loyalty?
Is there another objective in mind?
The next question is: who are you trying to reach?
As we mentioned before, Facebook allows for very specific ad targeting:
Country
State
City
Education
Relationship status; dating, engaged, married
Age
Gender
Workplace
Personal interests: from hobbies to actors to competitors of your company.
Will My Facebook Ads Be Effective?
Once you have these questions truthfully answered and a campaign set up to match it, there’s nothing that should hold your Facebook ads from being effective. If your objectives match your targeting, we believe you can find success in Facebook advertising.
What’s your story in regards to Facebook ads and their effectiveness? Have you seen great results, or are still trying to figure out how to improve your ads? Leave us a comment, we would love to hear what others have to say about their experience with Facebook advertising!
Why should you spend advertise on the world’s most popular website?
Questions to Consider
What is better, a person who purchases one item of yours once or a person who purchases an item every month?
Which of those two people is more likely to tell their friends about your product or service?
The choice is obvious and the difference is loyalty. The second individual is loyal to your company and wants more.
Do you trust your friend’s opinions and take them into account when considering purchases?
The person who recommends your product effectively becomes the best salesperson you could ever hire.
This close social interaction is the answer to why you should advertise on Facebook. A person who joins an active community created by a shared interest has their opinion enforced with every additional fan. That is the band wagon approach mixed in with a social layer. “Look at all these fans! They all love (your product here) just like I do!” These individuals have made a public statement that they have an affinity to your product, service or company. You have encouraged loyalty and repeat purchases and have given your fans ammunition to sell their friends to expand your fan base.
So what are you waiting for? Get moving with Facebook Advertising to help generate loyalty and buzz around your company!
With April right around the corner, Three Deep is proud to present its April 2011 calendar, marking one year of bringing you interactive and online marketing events in the Minneapolis and St. Paul community. Have more events to share? Please tweet us @threedeep!
April 4th
MIMA CATFOA #4: Anders Sjostedt, Hyper Island USA
6:00 – 9:00 pm
Fine Line Music Cafe
Join us for the third session of Conversations About The Future Of Advertising on Monday, April 4, 2011 when we welcome Hyper Island USA Managing Director Anders Sjostedt (@anderssjostedt).
In today’s competitive environment, making the right business decisions is crucial. Using market research can help increase sales and profitability and save money by ensuring that you are “on target” with your products and services. Save money and travel costs for this one-day session with the premier market research training company, Burke Institute. This seminar is designed for marketing professionals—market researchers as well as market managers and others who want to understand how to use research in decision-making. Both B2B and B2C markets will be covered.
Whether you work at a large or small company, your best ideas often come from peers. Looking for advice on a project? Have a campaign idea you want to test out? In this Peer Go-Round for Seasoned Professionals, we will be leveraging the power of group brainstorming. You will come with a question and leave with 20 good answers. You will gain and share wisdom, meeting new colleagues and deepening your connections.
Even if there’s still snow on the ground, spring will be here soon! Cocktails with Creatives will be at The American Swedish Instituteon Thursday, April 7th, from 6–8 p.m. Of particular note, The America Swedish Institute will be featuring the art of Jesper Löfvenborg. We’re excited to see all the returning faces and the new ones.
April 13th
MIMA Spring Socializing IRL!
5:15 – 8:00 pm
Location TBD
The where and when will be announced soon, but plan to do the social networking IRL.
MWMC is eager to connect with our newest members at the upcoming New Member Breakfast. Join us for a continental breakfast, meet MWMC board members, learn how membership has genuinely impacted our board member’s professional lives and network with other new members. Help us meet our mission of fostering collaborative relationships and championing women in business. We want to meet you!
Be sure to hit the Happy Hour at Fast Horse on Thursday, April 14. It will be a great opportunity to check out a groovy agency and mingle with plenty of advertising, marketing and design folks. Fast Horse is an innovative, non-traditional marketing shop with an impressive roster of clients and shelf or two of awards.
From marketing to education to building a community for yourself and your brand, there are myriad opportunities being missed. This session aims to bridge the gap by equipping attendees with the tools they need to make good use of digital tools now. Attendees will learn basic social media strategies and skills that you can immediately put to work for yourself, and your business.
Ad Fed’s Getting Surly! The first 75 people to join or renew Ad Fed membership during the months of March/April 2011 get an invite to a FREE limited availability, private tour and beer sampling event at Surly Brewery on Thursday, April 21. Founder and President, Omar Ansari, will be giving the tour and sharing the history of how this iconic Minnesota brand came to be. He will also be taking questions afterward. Have you seen the Surly tour waiting list? Avoid the wait and renew/join now! This is your chance…
Social media is greater than simply sharing, marketing, or making friends. It’s about changing the world, and some folks really understand what this means. We’ll explore our changing world through the use of social activisim online and talk about what that means for all of us.
The Ad Fed Mentorship Circle program allows members to engage individually with industry professionals by meeting them in a casual group setting. These Mentorship Circle events are held four times a year and offer networking, discussion and group mentorship based on areas of interest.
Learn, from case studies in such areas as preventive care, chronic illness, online and print communications, and smart apps, how industry innovations are evolving to foster patient loyalty and better influence patient outcomes.
This event will showcase the various in-house groups, who use research and design to deliver on Mayo Clinic’s primary value: the needs of the patient come first. Encompassing all media, our in-house teams have the ability to connect brand touchpoints, and help provide a seamless experience for all.
Official details are still firming up, but the next Pivot will be hosted by the AIGA MN Student Group at Saint Cloud State.
The Pivot Series is designed as an opportunity for AIGA student groups to develop programming for their fellow students who reside and study in the upper Midwest.
On September 10, 2010, I gave a speech to an organization called MENG. For those of you who are not familiar, MENG is a national organization of marketing executives. There are some pretty heavy hitters in the organization, so I was honored to be invited by the New Jersey chapter to speak to members. I was also a little nervous, because I would be talking about social media for the first time!
While I use social media every day in both my work and personal life, rarely does the opportunity arise for me to position myself as an expert on the subject. In fact, I wouldn’t call myself an expert at all. Knowledgeable is probably more accurate.
Continue Reading Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media Integration →
I read a very interesting article the other day on the Marketing Sherpa blog highlighting how social media and email work together. Some of the takeaways that stuck with me are statistics that were found in Merkle’s study “View from the Social Inbox 2010”:
42% of social media users check their email four times a day or more as opposed to 27% of those that do not use social media
63% indicated that their email address for social media is the same for opt-in permission based email
What does this mean and how do they relate to each other?
First the obvious: social media users are two times more likely to be checking their email at least four times per day, disproving the long standing notion that email deployment should only occur Monday – Friday and in the morning.
Since social media users are regularly checking their inbox, email campaigns can be deployed at non-traditional times (evenings and weekends), with greater confidence that they will be viewed, and even better, acted upon.
For example, if a restaurant would like to offer a special for the weekend, they can deploy an email Friday afternoon knowing customers on their distribution lists will view their email.
Given this information, experimenting with non-traditional email send times can dramatically increase the ROI of certain campaigns.
Continue Reading Making Social Media and Email Work Together →
There has been a lot of chatter on the web recently about how Google better watch out, because Facebook ads are gaining on them. While it may be fact that Facebook is experiencing a higher percentage of growth than Google (naturally, since Google has already reached critical mass, and Facebook had minimal revenue in 2008), the reports of Facebook being the next “Google Killer” are downright irresponsible.
While I cannot definitively say that no advertisers have had positive experiences with Facebook (Shoemoney’s Facebook Ads article from earlier this year is still the best example of success that I have read to date), I can say that I have had poor experiences thus far with Facebook advertising. I’m embarrassed by how bad they performed!
As a performance oriented marketer who tends to look at campaigns from a direct response point of view, my results from an August 2009 campaign were absolutely putrid. Even removing my direct response glasses and putting on a “brand hat” – the results were about as poor as they get.
In fact, I’m so embarrassed by my results that I’m almost ashamed to show them in public… but in the spirit of transparency, they will be shared at the end of this post.
However, I would first prefer to share what I have learned from my recent foray into Facebook ads:
Be Specific With Your Targeting – Demographic targeting is your friend! Find your target market and make sure you only advertise to them.
Our company President, Dave Woodbeck, sent the above slide deck to several members of our team this weekend, and I found it worthy of sharing on our blog. I made the executive decision to tone down the actual title of the slide show (what the f**k is social media?) to prevent any misunderstandings from those who read the title and get scared away.
The actual content of the presentation is much less harsh than the title would imply. The underlying theme throughout: you need to join the conversation! You can’t simply ignore the social interactions that are happening around your company, brand, clients, friends, family, etc. While the tactics used to deliver messages may change, social interaction will only become more open and candid. Like-minded individuals will be forming groups, talking, interacting, etc… and those that listen will be the ultimate winners in the social media landscape.
Continue Reading What is Social Media? – Excellent Presentation Social Media →
