Facebook Advertising
Discussion
If you use Google Analytics it's worth setting up custom URLs - here's a good guide.
https://www.postplanner.com/how-to-use-facebook-an...
https://www.postplanner.com/how-to-use-facebook-an...
I found I did better joining groups and leaving comments on relevant posts. I spent £30 - reached about 3000 people all up - but don't think any resulted in a sale. But my stuff is very niche - probs works better if your product/service is more mainstream - If its something people will look for anyway then it puts your company in their face, before they've got around to researching themselves.
First of all you need to set out what you are trying to achieve....
- Are you trying to buy "likes" for your page to make you look more popular? Bigger than you really are?
- Are you trying to turn £30 into £50.
I dont have a huge amount of experience with it, but I have used it more than your typical joe and the first thing I have to say is do not get hung up on likes. Put simply, most people on Facebook will "like" anything and likes alone do not convert..
Based on selling a product:
Its like any type of marketing. You need to research your target market and really drill down into them, Facebook makes it easy to do this - you can choose age, sex and interests. Also do not get hung up on Facebooks "reach" suggestion in the boost page. i.e dont add in more general terms just to get a bit more reach. You'd be better off doing a separate campaign for this term, so you can actually judge whether its worthwhile, without diluting and wasting your budget for the right people.
I also play about for my sisters business (Artist). We upload one of her portraits and then boost the post to try and attract more customers to get a portrait. First time we did it we put up a picture of a Black Lab and spunked £20 over 3days on the term "Pet Portrait", the reach was a few thousand. We picked up about 1000 likes, 50 shares and about 5 enquiries, none of whom actually purchased. So apart from a small bit of web exposure it was a waste of £20. I then tried again with the same picture and spent just £10 on targeting "Labrador Owners club" and voila....only a handful of likes, but enquiry after enquiry with several conversions.
Another thing to avoid in my opinion is these "Giveaways". We have run two and on both occasions we have made the entrant like and share the post. They have been successful in getting around Facebook and have both had several thousand likes/shares, but the entrants do not look like our typical customers. I mean on the last one we did we had some 3000 likes, so I brought up a list and randomly clicked on 50 profiles, 47 of them were competition w
es. I mean every single post on their page was a competition of some sort, (got to be in them to win them!) So I kept looking and there it was, there is a whole fleet of Facebook pages where people list these "Giveaway" competitions - so basically all the members of these groups simply get a heads up and simply share anything. One of my neighbours is actually bit of a competition queen and thus far they have won a new fancy lawnmower and a spa break - so you can see why they do it, but personally Id say avoid.
- Are you trying to buy "likes" for your page to make you look more popular? Bigger than you really are?
- Are you trying to turn £30 into £50.
I dont have a huge amount of experience with it, but I have used it more than your typical joe and the first thing I have to say is do not get hung up on likes. Put simply, most people on Facebook will "like" anything and likes alone do not convert..
Based on selling a product:
Its like any type of marketing. You need to research your target market and really drill down into them, Facebook makes it easy to do this - you can choose age, sex and interests. Also do not get hung up on Facebooks "reach" suggestion in the boost page. i.e dont add in more general terms just to get a bit more reach. You'd be better off doing a separate campaign for this term, so you can actually judge whether its worthwhile, without diluting and wasting your budget for the right people.
I also play about for my sisters business (Artist). We upload one of her portraits and then boost the post to try and attract more customers to get a portrait. First time we did it we put up a picture of a Black Lab and spunked £20 over 3days on the term "Pet Portrait", the reach was a few thousand. We picked up about 1000 likes, 50 shares and about 5 enquiries, none of whom actually purchased. So apart from a small bit of web exposure it was a waste of £20. I then tried again with the same picture and spent just £10 on targeting "Labrador Owners club" and voila....only a handful of likes, but enquiry after enquiry with several conversions.
Another thing to avoid in my opinion is these "Giveaways". We have run two and on both occasions we have made the entrant like and share the post. They have been successful in getting around Facebook and have both had several thousand likes/shares, but the entrants do not look like our typical customers. I mean on the last one we did we had some 3000 likes, so I brought up a list and randomly clicked on 50 profiles, 47 of them were competition w
es. I mean every single post on their page was a competition of some sort, (got to be in them to win them!) So I kept looking and there it was, there is a whole fleet of Facebook pages where people list these "Giveaway" competitions - so basically all the members of these groups simply get a heads up and simply share anything. One of my neighbours is actually bit of a competition queen and thus far they have won a new fancy lawnmower and a spa break - so you can see why they do it, but personally Id say avoid. loafer123 said:
Joratk said:
Do you just Boost your posts or your page or do you use the Ad Manager?
Ad manager. Boosting posts/page seems to get very little traction for us - pay alot, get very few impressions.If your page has more "likers" they should automatically see any new posts.
Google Ads are becoming ever more Machiavellian and costly IMHO.
A couple of other things.
Likers may or may not see your posts - we have 20,000 likers on a business and posts are only seen by a small %age - but if you can get them to subscribe to your posts/updates they will always see them.
Also, we have a Facebook shop (we use Ecwid, and it is a very easy and free add-on) and have coverted a fair amount of sales through that and through sales in comments below pictures.
loafer123 said:
Also, we have a Facebook shop (we use Ecwid, and it is a very easy and free add-on) and have coverted a fair amount of sales through that and through sales in comments below pictures.
We're just moving to the too. 
IMHO, it can be worth doing Google ads if you have a very good page ranking for your business/keywords and want to preserve it, but in crowded markets, or for start-ups I can't see how it would always work.
Digga said:
loafer123 said:
Also, we have a Facebook shop (we use Ecwid, and it is a very easy and free add-on) and have coverted a fair amount of sales through that and through sales in comments below pictures.
We're just moving to the too. IMHO, it can be worth doing Google ads if you have a very good page ranking for your business/keywords and want to preserve it, but in crowded markets, or for start-ups I can't see how it would always work.
ETA - I guess that won't matter for you - less call for digger buckets on Ebay and Amazon, I would guess!
Digga said:
loafer123 said:
ETA - I guess that won't matter for you - less call for digger buckets on Ebay and Amazon, I would guess!
TBH, knowing the fees those places charge, you;d have to be mad to buy industrial parts from those platforms. But people do. 
Alot of people are nervous about shopping online and the Amazon "wrapper" is just them paying for the security of not being conned, so everyone is happy.
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