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Tag: Facebook

  • Facebook Advertising Delivers Low Cost Per Lead

    In the middle of August we started testing Facebook Advertising for one of our plastic surgeon clients.  The surgeon wanted to reach potential tummy tuck and breast augmentation patients.  We selected a number of stock images and loaded the ads.  However, Facebook rejected all of our ads (The Downsides) because they did not follow the Facebook advertising guidelines.

    Facebook Advertising Rejection

    Facebook Advertising Early Lessons

    This was a shock to me, the surgeon and the 5 other people who saw the Facebook advertising mockups, because we thought we used:

    • relevant and appropriate images and language
    • correct grammar
    • spelling and punctuation
    • proper sentence structure
    • and targeted the ads appropriately

    After trying many Facebook ad combinations, I realized Facebook was rejecting the images, so we decided to try the practices’ logo instead.

    Facebook Advertising Effectiveness

    Is facebook advertising effective?  I had run an unsuccessful Facebook advertising campaign in early 2008 that turned out to be a waste of money!

    So, I wasn’t very optimistic going into the campaign. We decided to start out by testing $150 in August.  After several days of looking at the impressions, click through rate and cost, I was still discouraged.  However, when I logged into Google Analytics, I noticed that Facebook was referring a decent percentage of the sites visitors and these visitors were completing contact forms at a very high rate.  At the end of August, I calculated that of the almost  $150 spent in August on Facebook Ads, there were 11 completed forms, which is about a $13.63 cost per lead.

    Facebook Advertising ROI

    WOW! A $14 cost per lead for plastic surgery is amazing! So, for September we decided to increase the budget to $200.   Again, I noticed a lot of activity in September and, as of Sept 30th, Facebook advertising had referred 17 completed forms for a total cost per lead of  $11.76.

    Low cost per lead means more money in your pocket

    Overall, $350 was spent on Facebook ads and 28 contact forms were completed during August and September, averaging a total of  $12.50 cost per lead.

    I am pleasantly surprised at how well it all worked, and I am very excited to explore more Facebook advertising opportunities in the future!

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  • Facebook Marketing – Sneaky, Subversive, Effective!

    The tactics of Local Facebook Marketing just got a whole lot easier to understand. Sarah Smith gave up the goods in her presentation at the Local Search Summit. It turns out there are some very subversive ways to use current Facebook technologies. Marketing on Facebook just got a lot easier. [caption id="" align="alignright" width="265" caption="Local Search Summit 09"]Local Search Summit 09[/caption] Don Campbell gives a great overview of the ideas presented in our "Using Facebook and Twitter to Drive Local Leads" session. And, I'm looking forward to Aaron Irizarry posting the rest of the video... ... But in the mean time, I'm going to share some ideas based on the Facebook marketing presented by Sarah Smith. I'm so excited by these ideas that we're going to be implementing some of them THIS WEEK with clients. But look, I'm even more excited by what YOU are going to do with them. Please comment and let us know what you think the opportunities are. Ok, ok - so the list:
    • Kinda mundane but still very helpful: Sarah indicates there is now radius based targeting for ads (e.g.: 15 miles around city X)
    • Real-time Search with greater search granularity.
    • Target just your fans or people coming to an event with Facebook Ads (this is definitely cool, and I can see some good applications but not mind-blowing).
    • Birthday Targeting! Holy cow! This is huge. I have a whole program already laid out for this one.
    • 1 to 1 communication with Event attendees/maybes. The pain point here is less obvious - you'll get it when I 'splain it.

    Killer Facebook Marketing Opportunities:

    Birthday Targeting:

    [caption id="" align="alignright" width="199" caption="Happy Birthday to You!"]Facebook Marketing - Happy Birthday to You! Cake Picture[/caption] So, Birthday Targeting - my goodness, how subversive can you get?! Imagine yourself cruising along in Facebook and Blammo
    "happy birthday Bob, click here to register for your birthday gift - good all month".
    Notice, we plan to message "good all month" (or "all week", or "for the next 10 days"). There is still a serious call to action but clearly it's an obtainable goal. The challenge of the Birthday message in Facebook marketing is that if you make it a "today only" deal you may miss those who sign in after work hours or who are otherwise unable to commit today. Maybe they've got a party to go to :D. You can see how this would be a killer tactic for a local business. Let's say you have a non-impulse product. You could make an offer of a $25.00 commodity gift card (Wal-mart, The Gap) or $100.00 gift certificate for your service. Even if you're not perfectly targeted you have the opportunity to start a dialog with a local buyer who knows someone who is.

    Event Focused Permission Marketing:

    Facebook event invitations are becoming much more prevalent. And, it turns out given this new feature, they're a sneaky marketing opportunity. [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="240" caption="Ant Party"]Ant Party[/caption] One of the problems we've had with "Fan Pages" vs. Facebook Groups is that there is no way to push communication to your fans. You can post something which will show up in their feed but  you can't get into their inbox without a more personal connection. So, Sarah says that all you've got to do is get someone to respond "Yes" to your invitation (or "Maybe", I think - hopefully Sarah will clarify) and you can then message them up until the event. But wait, there's more: You, the group owner don't necessarily have to initiate the "Event" invitation. Meaning that you can easily convert the Fan to a Friend with much less restriction on continued messaging. I'm not going to tell you how we're going to put this one into use 😉 but I'll tell you once we're done. --- As you can see, these two opportunities, "Birthday Ads" and "Event Focused Permission Marketing", enable much greater attention getting behavior on Facebook. Marketing through these channels can get you past the banner blindness of the usual ads and may even get you into the Inbox. With the rate of adoption of Facebook and Twitter we'll take any opportunity, the more sneaky and subversive the better, to build community and then hopefully move that community offline to buy something. We'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on how to best leverage these new Facebook marketing opportunities and any of the others Sarah detailed at Local Search Summit. --- Related Posts: Image Credits: