Obviously, these stats don't mean much without a breakdown of
how each campaign performed, so here are the important
details...
Cooking:
In this campaign I promoted a popular guide that shares famous
restaurant recipes. Other sites had reported excellent
conversion rates and at $20 commission per sale I thought it
might be a good fit. I targeted mostly women who were interested
in cooking, recipes, baking, etc. The ad I used in this campaign
is to the right...
Early on I thought this might be a winner. I made a quick
sale after just 40 visits and was able to get traffic for less
than a dime per click. Over the next few days my ad brought in
another 278 visitors. Unfortunately, there were no further sales
generated and I pulled the plug after a net loss of about $6.
This is one I may try again in the future.
Golf:
This niche made the most sales in my experiment. Unfortunately,
the $273 spent in ads only resulted in five sales, one of which
was refunded. That was just one sale per 500 clicks or so,
resulting in a net loss of about $150. I tried four different
affiliate products with a variety of golf ads and one product
owner was reporting a sale in every 20 visitors. I got nothing
close to that.
Had I been the product owner, I would have been much closer
to breakeven on this campaign. But as an affiliate earning 50%
commissions the low conversion rates ended up making this
campaign a loser.
This campaign did teach me something valuable though. I
discovered that the higher clickthrough rate an ad gets, the lower you can bid and
still get traffic. In fact, I was able to get my clicks down as
low as four cents each on some ads. I did this by using ads such
as the one shown here, and targeting them to men who like
golf.
Local Biz: This campaign taught me something else
valuable. I promoted a local business and targeted only people
in my state. I discovered that CPM rather than CPC can be more cost
effective in some cases. Since this was more of a branding style campaign I
placed just as much value on showing the ad to local residents,
as I did on getting clicks. After some experimenting I was able
to get the cost per 1000 impressions down to four cents -- a
real advertising bargain for any local business.
Although I do not have any measurable results from this
campaign, I consider this one of the best uses of Facebook
advertising. If you have a local business, you can target
consumers within 10 or 25 miles of your store, and even select
them by their specific interests if that suits your business.
Mobile: This campaign was for a mobile phone tracking
software program. With a $40 commission per sale and social
aspects of the product I thought it might be a good fit for
Facebook ads.
But frankly, I became a bit uncomfortable promoting this "spy
software" so
I pulled the plug after just one day. Just nine visitors and no
sales.
More Facebook Ad results...
Web
Biz: This was a campaign I set up to promote a web hosting
affiliate link. I targeted people interested in business and the
clickthrough rate was the lowest of all my campaigns.
Perhaps my ad was lame but as you can see from that stats
screenshot, it generated just one click from 48,000 visitors.
That meant I'd have to pay far more than I wanted to per click, so I
paused this campaign after just a few days.
Zero sales on just one click and $5.42 spent.
Autoauctions:
Here's one I was excited about after getting some excellent
clickthrough rates early on.
It was for a site that sold access to a database of seized
vehicles, and I could send visitors to different landing pages
based on vehicle interests. I selected the motorcycle auctions
page and ran the ad to the right. I may have pulled the plug on
this one a little early, but zero sales and a reportedly high
refund rate from other affiliates led to the decision.
Zero sales on just one click and $9.87 spent.
Basketball: In this campaign I promoted a basketball
dribbling program that had a slick video sales letter. Other
affiliates were reporting decent conversion of 3% or so and since
I could specifically target young men interested in playing
basketball, I gave it a shot. 267 visitors and $43 later, I
pulled the plug. Ouch.
Farmville: If you're not familiar with Farmville, it's
a game played my millions of facebook users. I figured what
better program to promote than a guide to getting all the best
farmville rewards. It was an inexpensive guide with decent
commission structure. After 75 visitors nobody purchased it so I
paused the campaign.
Magic: This campaign never got off the ground due to
the high suggested bids I was receiving. The low commissions
just did not warrant me spending too much promoting it.
Relationships: Here's one I had high hopes for and I
ran a variety of different ads. The affiliate programs were
bragging of great conversions. The products helped people save
troubled relationships and the advice sure seemed solid and
proven.
Unfortunately, after 197 visitors and $50 in ads, not a
single sale was generated. I thought this one would do better but
it was another failed campaign so I pulled the plug on it.
Weightloss: In this hot niche tried to place a few
different ads but Facebook
disapproved them for some reason. I see others promoting similar
ads so I'm not sure why, but at this point I was tiring of low
conversions and racking up charges on my credit card. So I
decided to call it a day and wrap up this little experiment.
In closing...
All together I spent $499.26 on this experiment. It generated
3459 clicks at about $0.14 per click. While I was happy with the
cost per click, a dismal six sales and a net loss of about $360
were the real stats that mattered most.
Keep in mind, this was not an exhaustive test. While better
results might be achievable by testing more niches and spending
more money, I'm pretty much done buying facebook ads with a few
small exceptions.
I believe the true marketing value in Facebook ads is not for
affiliate marketers earning a percentage of purchase prices, but
for product OWNERS earning 100% from each purchase. While there
certainly may be some hidden gem affiliate products that work
with Facebook ads, in my experience the conversion rate is simply too
low with these "cold leads" compared with other forms of
advertising I've used.
For example, I promoted another affiliate product to my list
of subscribers last week and generated 85 sales and about $4,600
in profits. Proving once again that nothing beats the power of
growing a "warm" list of prospects that grow to trust you
through regular contact such as a newsletter like this one.
In my opinion, Facebook advertising is much better suited to "branding"
type ad campaigns. After all,
if a business can get 10 million impressions for a few thousand
bucks and earn back part of that money with some sales, that's
not a bad deal. That is, if you have deep pockets like big
companies.
Another great use of Facebook advertising is to grow a
massive following of other Facebook users via CPM ads, then
warming them up with helpful content over time, which is quite
similar to my own "warm list" experiences.
Regardless of what your plans are, if you're going to try
Facebook paid advertising, here's one last tip I discovered
during in my experiment, which will help you save money.
When you first create an ad, bid the within suggested amounts.
When your
ad is approved, usually within an hour or so, keep an eye on the clickthrough rate. This will
appear in your stats as soon first few thousands impressions
hit, which can be minutes after ad approval. Then adjust your
bid down to about 30% of the new lowest suggested bid.
For example, let's say you bid $0.65 when you first place
your ad. Once your ad starts running, if your CTR is decent,
click on your current bid and you'll see a new suggested bid of
say, $0.21. I found that I could change my bid to about
35% of that new suggested bid amount, or $.08 and still get impressions.
This strategy also seemed to hold true when placing CPM ads.
Start high, adjust lower.
It may not sound
like a big difference but it can make the difference between a
profitable campaign, and a loser. Needless to say, you should be
prepared to try lots of different ads so you can boost CTR and
lower your ad costs.
I hope my experiment sheds a little non-hyped light on this new
advertising medium. Stay tuned to BizWeb eGazette for more
experiments like this!
See ya in a few
weeks...
Jim Daniels
Jim at bizweb2000.com
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