
How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads - rolfos
https://www.stackfield.com/blog/how-we-unnecessarily-burned-20k-with-facebook-ads-43
======
dangrossman
> Even these users churned after a short time. Why is that? We do not really
> know!

You need to know this, and knowing it is as easy as asking.

I e-mail every single person that cancels their subscription, and ask why they
cancelled today and what we could have done to better serve them. I don't
measure the response rate, but I write every mail personally and read every
response, so I can tell you it's well over 50%.

The responses to these e-mails are invaluable. They're how you learn why
people signed up, what pain points they experienced using your product, what
problems they have that your product didn't solve well, and what competitors
they're coming from or leaving to.

If there's some glaring issue with your ad campaign ("I thought I was signing
up for a free antivirus program because your ad said it made my files secure"
or "No hablo ingles") you'd probably have learned it well before spending €20K
through those exit emails.

~~~
AlBentley
Our experience when trying this approach is 90% reply with 'lack of time'
which is not the true reason but basically means the product didn't solve a
major problem for them.

~~~
dangrossman
Not necessarily. I solved most "lack of time" issues by improving onboarding.
People _thought_ they didn't have the time because the setup steps seemed
daunting or confusing, so they put them off indefinitely. Improving the "first
login" experience, moving to a more walkthrough/wizard-based setup (only one
thing to do on the screen at a time), and building more 3rd-party integrations
that eliminated technical work allowed me to retain more customers. I was
solving their problem -- once they got past the hurdle of starting to use the
product.

~~~
Waterluvian
Absolutely. I'm a picky user who will delete your app in 30 seconds if the
setup path isn't obvious and reliable.

~~~
blake8086
I think you're probably just a reasonable user.

~~~
jakobegger
Yes. If a company doesn't even manage to optimise the onboarding experience,
it's unlikely that they optimise anything.

------
jasode
_> , Facebook may just be the wrong audience for a B2B tool. _

Well, at least you can say that the 20k € was spent to learn that signups from
Facebook have a near-zero retention rate. (That's not meant to be a flippant
comment.)

A lot of successful websites seem to know (or learned) which market channels
bring in the right customers.

For Stackoverflow.com: most traffic comes via referrals from google.com
searches -- but not facebook

For Craftsy.com: it's referrals from Facebook -- but not google search queries

For a project management tool like yours, neither Google Adwords(1) nor
Facebook newsfeed ads will work. Maybe a strategy such as hosting for free a
high-profile open-source project so your brand gains mindshare. Then it may
attract non-open-source paying customers.

That subsidy strategy for non-profit customers is not foolproof (as it didn't
seem to help BitKeeper) but it did seem to work for Github.

(1) I suppose you could try running an AdWords campaign on keywords such _"
project management"_ and related competitor keywords such as _" Jira"_ and _"
Microsoft Project"_ \-- but I doubt you'd get quality clicks from it

~~~
z3t4
I find it amusing that a product focused on privacy choose to advertise on
Facebook. I bet that being on the front page of HN is well worth those 20k
though, but maybe that was the plan from the beginning.

~~~
stevenwliao
Are the assumptions here that:

1) Facebook News Feed users don't care about their privacy

2) The OP was more motivated by viral HN marketing than actual direct results
on Facebook?

These are interesting claims. Can you substantiate them?

------
downandout
There is an enormous difference between a user that is searching for keywords
related to your product, and potential customers that probably aren't looking
for your product that you have identified through Facebook targeting criteria.
The Google user has a problem and is actively seeking a solution; the Facebook
user fits what you believe is the demographic profile of someone that might be
interested in your product.

Traffic from Facebook ads is notoriously difficult to turn into cash precisely
because of this. Most of their advertisers measure ROI in terms of shares and
likes, not new users or product sales. Because Facebook has you bidding
against such people for traffic, you will never be able to make the numbers
back out because your competitors aren't measuring dollars or new users like
you are. Advertising products/services on Facebook is a fool's errand for
almost everyone, except for those with an extremely broad target audience.

~~~
jsonne
"The Google user has a problem and is actively seeking a solution; the
Facebook user fits what you believe is the demographic profile of someone that
might be interested in your product."

That's all well and good, but at the end of the day I can Google "Maserati
Dealer" and yet have nowhere near the income levels required to purchase one.

"Traffic from Facebook ads is notoriously difficult to turn into cash
precisely because of this. Most of their advertisers measure ROI in terms of
shares and likes, not new users or product sales."

As someone that works in the industry this patently false. We measure Return
on Investment in dollars not vanity metrics. ROAS is going to be your most
common topline stat which is used (stand for return on ad spend with return
meaning revenue).

"Advertising products/services on Facebook is a fool's errand for almost
everyone, except for those with an extremely broad target audience."

Again very very wrong. In fact the most successful campaign I've ever run (3
million+ in revenue that was 300% ROI positive) was a relatively small niche
market that was less than 200,000 people.

Now if you want the real reason Facebook seems to not work. It's a few things.

1\. The people that raise their hand up to talk about Facebook ads do so
because they're frustrated so all the things you read tend to be very
polarized and negative.

2\. Mostly amateurs are buying Facebook ads. Professionals routinely do much
much better even in B2B niches.

3\. Just because you're product didn't sell doesn't mean that the platform
doesn't work. It routinely works for thousands of advertisers of all sizes
every single day. I would encourage you to ask if it's the ad platform?
Perhaps your ads? Perhaps your targeting? Perhaps your product just hasn't
found product market fit yet.

~~~
downandout
You seem to be assuming that my comment was the result of some failed
campaign. It wasn't.

Surely you would concede that your $3M campaign was a rarity and could not be
duplicated in the case of most advertisers. About 30℅ of casino players walk
out winners on any given day too - it doesn't mean they are going to beat the
house long term. If you are advertising on a medium where useless metrics are
the desired goal of your competitors (likes and shares in the case if
Facebook), you cannot beat those people if you need a cash ROI and they don't.
There are always going to be exceptions to the rule, and I'm glad you found
one, but that doesn't invalidate anything I've said.

------
ssharp
I wanted to call this out:

 _We solved the first problem through a separate tool, which labels the user
with the originating source when registering._

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. If you're spending any significant amount of money on
advertising, you need to be doing this. Don't rely solely on third-party
cookies and session unification attempts. If you have a USER table in your
database/crm, add the five UTM fields to it! Conversions for most businesses
are a multi-day and, often times, multi-device process.

~~~
mrgreenfur
In truth, you should be doing this and modeling the results via attribution
for every source of traffic. What if the facebook audience bounced right away
and converted via google two days later?

Disclaimer: I'm working on an attribution modeling tool, attribution.io

~~~
shostack
Are you doing anything with dynamic/data driven models? Or do you just focus
on the same static ones as GA plus your static content models?

Also, how do you handle view through and other harder to measure branding
touch points? Do you integrate with things like DCM?

My beef with most non-enterprise solutions (which I'd classify yours as based
on pricing) is they are very limited, and typically don't do much of anything
beyond what is available for free in GA.

Fwiw I'm a senior digital media guy who goes deep on attribution. It is what
keeps me up at night as we work on display,video and paid social. The fact
that we have a longer sales cycle due to a free trial further complicates
things.

~~~
crdb
I do have a few questions...

Is there a way to do TV attribution beyond multivariate statistical learning
models attempting to gauge the impact on other channels based on broadcast
period? (i.e. treat the offline channel as a categorical variable)

What is "dynamic" attribution modelling? Does this mean the attribution model
changes depending on who you perceive the customer to be?

What is the best way to do multi-device tracking if you don't have a login?

~~~
mrgreenfur
I'm not who you asked, but maybe I can help with my viewpoint.

TV/Radio/Offline marketing can only be attributed via these statistical models
(eg in the zip codes where the ads ran, did a bump in traffic or store visits
happen). Although old fashioned, I think coupons per channel are a great way
to get confirmation of the link between ad and purchase, it's less precise
than digital tracking, but at least makes some concrete connections.

Multi-device tracking without a login can only be done by using a huge network
of 3rd party data. E.g. if xyz company has cookies on everyone and they see a
login on one site, then they equate that cookie as the same user across
devices, effectively sharing the information with their clients. I think this
is very shady and I do not use any data like this because I think it violates
people expectation of privacy across interactions.

~~~
crdb
Have you tried correlating visits from different devices from the same IP?
E.g. if you get 2 devices from 3 St John St within an hour, then the same 2
from The IBM Building again within an hour, you can make a fair assumption
that's the same person (you need the second site to isolate family members).

I've never implemented this - never had the time nor clients who wanted it
enough - but have always wondered whether it might work. Maybe later this
month. In declarative SQL, naturally.

------
Xyik
This is basic advertising. Google search ads and referral will bring in higher
quality users because search is trigger/intent-based and referrals come from a
more trustworthy source (usually), vs. FB ads that basically blast everyone.
Even if you narrow down your audience on FB with interest targeting and proper
demographic targeting, it may not help since many users just 'like'
everything. Consider the supply and demand as well, the less competition on FB
the cheaper your advertising is. Perhaps competitor also realized FB was the
wrong way to go and stopped advertising on FB, that means more auctions for
you to win and cheaper users. Of course, that doesn't mean higher quality
users.

------
NicoJuicy
In my experience, facebook is for marketing ( getting your name out).

Google is for results

( We had a facebook page with Pokémon Go, where we had 6 events in theme
parks. We did it all with facebook and a website... None the less, i seriously
changed my opinion about Facebook considering ads. It's not worth it )

We had a reach of 320.000 people with only 100$ spend on ads ( because of the
hype it was really cheap and a lot of people shared everything).

We could only convert something like 300 people per event.. Which is 0,00009%
conversion rate, where they pay lower entrance fees then normal for a theme
park, in the midst of a hype.

Remind you, the first event was in the first week after the release of Pokémon
Go.. So we really jumped on it :)

PS. We spent more on ads for

\- like our page

\- better position of our likes

\- ...

It's just not worth it

~~~
jcsvyu789jh
I recommend you don't use the conversions/reach number as your primary KPI.
From my understanding, you spent $100 on ads, and got 300 conversions.

If a conversion isn't worth $0.33 to you, I would recommend re-examining your
pricing structure and perhaps even model.

I may have misunderstood what you said, in which case I apologize. My point is
not to criticize your effort, or deny your experience, but to correct a
perspective I see a lot.

Don't worry about the number of impressions. Focus on how many customers you
can get, then back out the numbers to find out how much revenue that made you.

~~~
NicoJuicy
I am not saying it wasn't a succes.

But the success was because of the hype, not because of Facebook. We could
have pulled this off on other platforms as well, we were 3 times in the news.

But the success isn't as big as it should have been. We paid pennies and had
something. But I wouldn't want to know how much we should pay when I'm an
actual business and trying to get some traction through Facebook

~~~
rhizome
_We could have pulled this off on other platforms as well_

I have to ask: why didn't you?

~~~
NicoJuicy
Because this seemed the easiest way and i was curious about facebook for my (
now already launched) webshop.

Now i just consider facebook as marketing/brand building and not a big part of
my sales funnel.

Seems to be correct in my experience so far, most of my sales currently come
from offline and 3rd parties ( one friend of mine brought in a huge sale)

\+ I only have a limited time :)

------
pjc50
"Facebook might be the wrong audience for a B2B tool" sounds most likely.

~~~
blacksoil
I think so too. FB seems more appropriate for B2C products, particular ones
that are commodity.

------
andreygrehov
I had a bad experience with Facebook Ads. There were a lot of people that were
liking the advertised page, but at the end of a day, all of these people'
accounts were inactive. They never actually liked or shared anything published
on FB page they liked before via Ads. I have a feeling that Facebook is
generating fake likes, trying to make an illusion that the campaign goes well,
i.e. pushes people to spend more.

------
ThomPete
Facebook ads are primarily great for three things; selling games, physical
consumer products and local services

So if you are selling mobile games, t-shirts or offering plumber services or
are a dentist it's great. For most other things it's not really useful.

~~~
StreamBright
We tried to use it for local services and we failed. All of the likes were
coming from people who did not have anything to do with our service. It was
really bizarre. I made the target audience very narrow but could not get a
single hit that was a real potential customer. We switched up strategy and
just asked everybody in our social network to like our page and share our
service. This helped quite a bit, even though this is for free. :) Next thing
we did was using meetup.com and target the right meetups with a discount
campaign that worked out pretty well, this was also for free.

~~~
ThomPete
I have had success for those I have helped. My dad picked up quite a few jobs
(he is a plumber by education) that way and we only spent around 100USD.

But I am sure there are things where it doesn't work or areas were it wont
work.

With regards to asking network yes, thats the first thing I always ask them to
do.

In fact I don't understand why larger corporations do not have some social
media incentive program for their employers so they can help spread the word
and perhaps get leads.

------
cookiecaper
I put a lot of money into advertising through the "proper channels" for my
business, including Facebook Ads. We were crushed by a competitor who
activated a few links within his PBN and spent some serious time astroturfing,
both tactics that I had refused to engage in.

The sad reality of online marketing is that people who are buying ads are
suckers. The only way to be competitive online is to actively game the
mechanisms that the few big traffic brokers use to determine rank.

~~~
threesixandnine
What is supposed to be astroturfing in this case? Infomercials in media?

~~~
cookiecaper
I'm not sure I understand your question. Astroturfing is getting online and
posting positive stuff about the product while posing as many unaffiliated
persons on forums, review sites, social media, etc. This creates an appearance
of high popularity and user satisfaction, and like astroturf, you can't tell
it's "fake" from a glance. This creates a buzz that causes real users to pay
attention and join in.

Since this company was targeting Facebook, if they wanted to astroturf, they'd
do it by taking control of many Facebook accounts and posting positive stuff
about their product in niche groups, on the product page, etc.

~~~
threesixandnine
You understood the question perfectly. Sorry if I wasnt't clear enough. Thanks
for explaining it to me. Call me naive but I didn't know they go to that
length. I am aware of usual infomercial, PBN and outreach stuff but building
the whole armada of of fake identities.

I am all for playing clean but in this case it seems there is no other way
than joining this train(wreck).

------
vassilyk
So many people using online advertising tools face similar issues. As many
said here, setting the right success metrics + using the right tools to
measure them is key for a Facebook Ads campaign to work well.

The first thing to understand is how different Facebook metrics are from your
metrics.

Clicks on Facebook Ads are not visits, for instance, and the drop-off you're
seeing is just normal.

Then, Facebook allows to track many events that can help you acquire the right
people, including the one who stick, whether your product is B2B or C. There
are 1.7bn people on Facebook, meaning getting the right ones is more than
possible.

Experience is key, I work in the field and I can already tell you that your ad
and bidding options were probably not good enough to get the right users. You
basically asked Facebook to drive traffic to your website, never to generate
long lasting customers... so to me, Facebook did what you asked for.

If you want to be successful on Facebook, you must use their Pixel, and
optimize towards events that define success for you.

Place the Pixel on your site now, even if you don't plan to buy ads on
Facebook right away. Set some standard events on key pages (e.g. purchasing a
subscription or similar). This will help you for the next time, as you will be
able to create lookalike audiences based on your best users. This audience,
ANDed with some interests will allow you to target your ads to the right
people. Combining this with a good ad, and a good bidding option (e.g. oCPM
optimized towards subscriptions) will probably lead you to posting much better
results on your blog next time.

Lookalike Audiences:
[https://www.facebook.com/business/help/164749007013531](https://www.facebook.com/business/help/164749007013531)

oCPM:
[https://www.facebook.com/business/help/494633817315490](https://www.facebook.com/business/help/494633817315490)

------
pbhjpbhj
>Surprisingly, Google Analytics reported only 28.818 visits by users who were
redirected from Facebook during this timeframe – i.e. 8,81 percent less. From
these users, 3.786 registered on Stackfield. //

Hypothesis: Could that be pre-emptive caching - some browsers IIRC will fetch
a page ready for display. GA could be showing displayed pages whilst FB are
showing followed links?

On the general situation, what's the rate of false clicks on Facebook - like
how many people accidentally click an ad?

~~~
wlesieutre
Do browsers really preload pages from random links in advertisements that I
have no intention of ever clicking? That sounds like a _terrible_ idea.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Step 5 here - [https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1385029?hl=en-
GB](https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1385029?hl=en-GB).

Or [https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-
edge/platfor...](https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-
edge/platform/documentation/dev-guide/performance/prerender-and-prefetch-
support/)

Looks like Edge only prefetches when specific link tags give prefetch prompts
(Resource Actions per W3C specs) whilst Chrome appears to do things more
speculatively.

Not sure about IE, FF and other approaches.

------
gingerlime
My biggest problem with FB advertising is that it is virtually a casino. We do
everything right (I think). A/B test, segment, measure, measure, measure. But
somehow it's never reproducible. A great organic post can flop completely when
advertising to the very same target audience.

We're B2C selling a targetted learning subscription to students in the medical
field early in their learning path. We don't have fierce competition at all.
Facebook should be the right tool for us. Facebook did work great for a while,
but suddenly doesn't. Or maybe it would tomorrow. Who knows.

We're still spending money and trying to optimize, but somehow it always feels
like we're basically gambling the money away. We some times get lucky, some
times not. The house always wins.

~~~
blahi
If you have the budget and persistence, you need need to be doing retargeting.
Sponsored posts are... meh.

~~~
gingerlime
We are doing retargeting as well. Not just sponsored posts.

------
mikey_p
I think one of the main things people forget in B2B stuff is that impulse
purchases are less of a thing and people want to spend more time evaluating
value/spending. This is why many a lot of B2B folks setup nurturing campaigns.

This is where Facebook can really shine - what if instead of pushing a hard
sell when someone is in the middle of reading their friends updates, you
promote a white paper to folks that are already in your campaign? Or give them
something else of value, but make it about them, not you, and not about hard
sales – that comes at the end of your nurturing campaign, which should not be
on Facebook.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
This! I forget the company name but one was on This Week in Start-ups a while
back and they have a funnel where they use their data on you and, if they
found you started looking at their products, their ads would change to
something like "come on back" and if you started building a couch it would
change again to "you can have that couch delivered in a week!" or something
similar to that.

It's a little creepy mind you but I think the vast majority wouldn't notice
that and it's a huge way of getting people back in.

------
gk1
This is a valuable lesson in tracking marketing results.

Decide on what would make a campaign successful, and then make sure you can
track it.

Don't trust the ad platform's metrics. Not only are they inaccurate, they're
usually vanity metrics that don't matter at all.

Tracking outcomes can be as simple as including UTM tags in your ad links (eg,
?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=fall2016), tracking
signups/activations/upgrades in Mixpanel (or Heap), then viewing a report of
signups/activations/upgraes grouped by the UTM values.

------
hownottowrite
>> Why is that? We do not really know!

So ask... You have a few thousand users who bailed. Drop a survey on a
reasonable-sized random segment and find out why they left

------
jonaldomo
So your churn of users acquired through Facebook ads was almost 100%? To
confirm my understanding, thats why it was wasted? Why do you think they
almost all left? I don't see a free pricing tier on your website now. Do you
think the free pricing contributed heavily to your churn?

~~~
Raphmedia
I see a "Try it free" link on the bottom of the page.

------
joannabugreplay
I'm just about to start my first round of facebook ads for my b2b startup. I
was wondering what worked best for you? I read your post and you mentioned
users from sources such as Google... what else worked for you?

~~~
gk1
Don't bother with FB. It's a waste of money for B2B.

Nothing is guaranteed to work. AdWords could be a great way to jumpstart
customer acquisition, or a great way to waste money.

The important thing is to _experiment_ and _evaluate_ (using analytics and
attribution tracking) because what worked for one company might not work for
you, and as a startup you often can't afford to blow $20k just to learn that
lesson.

(Speaking from experience. I'm a b2b marketing consultant and I've been
through this many times.)

~~~
tootie
Would you recommend hiring a b2b marketing consultant ;)

~~~
gk1
Just like with everything else, if you have the time and skills to do it
yourself, then no. Otherwise yes, get help. If you know exactly what needs to
be done and how, then hire a freelance specialist. If you know something needs
to be done but not sure what or how, then hire a consultant.

------
0898
If the poster is here, may I ask – who does your illustrations?

~~~
speps
A quick Google have me this link :
[https://dribbble.com/stackfield](https://dribbble.com/stackfield)

~~~
0898
It's the CEO. Wow.

------
calsy
Missing one of the most useful metrics and that is CTR.

Take the startup campaign, 5880 Clicks / 716007 Impressions = 0.82% CTR.

That is a pretty poor CTR and explains the high cost of website clicks. If the
CTR was up around 2% the cost of website clicks would be halved. Would
probably look at changing the ad content if CTR was this low.

~~~
robryan
It is low but not unusual for Facebook.

~~~
calsy
I advertise a few mobile apps on facebook and have an average CTR of 2.5%.

Point is if your ads are getting that low a CTR than you need to change the
content, audience etc. No point in running ads for website clicks when no one
is clicking on them.

------
Macsenour
Pardon me if this is off topic, I'm sure someone will let me know. I run an ad
on Facebook for $25 for the weekend. We get somewhere between 2000-6000
"reaches". We get a fair share that like the post, I "invite" them to like the
page, hardly any do... Is this normal?

~~~
calsy
Liking the page would require effort from the user and most are reluctant to
deviate from their current thought process.

Most people are on facebook to scroll down their news feed and maybe like a
post or 2. There is no motivation for them to go to your page and just 'like'
it, unless you have content that appeals to them.

People are bombarded with advertisement all day every day, they simply feel no
obligation to help you unless you can provide them with something of value.

Think about from your own perspective, how you use something like facebook. Do
you go and like random pages from people sending you unsolicited invite
requests? Probably not, so why would anyone else do it.

~~~
Macsenour
I don't disagree with anything you've said... but... Since they already liked
the post, I'm not picking random people on Facebook, I'm asking them to repeat
what they just did. I think it comes to them just like a friend request.

~~~
calsy
I know it's not random, but liking a post does not mean a person is obliged to
perform a further action for your benefit.

My understanding is an invite will just push a notification to a user saying
'Such and such invites you to ...'. Its different to a friend request as that
has its own context where you accept, reject. People get notifications all
day, so it's easy to understand why they might brush over an invite for some
other content.

A little side note, someone liking your page doesn't mean they are going to
see your content. Only 10%-15% of people who like your page will actually see
your posts on their news feed. Have a read about it on the net, thats a
facebook policy that's been in place for about 4 years now. If you want to
extend your 'reach' you will need to boost your posts for a fee.

Sorry reply might come across as bit negative, I just wish to give you some
realistic expectations. Keep doing what you're doing, keep promoting, keep
growing.

~~~
Macsenour
I didn't take it as negative at all. Anything that moves the ball forward is
good. Thanks for taking the time.

I'm looking for the next step to take when someone has liked a post, and
inviting them to like the page seems to be the only option, which as I said,
has limited results.

Your comments are helpful.

------
wehadfun
I think facebook works for people that sell products that are revelant to a
person's friends. Even if you need a tool to store local files encrypted do
you college, or high school friends need this? If not you probably wont share
it and the viral effect will not happen.

------
ramblenode
This is a superficial complaint, but please fix the misuse of decimal points
and commas. They are distracting from what is an otherwise interesting read.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
It's actually quite common in Europe to use commas for decimal points, and
periods for thousands delimiters.

~~~
ramblenode
I learned something today.

------
BinaryIdiot
I wonder if you would have done better using native advertising through key
people in your industry who are followed by possibly customers.

------
dmoy
I've been out of the loop on Facebook ads for 5 years now. Is there a good
conversion tracking story now, or no?

~~~
jaggederest
Yes, the pixel code is pretty decent. You can set up custom event tracking in
JS on form submit or whatever you like, and their algos optimize for that
reasonably well. It's still more about audience and ad design than magical
pixie dust, but it seems to work.

------
maneesh
Perhaps they could improve their offer, ads, funnel, landing page, image, or a
variety of other things..

~~~
ssharp
Yep. The whole user flow for a Facebook lead might need to be different. I try
and treat acquisition channels as differently as possible, within reason. For
example, your organic traffic may behave completely differently than your
Facebook Ads traffic and that may be happening for a variety of reasons.
Organic traffic is targeted and active. Someone was likely searching for
something highly related to your product. The same goes for paid search
traffic. However, Facebook and other display ad traffic is passive. You're
targeting someone who may be interested in your product but they aren't
actively seeking it out. Those clicks are much different! I'd probably throw a
much heavier sell at those people and make sure your actively on-boarding and
engaging them to use the product throughout the trial period. They are likely
to be far less motivated than other types of traffic, so it's your job to get
them motivated!

------
Animats
_" Facebook may just be the wrong audience for a B2B tool."_

Duh.

------
99throwme
Thanks for sharing, informative article.

------
vacri
Derek Muller burned money on Facebook ads, and did an analysis showing that
their metrics are flat-out horseshit. Definitely have a watch if you're
considering spending on Facebook.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g)

------
ikeboy
How do you spend 20k on marketing without testing conversions with a smaller
budget first? They could have spent 300, noticed it didn't bring in anywhere
close to 300 in sales, and aborted.

How I picked 300:

They're charging 20-80/mo for the product. Assuming they're willing to pay 100
to acquire a user that hangs around for a while, by the time they spent 300
they'd know if they picked up at least 3 users or so. Less than 300 isn't
enough to be significant, more than that is wasteful.

~~~
BillinghamJ
That doesn't really work on pay-per-click type models. You need to be
acquiring 100+ customers before you can really measure properly.

~~~
ikeboy
You can't measure "properly". You can measure enough to know that you'd be
blowing it if you spent 20k.

If spending 300 didn't bring in at least 3 users over a week, that advertising
was never going to work. If it did, then you go up an order of magnitude and
test again. Never scale more than one order of magnitude at a time.

~~~
BillinghamJ
You really don't know that. It takes time for the algorithms of companies like
Facebook to optimise properly. For my company, CPA has come down significantly
as we have spent more.

