

Six steps to effective Facebook advertising at $0.01 CPC - nano81
http://www.dipoll.com/blog/2010/11/six-steps-to-run-cheap-and-successful-facebook-advertising-campaigns/

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il
Unless your startup is targeting teenage girls in third world countries, you
shouldn't be trying to simply optimize for low CPC.

You need to be thinking about traffic quality and conversions. The beauty of a
fluid marketplace like Facebook Ads(or AdWords, for that matter) is that the
cost of traffic will eventually approach its value.

The people clicking these ads are not going to be spending a lot of money on
your site, that's why the clicks are so cheap.

If you try this same approach targeting, for example, middle aged women in the
US, who have much more purchasing power, you can expect to pay closer to $1
per click.

Note that this post doesn't say anything about conversions or sales.

And if you think you can build a successful business around dirt-cheap clicks
from African children, well I've got a few million guaranteed visitors to sell
you :)

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rbritton
I believe the effectiveness of Facebook advertising in general depends totally
on what you're trying to sell. We tried it briefly for about a three-month
stint and didn't get a single conversion.

We targeted engaged women in the 20-30 age bracket within this region for
wedding photography. It ran about $250/mo but didn't net one single inquiry
whereas our Google ads account for about 40% of all inquiries for our services
at half the price.

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zach
I hope it's clear that this is targeted to nontraditional Facebook
advertisers. Ones that wouldn't advertise at $1 per click, maybe even at $0.10
a click because they aren't running highly targeted ecommerce with $20+
conversions or other usual PPC campaigns. Even sites which actually monetize
via AdSense!

Yes, buying ads for a site that runs ads can make money -- if you are
converting users from untargetable mystery people to users who indicate their
interest in subjects where traditional advertisers are bidding for keywords.
Facebook has a lot of potential for this and it's great to see a step-by-step
recounting of experience with this method.

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bryanh
A personal anecdote: we tried advertising on Facebook to people aged 30+ who
are interested in Catholicism (and other similar keywords) for
<http://BeadifulRosaries.com/> and had absolutely no luck at all.

We spent a lot of time crafting ads & landing pages but they didn't amount to
much. Adwords destroyed them.

Active searching > passive clicking.

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eli
So was the problem that fewer people from Facebook converted, or was it just
that Facebook had a much lower volume of clicks?

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bryanh
It seems like we could have gotten all the clicks we wanted, but they wouldn't
convert.

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tafle
Did Google Adwords have advertising opportunities like this back when it first
started getting traction? Is it still possible to get impressions on bids this
cheap for very long tail keywords in Google?

Would love to hear some input from someone more experienced than I.

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portman
YES, Google's CPCs were far lower in the past.

NO, it is not possible to a purchase a meaningful number of $0.01 clicks on
AdWords today.

I can't view the blog post (HN effect?), but I can say that we used to
routinely purchase consumer electronics keywords (ipods, razr) between
2003-2005 and pay between $0.08 and $0.12 per click. Those same keywords today
fetch over $1.00 or more. (Well not RAZR, but you get what I mean.)

Whereas on Facebook, I have yet to see CPCs of higher than about $0.45.

So yes, Facebook has a land of low-CPC opportunity. The challenge, of course,
is conversion. Google has a proven track record of turning AdWords clicks into
conversions. Whereas your average Facebook user who clicks on an ad is less
likely to convert. (A good portion of the clicks seem to be accidental, in
fact, judging by how quickly users hit the back button.)

My personal feeling is that Facebook advertising will one day grow to rival
that of search advertising, but due to this issue of conversion (and purchase
intent), other very smart people disagree.

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joelandren
I'm guessing Step 7 is use images that you don't own....

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joeymuller
What struck me here was how effective facebook proved to be for you on the
Weekend! To the contrary, my facebook rep encourages me NOT to advertise on
weekends because of ... ? what? lower traffic? Or maybe she's trying to keep
this a secret?

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zackattack
what volume do you engage in such that you get a personal rep? :)

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axavier
Unclear how effective this would be when you need to target more narrowly on a
certain demographic (i.e. only USA). Still very interesting - will have to try
something simple myself.

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nano81
Even though we targeted broadly over several English speaking countries, we
were still getting a big chunk of impressions (judging by the resulting
registrations) from the more competitive markets like USA and Canada.

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tibbon
My problems in trying for low CPC on these have been that Facebook just stops
delivering traffic. Period. You basically aren't meeting their bid and it just
stops. I tried targeting it pretty tightly by interest, but Facebook just
wouldn't give me the traffic. Its possible someone was outbidding me.

