26 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
26 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

My first FB campaign - Is this normal?

by junkdna
22 replies


This is my first day, should we say night, on the FB. I made a fan page (connected to my blog) in a Health & Beauty niche and started promoting it for likes. Prices are in British Pounds, so for US dollars just multiply with 1.5 for approximate figure. Budget is £6.0 (approx. $10) per day. And I it seems that I am paying £0.20 (~ $0.30) per like.

Could more experienced guys tell me:
- Are these results good or bad (or ugly ;-)?

- Why am I getting all the 'Likes' from mobile phones? Not a single 'Like' from desktop. That's kind of going going to make things difficult down the line.

- I checked Google Analytics installed on my blog, none of the 'Likes' bothered to visit the blog.
#campaign #facebook #likes #normal
  • Profile picture of the author ThomasOwen
    I am no expert in Facebook ads but have ran a few campaigns and managed to bring down the cost per like quite low. First thing I see is you could do with narrowing down your campaign audience, 15,4 million is huge and won't be targeted enough to get people to check out your website. I usually aim to get a potential audience of around 1 million.

    Also to point out when putting your audience interests in when creating the ad I tend to stick to precise interests instead of the broad range which uses #health, make sense? Narrow the interests down to things specifically related to your site so maybe certain products you have etc.

    I also find that displaying the ads in the newsfeed has produced better results for me as opposed to the right hand column. Make sure your ad photos are relevant and stand out.

    Its about testing and seeing what works, 0.20 cents is a little high but with slight tweaks to the campaign should bring it down.

    Hope that helps.
    Signature
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8767630].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author junkdna
      Yeah, thanks for the answer. The only thing I still don't understand, why everybody is coming from a mobile, not from desktop. Has everybody turned off their PCs?
      Signature

      Guys With Brains Work for Guys With Balls. Guys With Balls Work for Luck.

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8768212].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author Magicalidea
        Originally Posted by junkdna View Post

        Yeah, thanks for the answer. The only thing I still don't understand, why everybody is coming from a mobile, not from desktop. Has everybody turned off their PCs?
        Yes, they're not take their desktop to public )
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8773904].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author overtonis
        Originally Posted by junkdna View Post

        Yeah, thanks for the answer. The only thing I still don't understand, why everybody is coming from a mobile, not from desktop. Has everybody turned off their PCs?
        50% of FB users are now mobile. Also, your marketing effort is focusing on two entirely different objectives. Your ad objective is for 'likes' which is different then sending them to your website. Facebook has the option to send clicks from your ads to your website (usually highly ineffective).

        What will work best in long run is first building up your likes. Then provide content to those fans who liked you. Then final phase is to sell to those fans. Its way way more effective to sell to fans and people who already know what you are about than to complete strangers who you haven't established trust with yet.
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8777198].message }}
        • Profile picture of the author junkdna
          Thanks, that's actually the plan. I want to build it to 5-10,000.

          But I am having a sever problems with user interface, I choose one thing in Ad Manager, FB saves and serves completely different choices

          Plus, right now they just stopped with impressions, for no obvious reason.
          Signature

          Guys With Brains Work for Guys With Balls. Guys With Balls Work for Luck.

          {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8777726].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Ryan Thomas
    Facebook has a ton more traffic on mobile, and if you start a campaign at night, they will often burn through your daily budget before the day ends, so you end up with a lot of mobile traffic. Your numbers are not a bad start, but the CPM and CPL should come down some.

    Very few people will go to your blog just because they've liked your page, even on desktop. Most people click like and instantly get distracted by something else. A few might browse your page, but most will forget about you until they see something interesting from you pop up in their newsfeed. Getting likes is only step one. Next you have to post things that get engagement so your posts hit your fans' newsfeeds.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8768404].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author junkdna
    Is there a problem with getting so much mobile traffic? Is it possible that browsing patterns had changed and people realy use mobiles more than PCs, and that I had fallen behind with current picture.
    Signature

    Guys With Brains Work for Guys With Balls. Guys With Balls Work for Luck.

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8768479].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Ryan Thomas
    For FB, mobile is more prevalent. I don't know if that's true of browsing in general. Shouldn't be a problem, but in many cases requires adjusting your strategies.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8769194].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author ErinWalsh
      It seems normal to me, just look around at people who have there phones out. What are they doing? Maybe texting, snapchat, or most likely checking their FaceBook account. It is not a problem as long as your site is set up with a mobile version.
      Signature

      Boost Software teamed up with Neverblue. They helped produce this new affiliate video.

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8769269].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author junkdna


        For anybody that might like to see the progress. Day 2 is similar to Day 1 by numbers. I expected them to get bored and numbers to drop. Percentage of like is still, in my opinion surprisingly high, around 4.5%. I've seen people getting around 2% on right hand side ads and 4-5% on news feed posts. Here I am getting 4.5% on right hand side ads, which must be good.

        Excuse my excitement, but another interesting statistics is that 90% of people (62 of 69) who clicked on the ad, liked the page. Is this normal average?

        On the good side, CPM fell from £13(~ $19) to £7(~$11).

        I am going to try news feed ads today, just for comparison.

        I placed one photo of a dog and a woman in a snowy scene and that become so popular, nobody is reading my posts with well written articles.
        Signature

        Guys With Brains Work for Guys With Balls. Guys With Balls Work for Luck.

        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8769557].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author junkdna
    I am currently paying $0.20 to $0.30 per click for likes. I've seen other people get CPC down to $0.01. How's that done? I am currently targeting audience of 14 million. If I reduce that to 100,000 would that reduce CPC?
    Signature

    Guys With Brains Work for Guys With Balls. Guys With Balls Work for Luck.

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8770694].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Ryan Thomas
    The size of the audience isn't necessarily the issue...it's how tightly targeted the audience is. A 14 million audience probably isn't targeted tightly enough. CTR is good, but if people are clicking because of an irrelevant image, you're just wasting money.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8770773].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author junkdna
      Hey Ryan, Thanks. Image is very relevant. Its almost perfect match for the topic of the fan page.

      OK, I'll try zooming down to 500,000.
      Signature

      Guys With Brains Work for Guys With Balls. Guys With Balls Work for Luck.

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8770866].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author Ryan Thomas
        Originally Posted by junkdna View Post

        Hey Ryan, Thanks. Image is very relevant. Its almost perfect match for the topic of the fan page.

        OK, I'll try zooming down to 500,000.
        I guess relevant wasn't the right word...focused/targeted is really what I meant. It could be very relevant and still attract a lot of clicks from people who are not interested in your page, which would cost you money. Sounds like that may be what has been happening. Let us know how narrowing the audience affects it, though. That might be enough to fix your campaign.
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8776427].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author junkdna
    I let campaign off again and I was receiving likes every minute or so, with 14% CTR. Than suddenly FB stopped impressions (and clicks). It has been like that for 4 hours. Really weird. Are there some braking news in US?
    Signature

    Guys With Brains Work for Guys With Balls. Guys With Balls Work for Luck.

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8776663].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author LifeLikeLife
    First off, if you're serious about FB ads then get out of the adverts manager and move onto the FB power editor.

    Create multiple ad/image variations targeted to specific personas. The content a female in her 40s will find enticing is different from the content an 18 y.o male will find enticing.

    You can create and place hundreds of ads on FB by copy pasting from an excel sheet, just use the power editor.

    Also, I disagree with overtonis, if you want to sell something (not build a brand or community) then create ads specific to those potential buyers and then send them to a landing page. FB page likes are worth less by the minute.

    Some people will say this is not great because you can't market to them again in the future. I think if you capture their email address in the sale process then you can. Not only via email marketing, but also by creating custom audiences (and lookalike audiences) on Facebook based on their emails and then deliver ads to them again in the future.

    Make sure your landing page is using pixel tracking, then you can use retargeting to display ads to people who didn't convert.

    Make sure you're building custom audiences. Make sure you're using lookalike audiences. Make sure your excluding people who you're targeting with another ad. Don't double up. There's essentially a lot of things to keep in mind

    In other words, make sure what you're doing on FB ads ties directly with your end goal ALWAYS. If that's sales, then send people to a sale page. If you want branding and community then pay for likes.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8780542].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author junkdna
      Originally Posted by LifeLikeLife View Post

      ... FB page likes are worth less by the minute.
      ... .
      @LifeLikeLife Thanks for the input.

      Why do you say that FB page Likes are worthless by the minute? My impression is that once people like your FB page they will not be removed by FB for a long time.
      Signature

      Guys With Brains Work for Guys With Balls. Guys With Balls Work for Luck.

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8781799].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author LifeLikeLife
        Hey, no problem.

        The reason I say it is because FB does not let you reach all of these people when you post anyway, unless your content is incredibly engaging. Some would say producing and constantly publishing content that will increase your 'organic' reach is a large (huge) investment of time too.

        So, let's say you spend 5K and get 50,000 relevant/targeted likes. Once you have them, Each of your posts reaches 500-1000 people organically, unless you're willing to pay FB to reach more of them.

        It makes it very difficult to monetise those likes without further investment. In my opinion, unless you're branding or building a community then you might aswell skip the content curation/creation side of things and go straight for the sale. If they buy you'll have their email, which you can use on FB to create custom (and lookalike) audiences to advertise to.

        It all depends on what you're selling and what your goals are. If you have a business/brand then I see how likes could be more useful. If you're trying to sell someone elses product then I'd go straight for the sale. If you're trying to build a community to sell multiple niche products in the future then maybe likes would be ok.
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8782823].message }}
        • Profile picture of the author 32paul52
          If you move over to FB Power Editor you can turn off Mobile- test it out as last time I did it My Cost per like dropped by 50% - You can get lower cost Likes but most of the time they are from third world countries- same campaigns (keywords tard everything - just change of country) changed to USA -likes cost 2 times more. I admit to only tring a few things out when I was working on a project - my 2 cents - but test and track everything....
          Signature
          Butterfly Pendant Necklaces
          {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8782896].message }}
        • Profile picture of the author Ryan Thomas
          Originally Posted by LifeLikeLife View Post

          Hey, no problem.

          The reason I say it is because FB does not let you reach all of these people when you post anyway, unless your content is incredibly engaging. Some would say producing and constantly publishing content that will increase your 'organic' reach is a large (huge) investment of time too.

          So, let's say you spend 5K and get 50,000 relevant/targeted likes. Once you have them, Each of your posts reaches 500-1000 people organically, unless you're willing to pay FB to reach more of them.
          You're right that FB is making it more and more difficult to reach the audiences we've built, but if your numbers are that bad you're doing a lot of stuff wrong. It shouldn't cost 5 grand to get 50k likes unless it's a very small niche, and if you do have 50k likes, even basic simple posting with no ninja tricks should get you a reach of a lot more than 1000 people. I routinely get 5k+ reach posting on a non-optimized page of only 10k fans doing nothing special and running no ads.
          {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8783029].message }}
          • Profile picture of the author LifeLikeLife
            Hi Ryan, I manage many different pages and in some I see a lot of success with organic posts. For example, I run a page for a popular Sydney nightclub which has about 12k likes, I haven't paid for any of them, and I get at least 5k reach per post. The same as you. Not a lot of these guys will click outbound links though, but in this case that's not an issue.

            I have another page for a person who sells eBooks on promoting music. We get likes from all over the world at 1-2c per like, no low income countries, all English speaking. In this case, the posts on a page with 10k likes are reaching 200-500 people organically. This person creates unique blog posts, offers value to the community, etc. But the money it took to get the likes and the time it's taken to make engaging posts has demonstrated to us that in his particular niche, it's better to go straight for the sale. It was profitable before, but it isn't at the moment. We've changed strategies and now put all the money into creating unpublished 'sale' posts through the power editor and target those to custom audiences. It's working really well! Our list is growing, which means our target audiences are growing and our cost per sale is becoming lower.

            Another page I run is for a TV presenter in the fishing niche. The page has about 17k likes we've mostly paid for, again all relevant, targeted likes. With this guy we make one post without an image and bad grammar, no call to action (yes, I have told him not to do this but I can't stop him lol) and it will sometimes reach 20K+ people. We easily generates 300+ clicks per link we post, whatever the link is.

            What I'm trying to say is, the value of your 'likes' really comes down to how important a community is for your online marketing as well as your core business offering. In my experience, putting money into getting likes alone hasn't generated great ROI. It has worked in conjunction with writing content and building lists.

            Perhaps I have dealt with people who are more interested in fast results.

            It depends on your product and your goals. If someone asked me 2 years ago, I would've said sure invest in a larger FB audience/more likes. These days I'm less likely to suggest that.

            Just my 2 cents btw!
            {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8783088].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author junkdna
    Thanks guys for great contributions. Now I don't need to buy any WSOs ;-)

    I've been spying on the other fan pages. There is this guy with 300,000 likes and the only monetisation he is doing is Google's AdSense. He posts 4-5 times per day, each post has two links to outside sites. I've checked traffic on his main site (Compete.com, Alexa, Ahrefs.com etc.) and he went from 0 to 300,000 main site visitors per month in six monts. According to Alexa 15% of his traffic comes from FB and 5% from Google, but Alexa is not always right. What this suggest is that Google thrusts FB and brings your ranking up.
    Signature

    Guys With Brains Work for Guys With Balls. Guys With Balls Work for Luck.

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[8784312].message }}

Trending Topics