Thread: Facebook Ad FAIL

I saw this facebook ad tonight, and was struck by the name "colony dentist", since there are no developments around here called "the colony".

So I clicked on it, figuring I'd find a dentist who was advertising to the entire Bay area (dumb, since most dentists get their clients from about a 10-20 mile radius).

What I found surprised me.

Guy is a dentist in TEXAS.

Advertising to ME, in the Napa Valley.

Am I gonna get on a plane (when my tooth is hurting-- pounding pain, cabin pressures, etc)-- to go to TX to see this guy?

I don't think so.

Yet this yahoo is advertising to a LOT of people outside his area.

Why?

I'm guessing he hasn't quite yet mastered the art of Facebook ads-- where you can select ONLY people within a very tight radius (via zip codes/towns).

Another funny FAIL:

Look at the photo of the water tower.

It spells "C O L O N"

Not the kinda thing I'd like to use to promote my mouth business.

Now maybe, if I was a proctologist. . . .

-Russ H.

Originally Posted by puckman

I used to work for Facebook and sell these ads to fort 500's.

You could assume he does not know how to use the targeting tools, which is hard to believe because a monkey could literally set up an FB campaign. Have you used it? Its so ridiculously easy, it has to be one of the easiest self service ad tools ever created, and it would lead me to believe he avoided the geo targeting.

I would assume he is either trying to get traffic to his website, or grow his fan base. For him this is very cost effective, typically .50-1.00 per fan, maybe less. And then you have to ask, why does he need a big fan base? He could be doing it for competitive reasons, or he could be selling his business and wants to make it look bigger. He could also be a/b testing, geo and non geo target. He could drop $10K, build 5K fans, and have a pretty impressive FB page.

Just like revenue/traffic/etc, the size of your facebook page can say a lot about your business, even if you paid for it, no one knows or cares about the difference.

That's some really interesting insight.

It had never occurred to me. Thanks.

I don't think, given the current cost per click, that you could get fans for 50¢ to $1 per person, but then again, I've never used Facebook for this-- I suppose you could just bid it way below going rate, and have your ads plastered everywhere.

Again-- great insight. Much appreciated.

-Russ H.

I wouldn't directly assume that he himself is even doing this. Doctors and dentist are among the top and first people to be pitched to be 11ty million " Internet Marketers" that promise the world to these establishments yet don't really know their way around the block. He could have got a really good sales person in there to get him to sign up for a service that he thought was going to bring him more local business. I imagine he will eventually figure this out. Might even be a good oppurtunity to send the guy an email directly letting him know, and mention this place. He could learn a whole lot from here!

Originally Posted by CMCarlin

What LH said was my first thought - it may not be the Dentist himself, but a "marketer" that is being paid to do it.

Agreed. The poor guy probably paid some "guru Internet marketer" who said I can get you fans for X pennies per fan! One benefit of this poor targeting though is it does add to "social proof" which is becoming very important.

When the guy takes a closer look at his fans, I'm sure he won't be happy to see Chung Li from Shanghai and Pradeep Patel from Mumbai.

I wonder if the dentist has a Google alert on his name? IF so, he will find this thread.

EXCELLENT points-- I'll bet you're right-- and he's BLAZING through his ad budget, w/dozens of clicks, since they "experts" he's hired have made him nationwide!

Perhaps they'll tell him they're just "dialing things in"-- this would buy them time to screw around and run up the ad budget.

We just hired some landing page guys this year for our PPC stuff-- nice folks, but next to useless. S-L-O-W. No reports (even though they were using Fireball). Designs that didn't reflect our primary audience.

We hired them w/the specific intent of doing A/B testing to figure out which ads had higher click through rates-- and/or actually got bookings (we track bookings as well). I figured in 3 months time, we'd have done at least a few dozen iterations.

Nope. After 3 months, they STILL hadn't come up w/any significant A/B results. They said this was, in part, due to lack of clicks-- but our campaigns get hundreds of clicks per week-- more than enough to start getting some data.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

They came highly recommended-- if this is an example of what other people are paying for, that's sad. Really sad.

A huge waste of money and time. And a great example of a talented person (the principal) who did not have a clear laser-sharp goal that he worked on daily. I felt like he puttered around, coming up w/creative ideas, but never looking at the metrics or making changes based on those metrics.

I realized this one month in, so we pulled most of their services. But we were on a 3-month contract, so we just rode it out, hoping they would actually do something in the time they had left.

Nope.

-Russ H.

Originally Posted by puckman

He could drop $10K, build 5K fans, and have a pretty impressive FB page.

Just like revenue/traffic/etc, the size of your facebook page can say a lot about your business, even if you paid for it, no one knows or cares about the difference.

I know it's been mentioned already, but if someone really wants to just have fans (un-targeted fans, that is) for the sake of having an impressive amount of fans on their page, this can be done for about $100. You probably not going to convert a single one of those fans, but it may look impressive to new potential customers that find your page.

Originally Posted by RichD

Actually, there are a lot of affluent people who will travel to other states to be treated by certain professionals who are referred to them, or to acquire other kinds of personal services. So it is not necessarily true that the person who put up the ad "didn't know what they are doing".

RichD-

I agree w/you. I've done it myself.

That's why I specifically called out dentistry-- a field where, if things are problematic (abscesses, infections, voids), small changes in atmospheric pressure (like an airplane cabin) can produce intense pain. Unbelievable pain.

-Russ H.