Thread: Anyone used Facebook Ads before?

I know personally when I go on facebook it is to socialize. I never click the links and banners regardless of how cool it looks.

I read a article explaining why it's not smart to advertise on facebook somewhere but I'd have to look deep and hard for it.
It could have just been a propaganda article.

I'd assume your advertisements would have to be targeting an older crowd who doesn't really understand how annoying advertisements can be.

Facebook ads are effective for all ages pretty much, you just have to have real interesting content and target the right folks. When I got engaged I started getting ad's for unique groomsmen gifts, some of them i clicked on and got great ideas from.

I used them before and have had good ROI.. it's just like AdWords, you have to pay attention and adjust daily or you can lose a lot of money.

I think my problem with banners and advertisements is they just annoy the hell out of me and I never click them.
Not once have I thought
"Oh wow cool looking ad! I want to see more!"
I've been on the internet along time and can pretty much find anything I want easily.

I know what channels to go through. I suppose not everybody has the know how for that.

I get a good amount of traffic from my fan page and the facebook ads.

Originally Posted by JamesF

I used them before and have had good ROI.. it's just like AdWords, you have to pay attention and adjust daily or you can lose a lot of money.

I learned this the hard way in my first day, here's my stats from 1.5 days of ads:



I've gotten tons of impressions and quite a few clicks, however, I have received NO "conversions", which are defined as a contact hit, whether it's an email, phone call or Skype message since the ad leads directly to my Contact page(below is what the ad looks like):



My concern is looking at my GA account, I'm afraid that either my landing page is wrong OR there's click fraud involved as the average time on my site is less than 1 second and there's a very high bounce rate:





Either way, it's like you said JamesF if I wouldn't have cut it back to $20/day I'd probably be at about $100 by now with no conversions and who knows how bad it would've been in a week, two weeks if I didn't check it last night to see I had used up all $50 of my Day 1 budget.

Originally Posted by GlobalWealth

I get a good amount of traffic from my fan page and the facebook ads.

Any tips?

I took a quick look at the article that jonleehacker posted, however, that's geared towards an affiliate product where conversion is an actual sale and 0.5% is a "realistic" conversion rate. I'd like to think a simple contact lead would be a much higher conversion rate.

Average time on site: 1 SECOND?

You need to change your ad, buddy.

It's WAY too generic.

Or (worse), it's attracting people that won't even spend 2 seconds on your website!

Design an ad that will ONLY attract people who want to HIRE YOU.

e.g.,

-Look at the local market first (there are tens of thousands of people within 20 miles of your office).

-ONLY appeal to people who want to spend money on you-- NOT those looking for a freebie

Instead of 400,000 impressions and 0 conversions, why not shoot for 5,000 impressions, 50 actual clicks, and 1 conversion?

Or, design a landing page that gets their email address (offer to send them a free "how to save hundreds of dollars on your taxes" FREE tax guide if they enter their email addy. Problem is-- you should be doing this kind of lead gen WITHOUT pay per click on FB or google/bing/etc (using SEO for specific keywords).

We spend tens of thousands of $$$ a year on PPC. We use VERY targeted keywords.

And we track conversions-- actual bookings-- that come from the keywords.

-Russ H.

Have you considered doing a separate phone # for each ad?

That way, you can see which ads are generating calls-- even if they DON'T click.

-Russ H.

Originally Posted by valuegiver

Hi vr4playa,

"Jefferson Franklin Tax" is not a good headline. You may want to change it to:

"The Best Tax Planner EVER Or It’s FREE!"

Then the body will be something like:

WARNING: Do NOT Call ANY Tax Planner Until You've Seen This Video Or Read Our FREE CONSUMER GUIDE!

7 Insider Secrets Of Tax Planning That They Don't Want You To Know - And It's NOT What You Think.

Valuegiver-

I've got to disagree w/you here.

You're selling tax services like it's an ebook or something else w/low cost.

Or like what you'd put on a landing page where you're getting people from SEO (not from PPC).

This is NOT how higher-priced services or products tend to do PPC, at least those we've studied.

For the higher-priced items, it's all about making the ad SUPER specific, so only those who need the service (or product) will click on it.

There are other approaches as well.

But for all of them, the overall goal is not to get lots of clicks (b/c each click costs $$$).

It's to get the click for people who:

1. NEED or WANT your services badly enough to

2. SPEND the $$$ you are charging

-Russ H.

Maybe we'll all be lucky here, and Paul (Rakona) will give input.

Designing PPC campaigns for clients is what he does for a living.

-Russ H.

Another thot:

This is FB after all . . .

Why not have your happy clients post testimonials to your FB page?

Nothing sells like happy customers.

-Russ H.

Originally Posted by Russ H

Average time on site: 1 SECOND?

You need to change your ad, buddy.

It's WAY too generic.

Or (worse), it's attracting people that won't even spend 2 seconds on your website!

Design an ad that will ONLY attract people who want to HIRE YOU.

e.g.,

-Look at the local market first (there are tens of thousands of people within 20 miles of your office).

-ONLY appeal to people who want to spend money on you-- NOT those looking for a freebie

Instead of 400,000 impressions and 0 conversions, why not shoot for 5,000 impressions, 50 actual clicks, and 1 conversion?

Or, design a landing page that gets their email address (offer to send them a free "how to save hundreds of dollars on your taxes" FREE tax guide if they enter their email addy. Problem is-- you should be doing this kind of lead gen WITHOUT pay per click on FB or google/bing/etc (using SEO for specific keywords).

We spend tens of thousands of $$$ a year on PPC. We use VERY targeted keywords.

And we track conversions-- actual bookings-- that come from the keywords.

-Russ H.

I will need to implement some of these tactics. For my first ad I tried to reel 'em in with the free initial consultation. As far as sticking to the local market, I want to go nationwide as this will be one of our USPs in that we can service clients anywhere(and have already done a few remotely via Skype).

Originally Posted by Russ H

Have you considered doing a separate phone # for each ad?

That way, you can see which ads are generating calls-- even if they DON'T click.

-Russ H.

This would be down the road, as far as I'm concerned now, a call IS a sale, especially considering we have had a close to 100% conversion rate from calls to clients

Originally Posted by valuegiver

Hi vr4playa,

"Jefferson Franklin Tax" is not a good headline. You may want to change it to:

"The Best Tax Planner EVER Or It’s FREE!"

Then the body will be something like:

WARNING: Do NOT Call ANY Tax Planner Until You've Seen This Video Or Read Our FREE CONSUMER GUIDE!

7 Insider Secrets Of Tax Planning That They Don't Want You To Know - And It's NOT What You Think.

xx

This is a possibility. However, Russ makes some good points below. Personally, I'd like to stick with our name being in the title as I want to start developing name recognition and not be like an eBook where it's focused more on the product and less on the brand.

Originally Posted by Russ H

It's to get the click for people who:

1. NEED or WANT your services badly enough to

2. SPEND the $$$ you are charging

-Russ H.

This is the end goal, however, I know that we will not be able to continue closing at around 100% so I'm happy with building up my sales skills through offering the free consults, which also helps to sharpen my tax knowledge as every situation is truly unique, however, there's something to be learned that could be applied towards the next potential client.

Originally Posted by Russ H

Maybe we'll all be lucky here, and Paul (Rakona) will give input.

Designing PPC campaigns for clients is what he does for a living.

-Russ H.

I'd love that! I know I watched the 30DC vids on Adwords a couple times and feel like I almost have to be a "used car salesman" to get clients that are in the buying mood, however, I know that there is a higher degree of professionalism involved when you're doing taxes versus selling an eBook or niche product.

Originally Posted by dispin

Maybe add a live chat to your site. Its not hard to do with Live Chat plugin for Wordpress | Integrate LiveChat with Wordpress

I think you also get a free trial. You could then put 'chat with a tax specialist immediately'.

Will do. I already added the live Skype button to the contact page, however, a Live Chat feature on the homepage would be an additional layer of customer support availability

Originally Posted by Russ H

Another thot:

This is FB after all . . .

Why not have your happy clients post testimonials to your FB page?

Nothing sells like happy customers.

-Russ H.

We're working on building up testimonials, one for sure that we need is from a recent client who got an IRS bill for $30k that we got down to $100

In addition, we need to better position our "Benjamin Bonus" referral program where anyone who gets us 5 paying clients gets $100.

Originally Posted by bateati

Not once have I thought
"Oh wow cool looking ad! I want to see more!"

For the most part, I have ad-blindness as well. I don't even look at the sponsored results in google (although part of that is not wanting to waste someones advertisement dollars, since I'm never out there to buy when searching.)

But once in a while I see an ad that catches my eye. It's always one that doesn't have sound, doesn't jump out of it's boarders, doesn't use the same old "Seven secrets they don't want you to know!" and does have a pretty picture, with a quick description of what it is. Example: A drawing of a redhead holding a card and grinning with pre-determined victory, and a title below her that says "The Game of Dust, the worlds best tactical card game!"

If you were trying to appeal to someone like me there's three things necessary:
Your advertisement should universally look legitimate.
If it's annoying, it'll push anyone who's spent more than three days on the internet away.
And the advertisement needs to get the attention of the kind of person who would be interested, without bothering them.

That last part is difficult, and I've seen it done poorly more often than not. Gentle movement can catch the eye without bothering. This means occasional transitions, or a slightly growing and shrinking glow effect around text, for example.

...

The only flaw I can see with vr4playa's ad (and this is likely because it's way out of my interest zone!) is that phone number makes it look like a local service. I'd be expecting long distance charges, and someone on the other end to go "Oh, this is only for people within a 20 mile radius." So if I were to personally click, it would be with the expectation of checking out the freebie, but not calling because of that simple judgement.

*Edit: And yes, I know the freebie is meant to be an actual consultation, but that doesn't mean I won't think "Might as well see if they got something else that's free there."

Originally Posted by Flatlander

Just shootin' from the hip here and you probably know this but... If you are getting almost half a million impressions and only 72 clicks then I think something is very wrong. I think you need to make sure that you are targeting your region, college educated users, probably older people who actually care about their finances, and so on etc., etc., etc.

Here's my targeting:

Targeting

* who live in the United States
* age 18 and older
*
who like architect, architects, architecture, arch...itecture interior design, business administration, business analyst, business development, business development manager, business management, business manager, business owner, business studies, business systems analyst, busy, cars, comedy, cosmetics, cosmetologist, cosmetology, ecommerce, engineer, engineering, entrepreneur, entrepreneur magazine, entrepreneurs incubator, entrepreneurs organization, entrepreneurship, esthetician, fitness, information technology, internet marketing, investing, investment analyst, investment banking, music, real estate, real estate broker, real estate consultant, real estate investor, real estate investors, skin care, sports, sports cars, taxes, truck driver, trucking, vote yes reject new taxes, web design, web designer, web developer, web development, work, working, working hard or working too muchSee More
* who graduated from college

I originally left out "college grad" as I know that there are plenty of success people out there that didn't graduate from college as well as just people who are making a living without a degree and still need a professional tax preparer/consult.

Let's see how this changes things since my target market went from 25m to about 8.5m by changing that one piece of criteria

In addition, for the "interests" I chose professionals, entrepreneurial types as well as common interests, since again, EVERYONE is a potential client and the best ones are the ones with common interests so I can add a personal touch to our services