Julie 'FB Expert' J. said:

SHAAAZAAAMMMM!!!! This is a great and valuable post for all marketer's, love the way you brought your ideas together. Keep it up. . My friend Jani has created a "little known" secret from siphoning traffic from facebook, none of the GURU's are teaching and it's working AWESOME! speak soon Julie 'FB Pro' Jameson

Digby Green said:

Very interesting blog and comments.

As a small advertiser who has tried Facebook ads I am put off by the rapidly rising clicks bids price.

I was going to say that I cannot jutsify 90 cents a click.

But the Piper airplane example blows that away. But my product is only $5.00 retail.

 

 

MiaDand said:

@Michael Thank you! Your feedback is much appreciated :)

MichaelKolowich said:

Amen, Mia.  I was amused, too, at the commenter's faux-pas in criticizing your use of "advertising spend" -- a legitimate term-of-art in marketing.  How frightening is that?

Bravo for emphasizing substance over form, and keep the insights coming!

MiaDand said:

@Shari Gosh! You had me chuckling because it's the first time I've had someone completely ignore the content and focus instead on correcting it.

Thanks for the effort and since you took the time to comment, it's only fair that I respond. None of the "typos" you've pointed out are due to lack of diligence in the use of spellchecker or your whatchamacallit grammar book.

On the first one - try Googling "advertising spend" and you'll find that it's perfectly good use of the English language.

The "handbaks" part is baffling because it's spelled correctly in my original post on  http://marketingmystic.wordpress.com  But when I tried to correct it on this site, I got the message that "it's on the list of denied words". I have no idea what that means or how to fix it but my post got cancelled when I tried to use the correct version, so we'll just have to live with it.  

I am hardwired to add "an" in front of any word starting with a vowel. I don't claim to be an expert on grammar so I am glad that that despite my overzealous use of "an" and the occasional typo, previous commenters still found some value in this post and for that I am very grateful :)

MiaDand said:

@analogboy Can you share which product/service category you've used Facebook for? Would be helpful for my follow up post. Thanks!

 

 

ShariMoss said:

I was just reading this paragraph in Social Media's article titled "Debunking Five Social Media Myths":

"When you’re communicating online, people are judging you. Sometimes they’re just jerks who judge people, or martinets who enjoy correcting others, but they can also be important people who can influence your success.

If I was going to hire a PR agency, I would read the agency blog to learn about the firm’s communications philosophy. If its employees write poorly on the company’s blog, which after all is just a new kind of company web site, then why should I expect good writing if I retained them for my company?"

I wouldn't have mentioned it, but as I was reading this article there were just too many errors to overlook:

"39% increase in advertising spend on Facebook" (and that's the first sentence!)

"One’s pitching designer handbaks"  (what are handbaks?)

"As an user, it’s annoying but as an advertiser,"

 Now I'm neither a jerk nor a martinet nor do I enjoy correcting others, but come on... at least use a spell / grammar checker before you post your article... and for gosh sakes, getchurself a copy of Strunk & White's "Elements of Style".

 

 

 

 

 

StevenBradley said:

Working client-side for a large organisation, I have to say that advertising on Facebook works much better for us then advertising with Google Adwords or other PPC systems.

MiaDand said:

@Dom Given that Facebook's revenue model is based on these "display ad talking about a tinpot brand", the point of this post is to examine the efficacy of these ads from both consumer and advertiser POV.

Yes, I completely agree with you that there are many brands doing a great job of building their community on Facebook and other social networks. However, that's a topic for a future blog post :)

MiaDand said:

@Michael Thanks for sharing your experience. That's a great success story!

I've heard from numerous sources that Facebook ads work well for driving traffic to other social networks and in this case, to Fan pages on Facebook itself.

However, as you rightly pointed out, Facebook lacks the sophistication to allow accurate targeting. As a result, it works well for a limited number of products/services, but not as well for others.

I will go into more details in my follow up post.

DomWeiss said:

Aren't we missing the point a little here? Advertising on Facebook isn't about some display ad talking about a tinpot brand; it's about interacting on Facebook itself. Just from the examples above, BMW and HBR are doing well to build a relationship with their customers with giving value as the key component. Music artists are other very good examples of brands that use social networking sites as a vehicle to form personable relationships with their fans. This ranges from informing fans of upcoming gigs, to tweeting their personal anecdotes to providing a platform for fans to talk to each other. Thoughts?

MichaelKolowich said:

I agree with many of the previous posts that the Facebook ad offering is lame -- especially to one who's accustomed to the sophistication of Google AdWords, paired with Google Analytics.
That said, I am right in the middle of experiencing a real-time success story that is, in part, driven by Facebook advertising.  So in the interest of fair-and-balanced, I thought I'd share it now, as it unfolds.
This past Thursday mid-day, Piper Aircraft launched a hip new airplane, the PiperSport. It's a cool design at a very low price (for airplanes), and does not require a full private pilot license to fly it.  In many ways, it's an "everyman's airplane".
I've been in charge of the social media launch of the PiperSport, and in addition to a really informative YouTube video and channel and a lively Twitter feed, we wanted to create a strong, vibrant community on Facebook.  In our experience, though, organically-grown Facebook pages are often slow to develop.  And there's nothing more depressing to a new Facebook fan than to enter a Fan page with only a handful of members and little conversation.
Enter the Facebook ad.  And how.
Within two hours of launch, we had 100 fans at www.facebook.com/pipersport, all chattering away about their experiences and ambitions, sharing photos, and generally enthusing about the airplane.  By the end of the day, we had almost 400 fans, and the wall was buzzing with comments and questions.  Fans were answering questions as quickly as they were asked - promptly and accurately - even before I needed to step in as the "voice of the product".
It's now 6:00pm on Saturday, and we have more than 1,000 fans and 2,000+ viewings of the video on Facebook and YouTube.  57 hours ago, nobody had ever heard of the PiperSport; now we have an army of advocates.
We have four documented instances of people hearing about the PiperSport first on Facebook, going to the fan pages, and deciding to buy (a couple had previously decided to buy another airplane but switched when they saw the enthusiasm and pilot reports on the Facebook page).  At $120,000+ a pop, that's a huge return.  Total investment to date: $665.
How did Facebook ads help?  More than 600 fans came directly through Facebook ads. I'm sure that many others came as second-order referrals from people who arrived first from the Facebook ads.
And Facebook does itself a disservice in limiting new advertisers to $250 a day.  Based on these results, we would readily have spent several times that to get the community going.
Lesson: one can never categorically say something works or doesn't work.  For this application, I'm a believer.  For some others, not so much.
Michael Kolowich
DigiNovations / ChannelOne Marketing Group
Concord, Massachusetts

 

 

MiaDand said:

Thanks everyone for chiming in!

@Andreas Great point. Social networks may be new but the traditional agency mindset still needs to change and FB needs to do a better job at targeting.

@Katie Completely agree. It is disappointing as there is so much potential. As some others have pointed out, desperate advertisers will continue to flock to Facebook because of the hype.

@Matt @David Excellent points! Unlike existing ad models, Facebook and other social networks have the ability to combine contextual information with demographics on the individual user to allow very accurate targeting. However, it will be a huge missed opportunity if Facebook doesn't get it right.
@Robin That should be one interesting webinar. Will check it out :)

@Bret Agreed, it's going to promoted like crazy by the "experts" and traditional marketers will jump on the bandwagon because they are too scared to be left behind.

@Barry Thanks for pointing that out. I wonder if click fraud is responsible for some of the highly positive results we've heard being touted.

@Extreme John I think it works for certain product/service categories, but their ad serving model is too simple and needs to improve.
 

DavidDines said:

I agree that FB has done a bunch of things wrong:  lack of focus, targeting, pricing and helping their advertisers understand the new business model of SM ads. Though, it seems to me that if they follow Microsoft's and Google's model and learn from their mistakes, they do have a potential gold mine on their hands.  Also, if advertisers think that they can use the same annoying, gimmicky ads on social sites, they will likely be disappointed in the CTRs and the affect on the brand.

MattMooreWrites said:

It's likely both a lack of inventory and failure to understand the medium. Let's face it—social media and SM ads are very, very low priority for a lot of companies with tried and true business and advertising models. So, companies that create those annoying, shaking, blinking banner ads are going to migrate to Facebook—not to promote a service or product, but make a quick buck.

Look for the creative of the ads (let's face it—they're limited) you can present and user targeting mechanisms to evolve, which will attract bigger names with more serious campaigns, which will force another evolution of FB ads, attracting more serious ads, etc.

Robin Carey said:

Mia, glad you asked.  We're just putting together one of our world-famous webinars on using facebook for business, here's the link: http://bit.ly/7r3cj6