Does Facebook Advertising work?

Does Facebook Advertising work for direct sales? Everyone is on Facebook these days, people spend hours upon hours on Facebook, but  can I sell my product through  Facebook Advertising? The answer of course is it depends what you look for & the audience you target. Facebook has many layers, your  friends list of course, which may consist of real life fiends & family, or “friends” you have no idea who they are or if they exist at all. Then there are a billion other Facebook accounts, a substantial percentage of them are fake accounts. There are dozens of companies in India & elsewhere will sell you 500 or 10,000 Facebook Likes or Friends for 5$ to $15. I’ve tried them a few times, you would never guess all those accounts are just fakes who are handing out generous likes of which  Facebook makes a living along with many poor Indians.

Targeting your warm close circle of friends or company fans  & will naturally yield results. If you have a business page with fans or likes only, you will have to pay for Facebook to Boost your post to all fans  otherwise Facebook will show it to only a few. That is all easy; advertising to an audience beyond your own, does it pay on Facebook? I would say form experience it doesn’t pay. Facebook has a complicated platform where you can choose to pay per view, per post engagement or website click. You can also pick you target audiences based on age, demographics & interest at your specific industry or market. at one example, I’ve tried doing ads for a customer who has a steady over 5%  conversion rate on Adwords. I targeted a very specific product for an audience with a specific medical condition. I tried all form pay per view, per click & finally per website click. I’ve gotten hundreds of likes but after a week not a single conversion. For what I payed to Facebook,  this customer typically gets 50 conversions on average when paying the same amount on Adwords.  I’ve tried a few more test runs in other industries, we also spoke to others all with the same results, it doesn’t really work.

If you don’t have deep pockets for big branding campaigns, buying ads on Facebook is a waste of money.

One Reply to “Does Facebook Advertising work?”

  1. It comes down to buying intent. Site visitors with buying intent tend to convert well, while those who are merely curious convert poorly.

    Visitors from search demonstrate their buying intent by means of their search queries. Adwords and Bing allow marketers to bid for visitors with the proper buying intent. Those visitors can convert well.

    Of course, site visitors with buying intent coming from organic search are just as welcome. 🙂

    Social media sites on the other hand target a wide audience that includes few with real intent to buy. For gift items, social sites will perform better during the holiday gift giving season, since many people are looking to buy gifts and therefore have buying intention. Nevertheless, social channels are still best for branding, i.e. building awareness and molding perceptions.

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