My Experience with Facebook Advertising
There used to be a bakery on Armitage Ave in Chicago that
gave at free samples of bread. The bread
was amazing. The bakery was in a great
location and had tons of foot traffic.
The store was mobbed from opening to closing. Ultimately the bakery closed. Why? I
don’t know specifically but I suspect that people came to the store for the
free bread but then never went on to buy a loaf. In web parlance, the store got tons of
clicks but few sales: few conversions.
This is somewhat like my experience as a Facebook
advertiser.
II used to advertise on Facebook and may again someday but
as for now, at least for what I do, I see their advertising model as flawed. All in all, I spent a couple grand in
total. That was spread out over a number
of campaigns beginning in 2010 and most recently in early 2012. Website analytics indicated that Facebook
was the number one referral source to my websites, www.schoorurology.com and www.longislandvasectomycenters.com. I tried both pay-per click and pay-per
impression and both were effective in driving traffic to my sites. In fact, Facebook was more effective than
Google in driving traffic to the site. So
sounds good, right? Facebook would claim success and blame any
failures on my website. Perhaps they are
right perhaps not.
Let’s go a bit deeper. Business owners care about sales. While traffic may lead to sales, traffic in
and of itself, does not help. While both
Google and Facebook will drive traffic to your website, in in effect you
business, Facebook sends lurkers and window shoppers while Google sends
determined customers. My websites are
fine, as evidenced by conversions of traffic to actually physical patients
coming into the office.
Big difference.
