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Facebook ads and Google ads anyone used them?

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 gcandlin 12 Nov 2012
Just wondering if anyone has any experience of using Google ad words or Facebook ads to promote their business?

If so how effective was it for you and much did u spend?

Cheers

Gareth
 Jaffacake 12 Nov 2012
In reply to gcandlin:

There's been quite a few articles in the news about facebook ads not being worth it, because so many of the clicks are fake accounts. Also claims that they count things like someone liking your product or ad (and thus it showing in their news feed) as an impression. I read a thread about it on reddit a few months ago with several people who'd used ads saying it wasn't worth it, but I haven't used it myself.
What Goes Up 12 Nov 2012
In reply to gcandlin: Facebook ads a couple of times for my photo business. Generated a few enquiries and one booking first time, nothing so far this time - total outlay to date around £180, so I don't think I'll be bothering again (if I spend up to £50 one way or another to secure a booking that's okay with me, but any more and it starts to defeat the purpose). Shame as I like the principle of being able to target specific people / groups (so my current ad is set up for people who got engaged within the last year, 80 mile radius from my postcode) and I'm paying per click at around 60p each, but it's only averaging 3 or 4 clicks per day despite assuring me that there are thousands of people who fall within my specified terms. I understand that FB have recently changed the way they promote and share business pages and there's less of an incentive fr me now - partly it was about building up likes so that when I put up a post or promotion of my own more people would see it, but business posts aren't necessarily promoted to your likes any more without making further payments so building up a base of subscribers doesn't really have a lot of value to me. I'm going to keep the page ticking over just so that I have a presence as it doesn't hurt, but won't be spending any more money on it.

No experience with google ads.
In reply to gcandlin:

I've used Google in the past at up to about £300 a month.

It works well but you need to put in time to set up your campaign and monitor it regularly. If you don't keep your eye on the stats you end up paying for useless clicks and spam clicks and get outbid on the best keywords. The spammers and competitors using Adwords keep morphing tactics and Google keeps tweaking the system to get more billable clicks so you can get caught out if you just leave it running.
 Scarab9 12 Nov 2012
In reply to gcandlin:

google ads will certainly boost your traffic, and as you write the description that appears and choose what keywords from searches to target you can be sure it's people reasonably interested in your site (if you do it right).

You can also analyse what words have the best click rate so early on in the campaign check it often and narrow down which words work and which don't.
 EeeByGum 12 Nov 2012
In reply to gcandlin: Forget it. My boss used Adwords on Google a while ago and ended up spending about £3k which in total generated one £40 sale. Using the server logs, it turned out to to be a bot in Vietnam automatically clicking on his link.

We also recently got in a marketing chap and using some sophisticated tracking in our web page and software had another go with Adwords. I think we spent about £300 and generated a few downloads of our free software but generated no sales.

I genuinely wonder why people bother with such marketing. The only thing I can conclude is that it is marketing departments with more money than they know what to do with so just pile it into Google or Facebook, but I don't believe for a second it returns more value than is spent.
 yarbles 12 Nov 2012
In reply to gcandlin: The ads on fb were annoying me as they started to make noise and flash so I installed adblocker which stops them. I think its getting more popular so you'll be getting a smaller audience. Stops adverts on 4OD too, bonus!
 Big Steve 12 Nov 2012
In reply to gcandlin: Google ads - Ive used them and they generated some traffic, not what I considered a value for money amount though. For an unknown reason, I have been banned from putting google ads on my site, so I will never pay to advertise with google ads again.


OP gcandlin 12 Nov 2012
In reply to gcandlin: Thanks for all your replies guys. Looks like its a non starter.
 Snax 12 Nov 2012
In reply to gcandlin: Facebook ads, I've used a few times, but as a Facebook Social user they annoy the hell out of me and I'm inclined to think that Facebook has had its day regarding PR/Advertising use... So I would hesitate to advise the PPC scheme in its current form.

Goggle Ad's is different and set up correctly can work very well, currently spending up to £30/day over about 100 ad's and a couple of thousand key words and its generating reasonable conversions. So no complaints so far. It does take a lot of time to set up correctly through, takes time monitoring and tweaking each add, some will work some won't.

I guess it boils down to the amount of time you can afford to spend on building a successful Ad campaign against the expected return. Also the kind of business you are in, you likely buyers, social pattens etc...

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