Update on Facebook Ads
When I posted on Segmenting and Integrating Facebook Social Ads a month ago, I promised an update on the results, once the ads had stopped running. I was satisfied with the overall results, while not being ecstatic:
Maybe its the fact that when I do email ROI, I get a marketing ROI in the thousands, it not tens of thousands? So 237%, while still good by any standard, was a bit depressing for me.
The most interesting piece of information that came out of it was that the only ads where clicks resulted in transactions were the ones that were based on the year the person graduated and directed them to our honor roll (to guilt trip them into giving if their name wasn’t included on it yet. So while I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea in my original post, when I let it run its course it was the only one that worked. As a reminder, here is what those ads looked like, followed by the GA e-commerce stats:
I found it very interesting that the main ads, which led the user to the challenge landing page, didn’t result in any gifts. Next time, I think I’ll test leading them to the challenge landing page versus leading them directly to the gift form. All the stats tell me that people are much more likely to give if you just send them directly to the gift form - they don’t even have to think about it.
I also have to wonder if there was just over-communication during this challenge - I really noticed that both the email stats and the Facebook stats started to pitter out as it went on. Maybe taking a closer look at the user experience next time will be helpful. Maybe being more clever in what we deploy and when we deploy it next time.
But back to Facebook ads, I’m not jumping up and down over the results, but am I satisfied. Anytime you get an ROI of over 100%, you’re in the clear. Plus, since we used this as an opportunity to test strategies we hadn’t used before, it’s great information to use for next time.
(And yes, I understand the irony of posting a blog devoted entirely to web marketing directly after posting one that took a harsh line with people only being interesting in marketing. But now I’m going to go work on a web style guide and revamping my properties to make them more standards compliant so I’m OK with that 
July 3rd, 2008
Nice follow-up. What’s important and you addressed it is to keep tinkering. Well you found a formula that worked and some that didn’t… so do more of what worked and fill in the space of the ones that didn’t with something else. It’s an always changing and adapting landscape.