Small Business Advertising on Facebook

I recent­ly began run­ning a Face­book Ad test for a Christ­mas Décor fran­chise here in Mary­land. Face­book has such a huge fol­low­ing which made me curi­ous about adver­tis­ing on it. What intrigued me the most about Face­book ads was the very tar­get­ed demo­graph­ics you could select when cre­at­ing an ad. I was about to tar­get col­lege grad­u­ates in select areas of Mary­land, male or female and spe­cif­ic ages. Face­book demo­graph­ics are pret­ty right on, because most Face­book users don’t lie about their pro­file (as they are try­ing to con­nect with old friends). I start­ed out with a very con­ser­v­a­tive dol­lar amount of only $3 a day back in Sep­tem­ber and have done almost 6 weeks of test­ing. The cam­paign is a pay per click ad, very sim­i­lar to Google Adwords. I am only charged if some­one clicks on my ad. The vis­i­tor, when they click on the ad lands on a Christ­mas Décor ​“land­ing page” that I cre­at­ed. (View Land­ing Page). The cool thing about Face­book ads is that I can change them any­time I want and always have a pic­ture. The pic­ture ads are per­fect for a Christ­mas dec­o­rat­ing fran­chise as the beau­ti­ful dis­play homes speak for them­selves! Most days I max out my num­ber of clicks that range from 3 – 6 per day. As I write this blog, the com­pa­ny has received 3 quality/​targeted leads for $107 invest­ed. The aver­age cost per job for this Christ­mas Décor com­pa­ny is $2,800. So to spend $107 to get 3 leads with a clos­ing ratio of 50%+…that is a great ROI. Final­ly, I expect the Face­book ads to do even bet­ter as we move into the Christ­mas sea­son for 2009! Typ­i­cal­ly peo­ple do not start think­ing of Christ­mas til the mid­dle of Novem­ber and even more after Thanks­giv­ing. It is not on their radar screen. So, if my the­o­ry is cor­rect, I believe Face­book adver­tis­ing for a product/​service busi­ness works: espe­cial­ly for Christ­mas lights! As for painters adver­tis­ing on Face­book, I would love the chal­lenge of test­ing an ad cam­paign for them. I would say it may not be as suc­cess­ful as Christ­mas lights, but if the ad is writ­ten well with a good land­ing page, who knows!