Hi All,
Social marketing? Well I can categorically tell you what doesn't work and that's Twitter and Facebook. If anyone can make money from marketing on these social networks I'd be very interested to know exactly how they do it.
As far as I'm concerned IM twitterers would just like to think that all their "followers" are actually reading their tweets, when in fact nobody is. And the reason? Nobody is the slightest bit interested and everyone knows that they're just trying to sell them something. Now if you're a celebrity then that's a different matter. In that case everyone who is following will hang to to every tweeting word.
Now then what about Facebook? Well I tried an ad last year when I was promoting my License2Profit product. I spent $100 and I didn't get a single sale from it and only a handful of clicks. Well since then I kept on hearing and reading about how people were making money from Facebook so I thought I'd have another go.
This time I thought I'd put up an ad to promote the BusyVids service to the business community. Many businesses have scrambled to get a facebook page recently because... well it's a trend. But that's all it is... a trend.
So, I created an ad and submitted it for approval. And I couldn't believe it when it was disapproved. You just can't track these Facebook bods down to ask them why exactly your ad is disapproved, which is really frustrating. You're just referred to their policy and guidelines, which are pretty ambiguous to say the least.
Well, undeterred I revised the ad and submitted it again. Wham! The same thing happened. They refused my ad because of the image, which just happened to be the image of a video button. Well, I mean I was trying to promote a video service so what was the problem?
Okay, I thought I'll have one last try. I kept the description the same and changed the image to a laptop. I submitted it for approval and ... well I was now beginning to sound a bit like Victor Meldrew with my "I don't believe it" chant. "Oh let's just forget it", I said. Yes I do talk to myself.
Hmm Hmm do de do... twiddle twiddle... No! I can't stand being beaten and I was NOT going to give in. Actually, maybe this was the reaction they really wanted, so I'd willingly throw money at it without question. Hmmm... good marketing ploy.
Okay so I rewrote the description to something much less salesy and much more bland, and I changed the image to a UK flag. Well, what could they do? They had to let it pass, although it wasn't really what I had wanted. Right let's cut to the chase...
Here's a screenshot of my ad campaign more than half way through my $100 budget.
As you can see, it was running on a CPM at a cost of $0.19 per thousand views. But it was costing me almost a dollar a click so it would probably have been cheaper to have set it up for PPC. Anyway, at the end of the campaign I had a grand total of 102 clicks for my $100 and not a single call or email.
Well, in my opinion Facebook is simply for friends and not for business. Unless of course you know different?
All for now.
Bill
