As a SEO specialist here in Mauritius i always had an issue with google adwords and facebook ads. I am a big advocate of organic search results but obviously you need to do something while you get the ranking results. Over the years, i’ve done a fair amount of Google Adwords and Facebook campaigns. In both cases i found some problems:
Google Adwords:
Great tool when the buyer is in “ready to buy mode”. Usually, you are not going to google “buy wedding dress mauritius” for example if you are not looking to buy a dress (either now or in a near future). So, lets assume that you have the perfect product for this person looking to buy a wedding dress…bingo!
The buyer is effectively looking for a dress, she finds one and acts on it. As an SEO service provider, this is all i am interested in. If the dress for some reason is not perfect for the customer, or she doesn’t like it or found a cheaper one…these are elements that are beyond my control. I can’t influence the pricing structure of a product or service, nor can i make a product better. All i am doing is giving that product some eyeballs and a fair chance of it getting sold. That is what i like about Google Adwords, people are actively looking for a product or service and therefore are ready to make a purchase. All they have to do is find the right one.
The problem is, i can’t use high targeting techniques for them because google doesn’t have enough information on ‘you’. (one of the main reason they created google + probably 😛 ). If i am running a CPC campaign, i’ll probably waste a bit of money on people that are outside of my target range. For example, a 10 year old girl dreaming of getting married, could google for a wedding dresses…although she is obviously not going to make a purchase.
This is why i like to use Facebook ads in some very particular scenarios.
Facebook Ads
The main problem with Facebook ads is: Customers are rarely in a “ready to buy mode” and therefore once they click on your ad, whatever follows has to be amazing. First, they look at your ad – think it might be for them – click on it. Then you have the next 5 seconds to convince then (attention span of a goldfish! i know, but that is the sad truth). You might have made a few searches for “wedding dresses” and Facebook will allocate some wedding ads on your page. The problem is…you might be at work and you have only 2 mins to check your Facebook page. You’ll click on the ad because it is still relevant to your life but you are not in the “ready to buy mode” and therefore will probably skim through it. The client will still be paying for that click though.
Obviously if the click brings you to some magic LALA land and there is an offer that makes it difficult to refuse…then of course the ad might result into a conversion. I still think 80% of the time, you’ll be losing that money.
On the other hand, i think Facebook Ads are great for Awareness and Branding.
These guys have made an amazing job at using this strategy:
It’s a “marathon type race” company that tours the world and sets up the event in different cities. They started using Facebook ads to build awareness that they were coming in 6 months to Mauritius. After a few weeks, everyone started getting excited and passed on the information. It would have been highly difficult to obtain the same result with google adwords! Simply because people would not have been searching for “mud race” or “marathon Mauritius” out of the blue. It did a great job in building an audience.
The problem started for me when i had to build awareness about a certain website. They were offering a subscription type service to a very region base market. The problem was that i couldn’t simple pick a gender and an age demographic and bang it out. The product could only be purchased by the “decision maker” of the company. I started doing some research and i found a really cool article on Amyporterfield which talked about using interest as a further targeting technique.
It went from a broad Audience of:
TO
You can see that i am targeting a much small audience now and this will result in a much smaller amount of clicks, however the quality of these clicks will be much better.
All i did was: Add certain job positions in the precise interests section and hope that these will be decision takers within a company.
Lets see how my conversion rate performs in the next few weeks.
Related Tag: Social Media Marketing
