On Facebook and Twitter Ads

TL;DR: Social networks are great for spreading the word about almost anything. Ads on them, not so much.

I had a Doxie One to giveaway, and picked to give it away on April 1st as a inverse joke of sorts. This one’s the joke that’s actually real, everyone! Not exactly the best idea ever, since everyone seemed to ignore the giveaway the first day it was online, assuming it was just another April Fools’ joke, only one a lot less funny than the rest.

Yet, it was no joke. I had a real, $149 scanner courtesy of the Doxie team to giveaway, and I wanted to spread the word far and wide. What better place to spread the word about anything than social networks? The entries were trickling in from my existing follower base and their friends as the message shared, but I wanted more.

And so, I decided to do a little experiment. Every time you post something on a Facebook Fan Page these days, it prompts you to promote the post for money. I decided to take them up on it, for once. I’d promote the post to an audience of people who should be interested in a Doxie One (people who liked Evernote, Microsoft Office, and a few other things) in English speaking countries (since my post was in English), and limit the budget to the minimum possible ($15). The post told people that I was giving away a Doxie One, and to like the page and comment on that post to enter the giveaway. That’s not too much work to have a shot at a $149 scanner, and I figured I’d at least grow my page’s fan count, regardless of how unimportant that is with the new Facebook feed.

I did almost the same thing on Twitter, targeting people who were interested in Technology and liked Evernote, Doxie, and OneNote. You have to set a bid cost for clicks on Twitter as well; I’m cheap, so I went for half of the $1.15 they’d suggested. And I gave the campaign the same budget as Facebook’s, this time telling people to follow my page and share the post to enter.

You’d figure you’d get at least something for $30 of ads on the two hottest properties online today.

Not so fast.

Twitter says I got 5 new followers and Facebook claims 10 new likes on my page thanks to ads. And yet, my Facebook page likes actually only went up by 7, and my new Twitter followers are all people who already followed my personal Twitter account. Twitter says I got a total of 319 clicks to my site link thanks to the ad, and Facebook got 159 people to like my post and 6 people to click through to my site.

And yet, of all those, not one actually did what I said to enter the giveaway. No one commented on the Facebook posts, and the only people who shared the Twitter post were ones who would have seen it through my other account already. I got a ton of likes on the Facebook post itself, but that’s worth zero—page likes were what I was after, along with spreading the word about the giveaway, but apparently people clicked like on a picture post without even reading what it said.

Perhaps my targeting was too broad; I just saw a post today talking about how well Facebook mobile ads had worked for marketing an app with very specific targeting. I was trying to get a broad spectrum of viewers, and yet, perhaps that broad spectrum was less specifically interested in what I was offering.

Ads are a tough thing to actually get to work out well. If you’re Coke, you’re just trying to keep your brand’s name in people’s minds. With that, almost every possible ad buy is justifiable. But if you’ve got a specific goal in mind with your ad—getting people to share your content or directly purchase your product—Facebook and Twitter’s “targeting” isn’t going to magically bring the right people to your doorstep.

You might get a lot of likes on a post. But that’s not worth anything. You’re far better off focusing on your existing followers, and growing them naturally through quality products and posts. Even if you’re giving something away, the vast majority of people simply won’t notice if you’re telling them in an ad.

Thoughts? @reply me on Twitter.