This video title “Facebook Fraud”, opened my eyes to the truth behind Facebook Advertising. I understand not wanting to spend 8 minutes watching the video so I’ll sum it up in 1 sentence – paying Facebook to run your ad as a sponsored page is a waste of money and it needs to be exposed.
Getting Started with Facebook Ads
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Social media is constantly a hot topic in the corporate world and a raved as a wonderful way of staying current with your customers. With Facebook being at the forefront, it makes sense to experiment advertising within it. I ran a campaign that used a $5 dollar daily budget targeted to only the US and Canadian males between the ages of 25-55 whose interests were roofing, painting, and masonry. The company I work for sells hand tools to these industries and this was a broad / targeted attempt. I spent $604.00 in the past 4 months and it generated over 650 likes. Seeing who liked the page and how relevant they are to my company is the first key.
How Do I See Who Likes My Page in Facebook?
Click the people who liked this on the dropdown
The first interesting tidbit you run into is that Facebook makes it difficult to even find the page to see the actual people who like the page. You must click on “settings”, then click on “banned users” and switch the users to “people who like this” in the drop down. This is the first sign that Facebook tries to hide who views your page because they must have an inkling it’s bogus. The reason they don’t want you seeing your likes could be for privacy concerns but more likely it is to hide the data.
How Real Are the People Who Like My Page?
I went through 62 out of the 926 people who like our company page (most of which was accumulated by paying for likes) in FULL detail. I looked at where they worked, who else they were clicking on, went through their pictures, the full nine yards to understand what I was getting. Once you look at 62 random Facebook profiles, you start to pick up some understanding of what you are looking at.
Any correlation here?
It’s quite easy to spot people who are shills or people from “click farms”. The amount of likes a single person may have can range upwards of 10,000. Most people of the 62 fall between the range of 1,000-6,000. Now check how many likes you have. I have 63 personally. Most real accounts I checked ranged from 14-713. If you like thousands of pages with no consistency you are either stupid or paid to like pages. Other info to verify strange doings is when the likes have no baring on the person. I found a guy from New York like San Francisco Pizza. Another liked United Dental, Ortho Mattresses, and Kaa Energy drink. They don’t like your page, they are getting paid to spend your money.
Value?
Out of the 62 people I thoroughly evaluated, 7 were obtained that I would consider of any relevance. That leaves 55 wasted likes which goes off at a little less than a dollar per like. If you extrapolate this through 600 likes, I flushed $500.00 down the toilet. Compare this to my campaigns I’ve run on Adwords and it is night and day. Facebook is under so much pressure to make money that I believe that accounts are set up strictly to like any and everything. If you watched the video in the beginning you’d know they set up click farms in foreign countries to waste people’s money. The campaign I run was strictly USA but it’s clear that it happens everywhere.
If you are considering Facebook advertising, I’d suggest boosting posts to an audience instead of paying for people to like your page in general.
I’m sure we’ve had this discussion before, be Facebook remarketing is the way to go. It posts ads on Facebook only to people who have visited your website before.
I must have been asleep when we talked about it.