Small Business Marketing – Does facebook advertising work?

Does facebook advertising work? This question has been asked of me a few

Does facebook advertising work

times lately. And unfortunately, like all forms of advertising there is no way of really guaranteeing whether it will work for you or not. However, we can look at other small business experiences to get an idea .

Payvment is a facebook ecommerce platform that build facebook stores for businesses who have recently conducted a survey over 100,000 facebook store owners, so does facebook advertising work for them? Here’s an extract from the results

Small Business Marketing – Does facebook advertising work?

Facebook Ads are the top promotional tool for sellers beyond general Facebook marketing.

Facebook sellers are doing their part to fuel Facebook’s $5 billion forecasted ad revenue this year. More than one-third (39 percent) of respondents report having used Facebook Ads, making this the most prevalent marketing tactic used by sellers to drive traffic to their stores beyond general Facebook marketing — such as promotions and deals posted to their wall — and nearly 70 percent of respondents say they plan to use Facebook Ads again.

Facebook Ads enjoy high favorability among Facebook sellers who have used them. Sellers cite effectiveness in fan and customer acquisition as their top reason (68 percent) for planning more Facebook Ad campaigns. Other reasons for continuing to use Facebook Ad programs include the ability to start and stop campaigns (60 percent), Facebook’s targeting capabilities (60 percent) and Facebook Ads’ ease of use (55 percent).

But not all Facebook sellers have had success acquiring new fans and customers with Facebook Ads. Among the 30 percent who say they wouldn’t use Facebook Ads again, 68 percent report that they did not acquire many new fans or customers through this channel. Lower-than-anticipated results may be due to confusion about how to effectively use Facebook Ads, as one-quarter (25 percent) of respondents who haven’t tried Facebook Ads say they don’t understand how to use them.

Cost is also cited as another top reason for not using Facebook Ads again: 65 percent say they wouldn’t continue using Facebook Ads because they are too expensive. Interestingly, among those who aren’t currently advertising on Facebook, only 32 percent say that Facebook Ads are too expensive to use — the majority (63 percent) cite lack of budget as their primary deterrent. Click here to visit the original source of this post

While the survey has been skewed by being mainly for those that sell on facebook stores, it still provides the most recent data that I could find. And my own experiences? I have had 3 campaigns for my shoe store, limited by location ( my city only) and target market (women with children) at a $10US budget per day for a period of 2 weeks at a time. While I have not had many new customers rushing through my door as a direct result, I have had many new ‘likes’ on my facebook fanpage so at least I can continue to market to them directly at no cost.

When I stop to consider how my print and radio advertising has performed, I find that I have achieved more real action(s) by using facebook at a lower cost. So was it a success? I’m in two minds, however I am planning on another campaign starting shortly.  I love how I can target my audience, see how many have viewed the ad, how many have clicked, how many have then liked my page, and how many friends of those viewing the ads have seen them as well. I have had no other advertising channel give me such data.

No, nothing is guaranteed, all markets are different and so much of marketing and advertising success in my opinion is timing. So does facebook advertising work? Judging by my results and the results of others, better than other forms of advertising.