The Facebook Ad Experiment = Failure

So I recently decided to use $11 (a paltry sum but enough for a small experiment) to see if I could get more book sales by promoting the book on Facebook.

The results?

804 people saw the ad.
29 people "engaged" with the ad.

• 22 Post Likes.
• 1 Post Share.
• 6 people clicked on the image.
• 0 Page Likes.
• 0 Comments.

Zero additional book sales during the time period the ad was up.

Now that the experiment is over it really feels like I was paying 50 cents per Post Like.

Less than 3% of people who saw the ad clicked Like.

Now I do agree that if I was to do this experiment over again I would change things.

#1. I would have included a larger amount of text in the ad itself.
#2. More links in the ad to increase the visible opportunities for people to engage with the ad and click the links.
#3. I would have chosen a different image to promote, something that is more visibly appealing and also more quickly delivers the message of what the book is about.

I would also be tempted in the future to only promote a Facebook post which is ALREADY popular and has more viral potential.

Maybe.

Just maybe if I had to done those things prior to conducting the experiment perhaps there would be more Likes, more Shares, and maybe even a few book sales.

But how many more Likes?

Double, triple?

And there would still be no guarantee of any book sales.

I would have just as much luck promoting the post by Sharing it to various Facebook groups which are thematically on the same topic as the book - a practice which is FREE.

And then there is the time consumption.

I would say I spent 3 hours in the past 10 days monitoring this ad, getting and deleting annoying Facebook Receipts in my email, and the actual time it took to setup the ad in the first place.

And since I value my time at $35 per hour, I have now spent $105 worth of my time conducting an experiment that cost $11. So I am out $116 worth of time and money.

This officially makes Facebook Advertising a complete waste of both time and money.

It would have been faster, more efficient and free to just share the post to 3-5 Facebook groups and I would have gained approximately the same number of Likes.

And Likes are essentially worth nothing unless you can find a way to get sales from new customers.

So some people argue there is no such thing as a failed experiment. You either prove that something is true or it is false. In this case we have proven that Facebook Advertising is a waste of money, and for the time and effort involved, it is quantifiably worse than simply sharing the post for the free.

Also I did some research recently and according to my sources if a person wants to be a "Social Media Influencer" they need to be posting on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc at least 80 times per week. Not all at once either. They need to space it out to roughly 1 new post almost every 80 minutes you are awake. 11 to 12 posts per day, minimum.

Who has time to do that? People who are obsessed with social media and don't have much of a life, that is who.

So becoming a Social Media Influencer does take a lot of time and effort. You would need to be posting every 80 minutes in an effort to promote yourself, your products, your services, your website, etc.

And there would no doubt be a social cost in making all that effort. So say nothing of lack of sleep, stress and other problems.

So does it make sense to do it yourself? No. Not really. Time wise it makes more sense to pay someone else to do it. And then see how many sales you get during the first week, to see if it is worthwhile.

But in the case of Facebook... when you consider the time it takes to setup an ad, monitor the results... it doesn't make much sense. In that scenario it makes more sense to just share posts than to advertise posts.

In summary...

Facebook Advertising is a complete waste of your money and your time.

Festive and Holiday SEO vs PPC SEM

It is December 1st 2016 and there is only 24 days left til Christmas.

Black Friday, the 2nd busiest shopping day of the year, has already come and gone. The busiest day, Christmas Eve, will soon be upon us.

When it comes to the holiday season and spending your time and money on SEO, you might as well not even bother. Search Engine Optimization is designed for the long haul. It takes months for SEO to take effect. SEO does garner the best results, dollar for dollar - but the effects take time.

So don't bother. SEO simply takes too long and you are trying to advertise last minute. Anything you advertise in December won't see major results until months later. And that will be too late. Good for next year maybe, but not right now.

If you are trying to sell product NOW, during the Christmas rush, then your best bet is actually Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and that means paying Pay Per Click (PPC).

Lets say for example you are trying to sell a computer console game (eg. Skyrim Special Edition for PS4 = awesome game. I am hoping to get it for xmas myself.) and you want to be getting your customers to actually buy the product instead of just browsing, then you need to be focused on getting them to the checkout stage of purchasing.

This means you need to set up a PPC campaign wherein you only pay if the customer:

• Clicks your ad.
• Clicks a product for purchase.
• Goes to the checkout.

Google Adwords is your best bet for getting all of that. And the great thing is that they have to do all three things before you pay a penny.

It doesn't guarantee that they actually buy the product. Half of them might change their mind and decide to shop elsewhere, but if you are offering a good sale price, free shipping, 1 day or 3 day shipping, then chances are likely they will purchase via your store. This is why you need to calculate how many people are making their way to the checkout and how many actually make a purchase. Once you know the percentage, then you can compare that to your profit margin and figure out how to maximize your returns and how much you can be bidding/spending on each sale.

Hot Tip - If your sale price beats the price of the same product being sold on Amazon.com, and still has a good profit margin, you are basically guaranteed to make money if you are offering comparable shipping to whatever Amazon is offering.

For example if Amazon is selling the same console game for $69 and after Fedex shipping and expenses you are making $35 off every sale at the same price, you can then lower your price to $59 (and be making $25 off every sale) to beat their sales price. You could be spending $1 or even more on paying for clicks, but if half the people who make it to checkout stage change their mind and don't make the purchase, then that doubles your marketing costs to $2 for every sale. But you are still making $23 off every sale.

All you need to do then is calculate how many products you have in stock and how many you want to sell RIGHT AWAY. If you have 1000 units of the game, you could make your daily advertising limit $2000 (which most likely won't end up being used right away, but it could theoretically happen).

If you manage to sell 200 units the first day (for a cost of $400 but a profit of $4600) you are already in the black. Then just lower your daily advertising limit to $1600.

Day 2, another 200 or so units sold.

Day 3, Day 4, Day 5. If you are doing well you sell out of units and might even order more from your distributor. Then you simply suspend your SEM PPC campaign and wait until your next shipment of 1000 units arrives. Also you laugh all the way to the bank because you just made $23,000 in 5 days. (The Fedex people are amused by you sending out 1000 small packages in 5 days, but they might start offering you a business discount in the future.)

And eventually the well runs dry. The Xmas shopping season is over.

So you recalculate your profit margins, change your prices, change your PPC bids, and continue selling products anyway at a smaller volume.

And wait anxiously for next year, trying to calculate which console games will be the big sellers and worth advertising.

Update, Jan. 2017.

I did get Skyrim Special Edition for PS4 for Xmas. Woot. Oh and it is beautiful. The graphics are amazing. Breathtaking. I already had the old PS3 version of the game, but I wanted to play the new one with the updated graphics and all the added mods, expansions, etc. Simply wonderful game to play.

Amusing SEM Images

Since my brain is on the topic of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Pay Per Click advertising today I thought I would post these amusing SEM images.

PPC Competitors, Costs and Conversion Tracking

An Essay on the Topic of Pay Per Click Costs and Conversions

By Charles Moffat - SEO/SEM Expert at designSEO.ca

Let us say for a moment that you are running a business, like say an essay writing / resume writing business geared towards university students, and you were thinking about advertising using Pay Per Click (PPC). But you don't want to jump into the business of PPC without knowing what your competitors are spending.

Well I am afraid we would never be able to get exact numbers - the results of other people's PPC campaigns are confidential, you would need to hack into their account and look at what they are spending per click.

But I can give you an educated guess based on past experience.

Competitors and Costs

When I Googled essay writing, three sites came up in the top advertising box. Based on my experience I would say they are probably paying between 40 cents and $1 (USD) to come up in that top box, with the biggest bidder being the one at the top.

If I wanted a more specific number I would need to make an Adwords campaign, see what Google's bid estimate is (which is always inaccurate) and then actually bid on the keywords in question - essay writing, essay help, resume writing, resume help, etc. Wait a few days and I would get a clearer picture of how much the competitors are bidding. Then I would alter my bids to determine exactly how much the competitors are bidding for the top spot, alter bids for specific keywords, experiment with different keyword combinations, etc.

Basically it is a lot of hours sitting at the computer on a regular basis viewing the results and experimenting to determine how to get the best results.

If you wanted to hire designSEO.ca to run a PPC campaign for you then you could create an Adwords account, add a small sum of cash to the account balance, send designSEO.ca the login/password and we could run an experiment for you to see roughly how high you need to bid to come up in the top box in 1st, 2nd or 3rd place. Our monthly fee for running such an experiment is $120 CDN (4 hours worth of work).

However I don't recommend going the PPC route just yet. If you are running a business it would be better to find out:

#1. How many visitors your website has on a monthly basis;
#2. How many new customers you gain monthly;
#3. What percentage of visitors become customers;
#4. How much gross profit you make off each customer, on average, over the course of a year.

The trick however is that not all visitors are looking to buy. People who click on ads are more likely to make a purchase. What the higher rate of purchase is is unknown, but we can safely assume it is a higher rate. I will come back to this later.

Once you know those 4 things then it would be a matter of creating a PPC campaign, experimenting to see which keywords work best, making a PPC landing page with a contact form (to maximize how many people sign up), and add Adwords Conversion Tracking to the contact form.

Conversion Tracking is a great tool. Basically you track which people click ads and actually fill out / complete the contact/purchase form - then you learn which keywords people click on and are more likely to convert them into paying customers. Over time you then determine which ads make the most conversions and thus are worth bidding more on.

Using Conversion Tracking you can then determine what the higher rate of purchase is for people clicking on your ads as opposed to people just browsing.

But for now I recommend finding out those 4 things I mentioned above before committing to any PPC campaign.

Once you do determine those 4 things contact designSEO.ca and we can help get your PPC campaign on the road towards advertising success and maximizing the return on your advertising dollars!

Essay Fini!

Online Marketing Methods

Search Engine Marketing - Commonly known as PPC (Pay Per Click) SEM provides you an instant way of gaining visitors to your website but be careful as the money can soon mount up as you are paying for each and every your receive a visitor so making sure the phrases you are paying for is totally targeted to the page you are sending them to. ie. Google Adwords.

Banner and Link Advertising - Pay to have a banner and direct link placed on another website. Research what other types of websites your target customer base uses. Contact the owners of these websites and ask them if they could place a banner on their website for a monthly fee. You will find that websites which accept banner advertising have a page setup advertising the fact. The link is usually located at the very bottom of the homepage 'Advertise'. ie. Lilith eZine Advertising Opportunities.

Joint Ventures or Partnerships - Let's say you are a supplier of kitchens but you do not fit them. Why not contact the kitchen fitters in your area and do a deal where you advertise their fitting services on your website if they advertise your business on theirs. Maybe this is not the best example of a JV partnership but it gives you the general idea. HOWEVER WHEN LINKING BACK AND FORTH REMEMBER TO USE rel="nofollow" To learn why read The Importance of Non-Reciprocal Links.

Google Places - If you are a local based business then you need to make sure that your website is listed within the Google Places (or Google Maps as most people know it) section of the homepage.

Online Sponsorships - Sponsor an event or a charity in return the charity will be happy to provide your company with exposure on their website and exposure means brand awareness.

Social Media Marketing - With the massive following sites like Facebook and Twitter have it is a must that your business has an account. There is no cost involved, just a little of your time is needed. Building up a large following on both Twitter and Facebook can provide massive brand awareness. Do not use these sites to try and sell your services or products but use them to provide free information. Post links to the new articles you have written. Be informative not sales orientated. The idea behind using social media is that you want to make a name for yourself and seen as one of the experts within your industry. People might not need your product there and then but if they keep hearing your name you can be sure that you will be the first place they go to when they do require your service.

Online Press Releases / Newsletters - If you have some very interesting news about your business then getting a press release written and distributed is one of the best ways of getting the news out to the world. Maybe you have a new product launch or you are the only company within the UK who are able to supply the latest craze. If the news is good enough then spend a few quid and get your press release professionally written and distributed. You never know, you could even get a call from your local newspaper wanting to do a story on you. Building a newsletter and getting lots of people to read it is tricky, but worth doing.

Industry Related Blogs - Search for the top industry related blogs. Sign up and start contributing to the latest discussions. Again, do not try and sell but just provide advice, help people and join in the discussions. Once you have been a member of the forum and if you maintain an active presence, provide quality information then you will start to get asked for a quote.

Affiliate Programs - If you sell anything online then you should consider setting up your own affiliate system. This is where other people promote your business for you and in return they get a set percentage of any sale from people they have refered to your website. There are also well established affiliate networks you could look at.

Viral Video Marketing - With sites like YouTube viral video marketing has never been easier. We now have a free to use platform with millions of active viewers. The question is, how do you get a video to go viral? Viral meaning lots of people spreading the word about your video to lots of other people and so on. You need to create a video that includes an element of comedy. If something within a video is really funny or very unexpected then it will go viral a lot quicker. The video does not have to directly promote your company. As long as your brand is in the video somewhere then subconsciously it will stick in the back of peoples mind.

The Benefits of Search Engine Marketing

What are the benefits of doing Search Engine Marketing?

1. Marketing your website on the search engines is sometimes more cost effective providing a much higher ROI compared to most offline marketing methods.

2. You have the ability to promote your business Locally, Nationally and even Internationally.

3. The ability to target directly the people who want and need your product or service.

4. Depending on your industry and geographical target area(s) you have the ability to send a large amount of visitors to your website.

5. You can build up a strong brand awareness. If done correctly your brand (business or company name) could be seen many thousands of times per day.

6. Unlike an advertisment in a newspaper or magazine (unless you are paying a serious amount of money), search engine marketing has a long term future as long as you conform to all the online guidelines.

7. SEM takes less time than doing traditional SEO. SEM is great for people who lack patience and have extra money to burn.

However we should note that money wise SEO (Search Engine Optimization) may take more time and patience, but it also produces MORE BANG FOR YOUR BUCK.

Common Search Engine Marketing Terms

FOR A MORE DETAILED LIST SEE THE SEM GLOSSARY.

Knowing what these terms mean is the first step in strategizing your SEM campaign.

SEO or search engine optimization is the process of gaining a first page ranking on the search engines for any given keyword or phrase.

SEM or search engine marketing is a collection of all internet marketing methods you use to market your website on the search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.

ROI or return on investment is the difference in percentage between what you spend on your marketing campaign to how much profit you generate from that marketing.

PPC or pay per click is the ability to pay a search engine for advertising your website on the internet and each time anyone clicks through to your website, you then pay an agreed amount per click / visitor.

Search Engine Spiders are the tools that the search engines use to automatically spider through your website and then determine where to rank your site.

Landing Page is a page on your website which has been designed to sell or promote a certain service or product. These pages are sales based with a good call to action. The landing page is the first page on your website which your potential customers will see.

Keyword or phrase is the wording used when performing a search on the search engines.

Keyword Research is the process you use to determine what the best key phrases are for each page of your website. You need to find out what people are typing into the search engines to find your product or service then optimize your website for them phrases.

Analytics is the software used to track your website visitors, the number of visitors to your website, what pages are being looked at and much more depending on what analytics system you are using. ie. Google Analytics.

The Need To Use Search Engine Marketing

Internet Marketing is all about getting traffic to your website, and then converting it into dollars. Without the first part there is never any chance of the second, so generating traffic is a vital part of online marketing. Converting that traffic into profits is the real clincher so your product needs to be able to sell itself and your website should be in tip-top performance both in terms of design and being able to convert visitors into customers.

One of the most discussed methods of doing this is through Search Engine marketing. Search Engines play a huge and vital role in distributing traffic around the internet, and can make the difference between a site becoming outrageously popular, or dying a traffic free death. In recent studies it was shown that at least 80% of first time visitors to most websites are directed there through a Search Engine.

The obvious importance of Search Engines has spawned a massive demand for Search Engine Optimization and a number of Toronto firms have sprung up to cater to that demand. It is vital to new Toronto websites and established sites alike to be indexed with the big search engines.

Search Engines are the place that people begin their search for new information online. The search engines in turn gain their credibility through providing the most relevant search to the terms entered. The user is looking for the best answer to the question they have, and Search Engines are the most efficient way of finding that. Thus the search engines have to be very clever in establishing which sites are the most accurate match for the users query.

Webmasters agonize over finding the method which will put their site in the highest favor of the search engines. The answer given by almost all search engines is the same. The sites which provide the most current and meaningful information are the ones which will be listed the highest. Thus for the webmaster the first step to high search engine rankings is to provide meaningful content to surfers. Webmasters should always remember that regardless of the niche their website is designed for, the service that Search Engines provide is relevant content.

Search Engine Marketing needs to be taken very seriously by any webmaster who values traffic to their site(and that should be every webmaster). No webmasters work is done merely because they have finished constructing a website, no matter how wonderful the website itself is. In fact the website being built is merely the first step. Each page needs to contain relevant Meta Tags to start the search engine optimization process. Search Engines were once almost exclusively reliant on Meta Tags, but this quickly became inefficient as a means of determining the content as a page as webmasters would ‘spam’ their meta tags with a huge list of keywords to hijack traffic away from more quality content sites. Search Engines have wised up to this tactic, and they now not only recognize this process as legitimate, but will actively punish those indulging in it.

Along with Meta Tags, Search Engine Spiders are also able to browse site content and establish themes between Content, Meta Tags, Meta Descriptions and even anchor text on links(both internal and external). Search Engine formulas are designed to be increasingly hard to trick, and are now provide more and more accurate results. However due to the nature of internet spiders on websites, sites that use flash and images to provide content do rely heavily on the information in their Meta Tags and Descriptions.

Alongside Meta tags, Optimization is a highly important step in Search Engine Marketing. The process describes the process of designing a website specifically with getting a high Search Engine Ranking in mind. There are numerous Search Engine Optimization organizations around, and the ideal situation would be to employ the services of the better amongst these firms. Results can differ from absolutely nothing from a poor SEO provider, to dramatic floods of traffic from a successful Search Engine Optimization campaign. A good Search Engine Optimization firm will have their finger firmly on the pulse of what is happening in the Search Engine world, as this changes very quickly, and the changes can often have dramatic repercussions for the ranking of your website. Likewise changes you make should always be run past your Optimization specialists, as even a small and seemingly insignificant change can undo months of Optimization work.

A good SEO firm will also know its very important to base your product locally if you're promoting a business with an actual store front. ie. A Toronto restaurant or selling Toronto real estate. You want the locals to be able to find you so everything they do in terms of SEO should have the word Toronto in it (and possibly other keywords so you can pinpoint the location even more).

When you get the right combination of SEM and SEO, your site can soar to the top of the Search Engine rankings and your business can thrive. Needless to say getting it wrong can have the opposite effect, so it’s vital to make Search Engine Marketing a cornerstone of your online strategy.

NOTE: SEM really only works for certain types of products. Its best to start off with a small budget to determine whether your product is worthy of using Pay-Per-Click advertising. Otherwise you are better off sticking to traditional SEO.