Facebook pay-per-click-advertising. Worth your money?
We rarely recommend PPC advertising in general, and Facebook advertising specifically, the reason being that the marketing ROI tends to low. It turns out that, according to research by CNBC, we were right. Apparently 83% of Facebook users almost never clicks on an ad they see displayed in Facebook. This is in spite of 30% saying that they check their Facebook account multiple times a day, and 75% saying they check it once to multiple times a week. General Motors apparently felt the same way, having completely eliminated their Facebook advertising spend.
Apart from the fact that it begs some interesting questions regarding the Facebook valuation, and it's financial outlook (remember how I have been arguing we have a social media bubble?), marketers should be asking themselves how they can use Facebook as part of their marketing mix. The response lies in the business pages, and the content you post on there. If you provide value to your audience, interact with them and give them a forum, chances are you are getting some good mileage out of your Facebook presence. As long as you remember that it's going to be a long term project: just because you start posting solid updates today, doesn't mean you will have 1,000 likes tomorrow. Getting there will mean you need a content strategy, someone to moderate for you, discipline and a long term view.
Does that mean you should not be spending any money at all on PPC? No, it doesn't, but what we recommend is that you use PPC while you gear up your SEO effort. Just like social media, SEO is a long term project, and when it comes to generating traffic to your site, which will be converted into leads, you might not have the time you need to gain momentum using SEO. PPC can offer some relief there in terms of a short term solution, but we will always recommend you scale down your PPC effort in function of your SEO momentum, because your PPC ROI will eventually be lower then your SEO ROI.