You may have noticed that Facebook has been heavily distributing “Coupons” worth a few dozen euros in France to promote advertising on its network, imitating Google in this respect, which has been doing it for ages.
I won’t hide the fact that we were long reluctant to advertise on FB, even though the social network is an integral part of our clients’ web strategy. These coupons gave us the opportunity to get started. Trained (should I say mis-trained?) and seasoned in Adwords for many years, we do, however, have solid benchmarks regarding the quality of certain ads and the return on investment of campaigns.
Personal targeting vs behavioral targeting
Facebook allows several uses: fan acquisition and/or redirection to an external landing page. In the latter case, the major difference between Facebook and Adwords is the way targeting works. With Google Adwords, we rely on a search or on an editorial context (display network), which amounts to working on the behavior of the internet user. With Facebook, we target interests and the population likely to be interested: we focus on the person in general. And that changes everything.
Targeting by person and interests treats people with a shared interest equally: in a way, it assumes they all have the same needs. All gardening fans are therefore likely to buy a rake. But do they actually express that need?
Hard to optimize a Facebook campaign
Google’s behavioral targeting is much more precise: it allows you to work on searches and/or the sites visited, which gives an idea of what the internet user is looking for. With Adwords, you quickly realize that some keywords do not convert, despite a high click-through rate and a low CPC (Cost Per Click). We thus try to better understand users’ expectations so as not to lose money on useless clicks. With Facebook, this type of optimization is impossible. Besides, the system is not designed for it: conversion tracking and optimization are notions entirely foreign to Facebook.
Bottom line: in this mode, the return on investment delivered by Facebook does not compare with Adwords.
Fan acquisition vs immediate sales
Where Facebook offers an interesting differentiator compared with Adwords is in “fan acquisition” mode. Even though we lack the hindsight to measure its long-term benefit, the fact that it can “capture” people who are likely to be interested in the brand remains THE strong point of the social network. Still, for many companies (especially small businesses/SMEs), that is not the priority. On the one hand, it requires effective community management to one day convert this fan base into sales. On the other hand, the return on investment is very difficult to measure. It also means that fan volatility must be monitored over the long term.
And for the killer question from an SME owner: how much does it bring in for me? We still struggle a bit to answer that.
