Facebook Advertising in Lethbridge – Better than Print, Radio, and TV – Some times

September 23, 2009 Update:

Clicks 2,687
Impressions 5,572,918
CPM $0.13
Cost per click $0.27
Total Budget $738.39

[Here's a quick update as of August 14 , 2009... the cost of 1 million impressions on Facebook for Lethbridge is $93.92 (for all the ads that I have run) this represents a CPM of $0.09! In June the CPM was $0.12 and,  for March and April, it was $0.17.  The lower the CPM the better. Though I don't know why I put an ! after the first sentence, CPM is pretty much meaningless, but people like to use it because it sounds impressive. CPM is very old school marketing and totally antiquated.]

Two months ago, I posted the data on the cost per click of online advertising in Lethbridge. This is an update of that data.

Up to April, 2009 my Facebook advertising gave me:

321,000 impressions which brought
182 click throughs to various websites at a cost of
$0.31 a click for a total cost of $55.88.This represents a
CPM (cost per thousand) of $0.174

Since then, while marketing other websites and products I have received: (including the above totals)

Impressions   1,555,187
Click Throughs 902
Total Cost    $187.50
Cost per 1000 impressions (CPM) $0.121
Cost per click   $0.208

By learning the Facebook advertising system and what people in Lethbridge want from Facebook advertising, the CPM was reduced 30 percent and the cost per click dropped 35 percent. Having a cost per click drop more that the cost per thousand came by setting some campaings as “pay by CPM” (a Facebook setting) and then, once an initial click spike dropped, switching the campaign to CPC (the other costing alternative on Facebook).

One campaign cut my client’s print advertising budget by 50 percent. That business received a better response from Facebook at half the cost of a print ad. But the benifits don’t stop there. Facebook also gives some information on who your customer is (age, sex, etc.) and what kind of advertising (creative, the offer) they prefer. With this information, you can serve your customers better because you will have a better idea of what your customers want. By reducing trial-and-error, you can save money on advertising and create even better customer focused strategies.

The important things that I have learned from Facebook advertising is that the offer has to be relevant, and worth someone’s time to check out (value). This is no different than any other form of advertising. So the real difference is cost.