I have watched my new registrations dry up with AdWords over the past year, and it was seriously like throwing money in the toilet. When you go through an entire daily budget and end up with zero or one lady registration on a free dating site you have problems. The problem is plain and simple. The network has become flooded with too much garbage. I suspended my AdWords campaign and was forced to look elsewhere. I found Facebook and signed up with low expectations. Then it was like all the sudden my registration page started working again. One after another, after another, new ladies signing up. I am getting at least 10 times the results that I got from Adwords, and it might even be more. My daily budget amount is the same with Facebook, it just happens to produce results. I put a new field in the registration field for admin purposes, asking people where they found us. 8/10 ladies are saying Facebook I wrote an article about it a few days back. http://www.articlesbase.com/ppc-advertising-articles/facebook-vs-adwords-999439.html I am making no claims here that the results would be the same if you are selling cars or books. I am just saying if you need to target a social networking audience, Google cannot touch Facebook in MHO.
Facebook works great specially if you are marketing relationships related sites and because it is a social networking site.
Maybe I should consider this for my Video Games Review site. May I ask what kind of budgets you guys are using to maintian your conversion rates through facebook?
Not sure how it would work for this type of site but worth a try. Right now I am spending $5 a day and bringing in about 68 visitors... About 18 of those are registering, and about 10 make the final cut. So 10/68 off the ad are converting to full members with complete profiles. This is so far beyond what AdWords did it is unreal for me. Facebook allows me to target the Philippines, females, 18 to 40 years old, single, looking for a relationship. It must be their targeting ability I guess.
One more thing. With AdWords I estimated 30% of my budget went to fraud clicks and 50% went to guys which I was not targeting. So that really screws up your budget right out of the gate if you know what I mean.
You can see my conversion rate for Facebook as of right now it is 10/68 or 14%? This is even better that I thought when I first wrote the article. Google is was 2/150, so that is what 1.5%? I think some of these great results have to do with my site being social networking, which is geared toward Facebook, but if I had another type of site I would still test it out.
Today I saw my first conversion coming from Twitter. In the past I got some conversion (good ones!) from craigslist, so I agree with you. I do use AdWords but more for general advertising purposes. Thank you for the tip. I am going to check Facebook out. Always wanted to create a prof. there. Maybe this is the right time.
What are you setting your max bid at? My average cpc is .43 I would say those are tremendous results you are having
On Facebook targeting the Philippines .08 is all I have to pay. I am sure it is a lot more to target other areas of the world. I can pay even less with AdWords, but it is not worth it with a 1.3 or 1.5 conversion rate. I have a free site and I cannot even imagine how bad the conversion rate is on a pay social networking site with AdWords. P.S. The average time visitors are on my site is also going up now with Facebook. It makes sense, better targeting means people stick aroound longer.
I see how your social networking site is getting maximum benefit here. I will likely have to do some creative thinking to get such a small ad to work for the video game site. But it shouldn't be too hard. Everyone loves a chance to win free stuff!
I believe with some research may be you could find some answers as to why your conversion rate on Adwords was not so good as it is on Facebook. But like the previous posters have mentioned, Facebook is a social network therefore you are advertising to the right audience. May be with some research and a lil tweaking your Adwords campaign might start producing better results as well.
I find certain niches work better with Facebook and others work better with Google.. all depends on the offers your promoting..
Possible. However I have tweaked and tweaked and the results went from marginal, to bad, to pathetic over the past year. It has just become too complicated, too many options, and I don't have time to deal with it anymore. With Facebook it took me 10 minutes to create and ad which targeted the country, sex, age, and marital status, and the relationship they were seeking, and that was it. I saw the recommended amout to bid per click, picked a number in the middle, and I was done. One thing, at first I did not have an image to go with the ad (not sure if that option was available and I missed it) and my CTR was low with Facebook. Once I added the little image my CTR went up dramatically and my conversion rate still remained good. On a side note at the very end of AdWords campaign (after basically giving up) I dropped the amount I would pay per click to almost nothing. As a result Google could no longer go through my daily budget. I decided to try those image ads to get more impressions. I created them and they just sat there for weeks with no impressions. Then one day I checked and Google had started displaying those image ads and was wiping out my total daily budget in less than an hour LOL. I couldn't believe it. In the end I low balled them and they still found a way to spend the money. Oh well it is over now and I am happy with Facebook. As long as it keeps working I will glady pay them $4 or $5 a day for good results
I mean obviously this is going to convert well on a social media site, especially in the Philippines. It's a dating website, and you can target male singles on FB. This is a perfect example where FB > Google that's for sure, as well as using the targeting to your advantage.
i am always not a huge fan of such social networking sites in . but i think it work remarkablely for filipina is because the revelancy, or plus a little bit luck!