Facebook Ads????

[Adam123]

Hello all, Im sure this has come up before - just wanted general thoughts on whether anyone here uses facebook advertising???

We been advertising on FB for about 2 months, hasnt generated anything so far - just wanted to know what others thought?? Whether you advertise your business yourself or have "clicked" on the adverts etc???

Many thanks,

Adam

 

[dnavarrojr]

Adam,

I had $50 in Facebook credits, so I set up a Facebook ad campaign for $150 total limit and targeted at anyone from local cities. I got almost no results. I think most people ignore the ads on Facebook. I know that I've only clicked on 2 or 3 myself over the past 2 years. I've been much more successful at using local radio and newspaper ads to drive traffic to my Facebook page and web site.

Things are really tight right now with money, so I'm concentrating on "no cost" advertising, such as joining numerous Facebook groups for locals and posting useful/meaningful information with links to my Facebook page. Or example photos in a couple of groups that allow it. I'm also getting out of the house more and going to local social events such as "First Friday Art Walk" and "Top City Thursdays" which are regular events in the downtown area. By shooting video of different events (dancers, musicians, street performers, etc..) and posting them on Facebook, people start to see me as the "photo/video" guy.

I cut a deal with a downtown business to set up a little "booth" in their shop for a couple of Thursday events where I took free pictures of people and emailed them a single 300x400 JPG for their Facebook profile. That got me about 100 email addresses and resulted in a few paid gigs so far. For the business, I took some photos of their shop to use on their web site in exchange for the booth space in the back of the store. It was very popular and ended up being a lot of work. Most 'pro' photographers here would view it as a waste of time/effort, but I literally had nothing else to do and I'm working to build 'brand awareness' and do more networking which I have always found to be valuable, personally.

 

[Diddy2theJJ]

Hey Adam, welcome to the forums! I have had great luck using facebook for my business. I don't do the paid ads on there, but I ask to become 'friends' with my clients, and then upload and tag them in the best photos from the shoot. This way, all of their friends get to see those photos and keep me in mind if they need a photographer or if their friends do, they will be sure to suggest me. I let them know they are welcome to remove me from their friends list if they would like, and generally people don't remove me because they like to keep up with what I'm doing on there.

I'm really not that active on facebook with keeping up with my posts and status updates on a daily basis, I just upload any big news on there, but mainly it's just an update of a few photos here and there when I have time.

How long have you been in business?

 

[Adam123]

thanks for getting back to me guys. In response to your question - Ive only been in the industry about 2 and a half years (I work alongside my dad who has ran a studio for about 30 years) - hes pretty much lets me know run the show (as he is getting older) so inevitably I like to try different marketing methods etc and test them. Im going to run the facebook Ads for another 2 months, see how its goes and then make a decision.

Adam

 

[mbonner1]

Haven't found Facebook to be worthwhile - since you can't target it by keyword, it's really tough to find interested parties simply by drilling down to demographics.

 

[photosneak]

I would have to agree. I honestly don't pay attention to the facebook ads and I give them as much credit as I do annoying pop up advertisements. I just don't take them seriously.