Targeted Facebook Ads

[luckyj142]

Happy New Year Shedders!

I have several products that I am creating to sell on Etsy, they are vintage style tourism posters for specific places in the UK.

I've never used Facebook advertising before - if I were to be making a poster for example, for the Cairngorms, is it just as simple as choosing to target people who have 'liked' the Cairngorms Facebook page or visited the Cairngorms?

Any help or advice on this matter would be great! Many thanks

 

[Jon]

In the past when I've done it you can be very specific about the demographic you are after so stuff like location / sex / age / interests etc.

So I suppose you could go after people who have an interest in holidays in Scotland if you wanted to be more broad

Have a play around and see how it works for you

I found it a bit of a mixed bag really as organic engagement (ie, someone seeking you and your posters out) is always going to trump someone having an ad put in their face and them just clicking on it.

 

[luckyj142]

In the past when I've done it you can be very specific about the demographic you are after so stuff like location / sex / age / interests etc.

So I suppose you could go after people who have an interest in holidays in Scotland if you wanted to be more broad

Have a play around and see how it works for you

I found it a bit of a mixed bag really as organic engagement (ie, someone seeking you and your posters out) is always going to trump someone having an ad put in their face and them just clicking on it.

I don't know if it is better to be more specific or more broad. I guess there is no use in having thousands of people see your product if they aren't the kind of people who would consider buying it.

I feel like it should be a relatively simple process but all the blogs I've read about targeted ads seem so convoluted and complicated.

I guess I'll just set myself a maximum budget and do some experimenting!

 

[BreeziOG]

I recently used a £10 advertising credit from FB to promote one of my OH’s Etsy items. Got a few likes on the page, and plenty of likes on the post itself, but virtually no click throughs to Etsy. In my opinion you’re better off working on your organic Etsy traffic, working on tags, descriptions and listing titles, and maybe look at promoted listings within Etsy.

 

[luckyj142]

I recently used a £10 advertising credit from FB to promote one of my OH’s Etsy items. Got a few likes on the page, and plenty of likes on the post itself, but virtually no click throughs to Etsy. In my opinion you’re better off working on your organic Etsy traffic, working on tags, descriptions and listing titles, and maybe look at promoted listings within Etsy.

Interesting. Does your OH sell a lot on Etsy?

I'm also considering setting up a Shopify store but at the moment Etsy seems like the easier option

 

[BreeziOG]

She sells embroideries and patches, all done by hand, so she doesn’t list enough to sell a lot, if you see what I mean - they’re all one of a kind and pretty time consuming. Almost all of her sales and enquiries have come through direct Etsy traffic, a few from her Instagram page, but the majority is organic. There’s a huge amount of customers on Etsy so there’s definite potential for large amounts of sales though. There are a few Facebook groups that have advice which I’ve found invaluable - if you want the links or anything just drop me a DM.

 

[luckyj142]

She sells embroideries and patches, all done by hand, so she doesn’t list enough to sell a lot, if you see what I mean - they’re all one of a kind and pretty time consuming. Almost all of her sales and enquiries have come through direct Etsy traffic, a few from her Instagram page, but the majority is organic. There’s a huge amount of customers on Etsy so there’s definite potential for large amounts of sales though. There are a few Facebook groups that have advice which I’ve found invaluable - if you want the links or anything just drop me a DM.

Inbox incoming

 

[luckyj142]

Just noticed that I have a £10 credit on my account. Gonna have a play around with it and see what happens...

 

[Shemightbeloved]

My old client had over 50k likes and used to pay SO much for ads, but then the non-promoted posts never did well

 

[luckyj142]

In case anyone is interested, I just came to the end of my £10 free Facebook ads credit and I think the results are rather interesting.

I spread the £10 over 1 week, chose my demographic and just let it run.

I know very little about Facebook marketing & I didn't expect much. The first 3 days seemed to confirm my misgivings with nothing more than a few extra views of my Etsy store.

However, in the last 4 days I have made 4 sales totalling 6 products and a little over £100 profit.

I'm very pleasantly surprised.

Of course this could be coincidence and I may have got some of these sales organically. Therefore, I have emailed all of the buyers asking them how they heard about the product.

One has responded already to tell me it was a sponsored Facebook post. Lets see if I hear back from the others.

In the meantime I plan to leave it for a week with no promotion and see if I make any sales. Then I'll stick another £10 on in a weeks time to compare.

Exciting times indeed

 

[Jon]

that's a great return on your investment!

Keep us updated!

 

[luckyj142]

that's a great return on your investment!

Keep us updated!

I shall. In the meantime I'm going to work on creating more products to add to the store.

I'm enjoying this!

 

[luckyj142]

Since my initial £10 advertising freebie, I did exactly the same again with my own cash but was getting nothing so I played around with the demographics. I got a fair amount of views each day but only 1 sale this time and I can't be sure if it came from facebook or not.

So I gave up with the FB marketing and just tightened up the SEO on my most popular listing. I've since made 6 sales.

The plan now is to create a minimum of 30 brilliant items over the next couple of months in a similar format to my current best seller. Give them beautiful listings with great descriptions and top notch SEO.

Fingers crossed they sell - this could be the start of something

 

[BreeziOG]

Since my initial £10 advertising freebie, I did exactly the same again with my own cash but was getting nothing so I played around with the demographics. I got a fair amount of views each day but only 1 sale this time and I can't be sure if it came from facebook or not.

So I gave up with the FB marketing and just tightened up the SEO on my most popular listing. I've since made 6 sales.

The plan now is to create a minimum of 30 brilliant items over the next couple of months in a similar format to my current best seller. Give them beautiful listings with great descriptions and top notch SEO.

Fingers crossed they sell - this could be the start of something

Great news on the increased sales front.
There are rumours that 50 listings is some kind of magic number, but I don’t think there’s much truth in that.

 

[MuchMoreWithLess]

Glad it worked so well with the initial £10 credit, and you've generated some decent sales from it. I've always been paranoid about venturing into Facebook ads, that if I used them, facebook would kill all organic reach afterwards. Mind you, think that will happen anyway with the algorithm changes!

 

[luckyj142]

Great news on the increased sales front.
There are rumours that 50 listings is some kind of magic number, but I don’t think there’s much truth in that.

I’ve been following several posts on the Etsy FB groups and this comes up quite often.

Of course having more items in stock will make you more visible and easier to find.

However, there was a post on there this morning where someone with 28 items in her store is doing incredibly well pretty much from just having fantastic listings with great SEO and good photos - doesn’t even bother with social media.

 

[Jon]

So I'm actually back to playing around with Facebook ads again at the moment.

I'm using them to promote TotallyBlogging but it's not convinced.
Put the ad up yesterday, it's already got pulled for having 'too much text in the image'

Spent a grand total so far of £1.43 so far for 5 Clicks, 187 Reach, 201 Impression

Not convinced, I shall see how it plays out over a month or two

 

[fraserbooks]

I created a Facebook page and was offered a free £50.00 ad credit. I have not used it as I have not got any thing to promote but it might be worth trying if you have.

 

[The Reverend]

I created a Facebook page and was offered a free £50.00 ad credit. I have not used it as I have not got any thing to promote but it might be worth trying if you have.

I have the same.

I keep meaning to do it when there is an ebay code ... point to an afffilate link and hope you get some click-throughs. Seems like the best use of the free ad credit.

 

[Jon]

Take a read of this

E-scooter company Unicorn goes bust after spending big on Facebook ads

The Texas-based company reportedly sold just 350 of its $699 commuter scooters.

www.bbc.co.uk

There is a lesson there for Everyone considering blogging / running a website and then spending a large amount of cash on Facebook ads!

I know a LOT of bloggers (including many people in my niche) who spend a HUGE amount of money in an ongoing way each month to advertise on Facebook and drive traffic to their sites but you need to then have money coming in at the other end or else you will just end up as this scooter firm has!