Are Facebook Ads a Waste of Money?

Is Facebook Wasting Your Ad Budget?

Are you wasting your money using Sponsored advertising on Facebook? How can a Facebook ad get any positive results when users hate them and Trollers love to comment on them? Lets look further.

Facebook gathers a huge amount of data about us giving businesses and brands the opportunity to provide ads that we really want to see. They try this approach on Sponsored ads to your friends (and friends of friends) and people with common likes.

A niche business may find interested users who will click on their ad to find out more information. But from our review of comments on Sponsored ads, the ROI on the ad seems negligible, if there is any at all. It becomes a field day for Trolls to post and many feel the ads are SPAM on their newsfeed.

Comment on Sponsored FB Ad

Small businesses still seem to be wasting money by ignoring targeting. If you can’t afford a targeted ad, don’t throw money at a sponsored ad.  As marketers we really need to hone down our audience and target those who are interested in what we do, those who are likely to spread the word or are likely to buy from us.

The ROI Should be Higher!

The rate at which bots are crawling through everyone’s internet life is incredible. It was reported earlier this year that 60% of 2013 internet traffic was being generated by bots! This includes adbots. The results for 2014 aren’t out yet, but we are betting the percentage is higher.

With so many bots crawling around websites and social media, you would think that computer generated marketing targets could get it right. Yet, many Facebook users continue to be dealt up ads that they have no interest in. Maybe not because the ad isn’t interesting, but because they are on Facebook to be social, either actively or passively. Looking at ads is definitely not why they are there.

Alternative to Facebook Ads

Fighting for attention with Facebook ads seems to be a waste of money. If you want to use Facebook as a marketing tool:

1. Invest in creating a great Facebook page for your business by posting good content.
2. Work on getting more fans to visit your page and website.
3. Build an audience that will promote your business and buy your product.

If you use advertising budget on an ad to promote your website or product, make sure you are targeting the ad to people that are likely to find your product useful. If you are going to spend money on a Facebook ad, get it targeted to a very narrow audience and make it relevant to them.

Obligatory link to our Phoenix Marketing Website.