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Facebook Flyers Pro - What you've gotta know

by Rafiq Phillips

2007/09/26

Heidi posted about Facebook Flyers Pro, last week but to recap Flyers Pro essentially enables you to reach the right audience for your ad and only pay for the clicks you receive.

One of Quirk's amazing new clients are a company called Wicked Uncle.

Wicked Uncle is a solution site for time-poor professionals who have nieces, nephews and God-children, but no idea what to buy them for their birthdays or Christmas. These bankers and lawyers don’t have kids yet, but their friends and families do. They also don’t have the time or inclination to spend a Saturday morning surrounded by moms and screaming kids in a toy store.
Wicked Uncle provides the answer by offering a limited selection of the coolest kids’ gifts, arranged by age and gender, making it easy for visitors to select the perfect present in under a minute. They will also wrap it and deliver it the next day, with a hand written, personalised card. To top it off, they will also remind you next year that the little one’s birthday is around the corner.

What a better way to target single men between 25 and 40 years old in the United Kingdom than with Facebook Flyers Pro?

When trying to compare Facebook Flyers Pro with another form of Online Advertising within Quirk's arsenal the closest I could come was Google AdWords.

The similarities between Facebook Flyers Pro and Google Adwords:

Headlines are limited to 25 characters
You are able to set a daily budget and Maximum CPC
Your impressions, clicks and ROI are measurable

Differences between Facebook Flyers Pro and Google Adwords:

The keywords are from your target demographics profile info
You are allowed a maximum of 200 characters instead of 70
There is no spell-checker. So U R able 2 do this
You are able to upload an image along with you text ad
People are not searching for your product/service when your Facebook Flyers are displayed
You are able to share the Flyer with your Facebook friends or post it to your profile (my personal favourite)

Wicked Uncle’s Facebook Flyer Pro vs. the Google AdWords statistics for yesterday, 25 September 2007:

	Facebook Flyers Pro	Google AdWords
Clicks	32	40
Impressions	67 929	401
CTR (%)	0.047	9.97
Average CPC ($)	0.09	0.87

Facebook Flyers Pro could be very useful for getting your brand (slogan and logo) in front of your target demographic at a very low cost.

As Facebook users are not actively searching for a product or service when the Facebook Flyers are displayed the CTR is much lower compared to Google AdWords. You are able to see more examples of the Facebook Flyers currently running in your network on the Facebook Flyer board (and while you’re logged into Facebook why don't you join the Friends of Quirk Facebook Group).

Facebook Flyers Pro still appears to be a bit buggy as I am unable to pause certain flyers or delete them. We’ve created a special Facebook account to run Quirk’s Facebook Flyers and I currently have a Wicked Uncle flyer running on my personal account too. I am unable to pause the Wicked Uncle flyer on my personal account so the wicked Wicked Uncle campaign is getting double the amount of exposure at the moment.

Anyone else having trouble with Facebook Flyers Pro?

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Cheers Rafiq. Good work, good summation.

Seems Facebook is still ideal for brand awareness and not necessarily a direct driver of sales looking at the impressions and CTR.

However, at the low cost the returns seem to be justified.

I don't believe Facebook to be a marketing platform for just any company.

Marketers should analyse the target market and devise a message that is appropriate to the Facebook audience and more importantly to the Facebook audience's frame of mind.

Do you agree?

Posted by Henre on 2007/09/26

I always just tune the ads out. I know they are there but never see them. In fact - not sure I remember any ads on Facebook at all... hmmm.

But obviously your stats show the clicks are there so others must see them. And the CPC is so cheap. Sounds good to me.

I wonder how many converted? Any info on that or is it confidential?

Posted by Chewbacca on 2007/09/26

Thanks for the comments/questions.

@Henre - I agree but not only the Facebook platform. Marketers should analyse the target market and devise a message that is appropriate to the platform/market no matter what is being marketed where. Facebook might be a new marketing tool but the same 'old' rules still apply.

@Chewbacca - I'd have to check with the powers that be on releasing that info. I do not know the answer to that myself yet as Google Analytics is still gathering the data. Check back in 24 hours. I might be able to give you an update then.

Keep the questions coming.

Posted by Rafiq on 2007/09/26

Rafiq, too true.

Various platforms are suited to various campaigns and it's important for us marketers to keep up to speed on developments.

THEN, equally important, as I've mentioned on my blog, we need to translate that message into terms that is clear to our clients.

Going to trackback, would like you to have a scan on the post.

Posted by Henre on 2007/09/26

Henre - you are correct that this can be used as a branding tool, similar to CPM online advertising. In a way it is more similar to CPM online advertising because, although we are targeting by profile, the audience is not actively searching as they would be when using Google.

Therefore we would also expect the CTR to be much lower than Adwords. In this case however, low CTR doesn't affect CPC as it would on Adwords, so it isnt really something to worry about.

In fact, I think this is almost the best of both worlds - CPM brand exposure with very reasonable CPC rates. A while back I investigated the cost of CPM advertising on Facebook and I have just worked out that to get the number of impressions we got yesterday would have cost R500 in media spend for CPM. Instead, at CPC rates we only paid R20 - and only because people were interested enough to click on it.

Makes you wonder how much longer we are going to continue to see skyscrapers on Facebook?

Posted by Heidi on 2007/09/26

ahh lol. Excellent work Heidi. Well worth noting.

Posted by Henre on 2007/09/26

I'm testing Facebook Flyers at the moment and am also experiencing very low CTRs - 0.05% in some cases.

BUT...the reach is good and the cost low at the moment - Adwords CPC is way too high for some of the keywords I want to bid on.

I'll leave Flyers running for a while longer before I come to a conclusion

Posted by mcrilf on 2007/09/30

I'd also like to see the conversion data if possible.
Also, was your AdWords data from search or from the content network?

Posted by SEO ROI on 2007/10/08

@ SEO ROI - The AdWords data is from the search network.

I'll be writing an update on this post in the near future, would suggest you subscribe to this blog via RSS here www.gottaquirk.com/rss.xml

Posted by Rafiq on 2007/10/08

For a month or so I have been using Flyers Pro to promote my Facebook application. However, today, they disabled my Flyers apprently because I pointed (directly or indirectly) to a Facebook URL.

Am I missing something?

Posted by Jeremy Chone on 2007/10/20

As far a I'm aware the only Facebook locations you are able to point your ads too are Events and Groups, not applications. Does your application have a group? What Facebook application are you pointing your Facebook Flyer Pro too?

Posted by Rafiq on 2007/10/20

Rafiq, tx for the quick response.

I did not have a Group, but I just created one. However, I am afraid that the conversion rate won't be as good if I point my ad to the group vs a landing page (even outside facebook which point back to Facebook).

The application is http:apps.facebook.com/sportner (I was originally pointing to the install page, and then to the http:www.sportner.com/). Both ways got disabled.

Posted by Jeremy Chone on 2007/10/20

I tried making pro flyers but they never got posted. Facebook's loss. It seems with all the disabled stuff that they're trying to shoot the idea down as much as possible...

Regarding the AdWords data being from search, well, you need to compare apples with apples. Facebook flyers are content network.

Posted by SEO ROI on 2007/10/22

BTW, I got the answer from Facebook. I was using the Facebook's "Add Application" button.

Posted by Jeremy Chone on 2007/10/22

TYFYC Jeremy - What was the problem using Facebook's Add application button in your Facebook Flyers Pro ad? Please tell us more.

I've been having some issues creating new Flyers, they've been sorted now. Any of you also experience problems with creating Facebook Flyers?

Will be running some flyers over the next couple of days/weeks. Should be posting a follow-up on my findings

Really like the new feature added to Face Book Flyers: You are able to see the size of the country or city you are targeting.

Posted by Rafiq on 2007/10/23

Here is the answer I got from Facebook.

"We do not allow any ad on Facebook to use Facebook's logos, designs, or icons. You will need to remove the 'add application' button from your flyer if you wish to post it in the future."

So, what blocked my Flyers was not the link (to the install app), but the "Facebook add application gif".

Posted by Jeremy Chone on 2007/10/23

Thanks Jeremy...

Posted by Rafiq on 2007/10/23

I wrote a message to Facebook support and got a crap response back. You can check it out here:

www.beerpizzatech.com/2007/10/facebooks-response-to-my-complaint-about-flyers-pro.html

Posted by Shawn Farner on 2007/10/25

facebook is gay

Posted by Anonymous on 2008/02/10

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