Has anyone tried using Facebook Ads, what have your experiences been like? I can see it work for Wedding/Portrait shooter (targeting the newly engaged) but what about photographers who specialize in other fields?? Any and all input appreciated.
I've used the simple Facebook promotions to advertise photo workshops. I have just under 500 likes on my business page. The Facebook Insights statistics tell me that a typical post has a reach of 100-150 people (unique views). Yes, only 20-30% of people see your posts if you're lucky.
A $5 post promotion can show this information to friends of friends, and typically generates reach numbers anywhere from 500-1200 (3x to 12x higher than normal). While this is just dipping my toe in the shallow end, it has been useful. Hope this is helpful.
My main advertising source is Facebook as most of what I sell is landscapes of the local area. I have a little over 1,000 likes and have dabbled with various ads on Facebook.
I often do what Mr. Joe does and promote my posts that I want all of my fans to see, such as giveaways and promotions. My reach per post without an ad is usually about 400 people, with an ad it is around 700 or so.
The other ad I took out recently was a "get more likes" ad that Facebook uses. All it does is puts my Facebook profile picture and a like button next to it. It's fairly effective for some quick likes. I only spent $5 a day for 4 days and ended up with about 100 new likes.
Andy, did you use the ads to offer say a print at a special price? Or are you just building likes...I don't have lot of likes yet and not sure if 100 or 1000 does anything for me, gets me seen but will people buy from Facebook?
thedruid wrote:
Andy, did you use the ads to offer say a print at a special price? Or are you just building likes...I don't have lot of likes yet and not sure if 100 or 1000 does anything for me, gets me seen but will people buy from Facebook?
I usually use the promote this post option for a few different things. The first would be for special promotions, like if I created a coupon on zenfolio for canvas or whatever it may be. The second would be for images that I think will do great in the print market, say one of my popular football shots or a shot of the local ski hill. The ads I'm running are really to stockpile likes though, and I figure if I'm able to get 100 new likes then one or two of those translate in to print sales.
And as far as if likes translates to prints sold, it absolutely does for me. It really depends on the business however. But I would go as far as saying 75% of my prints sold stem from Facebook. And when I look at the cost of advertising I think about if it will generate a sale for me. For example, I promoted this print via Facebook for a measly $5 and got two sales out of it that I know came right from Facebook. Even when I do not pay for promotions I still see an upswing in print sales for a recently posted print- even if it is an older shot that has been long dormant.
It turns out that these FB ads do nothing more than just help you buy Likes in a nutshell. And they are not even true likes. Alot of them comes from chronic "Likers" that like random pages.
PeakPhoto wrote:
I usually use the promote this post option for a few different things. The first would be for special promotions, like if I created a coupon on zenfolio for canvas or whatever it may be. The second would be for images that I think will do great in the print market, say one of my popular football shots or a shot of the local ski hill. The ads I'm running are really to stockpile likes though, and I figure if I'm able to get 100 new likes then one or two of those translate in to print sales.
And as far as if likes translates to prints sold, it absolutely does for me. It really depends on the business however. But I would go as far as saying 75% of my prints sold stem from Facebook. And when I look at the cost of advertising I think about if it will generate a sale for me. For example, I promoted this print via Facebook for a measly $5 and got two sales out of it that I know came right from Facebook. Even when I do not pay for promotions I still see an upswing in print sales for a recently posted print- even if it is an older shot that has been long dormant.
I wasted about $100 on clicks for wedding photography. I thought it was cool that I could target engaged females aged 18-36, but there are bots and competitors that click on your ad to deplete your budget. I remember reading an article that verified my suspicions.
There are only a few options, I tried Adbase now Agency Access a few years back and spend $k's on promotions for nada, zippo. The names and adresses of photo buyers updated how often, every few months I was told. Many time s this info was old and questionable too.
I think there are two issues here, Likes and ads. Buying Likes is pointless unless you are just starting out an want to get a few warm bodies on your like list. This is worthwhile because others may not Like a page if no one else has. So buying the first batch may be worthwhile, even if they are bots.
Ads - just like any advertising they need to target real potential customers for your product and actually offer something compelling to get those customers to move from potential to actual.
