I want to share an experience I had with placing a facebook ad. Now technically, this was for my podcast (WizardCast). I use the same site for my blog as for my podcast show notes, so for me it's kind of the same.
I spent $30 on a facebook ad to display from 9/8 (7pm CST) and 9/10 (ended in the AM). It was intended to get traffic (clicks to website) and I focused on anyone with interest of podcasts & salesforce.com who were 18+. I also excluded anyone who liked my salesforce wizard facebook page.
I chose this timeframe because Friday night & the weekend tends to be the slowest hits to my page. I figured the majority of the traffic to the page would be reliably considered from the ad.
According to Facebook, I reached 4,548 (meaning it showed up to that many people) and received 86 clicks to the show notes.
According to google analytics, I had 51 hits through the UTM campaign (used in the facebook ad). Average bounce rate was 45%, 1.8 pages per session, and the avg session duration was 40 seconds.
According to the blog (jetpack) stats, I had 48 hits to the page. So I'm not sure why the discrepancy between facebook and blog stats/analytics.
Based on my libsyn results, I went from 115 to 130 downloads. This tells me I drove traffic to the page, but didn't actually receive any new listeners.
My conclusion from this experiment with a N=1 is facebook ads can push traffic to your site, but finding the right audience can be tricky (at least for me). For my podcast at this point it doesn't related to additional listeners. Unfortunately, what I'm not able to do is to determine:
1. That any of the people who clicked on the Ad were already familiar with my blog site
2. That any of the people who clicked on my Ad came back again
I'm not ready to say facebook wasn't worth the time or money based on a single experiment post. I may do few more for different days/time of the week to see if it changes things.
Anyone else do Ads to drum up traffic to your website? Be interested in your experience.
I asked Facebook Support about the discrepancy between Google Analytics and Facebook. I can buy the HTTPS to HTTP - in part - but it doesn't cover everything. This was their reply:
Cross-device reporting:
- Third-party reporting platforms aren't able to measure cross-device conversions well due to cookie-based measurement. Because people are their real selves on Facebook, conversions can be captured more accurately in Facebook reports.
- Cross-device conversions from ads are common. Mobile conversions tend to be underreported by third-party platforms that measure with cookies.
- Facebook conversion tracking has the ability to track how your customers move between devices before they convert. Try compiling a cross-device report to see how mobile your audience is.
Check that your conversion attribution windows match. By default, the Facebook conversion reports are set to a 1-day after view or 28-day click window.
UTM Parameters (Referrer Links):
- Many third-party tracking providers use referrer URLs to credit conversions back to ads. Some providers may under-report Facebook conversions by as much as 40%. This is often due to the fact that roughly 40% of people browse Facebook using HTTPS instead of HTTP and when someone clicks on an ad on Facebook and converts on a site, the referrer cannot be recorded since they left an HTTPS environment and entered an HTTP environment.
- In addition, if someone opens a new browser tab and purchases there (ex: they click the ad, run to a meeting, then go back to the website after work to purchase the product), the referrer URLs will no longer be available. The analytics tool will consider the purchaser a different person and not attribute the sale to Facebook.
Here is more information on common reporting discrepancies between third-party reporting tools and Facebook Ads Reporting:
https://www.facebook.com/business/help/147965221941551.
