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Has anyone used paid advertising on facebook?  Were there identifiable results - negative or positive?

 

The Gene Siskel Film Center is investigating advertising on facebook and was wondering if any of our piers have done so, and what their experience was.  Any best practises out there?

We’ve been using it for about a year, with some success at achieving some impressions at a very low cost (their CPC is pretty reasonable).  Honestly, it only made a difference when we were promoting something that was already getting a good deal of attention—I don’t know how capable it really is of being the first introduction point.  That said, it doesn’t take a lot of effort to get it set up, and every little bit helps right?  I’d just be sure to take advantage of as much of the targeting that they offer as you possibly can to make sure that the folks who do have the opportunity to click are realistically interested in your product, and aren’t just casually surfing…

Don’t know if that fully answered your questions.  Feel free to email me if you want to chat further.  cpeterson at northlight dot org.

Chad Peterson
Director of Marketing
Northlight Theatre

We just started using it this season and have seen an influx in attendence at our shows. We are currently in the process of analyzing how effective the ads have been and are happy to share the results when we have them. It does appear to be a pretty cost effective way for us to reach a different audience.

Kat Ryan
Director of Operations
The Chicago Jazz Ensemble

Kat + Chad, I’m curious to know if your Facebook promotions have been for a specific show or a general promotion about your organization.

Ours have been program/event specific.

We’ve got both.  A general “Become a fan” and and specific ads geared toward each production.  The general ad tends to get more clicks, which I find interesting…

Chicago Human Rhythm Project did Facebook Ad campaigns for two shows last year (no general one yet). Both were effective, but not stellar. But to be fair, we put as little money into it as possible. They blew our cpm impression ad campaigns out of the water though.

Our Facebook Page at the time was not very good, so we used ads that linked to our website. In both cases the Facebook visitors on average stayed for a while and clicked around the site, even if they didn’t buy.

The cheaper of the two shows did better on Facebook ($15-25 tickets v. $15-65) even though they both had a similar low end price.

From others I’vespoken to, the ds are much more effective with a good Facebook Page, wih Gene Siskel seems to be doing. If you’ve got good Page content that will get them to “Become a Fan” you can use that to drive them to the show. A $30 ticket sale is a lot to ask from an ad. Becoming a fan is free, and then you get unlimited messages to them as long as you don’t abuse that power.

We’re working on a similar program, so I’ll let you know when we have data to report.