Facebook PPC vs SEO

[Rob Stone]

Hi Everyone
Not meaning as a indepth question .. just..

Has anyone dealt with SEO for years, then moved to Facebook PPC and had better results?

Reason being, I am starting my site at last but feel even the niche keywords still have nhs, livestrong etc so at 44 year's old.. wonder if I am best using Facebook PPC demographics

 

[breedingsuccess]

FB ads are difficult to get an ROI from. The golden ages of low cost FB ads are long gone.

If you improve your keyword research skills, there are good keywords in every niche that are so difficult to rank for. The problem with most SEOs is they want to automate KW research, but if you manually look (at the competition) on certain keywords, you'll be amazed at what you'll find. I'd recommend against you using FB ads on a new site, unless you're doing ecomm.

 

[Rob Stone]

Ah thanks very much

Answered what was bugging me so will stick with what I know and have always done which is SEO, started back before FB existed

Awesome thankyou ))

 

[Zach]

Just to combat the breedingsuccess response above, I launched a product 4 months ago and have sold 3500 bottles ($100k in rev) mostly via Facebook ads & at a profit. I probably sold less than 100 on Google at a loss between organic & paid.

I know a decent amount about SEO, but I know FB can do volume NOW instead of waiting 6-12 months crossing your fingers to rank.

Don't know your product, but with ANY traffic source there are people who aren't good at it and insist the golden days are over. The younger me would've listened to that, now I ignore it. Spy on your competitors. Figure out how they do their volume. Emulate first & THEN innovate.

 

[Olov]

If I may be so rude to add a question to the thread: has anyone done PPC for affiliate sites with success? I'm thinking about trying Facebookd ads for a site that doesn't have a product, only affiliate links.

 

[Zach]

@Olov
Affiliate sites can make bank on FB, but be careful as affiliates are kinda frowned upon for their practices of "pushing the envelope" in their marketing. Try to get a feel for if FB accepts your product & angles. Some products they just straight don't like and your ad account won't last long.

 

[infoslob]

FB ads are difficult to get an ROI from.

With all due respect, then what the hell is giving Facebook its 1/2 Trillion dollar market cap?

My point is this, I'm not really looking for a legendary leverage, I'm more interested in utilizing FB as is.

A short while back during a sales call with a syndicate real estate guy, he casually mentioned that Facebook was great for finding accredited investors (ie. rich people) ... it was not my client, I don't think anyone else took note of it, and I was in no position to follow up with him on additional details. But if what he was saying was true, I'm doing what I can to find out.

 

[CCarter]

FB ads are difficult to get an ROI from. The golden ages of low cost FB ads are long gone.

Umm... No.

With all due respect, then what the hell is giving Facebook its 1/2 Trillion dollar market cap?

Yeah I can't believe that statement went unchallenged either. FB ADs are killing it for me at the moment. You can hyper-target people that have certain incomes levels and craft your messages for qualified leads better than Google Adwords.

I mean if a person can't generate leads or make money targeting people that are literally "interested" in their niche/topic/industry then that marketers need to rethink their career path.

 

[Tiberian]

Not only are Facebook's ad tools significantly better than they were a year ago, so is their method of delivery. I used to use a tool called Ad Espresso to help me launch and optimize ads quickly. Now, Facebook does all of this for me without any outside help. It quickly narrows down the type of people that are clicking and converting the most. I am really impressed by how well it optimizes your ad delivery, the ads that work, and how it can expand your ad reach to new potential audiences.

I've done SEO for a while, and I've done Facebook PPC for a while. I'm almost at the point where I only consider SEO for local businesses or where the volume is high. For everything else, FB/social PPC is where it's at. I had a similar experience with Zach - there is only so much volume on Google.

One part of Facebook that's really underrated (in my experience) is their retargeting options. You can craft ads to retarget customers for sales, or non-customers to get them to return, all without having to use another software. The Pixel helps you create new audiences too.

Consider that there are 1,000 people interested in a product. Only a fraction of them will be searching online. Some of them are asking friends or going to Amazon or forums. FB is pretty much the only thing that many of them have in common, and guess what? You're right there.

 

[Janiform]

One part of Facebook that's really underrated (in my experience) is their retargeting options. You can craft ads to retarget customers for sales, or non-customers to get them to return, all without having to use another software. The Pixel helps you create new audiences too.

Agreed. I'm seeing lots of sites that still don't use retargeting in general, let alone via social ads. How the fuck is that still a thing? On top of that, the majority of retargeting users don't even move past the "all website visitors" audience and don't exclude converted traffic... so you'll see the product you just bought for 30 more days or more.

And holy smokes Batman, what would happen if you not only use converted traffic to exclude from the standard-level retargeting but to actually create separate messaging for so you can turn 'em into repeat customers?