Why I Changed My Mind About Facebook Advertising

I used to think that it was unnecessary to pay for more likes and visibility on Facebook. I felt I could slide by using only free methods to promote my business and page.

Yet around mid 2012, I starting to feel differently about Facebook advertising. For you to understand the full scope of the story of how I feel today, let's first go back to why I didn't want to advertise on Facebook.

Why I Didn't Like Facebook Advertising, At First

It was the first two ad campaigns I created a little over a year ago that put a "bad taste in my mouth" about Facebook ads. I first gave it a try after hearing all this hype about businesses who ran ad campaigns and successfully grew their Likes and customer base.

When Facebook ads became pretty popular I really didn't have a budget for Facebook marketing. So it wasn't until a free $50 advertising credit was offered to me that I tried Facebook advertising. I created my first ad using that free credit and it did ehh... okay.

I chalked up some of the unsuccessfulness to:

me being a newbie to Facebook advertising,
having a small budget, and
not targeting the right market.

So when a new opportunity came up a few months later to get some free ad credits again, I gave it another try. The second time was slightly better but not that big of improvement. It gave me a little bit of following but not enough results that would make me spend another $50-$100 or more on Facebook advertising again.

From these experiences, I had concluded that Facebook ads "weren't that effective" and "maybe they just weren't for me."

Things had changed...

Facebook had changed. Since the last time I had ran an ad, Facebook had:

converted business pages over to the new Timeline,
cracked down on fake accounts, and
improved their ad campaign module.

But here's why/how each of those things affected me.

The new Timeline layout was pretty cool to me but it also came with new rules and regulations as to what you could put on your cover photo. Basically, you were no longer allowed to put promotional stuff on the cover like you could in the past.

Too, you couldn't set a default landing tab for fans to first see when they visited. That change cut out on what many, including me, would use as a sales page.
Facebook started closing down fake or duplicate accounts. This is understandable because this was getting out of control. But when Facebook started shutting down false accounts some business owners, including me, who had bought Facebook Likes were starting to lose Likes. That's why I now say never ever buy Facebook Likes.
When Facebook improved their ad campaign module it was a two-fold change for me. One, I wanted to try the new things in the module like Sponsored Stories, Promoted Posts, etc.

Two, I could see a decrease in my EdgeRank — you know, the value Facebook puts to your posts that determines what posts populate the News Feeds of others. I started noticing that I wasn't getting much participation on my page. I saw how other pages were bumping themselves up by using Promoted Posts and ads.

When I Changed My Mind

The factors above made me change my mind and try Facebook ads just one more time. This time I was going to spend my own money and see whether the new platform was an improvement.

In short, I can tell you that my latest ad campaign turned out really great! After finding great success this past time, I gained a lot of (self-taught) social media marketing tips and could finally see how successful Facebook advertising can be, and that's when I changed my mind.

And you know what? I will be using it again!

For more detail about how my ad campaign turned out, read further on the page "How I Used Targeted Facebook Ads to Gain More Followers."

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