[Johnny Czarnota]

Just got a call from media networking with the offer to advertise on facebook for £129+vat.  Anyone has done and how did it work for you. The guy will call me back at 12 and I have to make my decision by than, coz they will only put 2 carpet cleaners within my Facebook.

[AshWhite]

You're better off doing it yourself. Similar to adwords, but not as successful in my experience.

[Johnny Czarnota]

It is what I was thinking, it did sound very well over the phone, but you probably right. Anyone else?

[davep]

Waste of money. Of course it sounded good on phone. He was a salesman!

[Johnny Czarnota]

dude was a dushe. i told him im gonna pass this time and he kept asking why, bla bla bla. I talked with him for 15 mins and even told him that i dont want to be rude and thats why i didnt hang up unpolitely and sudenly he goes 'ok, bye'' and done

I called back and told him that it was little rude and unprofessional, i was not polite any more. This happened to me before when yellow pages lady came up to my house (it was obligation free app), but you should have seen her when she was leaving. There were no smile on her face and voice also changed dramaticly and all this becouse i said 'no thank you'.

[Steve Rothwell]

that is what unprofessional sales people do Johnny

[John Kelly]

You need to grow a thicker skin. These people aren't your mates, nice as ninepence when they think you are going to buy something. Just be blunt and tell them to get stuffed, don't worry about offending them they are used to it.

[wynne jones]

As Ash says do it yourself.

The rats from YP have fled to companies selling the next big thing, they are not interested in you having success only taking your money. The key to knowing is when they want you to commit a big sum on over a protracted period rather than a small test which proves results.

[AshWhite]

I'm quite active advertising on Facebook, but now only through my business page and through local selling pages. I tried putting £30 into paid ads through FB, website had a few hits, but no enquiries.

The downside to FB is that its mostly used by 19 year old single mothers with 5 kids by 6 different fathers (at least in this area anyway..).
I've given some cheap quotes through Facebook with the view of spreading the word, but quite often hear diddly squat back (althugh I have also done a bit of business off there too).

[wynne jones]

To get facebook ads to work you really have to work with demographics. This is where knowing your best customers really well comes in because you know what they drive, what they read what past times they have. Targeting every woman in a 20 mile radius will not be very effective, you need an ad per sub group. 

Then you have to test, a lot.

Facebook campaigns are cheap compared to adwords but it's changing fast!

I've seen it work better in other markets though I have to say.

[davep]

As soon as I answer the phone and get 'may I speak to the business owner' I just hang up

They all try and bamboozle you with 'we get 50000 hits a day' or 'well get you high on
Google' blah blah blah......

[JandS]

I regularly advertise on my wall on Facebook.
All my friends see it as do they're friends and
their friends friends.Recently made friends on
FB with a beauty therapist who has every customer
she treats as a FB friend.
She has over a 1000 friends and I'm busy going through
them now asking to be friends so they'll also so
see my ads and special offers.
It's not rocket science, it's free but I think before
long FB will ban it.
Had 6 calls since I started in middle of October
with only a small database and converted 4.

John

[AshWhite]

Ill usually listen to what they're selling, just to see if I can put into practise what they're offering myself, either for less or even for free.

[Gary Humphreys]

Did targetted FB ads for 6 months and and got no calls but FB kept collecting their £££.

Wouldnt do it again.

[mark joyce]

did it last month 38000 images 6 clicks to the site not one call DO NOT DO IT ITS A WASTE OF MONEY!!  when I was complaining at the end of my month the complaints advisor was very rude and laughed when I said I felt I had been miss-sold the advert ( they where claiming 120 carpet cleaners with a running advert of over 9 months) ASA are not interested as its Business to Business sales, glad I got him down to 99 +VAT for the month the company is a company called Answer IT avoid at all costs

[Johnny Czarnota]

its not a bad think to listen what they have to say. I have listen SEO specialist and now im trying introduce what they said to my website myself and i can see progress through webmaster tools. I may try FB, but i will probably do it myself, but to do it well i need to spend a lot of time doing some research how to do it well and the 'time' is very hard to get

www.ejcarpetcleaners.com

[wynne jones]

I'm just trying to think of a time when out of the blue I've got a call from a salesman selling me advertising and it was something actually worth doing.

If it's good, you find them and they don't need cold callers taking a big cut in commision. Facebook ads are fine, so is adwords, seo etc but when a third party has to call you up then you're asking for trouble.

[Barry Livingstone]

Why pay to advertise on FB, social media isn't going away, am now using it to build a data base of Potential customers for the future as a means to Reduce my marketing cost!

Its may cost me a few FREE carpet cleans in the short term, but its part of a bigger plan!

my Weekly update from facebook

84 wall posts or comments this week84 since last week
419 visits this week399 since last week

No all i need to do is turn these visits into paying customers

[AshWhite]

How many likes do you have Barry? And of all the comments, did you manage to book any paying jobs?

I get a few off there, but mostly I think its people who are curious, with nothing better to do!

[Barry Livingstone]

Booked in 3 jobs from it this week, only really pushed it in the last week but really happy with the way its going! the visits to likes don't add up! but that's me advertising the page on other pages on FB.

Now my thinking is, every mth to gain over 200 prospects you could target with offers? 2400 new prospects a year if i make it work! at the end of the day am only looking for 700+ customers a year!

Am not looking from them all on FB, but its another cheap marketing tool!