You may have heard a lot of hoopla in recent weeks about FaceBook Ads.  If you aren’t familiar, it’s like Google’s AdWords but on FaceBook.   And if you’ve been living under a rock over the years, Google AdWords are those “pay per click” ads you see on Google’s search engine results pages.  Advertisers sign up for this service on Google, add search terms (keywords) to bid on, and bid a certain amount per search term that will partly determine how high their ad appears when people Google that term.  For example, if someone Google’s “Atlanta chiropractors” a bunch of these PPC ads will appear in order of the bids/ quality of the ad.

Lots of internet marketers are trying to cash in on selling “How to use Facebook Ads” ebooks.  A guy named Todd Brown, who is well known in the chiropractic marketing community, is selling one for I believe around $197.    DON’T BUY ANY OF THESE ebooks because you don’t need them, it’s a waste of your money!

The internet marketers are trying to make it sound like FaceBook Ads are better than Google  AdWords because the platform is newer and it doesn’t cost as much to bid on search terms because not many people know about it.  The second thing they gush about is that you can target your audience more precisely with FB Ads; for example by age, sex, marital status, birthday, and interests (if you’ve ever used FaceBook before, you know this is the data you fill out on your personal profile).

It all sounds too good to be true, right?  Well, it IS too good to be true.  FaceBook ads are nowhere NEAR as good as Google AdWords for a very fundamental reason:  FB Ads are interruption marketing; whereas Google AdWords is search marketing.  In other words, people who view the Google AdWords PPC ads are ACTIVELY, PURPOSELY LOOKING for what those advertisers offer.  The FaceBook Ads appear when people are writing on their FaceBook wall or playing one of those mind-numbing FB apps like the Farm.  They AREN’T looking for your service.  If they DO see your FB ad, they may click it out of curiosity and waste your money.  In short, the FaceBook user is an UNQUALIFIED lead.

Here are my FB Ad Stats for a chiropractic ad I placed and ran for a week: 

• 694,350 impressions,
• 99 clicks at an average of $1.28 per click
• Total cost of $127.02
• Zero new patients

I could let it run longer, but this data to me suggests that my money is better spent elsewhere.

If you are still curious about FB ads, save yourself the money and don’t buy any ebook.  Just go on FB and figure it out yourself; it’s not that difficult.  What I can tell you is that FB has much more restrictive rules than Google.  They didn’t even let me use a picture that showed a woman’s back, for example.  Can’t say things like “look better” or “feel better” etc; and you can’t have any pop ups on your landing page.

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