- Tens of thousands of pounds,
that's what we've spent on Facebook ads
in the quest to get customers for our business.
The question is, do they work?
Can you get a return on investment on them?
Well, in this video, I'm gonna tell all.
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Let's talk about Facebook ads.
Now in the comments below
let me know if you've spent any money
on Facebook ads and if they've been successful for you.
What's the best thing that you've done?
I'd love to read those comments.
I want to talk about Facebook ads, because yes,
we have spent tens of thousands of pounds on them.
And I have to say out of all the mediums of advertising,
this is my favorite
because I've seen the biggest return on investment.
So to go into more detail on the world of Facebook ads
I brought on Dom, who's our head of web here,
at the Partyman group.
And here he is. (finger snapping)
So Dom, Facebook ads.
This year we have spent,
in the coronavirus pandemic year,
we've spent, so far, 11,521 pounds and 11 pence.
And a big chunk of that has been spent
on Marsh farm, and the Marsh farm shop.
- Correct?
I think it's really important to just say
that Marsh Farm is a really well established business,
30 plus years old.
We've owned it for seven years.
It's got a following.
Out of that 11,521 pounds,
We've only spent 6,149 pounds on the visitor attraction,
and 4,800 pounds on the new farm shop.
Do Facebook ads work for us?
That's the first question.
- Yes they do.
- If we had 10,000 pounds to spend on radio,
10,000 pounds to spend on Google,
10,000 pounds spend on Facebook,
which is your favorite?
- From a target perspective I would say Facebook.
- So we spend about, I think, 1500 pounds a month on radio.
Part of me thinks, and I have this
every time we've done a radio campaign,
should we just stop that?
And spend another 1500 pounds on Facebook?
- It's really difficult to tell, isn't it.
- Because radio, we don't know
it's just an ego thing.
Oh, we're on the radio.
- Well I'll tell you, there's no way
of tracking a conversion from a radio ad,
to a certain extent.
And the facts are, the 6,149 pounds
that we spent on Marsh Farm, the visitor attraction,
generated 25,593 pounds in sales.
Have we only spend that on one event?
- So that's split across four events.
So that's the Bubble 'n Bop Summer Festival,
the Dino Weekend,
Halloween Spectacular, and Winter Spectacular.
- It's pretty impressive, isn't it?
Do you notice we spend more when we do something new,
don't we, than something that's established,
like the Halloween thing.
But we was fully booked, weren't we?
- Well Halloween kind of ties into what
Pumpkin Village was as well,
which helps really well for the Farm Shop.
Let's talk about the Farm Shop,
cause that's a new business.
And those of you that haven't seen
our documentary about the Farm Shop
that we built a million pound business
or tried to build a million pound business, in a pandemic.
You can go and watch that by clicking here,
cause that'll give you some really good detail
around the farm shop.
We spent 4,800 pounds on the Farm Shop.
How are you working out those returns?
- Okay, there was various different types of campaigns.
So general shop was when we first started,
and were targeting like barbecue meat, flour.
- Yeah.
- "We have flour, buy your flour from us".
- I think we should,
because you couldn't get flour anywhere, could you,
at that time, because of the pandemic.
- And then we have the Pumpkin Village,
which is kind of part of the Halloween Festival.
Then we have the Christmas Shop in general,
just selling Christmas decorations,
and then Christmas events as well,
cause we had the Tree Village,
buying your Christmas tree from us.
- For me, as a business owner,
I want to know if we put more in,
would we get more back?
Now, the ones that like that Christmas Shop,
if we'd spent 30,000 pounds on Facebook,
do you think we would have been completely round?
- Yes, I think so,
And I think online sales would have been great as well.
Well, let's talk about that, that's the next thing.
So we're a physical location,
we're a brick and mortar store.
We never really, like with Teddy Tastic,
let's just quickly jump on the Teddy Tastic here.
That is, those of you watched our other ads.
we make Teddy bears,
we made over a million of these bad boys.
We sell them on Amazon,
we sell them on our own website.
We've done, we've worked really hard, haven't we?
To increase our B-C sales,
because we're mainly a wholesaler.
We sell it to visitor attractions,
and this year, in the pandemic,
we've gone mad on trying to sell to consumers.
And Amazon is by far our biggest gateway to consumers.
- Yep. - But our website has grown.
We have tried Facebook for that have, haven't we?
- We did, at the beginning of this year,
around Mother's Day.
- And it didn't work.
- It didn't work for us.
- How much did we, it just was terrible, wasn't it.
- We got one sale, of 200 pounds spend, which is.
- S you see, this is the thing, you know.
- Also remember, that that was when the site
wasn't optimized, it was loading slow,
maybe we didn't spend enough time
on the squeeze page, as it were.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Because, it was kind of a rushed campaign.
- I think it would have worked well
at Christmas, as well, don't you?
- Yeah. - So next year,
so we need to, what we'll do is
we'll do another, because from my point of view,
for experiences, and services, for products,
still I think you should put your money
into Amazon ads.
On Amazon, and get your product on Amazon,
because you can really track that, can't you,
far better than Facebook, or do you disagree?
- I disagree slightly, Amazons--
- I like that you disagree. - Very good.
- I love that you disagree, Dom.
- And I think that as long as you--
- But I have to say to you though,
the last time we did it on Mother's Day,
it didn't work, did it?
- Well that's just one, one little point.
You could, you've got all these other
times of the year, you got Easter,
you got Christmas, it doesn't have to be Teddy bears.
We can look at Christmas decorations.
They sell really well on line, which wasn't expected at all.
- Yeah.
- People from Scotland buying from us, in Essex.
- Yeah.
- Because I don't think people,
there's not a site out there
where it's really easy to buy a Christmas decoration,
with nice photography, or how does this decoration
fit in with that theme of tree?
- Yeah, yeah.
- I think it's totally untapped, in my opinion.
- So we can work on that for next year, can't we?
- Yeah, definitely.
Right, lastly, towards the top,
is our day nurseries.
We also own a chain of day nurseries.
We've used Facebook for that.
We're also, I think for comparison,
we're also using Google for that.
And in the last video that we did, on Google ads,
we ascertained that for day nurseries,
Google ads were really fantastic.
You can also watch that video
by clicking here as well,
on Google Ads for a day nursery business.
And we worked out that
because our day nursery customers spend
around 700 pound a month with us, on average,
and they stick around for four years,
you know, you got a 28,000 pound
lifetime value of a customer.
We worked out, didn't we, on Google,
we spent 40 pounds to get a qualified customer
on a brand new day nursery.
Fantastic return on ad spend,
but how's Facebook compare?
- Oh, it's better.
- Better.
- Yeah, you're looking at the current,
well from the 18th of December,
we have conversion cost per lead, is 17, 18, 19 pounds.
- Yeah. - To ten pounds.
- So we're spending, just say on average,
16 pounds to get a cost per lead.
And then these converted,
any of these actually converted into customers?
At the moment we don't know about other sites,
but Ipswich have been doing a conversion percentage.
- Yeah?
- They convert around 70% of people that come in.
- Oh, that is fantastic.
But that's very similar,
see the thing is that if you're spending 17 pounds
at Marsh Farm, as a visitor attraction,
to get a 20 pound ticket, or a family of five,
you know, or a family ticket
of between 50 and a hundred pounds,
you just can't keep doing that,
because they're only gonna buy from you once,
or maybe once a year.
But with the day nursery, to spend 20 pounds to get a lead,
when they know that they're going to be worth
28,000 pounds over four years,
is really where it starts to rack up.
And I think really that that's the,
it comes back to our last ad that we said,
if you can increase your average customer value,
and the amount they transact with you,
and have a lifetime value,
then really Facebook's great for it.
But we've also ascertained that Facebook is good
if you do I mean, I think the videos,
and the imagery is so important.
You just talk through, when we do that,
how important that is. - Okay,
so for an event, you ideally put a video out.
- Yeah.
- which would be set to get as many interactions
or web visits as possible. - Yeah.
- Then you might have another video that focuses
on trying to convert into booking a ticket.
Then you might have a gallery of families
having fun at that event. - Yeah.
- So it's always reminding them.
- The video ad, a gallery ad,
and what's the other one that we do?
Carousel ad?
- Yeah, well we do it for.
- Which is the one that performs the best?
Or is there no real?
- Well, it depends on what you want the performance to be.
So for getting interactions, and web visits, videos.
Because people love a video, it sells the event.
I always use those at the top of the funnel.
- Yeah.
- You filter them down into, it might be just a picture,
with just a call to action, saying,
just "Book now", with a family having fun.
You have a gallery with loads of pictures of families,
children, having fun at the event.
- Yeah.
- It just sort of cements in people's minds that,
"Okay, this event looks really good,
"let's go visit".
- Imagery or videos are so important to get more clicks,
and you can't just have, and the copy, the words you use.
- That's why we're always struggled with new events,
because it's a fresh event,
we don't have a catalog of these images.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- To really put up on.
So we've got to wait 'til the event starts
before we can start.
- Yeah, absolutely.
Even sometimes we put on fake stuff, don't we,
for a new event.
Get actors in, and then use old imagery to make a video,
to get us going.
I think that's a really good point.
So to conclude this video,
I'm going to ask Dom here his five, maybe six
top tips on using Facebook ads
to be more profitable for your business.
Dom, don't what's your top tixs?
Top tixs?
Top six ideas, or five.
Is it five, or is there six?
- There may be six, have to wait and find out.
- Okay, number one. (Dom laughing)
Let's go with number one.
- Okay, so, number one I would say,
is the fantastic targeting
you could achieve on Facebook.
Because they have so much data about everyone's lives,
that you can really drill down.
- See, cause what most,
if I was doing a Facebook ad,
and I haven't got someone like you,
all i just is boost post,
and that's just a waste of money, isn't it?
- I would say, yes.
That's what Facebook want you to do.
- Yeah. - Is waste money.
- And you need to do this on desktop,
really, don't you?
- Yes, you never use the boost function,
always go into to ad manager.
- How often do you go into ad manager?
When we're running a campaign, every day?
- Daily.
- Daily. - Yeah.
- Okay, and then when you go in there, you can say,
I want someone that's this inside link measurement,
that's married, divorced, engaged.
Has children, thinking about having children.
I've also, I just want to say this,
I've read that if you go too niche,
you actually lose loads of people at the same time.
Have you?
- Oh, 100%, there is a sweet spot.
- Yeah.
So Facebook has a little gauge, red's too niche,
green's optimum, and then, I think,
yellow or something is too broad.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And you're just wasted money,
or you get a higher cost per interaction, or click.
- Number two would be, the fact that you can do
look alike audiences based upon existing customers.
The people that are already transact you,
you can create lookalike audiences based upon them.
- Fine.
- That are more likely to--
- And it does all of that at the click a button.
- Click a button, you can do 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%,
obviously the bigger percentage,
kind of the less lookalikey they are.
- And Facebook does that all
for ad manager for you.
- Yes, yeah. - Fine, Number three.
- I would say, type of ads.
So you've got a massive selection
of different types of ads, and they're always adding more,
because they want people to stay on their platform longer.
So they're building it in your favor.
- What's the best one, in your opinion?
- I would say video ads are always fantastic.
- Yeah.
- But then, the new instant experience ads, are also.
- Well tell me.
- So, it's like a picture, or a video,
you click it, and rather than go into your website,
you go into like a mini website within Facebook.
- Like a funnel. - Yeah.
- Like a squeeze page.
- It literally just content blocked down,
and then always a call to action there.
- That's like, a bit like what ClickFunnels do,
but within Facebook.
- Yeah, or you can do, they have like a scroll up function,
where you can then visit the website.
So it's all. - Good.
- Based upon user interaction, and their phone.
- Number four.
- So copy and visual.
- Copy and visual.
Copy is the words that we use around the ads,
something that a lot of people don't,
so many people still get confused by that.
Copy, when we say copy, we mean the words.
- Yeah, and Facebook now have ways of formatting text,
which make it more interesting,
so they can get it by people's eyes,
and then emojis as well, work fantastic.
- Yeah.
And the visuals, obviously you mean the photos.
- Yeah, photos, videos.
- I can't stress to people, on all marketing,
that getting good visuals, and paying for them
can really give you a strong return on investment.
And we've definitely seen that on our Amazon features
that we've been using for these guys,
getting paid, proper photography, really works.
- Next, and I think, then you've got one more, have you?
- It's what you touched on, is the hungry audience.
- Hungry audience.
This is the bit, this was really mine,
that I gave to Don.
(Don laughing)
I think, so we did Teddy Tastic.
We tried selling these for Mother's Day,
for our Teddy Tastic on Facebook,
and I think the real reason they didn't sell
spectacularly well, even though we put 200 pounds into it,
I don't think there was a real, strong,
hungry audience for it.
When I've looked at the things like the Farm Shop,
when we use Facebook ads for that,
people couldn't buy flour, they couldn't get meat,
they couldn't get vegetables,
there was literally, literally,
a hungry audience for food
at the beginning of this pandemic.
So we put a little bit of money into Facebook,
and it just exploded,
and that's why we've got a 10 times return.
So I think whatever you're doing,
if you've got a hungry audience,
whether it's at, I look at our Days Out,
for our visitor attraction.
This year, people were locked up,
locked down, and they were desperate to go out.
So there was a hungry audience
for people that wanted to buy experience,
and days out for their families.
And that, I think, for all marketing,
whether it's on Facebook, whether it's on Google ads,
or whether it's in a newspaper, or on the radio,
if you can find a sector of the market
where there's a real strong, hungry audience,
then that's how you're going to win on any ad spend.
I've been James Sinclair, and you've been.
- Dominic. - Dominic.
We don't know his surname, it's a big secret,
it's a mystery.
- Dom the Web. (laughing)
- Dom the Web.
Check him out, that's on his birth certificate.
Thanks for watching.
Don't forget to check out the last video that we've done,
which was about the million pound pandemic,
you can watch that by clicking here,
and subscribe to the channel by clicking here.
I'm James Sinclair, and I'll see you real soon.
Bye-bye.