BusinessInsider.com produces a series of “charts of the day” based around different topics. This morning’s chart shows the Most Successful Facebook Ads and it makes for very interesting reading.

Take a look at the bottom of the chart for the best performing ads. Clickthrough rate is in red and cost per click on the right. There’s a typo in “tabloids and blogs” because I think it should read 0.165%. So, the best performing Facebook ads have a clickthrough rate of around 0.15% and a cost per click of around 20c. Of course, we don’t have conversion rate information so we don’t know how many of those clicks resulted in sales – my experience has been that, at best, Facebook ads perform somewhat below the conversion rate of Google’s Display Network (Adsense).

A clickthrough rate of 0.15% for the BEST performing ads is woeful. This means (if my maths is correct) that over 600 people see the ad before a single one clicks. For the worst performing ads, this is nearer to one in every 9,000 views. Even though Facebook is a huge network, you’re going to struggle to get any meaningful traffic with those numbers.

How does this compare with other forms of advertising? Well, the closest Google analogy is the Display Network (formerly the Content Network) which, like Facebook Ads, is interruption marketing. If I were to run a Display Network campaign with 0.15% CTR, I’d shut it down – it would simply not be worth the time. I’m looking for CTRs of at least 10x that figure to make a campaign worth running.

Google Adwords is a different kettle of fish. Because the ad is only displayed when the searcher types specific keywords in, then as long as you choose the right keywords you should get much higher CTR. I look for a minimum of 5%. In other words, I can expect roughly 450 times more effective marketing using Adwords than Facebook- where do you think I concentrate my efforts?

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I am becoming progressively more fed up with internet marketing gurus. The hyperbole has become utterly ridiculous, to the extent where I now believe nothing. The most common line I hear now is “I’m sure you’re confused about all the different get rich quick schemes, not sure what to believe. Well, I’m telling you – you can believe me: this really is a get rich scheme!”

Oh for heaven’s sake. There was a time, not long ago, where an internet marketer would sign you up to an autoresponder, provide loads of good value advice and then, after a reasonable period building up the emotional bank account, would offer you something to buy.
No more. Now, you get onto a list, any list, and you’ll be getting “joint venture” emails on an almost daily basis – “here’s this guy, his product is brilliant, you should buy it! [Oh and by the way, I get 50% commission if you do].” If you’re subscribed to a number of “experts” then you’ll get the same product pitched by all of them.

This culture of affiliate marketing and joint ventures makes the extravagant endorsements and testimonials of gurus for the products of other gurus completely valueless.

Is it coincidence that this has happened during the economic downturn? Probably not, but it seems to me that these gurus know the game is nearly up and are pushing their products for all they’re worth before the market collapses up its own arse.

In my view, internet marketing is exactly the same as all marketing and, indeed, all business. Find a market, build the right product for that market, market it effectively and build a community around it. There is no magic in doing business on the internet, it’s just direct mail on steroids. Once the perception of instant internet riches finally fades into the past, the hyperbole of internet marketers will cease to have an effect and we’ll get back to doing business the right way.

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Just a quick heads-up for an excellent new Twitter-related service. Sometimes I write tweets quite late at night and I certainly don’t want them being posted at that time. Cotweet was developed to allow multiple authors to create tweets on a single account but what I use it for is delayed tweeting. Although other services also offer this, Cotweet is the simplest to use: simply tell it when you want your tweet sent and it will do it! Tomorrow morning at 10am? No Problem. Cracking.

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