[kerryfalk]

I have run a few test campaigns on AdWords and Facebook recently.

I was expecting better traffic and conversions from my Google campaign. The exact opposite happened, and by a large margin.

I received a lot more traffic from Google in a shorter timeframe but converted that traffic to registered users somewhere in the 5% range - I wasn't really happy with that. I believe the root cause there was the words I was picking, it's really hard to pick the right search terms. I don't think I've got it right yet and I expect my next campaign to go better.

Facebook's process is much, much more intuitive for a marketer though. It's easy for me to identify what my specific target market "likes" and then advertise a compelling message to them. The frequency of traffic was lower than Google's but the quality of the traffic was much, much higher. I converted nearly 20% of the traffic which I was much happier with.

I prefer Facebook's targeting as I found it a lot easier and it worked well for me but I need to spend more time with AdWords to determine if Facebook is better for me (It ended up being cheaper, too), but it's been pretty good so far.

[div]

Just out of curiosity, which of the two platforms had the higher net number of conversions ?

It feels like this is very relevant especially since you think your next Adwords campaign will be more successful.

[hartror]

Also of import: which had the cheaper cost per conversion and can you scale the traffic up?

[kerryfalk]

Facebook on both counts. Again, I was shocked. The CPC on Facebook started higher than it ended and the average ended up being lower than on AdWords (By about 10% or so IIRC). So Facebook ended up sending slightly more traffic over the course of the campaign and converted far more users - by large margin, >70% of the total.

So I'm sure my AdWords campaign could use some improvement as I don't think the difference should be so great, but it has been. And again, this is not what I was expecting. I was expecting the opposite.