I don't think my creative was perfect, it was put together very quickly and my budget was just £15 last time. I spent a lot of time on the text and story appeal of it though. I am one of those very small businesses that needs to spend carefully and "hyper target", and geotarget; start small with a number of high quality audience individuals and map my content to them. That's pretty common sense but it's basically how all small campaigns ought to work.
I think I got 1 or 2 phone calls, one was sorted out with another supplier in under 24hrs so wasn't really looking for the very basic amount of consultation inherent in the service I offer, they just wanted click button and get thing, which is fine. I think that's where I falter on going for the "interests-based" approach and perhaps should have cast a wider net as I kind of forget I need to vet customers as well and avoid time wasters, however possible.
In terms of what the ad was optimised for though, website clicks, and follows, I got nothing at all. Just gooseberry fool load of impressions (about 1.5k or something). The thing is with Facebook, these are all just scrolls past your content, the engagement is really low. In theory, the opposite should be true provided the creative is on point or at least great than something like 1.5% click rate / engagement and 0% conversions from that (if we're looking at a sale as the target, which wasn't my target actually, it was brand awareness but instead I got no lasting awareness just a blip in front of some random people's eyes who were vaguely interested in my area of work, not necessarily buying anything). I can do the same content on Instagram organically with hashtags (which just don't work on Facebook even if you include them) and get a much better engagement rate, new followers etc, and my follower count sticks.
I sincerely doubt it's Facebook that brings a business from 0 to hero as they are implying. There is so much more to it than that, including the creative aspect for which Facebook isn't accountable at all.
As a creative guy myself I gotta cringe at leaving that out of the equation and essentially saying, "besides all the work you do to make your ad and service offering appealing to customers, you won all these sales because of us! Don't stop using your Facebook page which has TERRIBLE exposure compared to FB's portfolio of other platforms including Instagram and keep pumping money into it". I used to sell marketing and perform SEO campaigns, I know there is no such thing as a guaranteed result, and those announcements just remind me of that.
Organic success on Facebook became a ridiculously high treshold all but requiring financial investment in the page/channel after pressure from their investors, whereas before if someone liked your page, for example, 100% of people actually saw that page, etc. So more on par with actually earning your followers a bit like how SEO works favouring good quality content rather than purchasing the audience consistently enough with hard cash to buy the same result - although Facebook could never guarantee those followers stick around either. They are talking specifically about paid advertising and a reduction in the efficacy of that and ability to track results with FB pixel etc (I just use Google Analytics instead and a campaign code) but it's sort of a problem of their own creation. You get your community pages etc to rely on paid ads to cut through the noise, which barely works. Then you whinge about the platform holders not supporting that to the same degree anymore.
I know small businesses that haven't spent any money at all on Instgram and have something like 20-30,000 followers at this point. They spend their money on influencers or giveaway product which is pretty effective for them. I sometimes wonder how squirmy the platform holders get when they can no longer prove an add as been effective due to privacy policies or the law changing. It's almost as if suddenly they have to admit they are a tool and nothing more. Yet they chose to go down this path of strawberry floating over organic content growth and funelling businesses into an advertiser/publisher relationship, where Faceboook control both ads and publishing aspects.
I guess I'm just bitching about how hard it can be now to reach the audience you already have, nevermind new audiences on these platforms. I should probably direct my efforts there to newsletters etc, only again, I dislike spamming customers whereas through social media they have a choice whether to follow you or not. Direct marketing is not my style but maybe I need to change my tune and be more aggressive!
(Oh and there's also GDPR making that kind of illegal, so I need to recollect any and all email addresses for marketing purposes again anyway.... Which brings us back to directing an ad to a landing page with a turnstile to sign up to email letters to get some content or freebie etc etc).
Ugh maybe it's just all too much like my old job and I'd rather make things, I'm unsure at this point what it is I'm really complaining about