Case Study: Advertising Forrester Marketing Forum Coverage on Facebook

During Forrester’s Marketing Forum 2009 (read the full roundup), I spent a networking break demonstrating Facebook’s Page analytics and advertising. What better way to demonstrate it than create an ad on the fly?

>>See below for screen shots of the ads, the targeting, and the campaign overview.<<

As I was blogging the event, I created a simple ad with the subject “Forrester Mktg Forum Blog,” using the abbreviation for marketing due to character limits. I added a photo I took of the event, so there were no rights issues, and then had the copy read, “Want to read coverage of your own event? Visit MarketersStudio.com.”

The more interesting angle comes with the ad targeting. I was able to reach 400 U.S. residents who listed Forrester Research as an employer. It’s hard to get more precise than that. I then created another ad group targeting several Forrester competitors and changed the copy from “coverage of your own event” to “coverage of your rival’s event,” opening up another 1,000 people. And for fun, since I met a Forrester staffer from Amsterdam, I ran one more campaign targeting the 40 Forrester people in the Netherlands.

The campaign was cheap. Recommended CPM (cost per thousand impression) bids ranged from about $0.25 to $0.50, so I overbid considerably to max out my reach among the very limited target audience. I bid anywhere from $1 to $3, gradually upping several along the way. Over the course of a week, I spent under $16, garnering 26,000 impressions, 64 clicks, a 0.24% click-through rate, a $0.25 average cost per click, and a $0.60 CPM.

More importantly, I attracted attention from my target audience, including a comment on the blog from Jeremiah Owyang when he came directly from an ad. Is $0.25 a good price for an influential analyst’s/blogger’s attention? Is $16? Jeremiah’s a friend of mine, so I won’t imply in the slightest that we’re friends on a cost per click basis, but as a general rule I’d say it’s a good deal all around.

Oh, and Jeremiah also was featured in some ads. I ran three ads initially with analyst Shar VanBoskirk, and then I added a couple with Jeremiah. The Jeremiah ads attracted more than double the click-through rate, but that can at least partially if not mostly be attributed to the better photo of him compared with Shar.

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