I threw $5 on my first ever Facebook ad. Here’s what happened!

Tessa Palmer
Jul 28, 2017 · 4 min read
Edinburgh Castle by Palmer Designs

I had never done a Facebook add before. Nor had I really invested a lot of effort into my Facebook business page either; around 50% of my page likes are from friends of friends, and extended family members.

I have just about managed to post on average once per month over the last 6 months. And I haven’t even invited my full list of Facebook friends yet to like my page. Not exactly what I would call aggressive…

So when I posted a recent update on my Facebook page and got an email saying that I had a ‘high performing post’, I decided to take a little $5 gamble to try and grow my engagement. What’s the worst that could happen?!

I set up a 24 hour promotion for one of my posts to run from 10am EST on a Sunday to 10am on a Monday. I set my cost limit at $5 and then a couple of parameters.

I’m going to be honest, I didn’t really have much clue about what I was doing!

It was incredibly easy to set up though, and I admit I very quickly decided to set up another $5 post with a different target market and product as a comparison. When in Rome…

My first ad was for this one, a fun design of Edinburgh Castle newly uploaded to my Etsy page:

Edinburgh Castle Designed by Tessa Palmer

I set my target market to 16–64+ year olds, in both the UK and USA to try and hit up anyone with an interest or connection to Edinburgh.

My second product was a recent post on my Facebook page which advertised a new partnership with Cape Cod Life Magazine. I set my target audience to just the area of Cape Cod & the Islands within Massachusetts, since the products are maps of that area.

So what were the results of my two $5 little Facebook advertising gambles?

Here’s what I learned:

- I was pretty wrong about my target age range. I was pretty surprised to see ALL of my clicks throughs for my ads were for people aged 45–65+. This was pretty surprising!

- The gender mix was more even than I expected. I was expecting mainly females to be interested in my ad, but I was wrong.

- You can get really specific. Like, really. You can target people that only like a specific Facebook group, for example. In fact my more targeted ad performed better than the other.

Overall, I was pretty excited with the results. I got 17 clicks on the ads and over the course of the week, I got 9 new page likes!

These are the results of the two ads that I ran.

Given that the click-through rate for a Facebook add is 1.59% (for the retail sector), I’m actually feeling quite happy about the results. The Cape Cod ad on the right did particularly well: I got a click rate of over 3%.

AND to top it all off I actually got my very first sale this week from the UK!! I’ve never had a non-US sale before and it was interesting to get one the same week I advertised on fb to the UK. Coincidence?!

The more I learn about setting up this business, the more I learn that targeted advertising is so important. While I already knew this, I didn’t really know how to verify who your target audience is and also how specific you should be. Advertising on Facebook provided me with a really cool view into who is clicking my ads and gave me more clarity on who my audience is. It has certainly given me lots of food for thought!

So, one of my key areas of research next week will be look a little bit more into my newly verified target market. Where do they hang out? What platforms do they use? How can I get my product in front of them?

Until next time!


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Palmer Designs Facebook Page

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Palmer Designs on Etsy

My logo! :)

Tessa Palmer

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Life after quitting the rat-race.

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