Paid $200 for a Facebook ad experiment that flopped hard...

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2 Comments

Man I dropped $150 on a Facebook ad for my buddy's lawn care business once and got exactly zero calls from it. The targeting was a mess, like I was showing mowing services to apartment dwellers somehow. Reminded me of the time I bought a "proven" Instagram growth course that taught me how to make aesthetic grids nobody cared about. Did your ad at least get any clicks or was it dead on arrival?

sethhernandez1d ago

Actually, it wasn't totally dead on arrival. I got maybe 20 clicks to the landing page, but zero conversions of course. The targeting error you described is painfully common though. I think Facebook's algorithm just guesses wildly sometimes, like it saw "lawn care" and thought "apartment dwellers might need houseplants" or something crazy. Your buddy probably would've been better off just printing 500 door hangers and walking a neighborhood for a weekend. Social ads work for some things but local service businesses are tough because the platform doesn't really understand neighborhoods the way humans do. That Instagram course thing you mentioned that's a whole other painful memory I'd rather not revisit.