If your company does Facebook advertising, you just got a swift kick in the ads courtesy of Cambridge Analytica and data scientist, Aleksandr Kogan, a super-smart, super-dumb, Useful Idiot who sold Cambridge Analytica the raw profile data of fifty-million people in violation of Facebook’s terms of service.

Click here if you need to get the facts about this catastrophe.

And no, “catastrophe” is not too strong a word to use to describe the blow to all of us who work in generating leads for HVAC contractors.

The Downside of Facebook’s New Privacy Policy

new fb privacyIn a nutshell, you no longer have the ability to target Facebook ads based on some key user demographics such as:

  • Home ownership
  • Education level
  • Income
  • Job

Not because you or I were doing anything predatory or underhanded with it.

When building a Facebook ad campaign using this demographic data, the Facebook user who saw our ad was always anonymous.

We never knew who we were servings ads to, we just knew they owned their homes, had advanced degrees, and had a six figure income.

We knew when one of those people contacted us, they very likely had the authority and the means to buy a top-of-the-line system.

We knew that comfort, efficiency and system design would not be compromised for budget.

When Mitsubishi Electric ran their COMFORT FOR HEROES promotion this spring, we used Facebook ads to educate the military personnel, first responders and educators who qualified for the program.

Comfort for HeroesAt the same time we were able to prevent ads for this special program from showing up in the news feeds of Facebook users who did not qualify.

Man, those were the days, huh?

Workarounds to Demographic Targeting of Facebook Ads

Yes there are other ways to get this information and to bake it into Facebook ad campaigns, but it won’t be cheap, which stinks because until a week ago it was free.

And if you’re planning to use Experian for that granular demographic detail, don’t get too cozy because they and other credit data groups are under increased scrutiny since the EquiFax hack last September. We don't know what changes may be ahead for access to this data, but one thing is certain about this business, things are always changing.

Here at CMG we are already have and are researching other sources of data to create these custom audiences for Facebook ads, but it will never be as accurate, effective, or as easy to do.

Consequently, your lead generation cost will increase on two fronts:

1. It is going to cost more to create demographically targeted audiences because there will be more sources required in order to build them out. We will have to buy that data somewhere and you are going to pay for it.

2. If you do not invest in demographically targeted audiences, the overall quality of your Facebook generated leads will decline.

Imagine the impact to your business if every salesperson has to run down and disqualify one more poor lead a month. How about two or even three?

That’s two and a half hours per lousy lead per month per salesperson.

And not only are they not going to book those jobs, but every time it happens there’s a good lead they can’t run.

Moving Forward

Many of our clients have enjoyed the benefits of custom Facebook audiences (meaning they have made significant profits using them in the past), so they understand the value, and are willing to ante up.

For smaller clients we’ll fall back on the the initial demographic analysis we provide at the beginning of every business relationship, which includes income and home ownership elements that enable us to target down to the zip code level with reasonable quality.

Central Florida Income DataAs we adapt to these recent changes over the balance of this summer season and into heating season, we will measure the impact in real dollars and report back along the way.

In the meantime, you can thank the unscrupulous turds at Cambridge Analytica and the creeps who paid them for negatively impacting your bottom line.

Social Media Marketing

Don Lafferty

About the Don Lafferty: