Small business owners nix Facebook advertising

Small business owners who are looking to expand their company's reach by advertising on Facebook might think twice after hearing first-hand accounts from other entrepreneurs who have already tried the small business marketing tool.

Two stories were recently released that expressed company's frustration working with Facebook ads. The first was reported in Benzinga, in which the owner complained that Facebook attempted to charge them $2,000 to change its name on the company's page. The company also claimed that the analytics were subpar and estimated 80 percent of the clicks they received on their pages were from bots.

In a recent blog entry, Erik Larson had a similar complaint, estimated that 90 percent of the Facebook clicks recorded by companies were from spambots. Larson became frustrated when he realized he was getting mostly fake clicks from bots for his campaign and got in touch with Facebook customer support to correct the problem.

"The problem is that Facebook misled my company with respect to the inherent value of most of the clicks by claiming that these clicks were comparable in value to clicks in other CPC venues or to clicks by FB users with typical and expected interactions with CPC advertising (emphasis added)," Larson said in a response to Facebook after his initial complaint.

While some businesses have complained about the ineffective marketing of Facebook, others have shown improvement working with the social media website and other sites that are now being used for business marketing.

Users should make sure they research the best possible steps they can make to increase their return on investment, including the profile picture they add and what message the company sends to the millions of Facebook users.