But still 18k for 250 customers 
reckon I could get 250 customers for less than 2.5k in fb ad spend....
How much time would you spend on gaining 250 customers on FB?
I’ve said it a million times (and you’ve disagreed nearly every time) but the thought of communicating with 250 customers on FB fills me with dread. Absolute cranks 95% of the time.
Not nearly enough time to warrant not saving 15k in marketting costs that's for sure !
Well once you've set your ads up and your leads start to come in you need to contact them, give them a call or on messenger whatever way you want to set your leads up.
I disagree slightly, fb leads won't be as good as leafletted leads but they are better than canvassed customers for retention rate as they are not cold called. They see ads and respond to an ad .
I usually work on a 50 % conversion of a lead . So if an average lead costs £5 then and average customer signed up costs £10.
As an aside you can get 250 customers for free from Facebook if you play the longer game.
Last time I posted on free groups in one evening I got around 20 new customers and one evenings posting a few months ago got me over 100 enquiries resulting in about 50 new customers.
I found this not to be the case - my first 500 canvassed customers from 12 years ago are still going strong - maybe 70 of these no longer with me - thats mostly moved - still have them at new address (those in the area) some oldies who have passed on and a small minority that fell by the wayside
At currently canvassing over the last 3 months - have yet to have one cancel
FB on the other hand - don't want to pay the price - always issues with the clean - then don't normally last until clean 3
I'll stick with leaflets and canvassing
Darran
This is the thing if you have a had a poor experience with leaflets, canvasser or fb ads then you are going to be of the opinion it doesnt work.
So my opinion is purely based on my own experience.
When is started out i spent about 10k on canvassed work. I used 4 different well know companies to do this for me. At first when i got results below what i expected i blamed the initial canvasser which is why i tried others, after doing this i came to the conclusion it wasnt the canvasser at fault but more the nature of canvasssed work. I havent done a lot of canvassing myself as i was always too nervous which is why i paid others in the first place but i did do enough to pick up around 50 customers which all went the same way as the canvassed work i had paid for, again reinforcing my opinon of canvassing,
I paid 3 cleans for canvassed work, generally i would get about 50 customers at a time so a whole week of doing sometimes minging first cleans. Out of that 50 i would get a mix of cancellign before the first clean, some that would never pay and a good amount only lasting a couple of cleans. I never kept a record but at a guess you would be lucky to be left with 50% of it 6 months down the line.
Now saying all that, i dont think its a horrific return, in reality this work was costing me more like 6x clean value BUT the work i had canvassed is some of my most compact, best earning work and in the long run has paid off.
With leaflets i found i was only getting 1 or 2 calls per thousand delivered, i have probably had about 20k put out in total. I stopped doing leaflets because i felt like it was much more of a gamble than canvassing. You were literally taking a handfull of money and posting it out and then sitting back with crossed fingers that the phone would ring. Quite a nerve racking time! At least with canvassing you are paying for direct results, 1 customer 1 payment, no customer no payment. Similar with a fb ad campaign, if you have spent 50 quid and an ad isnt working you can change it up and find something that does, you dont just shell out a few grand and hope you have that control.
When it comes to facebook ads, as above ive always found 1 converted customer to cost around £10 which for me is better than paying 1x clean value. At worst ive found the retention rate to certainly be no lower than canvassing and in most cases better because much like a leaflet they have responded to an advert and made the approach for a quote. Of course the downside compared to canvassing is the work is unlikely to be as compact.