By tracking people that converted and then feeding that into Facebook's Lookalike Audience we were able to drop the cost per lead to about a third of the original cost over time (from $78 to $27). It beat everything else (TV, display ads, retargeting, SEM, etc), to the point where we only did that.
We've noticed that every time we stopped the ads, or changed the targeting parameters/audience, it would take a while for Facebook to get back to the same results.
p.s The lead cost was that high because we were selling $200k land + $500k houses from a small tropical country to US consumers that may have never even heard of that country.
Personal anecdote that shows how customer service laser-focused T-Mobile is:
Last week the T-Mobile CMO announced a nationwide campaign in which existing and new customers could turn in any Blackberry and get $200 towards a new phone (it was a response in regards to the CEO of Blackberry blasting them the day before).
I had just switched over to T-Mobile a couple of days before (so that I can upgrade phones whenever I want with their Jump program) and gotten $0 for my Blackberry. Usually I don't bother but this time I wanted to carry out an experiment on T-Mobile's customer service and see if I could get them to retroactively honor the Blackberry deal.
Long story short, I twitted their CMO (I'm nobody on Twitter) and he got back to me within 30 minutes. The next day I got a call from T-Mobile's corporate that my account had $200 in credit!
We've noticed that every time we stopped the ads, or changed the targeting parameters/audience, it would take a while for Facebook to get back to the same results.
p.s The lead cost was that high because we were selling $200k land + $500k houses from a small tropical country to US consumers that may have never even heard of that country.