6 Elements Of A Failed Facebook Ads Campaign ($1951 CPA)

Note: This post started as a comment on Fee Fighter’s blog, but as I couldn’t post it for some reason, I decided to go for a pingback – which turned into a post. Enjoy.

Do you know Fee Fighters? They do something with credit cards, and they have one of the BEST corporate blogs around. Check them out.

One thing they are not so awesome at, apparently, is Facebook ads. They published a post not long a go about their attempt at a Facebook campaign, where they spent $1951 to get one paying customer, i.e. a CPA of $1951.

Here’s the original post.

I think they came up with a very cool concept for an ad, but they messed it up. Which is fine for the first time you try something, but what I didn’t like reading was this part:

Facebook ads (though cheaper) may not be the most effective place to put advertising dollars

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I just hate it when people give up too soon.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to write about what they did wrong, and hope that they would give it another shot and see if the results are any better. And along the way, maybe we can all learn something.

Here’s what they did wrong, imho:

1. Ad isn’t targeted well.
Targeting has a huge impact on an ad’s performance, and it seems like these guys went for the most obvious targeting ideas. People who like ‘business ownership’ or ‘small business’ are not necessarily beer lovers, and we can’t assume they all need credit card processing. Most startups I know are far from needing a CC processing solution…

Targeting the ad tighter could increase the CTR’s as well as get much better traffic to the site which will increase the conversion rate.

The targeting of the ad must consider the message (i.e. people who are likely to think this ad is funny), and the potential customer (i.e. people who actually need CC processing now or at some other time, or are likely to know someone else who does).

2. No landing page.
The Fee Fighters guys say they found that their homepage does a better job at converting users, which I think means there’s a good chance they’re doing something wrong (they should ask Oli), but the lessons here is simple: if a page (wether it’s a landing page or a homepage) converts well for one traffic source, it doesn’t mean it will convert well for another traffic source.

I’m pretty sure a homepage would change everything for this campaign. Why?

3. No Consistency.

It’s important to keep the message consistent throughout your marketing funnel, and in this case it would be important to create a landing page that has a similar message and the general spirit of the ad (e.g. I’d keep the beer picture and the beer references).

Keeping the message of how your’e spending too much money on CC processing instead of beer, time with your kids, etc. on a well optimized landing page would definitely work better, because right now if you see a cool laid-back ad about beer and spending money on fun stuff, and just want to see who is behind it, you will probably bounce right after landing on this blue homepage asking you to commit right away.

While the value proposition on the homepage matches the one on the ad (“save money”) I think the page focuses on the process more than on savings. On a dedicated LP, I’d start with the testimonial they have on their homepage saying something like “Michael Pryor saved $50k, that’s a lot of beer! Sign up to find out how!” or something along these lines.

4. The wrong ‘A’ in CPA.

This ad is very very cool, especially coming from a company dealing with credit car processing. I’d use this ad to get some attention, get people to know there’s a better option out there and what I’m about, and maybe capture leads.

A secondary call-to-action on the page could ask people who don’t need that service right now to sign up, subscribe to the blog, or share the page with a friend they think might need it.

Email marketing is known to be one of the most effective online marketing methods, and brings in super high ROI’s, and I’m sure if the Fee Fighter guys would track sales generated from emails who were originally picked up by a Facebook campaign, the ROI’s would be much higher (or the CPA much lower) over a 6 month period.

That said, even if the desired action is ‘buy now’, I think using the rest of the tips here could help.

5. Testing, Repetition & Tighter Targeting.

Before giving up on an ad, I would try at least 10 other images (if not 30), and at least 5 more variations of the text.

Think different images of beer don’t make a difference? You’re probably wrong. Think a red border around the image won’t increase your CTR? Well, at least 20% of the time, you’re wrong.

Think changing just one word on your ad can’t affect your conversion rate? You’re dead wrong.

I’d also try different variations, to see which one is more effective, and maybe target different types of people closer. For example, some people don’t care too much about beer, but they might care about spending more money on toys for their kids or a trip to Disney land. Someone else might be excited about a fancy watch (probable, if you own a company that needs CC processing).

Last note about the specific beer ad: it doesn’t have a strong call to action telling people to click. Adding and testing a few of those could increase CTR significantly.

Which brings me to the final tip:

6. Click Cost.

$0.018 is not a bad CTR. But with an initial suggested bid of over $3, it just won’t cut it. I’d try to get the CTR up to at least 0.15 or o.25 to start getting cheaper clicks.

This also takes me back to my first point about targeting – tight (or just right) targeting could affect your suggested bids & actual CPC’s and take them down more than 50%. Even more.

7. Bonus: Optimizing landing pages.
once you get your CTR under control, the next thing to do is split testing obsessively on your LP. I don’t need to tell you how much this could affect your bottom line, right? (If I do, stick around, we’ll discuss that as well in other posts).

So there you have it. I think these tips are enough to make a huge difference, and turn a money draining campaign into a money-making campaign. I hope the guys from fee-fighters will give it a few more chances before quitting.