Plugin Alliance: 35X Return on Facebook Ads

Are you disappointed with social advertising or have thrown up your hands and said “I give up?” This article explains how we generated a 35x return on spend and why it was successful.

Analytics and Tracking Set Up

After identifying our objectives, my team and I went to work with the company to set up the granular aspects of Facebook ad tracking and remarketing parameters.

Then we set up the dynamic ads process. The upsell aspect of dynamic ads is fantastic as you can show people ads of specific products they purchased initially.  For exam.ple, you can sell raincoats to people that bought umbrellas.

We then created a conservative budget for testing focused on our goals above and set up a Google spreadsheet for our notes. Take detailed notes and document everything. You never know what might be important later on. You won’t regret it.

Dating Before Getting Married

Social marketing is a bit like dating before the marriage. You go out for a drink (awareness), then you go out for dinner and continue dating (consideration) and then you look for a wedding cake (the purchase phase). If you go for the sale in social advertising too early you are wasting your money.

Know What People Are Interested In

Using this philosophy, we used Facebook and Instagram campaigns to drive people to educational articles on the site that also featured the company’s products. This is the awareness phase. With Facebook advertising you can set up targeting based on specific pages people visit and you can communicate specifically about problem solving for their needs. Remarketing is the process of connecting with people that took some initial action with your company. This could be anything from engaging with a social post to visiting the website.

Then we would show these same people videos of products related to the website pages they visited or direct them to other related educational articles. This is the consideration phase.

Thirdly, we would provide a coupon code and ask for the sale, knowing the ad recipient was most likely already considering the specific product for a purchase.

The Key to Success

Through conservative spends, lots of testing and adjusting, we came up with a formula that allowed us to raise our spends knowing the return would be there. Like a song that never ends, you must be willing to maintain this process until you achieve results.

Turbo-Charged Remarketing

The above is just a small portion of our total social advertising strategy. We provided incentives for people to register. We showed ads to people that didn’t open our emails – or opened specific emails but didn’t purchase. We tested videos versus carousel ads, long copy versus short, lifestyle images versus products, and more.

We even created some fun abandoned cart ads that did amazingly well. This speaks to another aspect of social marketing which is entertaining content works very well. Our abandoned cart ads got lots of shares and comments and of course brought in lots of revenue.

The result was a whopping return of thirty-five times the spend for all the campaigns in 2017 and thousands of new registered users and fans. This is not a fairy tail. It’s a real-world success story with measurable results.

Why It Worked

We set up everything that could be measured and embraced the challenge of the more technical aspects of setting up dynamic ads. We conducted weekly brainstorming sessions with the client who actively participated in the discussions to provide customer insight and industry knowledge.

The client was patient enough to allow us to guide the process starting with conservative spends and just as important – the client trusted my team to make decisions on their behalf. The client also generated lots of images, videos and educational content for our awareness phase of our campaigns.

Key Takeaways

• Set up everything you can possibly measure for social advertising.
• Start conservatively – don’t waste money early in the process.
• Be diligent about testing, analyzing and adjusting.
• Use all forms of remarketing that make sense.
• Use the awareness, consideration, purchase approach to campaigns.
• Conduct regular meetings and brainstorm for success.
• Keep detailed notes and review them frequently.

Good luck and do NOT get frustrated. It takes time to build a winning plan.

Michael Newman
Director of Marketing