Ok, so everyone and their dog seems to be doing dating on Facebook. Well it's time for me to get a slice of the action. While I've been doing AM for a long time, I've never dove into dating. Also I haven't did that muchy Facebook PPC other than building fan pages. Not a problem getting 2%+ CTR for those type of ads. Dating seems to be a little bit of a beast. SEO has been my bread and butter for so long, but it's time to move on.
Anyways, I figured I'd do a follow along to keep myself accountable, and get my butt in gear and learn this. I definitely can use any suggestions or help from those pros out there.
So I'm using CPV Lab, which I've already started not liking all that much. Maybe I should hire a programmer to create a decent tracking platform for FB and PPC marketers out there. I've tried imobitrax and 202, but all seem to excel at certain things, but not everything. Oh well, will stick to CPV Lab for now.
My Dating Campaigns
So I started out with campaigns in 3 countries over the weekend. Each is targeting single women 45-60 going to a landing page (going to build out another version which I'll rotate in to split test). I am picky about my offers and want to do things following Facebook rules. Nothing sketchy and no promoting red dot MyWOT offers.
After this weekend though my first priority is to increase my CTR which seems to be sucking. I've tested about 30 images in each country so far, but hunting for more.
Country 1 - Highest CTR 0.076%
Country 2 - Highest CTR 0.124%
Country 3 - Highest CTR 0.085%
Here is how ugly things are the first few days
9/13
Revenue: $30.90
Ad Spend: $72.48
Profit/Loss: -$41.58
ROI: -57.37%
9/14
Revenue: $32.10
Ad Spend: $62.79
Profit/Loss: -30.69
ROI: -48.88%
9/15
Revenue: $38.10
Ad Spend:$39.60
Profit/Loss: -$1.50
ROI: -3.79%
I'm definitely open to any tips you guys have. Going to be testing 2 more countries and get more ads created today.
I'd definitely recommend split-testing landers ASAP. Are you split-testing your offer across different networks too? I'm often amazed how much of a difference that makes.
Hey Caurmen, getting some lander split testing today. One of the offers I can only find on 1 network. The conversion rate is almost 25% on the network. Just my landing page CTR is only 31.5%. What would you suggest is a decent CTR to strive for? Or does it really matter as long as it's profitable.
Also my click prices are pretty high since my ad CTR isn't really getting over .12%. Working on new landers today and new angles/ads. Trying to get geolocation redirect set up but having a tough time with getting geolite installed correctly. I want split test direct linking just to see the difference, but ads won't be approved until I can get geo redirection working.
It was another day of losses. Hopefully I can get something in the green soon.
9/16
Revenue: $30.10
Ad Spend:$54.79
Profit/Loss: -$24.69
ROI: -45.06%
Like they teach you in the Gym, "don't strike for a certain amount of reps. Do AS MANY reps as you can until you collapse."
same goes for your landing page...
There is no CTR to strive for, strive for 100% if you can. Just keep optimizing forever...
So if you want a number to strive for. Aim for 50% CTR to start and go from there.
Also you're targeting a niche group of older adults. Make sure your landing page applies directly to the benefits of dating/relationships for that age group.
Well, another day of losses. I built out campaigns in a few more countries. I'm thinking today however of just cutting all countries and stick to 1 of the larger English speaking countries until I can get a campaign in the green. For 1 I don't speak another language so I'm just using 1HourTranslation right now to translate pages and ads. It might be better for me to just stick to an English country before translating it and starting in a non-english speaking country. Also the traffic volume isn't that high in some of these smaller countries. What do you guys think? Is that a better strategy?
Also still working on my ad CTR. Have tested out about 100 images so far and haven't found any winners yet. Will keep testing. Any ideas on good places to find fresh images that won't get me into trouble?
9/17
Revenue: $62.25
Ad Spend:$109.92
Profit/Loss: -$47.67
ROI: -43.37%
Keep going buddy. Don't stop testing!
@drumminlogan - personally I'd strongly recommend sticking to a non-English-speaking country - chances are the competition will be much lower there. You may want to focus on just one country, though - do research on their current affairs, their dating culture, etc, and build campaigns from that knowledge.
Thanks for the advice. Will just focus on two countries for now. I had launched a couple new campaigns that look promising. MY ad best ad CTR is a .09% so definitely room to improve. Plus it was direct linked so will be split testing a couple of landing pages today and new ads to get my click prices down.
Man, this can be a frustrating game trying to find decent images. Does anyone ever get decent CTRs with stock photos?
9/18
Revenue: $38.75
Ad Spend:$84.53
Profit/Loss: -$45.78
ROI: -54.16%
Well, another day of losses and a total sucky day. Feeling really frustrated with dating. Tested out a few more landers and more ads. I got canned from one of the offers after sending just 10 leads. Seems strange they would do that so soon, but I guess that's the game.
Still searching for some profits and a glimmer of hope.
9/19
Revenue: $5.60
Ad Spend:$43.35
Profit/Loss: -$37.75
ROI: -87.08%
Some of the dating offers can be just insane with how fast they'll can you and how little data they'll do it on. Everyone up to and including affiliate managers gets pissed off with that.
Well this weekend I paused most of the ads since they were sucking and figured I'd regroup today. Already got 4 new campaigns launched this morning and will try to get another 4 more launched this afternoon based on a couple of angles that popped into my head this weekend while I was taking a break.
I think right now my biggest challenge is increasing my ad CTR. I've been testing multiple image styles but have yet to find something that is giving me decent click prices. I had a couple of great ideas I wanted to try but am having trouble finding the style of images I was thinking of.
Any tips on places to find good images?
Here are the ugly stats for the past few days:
9/20
Revenue: $9.6
Ad Spend:$25.90
Profit/Loss: -$16.3
ROI: -62.93%
9/21
Revenue: $1.6
Ad Spend:$19.39
Profit/Loss: -$17.79
ROI: -91.75%
9/22 (paused all ads Saturday night)
Revenue: $0
Ad Spend:$0
Profit/Loss: $0
ROI: 0%
Hi Drumminlogan
Most of my images are coming from thechive.com. In another follow along of Mehdi (if i'm not wrong) he got decent 0.3%+ images from dating websites like adultfriendfinder.com and so on. They do have algorithms that show pictures of woman and men that converting well.. I didn't test this, but if you want to take a shot.. go ahead!