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Re: Small Facebook Campaign! (19)

06-30-2015 12:18 PM #1 caurmen (Administrator)

$5 per day should give you basic information on whether the campaign's promising. Definitely test some more ads as soon as possible, though - currently all you'll test is whether that ad works.

Looking forward to your first results!

06-30-2015 12:22 PM #2 chintu (Member)

How do you guys keep track of campaigns and ROI. Should I just use Google Spreadsheets when it comes to facebook PCC.

06-30-2015 12:34 PM #3 zeno (Administrator)

How you keep track of things is up to you. Just track daily spend and revenue and split it up into finer details at your own discretion.

$5/day is quite low but will suffice to get you data, but be aware this rapidly becomes a very prohibitive budget if you want to test multiple ads and audiences.

More importantly, you should be confident this offer performs well before spending too much time on it. If the offer has had no data sent to it and is new, that's fine, but if you haven't asked your AM about this you are making bad habits early on.

P.S. "we're" not "were" and be careful with saying "enter to win" with sweepstake-style stuff. At both the traffic source and advertiser end there can be a lot of discretion, e.g. where they want you to make sure you say "enter for a chance to win", otherwise it can mislead people into thinking entering = winning (common sense is a rare thing).

P.P.S. try news feed ads.

06-30-2015 12:59 PM #4 chintu (Member)

Well I tried newsfeed and I have a an ecommerce business page and that keeps sponsoring the affiliate offer I am trying to promote which is a no-no. Is there a way around this. I've changed it "Enter for a chance to win".

06-30-2015 01:56 PM #5 wiifmdude ()

Originally Posted by zeno

More importantly, you should be confident this offer performs well before spending too much time on it. If the offer has had no data sent to it and is new, that's fine, but if you haven't asked your AM about this you are making bad habits early on.

This is SO TRUE.

One of my AM leaked the real volume ($ revenue) of all of his network campaigns for a european GEO last week and you would be absolutely surprised to see how many offers just do a couple dollars/week revenue...

And that was for one of the more pre-eminent network !!!

Needless to say that if an offer is making $50 revenue / week for an an entire network, that's probably not gonna work ;-)

I suspect the network's revenue / offer follow not a 80/20 rule but probably closer to 90/10 or 95/5... i.e. 95% of the network's revenues come from only 5% of the offers. So a TON of duds.

Cheers,

07-02-2015 11:14 AM #6 chintu (Member)

I've just created a spreadsheet to track my progress. Can anyone here help me to figure out what profit-loss is like for me at the minute even though the campaign is only on day 3 and how do I figure out ROI?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

Many Thanks!

07-02-2015 11:27 AM #7 wiifmdude ()

Originally Posted by chintu

Well profit / loss is in this case loss 100%

ROI is easy : in % it's ((Revenue-Expenses) / Expenses) * 100

e.g. your revenue is 110 and it cost you 100, your ROI is (110-100)/100*100 = 10%

07-02-2015 11:43 AM #8 caurmen (Administrator)

So far I've had 10 clicks and 0 conversions a bit disappointing but I know that in ecommerce you need to get 100 clicks before you get a conversion or sale. Is it the same with Affiliate Marketing Lead Generation.

Depends what kind of offer you're running.

The key thing that needs to happen is that the math needs to all add up. Is your CVR (conversion rate) multiplied by your payout lower than your cost per click to the offer? If so, profit. If not, not.

However, you also need to bear in mind statistical significance. 10 clicks isn't a lot.

You might find these posts helpful:

http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ats-Calculator
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ill-Make-Money

07-03-2015 08:51 AM #9 chintu (Member)

Originally Posted by caurmen

Caurmen,

What does zeno think since he's the Facebook Expert? I'm seriously worried that my facebook ads account may be banned. Personally I think the offer is tasteful and people do have a chance of winning a designer handbag if they do enter their details. What are you thoughts and do you think my account is at risk of being banned on Facebook.

Small success! I've generated 31 clicks so far with only one (1) conversion. So I made ($)0.95 payout on this offer. However the cost is $14.61 So it looks like I'm still in the Red.

You know what I own a small ecommerce business and it generated 591 clicks last month organically and I still didn't get a decent conversion people adding the items to basket and buying it. And on Facebook in 31 clicks I get one conversions. This is so baffling!

07-03-2015 10:14 PM #10 chintu (Member)

I've stopped my campaign and I'm going back to the drawing board. You mentioned that direct-linking to an offer in Facebook is frowned upon. Even for a sweep-stakes offer like this would you say that I have to create a landing page I have no HTML & CSS skills.

07-07-2015 11:41 AM #11 chintu (Member)

Update: so I've gone back to square one. I've decided to sign up with shareasale.com as an affiliate as they seem to be friendly towards facebook and mywot.com says it's a good site.

Now I'm just waiting for my affiliate account to be approved. One thing I don't understand why do I need a VPS hosting package such as beyond hosting especially when I'm utilising facebook. I would be grateful if anyone could explain this to me?

07-07-2015 11:53 AM #12 cmdeal (Veteran Member)

Originally Posted by zeno

Firstly, read my Facebook guide. If you haven't checked your offer properly and made sure geo-redirection is fine, then you may burn your account no matter the offer.

Secondly, I think you may be oversimplifying some fundamental things here and not asking the right questions.

Affiliate Marketing just means selling things on a commission basis. That's it. There are a thousand ways to do this, with hundreds of different approaches, offer types, verticals, markets, etc. Lead Generation is just that... generating leads. You could do this in a million ways. So, asking if your lead generation efforts are working in your affiliate marketing is definitely the wrong question - it's extremely broad.

You should be thinking "am I taking a sensible approach to running this specific offer in this specific Facebook campaign?".

Right now, the answer is no. If you are concerned about bans you should first make sure you have done your due diligence here with tracking setup and vetting the offer. If you aren't confident that you have done this, stop and make sure you have.

Now, you need to also understand that you're dealing with a highly complex platform where it takes substantial sums to get reasonable data on almost anything.

Right now you have thrown about $15 at the ads and have split this money (data) up amongst what appears to be 6-10 ads. I'm not sure how you have arranged these in your campaign structure, but they should be in separate ad sets with individual budgets.

That aside, this isn't enough money to test these ads given your likely click prices.

Let's equate the ads to pieces of cake. Say you run a bakery stall and you have 10 cake types you want to split test to see which ones are more popular - highest return on investment through high volume of sales. Say you sell a cake slice for $0.50 with 8 pieces per cake. You start a stall and you have 10 cakes. At the end of the day you sell 20 pieces, giving about 1/4 of every cake sold on average. There's a bit of variation. You do this for a 10 days and you find that you've sold e.g. 1.7, 1.3, 1.2, 1.1, 0.95, 0.95, 0.90, 0.75 and 0.60 cake units across all ten.

Now, it doesn't take much thought to see that you've raised $50 effectively in selling cakes and all you know is that they all sell to some extent. But if you were to invest another $1000 in making the best cake only, you sure as hell wouldn't pick #1 when you've sold less than 2 cakes of it.

But, if you had stuck to 3 cakes and invested slightly more in each, you may have data like 6.7, 6.1 and 2.3 cakes. You then can fare more confidently focus on Cake #1 and Cake #2, while potentially testing a 3rd cake but with less spent on it (e.g. only 10% of your inventory stock is that one).

The same common sense applies here. You are spreading out a tiny amount of spend/data on many of choices, and this simply wont lead to you having a clear idea of what works and what doesn't.

Here's the thing: Facebook doesn't give a care in the world about what you think about the offer. Not even an ounce of thought. So if you have to ask this question, you really need to go confirm your offer is safe to run. If you don't know... you should.

For now, I suggest you take a step back and write down a proper testing strategy. Run 2-3 ads at a time, in different ad sets, with individual budgets of $5 each. Run them with different images and the same copy, collect some data, then assess the viability of this offer for that specific demographic/angle. If clicks cost $0.67 and the offer pays out $1, that's a no go by even a far stretch of the imagination unless you do some serious work on improving the ads. A better priority would be testing the same set of ads across male/female, several age brackets and several interest groups.

The thing is, this takes money, and you have to get comfortable with this fact. Facebook isn't an arena where a $5 test on one audience will give you a yes or no answer. To give an analogy, you couldn't take a new chocolate bar to Singapore and start a stand giving it away in a busy business intersection and expect the results to be indicative of how good of a product the chocolate bar may be. It would do better/worse in other countries, with other age groups and demographics, with changes to the packet wrapper, etc.

Treat this like research and plan accordingly.

Wow, some really good stuff here. Listen to Dr. Zeno!

07-10-2015 07:54 AM #13 zeno (Administrator)

Originally Posted by chintu

Shareasale and Commission Junction are not typical affiliate networks like Neverblue, Glispa, F5 Media etc. They focus quite a lot on physical/digital products and revenue share/CPS rather than CPL offers. They may not be a good fit if you are new and want to deal with lower barrier to conversion items.

As for hosting, your traffic source is really irrelevant (why would advertising on Facebook require different hosting setups?). You need hosting when you want to put something somewhere. You can put simple HTML pages on a CDN where you only deliver static content, but if you want to do anything dynamic, use PHP, host a click tracking system like Thrive, etc., you obviously need somewhere to put it. Much like how you can't go out and buy a Playstation 4 game and expect to be able to play it without the appropriate console.

07-18-2015 09:36 PM #14 chintu (Member)

How do you go about spying on other affiliate advertising campaigns using facebook? I want to see what works and what doesn't before I launch my campaign and are there ways of doing this without spending any money?

07-19-2015 12:35 AM #15 aliaff (Member)

are this offers allowed on Facebook Ads?

08-02-2015 08:30 PM #16 chintu (Member)

There's one thing that confused me about Zeno's facebook tutorials. For example he says that Image 1 / AC 1 should have Ads 1, Ads 2, Ads 3. In my campaign for each image I've used 3 different images with the same tagline. Is this right? Or should it be 1 main image and 3 different copy headings and calls to action.

This is how I've set-it up Campaign is [USA] CheapOair | Male 35-44 | Sidebar-Ads | Clicks

Then it's Travel Interests | Image 1 | CPC

and the last one is Ad 1, Ad 2, Ad 3

Headline is: Book your summer holiday!

Copy is: Book today! Pack your bags. Great holidays begin with us.

And each image is different (3 ads) but uses the same copy above. So what's the right way of doing this? Do we just stick to one main image and test the copy and headlines with each image? By this does he mean come up with different angles using the same image.

Hope someone can help me out with this. Thanks!

08-25-2015 03:45 PM #17 zeno (Administrator)

What are your current stats? I do hope it's not $110 and 30 clicks, those CPCs would be ridiculous for RHS ads.

I don't want to discourage you from trying a tool like Social Ad Ninja but I think there are fundamentals to work on first that no spy tool can make up for.

Right now I see two major shortfalls: your ads, and your audience.

AUDIENCE

You have targeted a relatively small age group - any particular reason why? At first glance it seems to me like 35-40 is just an age group plucked out of thin air. If you aren't going to test multiple age groups simultaneously, make sure decisions like this are grounded in data.

Secondly, you're targeting travel interests. What types? The thing is, being interested in travel shows for example doesn't mean much for your intent and willingness to travel. If you liked Agoda, Expedia, Momondo, Kayak flight aggregators than that shows a little more affinity for flying at least. More importantly, you should know all of Facebook's targeting options and leverage them. Facebook has behaviours related to people who have traveled or plan to with a few destinations.

To me this is the most obvious targeting ever. Target users who have indicated intent to travel to e.g. Thailand and use a Thai-focused ad. Easy.

Interests matter a lot in the context of ad performance on Facebook. Don't pigeonhole yourself into one type of interest or your first idea. Think, plan, brainstorm, and come up with ideas that give a much, much more intimate and relevant connection between your ads goals and the people who will see it.

ADS

Advertisements should engage users and give them some reason to interact with them. They should tug on emotional hooks and highlight benefits, give clear calls to action, etc. etc.

Frankly, your ads don't do this at all.

Book Today! - booking implies spending money, right now, and going through a booking process. Neither of these are things I want to do or things that appeal to me. When I go to a desserts shop they don't have mouthwatering chocolate cakes with a sign saying "Pay for now. Then eat."

Pack your bag - Do you like packing bags? I don't. It's always a pain in the ass unless it's a quick business trip. No one dreams of their wonderful week getaway in Bali and thinks about the act of packing a bag. Don't put that image in their mind. Focus on what they want - the end result.

Benefits - why should I use CheapOair? This isn't clear to me. More directly: what do I have to gain by clicking on this ad? I have no idea. It looks like a branding ad to me. E.g. "Expedia: Your Travel Partners. We send everyone, everywhere". How boring is that? Sure they next time you think of a travel aggregator you might go to Expedia out of memory, but this surely isn't your goal.

Focus on what travel and a vacation would mean for your audience. E.g.

Give your wife the holiday she deserves - target married men, use a picture of a couple in the sunset
Bali. $699. Not for long. - focus on a cheap price and scarcity.
You. Her. Bali. Live it. - you could even pitch this to guys in a relationship and use a picture of a guy kneeling down to propose, there are so many ways you can angle these.
Escape the kids. A weekend getaway to Bali is easier (and cheaper!) than you think.
Escape Stress. Explore Bali. Need a quick revive? A Bali getaway will wash away stress without stressing the wallet.
Bali Helped My Career - Work-related stress can hold back your career. Take a strategic break, come back a new man.
Approaching a mid-life crisis? It's not too late - Visit Bali, find your youth again. Only a pair of flip-flops and sunglasses required.

These aren't even very well thought out, there is a whole lot you can do if you spend the time brainstorming and work in FB targeting options to the plan.

Lastly, Images - make sure you use images that get attention and align with your ad message and audience. You're targeting 35-40 guys, so why use a picture of a women on a plane? A plane in the sky? Boring and doesn't allude to a great holiday. Now, a guy with a sombrero, Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops boarding a plane... that has a clearer message, as would using pictures of the destination you are pushing in the ad.

Anyway, that's my advice for now. You need to focus on these core mind games and processes, there is no substitute for planning, brainstorming and understanding your market, psychology, copy-writing and how to craft ads.

For this specific campaign, I would move on. It could do well, but these offers can be hard to make work if you don't use good angles and I don't believe they are known to convert too well on average.

08-25-2015 08:28 PM #18 chintu (Member)

The ads cost me $118.60 and got back 105 website clicks and 0 conversions. I do think it's time to move on.

09-01-2015 06:02 AM #19 trojans10 (Member)

OP, have you been direct linking to the affiliate landers? or making your own?

also, zeno, do you reccomend your own custom landers for facebook? if so, do you create a full fledged blog to run traffic to an article, then push them through to offer, retarget... or are you using a subdomain traveling.subdomain.com and use a leadpages style lander then push them through?

always wondered. look forward to a response.

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