Need Advice in Correcting What's "Off" About This Campaign (7)
First off, a little on my background here: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-Like-a-Newbie
I guess this follow along is a little bit different in that I'm not starting from scratch here, but rather trying to get advice on how to turn around a campaign I started a few months ago (but never came close to profitability with). The hope is that I can get some tips on how to improve things, and then report back on my progress
After purchasing Charles Ngo's LeadGen Engine course, I decided to focus on Facebook ads promoting mortgage loans. The ad went to a landing page with a 3-4 question survey where the user would enter their email at the end, then would be redirected to a mortgage loan offer
Here's the results (spoiler alert: they are not pretty)
We'll start with the Facebook campaign stats:
Reach: 22,839
Impressions: 48,335
Spend: $761
Link clicks: 928
Unique clicks: 715
Bid strategy: lowest cost (conversions). No audience network targeting, just FB news feed ads and Instagram
Here are the interests I targeted:
Adjustable-rate mortgage
Buy to let
Equity loan
Home equity
Home equity line of credit
Home equity loan
Landlord
Lenders mortgage insurance
Refinancing
Reverse mortgage
Second mortgage
and must also match:
Mortgage bank
Mortgage broker
Personal finance
Mortgage loans
and must also match:
A Home of Our Own
First-time buyer
Home Ownership Scheme
My Own Home
The real issue was with the bounce rate on the lander. 95% clicked away without taking any action on the page, and only 6% completed the opt-in process. And none of them actually signed up for the affiliate offer
Originally thought the problem might be that the lander was too basic and quasi ugly, so I redesigned it. CTR rate on the lander actually DECREASED
Consulted with a landing page expert who gave me some good tips. Looked at load speed (it's fine). Added some trust elements like McAfee Secure, UseProof, but again, no discernible difference
Then started a search campaign on Bing just to compare the traffic. 21% CTR to the first survey question there, and 29% of those users opted in. 2 conversions out of 58 on the offer. Revenue/spend was $70/429
Here is the original lander: https://www.smartmortgagequote.com/original-page/
And the revised page: https://www.smartmortgagequote.com
So, to sum up, I am completely stuck and don't really know where to go next
Without seeing your lp, I am just going to focus on a few higher level ideas.
1. Consider using bing to seed your pixel with some data before running fb.
2. I’m interested in what kind of questions you have on your surveys
A The order of the questions matter, you should aim to have an “easy” non intrusive question first to get the ball rolling.
B The types of questions matter. If you plan to scale on Facebook, look into using questions that can be used to send data back to the pixel. Every response should be hooked up to a custom event and also tracked in your tracker. So that you can use the data to teach the fb algorithm. It’s easier to do multiple choice questions because you know what the range of answers are, but with open choice questions you can create an event on the fact that they answered the question.
3 How does the lp look and load on mobile. The majority of fb traffic is mobile and although the experience is decent on desktop, it might be terrible on mobile
4. What are you doing on the background with the email addresses? Are people getting an automated drip sequence to convert them on the main offer?
I think it is really going to down to the lander and offer. Unless you are willing to show these, it is really hard to give any meaningful suggestions. I am also not sure why you are putting a questionnaire as part of the conversion flow.
I have edited the original post to show both the original lander and the revised one
Why put in a questionnaire flow? Well, I wanted the user to have some engagement in the process instead of just asking them right away for their email
I've never run facebook but I've run a lot of mortgage lead-gen on natives and also use to work in real estate fulltime so very experienced with mortgage industry.
Here's my thoughts:
1. It might be worth running parallel versions of the campaign where you don't include the email opt-in, and just send the people to a lander/advertorial linking to the refi offer. This could help give you a baseline to determine how things are working when you DO include the email opt-in.
Certainly by getting their opt-in and then presumably following up with more emails to (hopefully) get more conversions later on will, in theory, raise the overall EPC, but if for some reason the people your targeting aren't "converters" anyway in that vertical it won't really mater... plus knowing how it would go without the opt-in should help you get perspective on all the numbers you need to hit to make it work.
2. Again, I don't know anything about facebook, but some of the 'Interests' you listed seem a little too "advanced" for the kind of folks I believe typically convert on these mortgage lead-gen offers.
I could certainly be wrong, but it seems to be that someone interested in 'Buy to let' or 'Landlord' or 'Mortgage Bank' is probably going to be a pretty savvy consumer who will either a) call up someone they know who originates mortgages, or b) shop around purposefully between a few different online options.
The typical mortgage lead that converts from an internet ad seems to be to be less savvy, and more your run of the mill not that financially literate homeowner, probably Gen X or Baby-Boomer, who sort of knows what a refi is but not really, and has sort of developed equity in their home without even really realizing it.
I don't know what all you can target but if you can do income (75k-125k) plus marriage status (married) plus duration of ownership (5 years +) and then anything that suggests a lack of financial sophistication or the early signs of interest in building wealth, rather than more advanced signifiers of financial literacy, that would be who I would target 
Again, could certainly be wrong about all of the above, but just wanted to throw out my .02$!
I dabble in the refinance vertical and it can be evergreen if you have the right set up and are creative enough. Well done for getting your feet wet however you are missing out on the 'angle' piece of the equation.
I recommend you come up with 2 or 3 different angles and test each of those angles with a decent sized budget. The right angle will make all the difference in this vertical and get you in the green.
Remember no one is on FB looking for cheaper mortgages thus dont target that way. Your angle should relate to your target audience and bridge that gap between the refinance offer and the user.
First of all: I have zero experience in this vertical. So take everything I say with a grain of salt.
I like your lander! I feel that it addresses the major pain point of wanting to save on interest and payments.
If I were you, I would try to effect improvements in multiple ways:
1)Test more offers! This would be the first thing I'd suggest if you haven't done so already, because it's one of those things that can make light-and-day difference to your ROI. And do this on search traffic (Bing, Adwords) because you can't test offers without conversions - and you're not currently getting enough conversions on FB.
2)Do more split-testing on the landing page. You don't need a landing page expert - just go to a bunch of similar sites and see how other people collect leads, test a few different styles to see which one works best, then split-test lander elements. Again, use search traffic for this.
3)Once you get the above 2 elements right (offer+lander), test FB ads and targeting.
For targeting: Those interests you listed - were you tracking them separately to see which ones were giving the best results (highest CTR lowest CPC)? Targeting interests separately will also allow you to customize each ad to that separate interest to effect higher CTR.
Another thing that comes to mind: What if you're not catching the audience at the EXACT stage where they're needing this service? Is FB serving you an audience that's looking to take on a mortgage RIGHT NOW?
One way to make sure, would be to build a list of people that have clicked on your ad - which means they're obviously interested - and then retarget them and hope that they'll convert on the offer when they're ready.
Another way would be to catch them early on, by offering information that people need when they START LOOKING: Real estate listings, market reports, community guides, foreclosure lists, etc. I got this idea from this article. You can collect leads that way too, and push corresponding offers (foreclosure lists etc.) to them. Meanwhile you'd be building a retargeting list AND a mailing list, then you can push mortgage offers at them regularly (along with solid useful information) to make sure that when they're ready, they'll take advantage of your offer. And this way, you'd be able to sell multiple offers for the same visitor/user acquisition cost to increase your ROI.
For ads: I've ripped a few ads from MagicAdz - again, since I don't have experience in this vertical, I can't tell how good they are, but including them just in case they provide insight/inspiration for your testing efforts. (To find more of these where they came from: MagicAdz )
Download full image: https://imgur.com/bODvpqF
Download Landing Page: https://www.dropbox.com/s/w415edf5a3...ander.zip?dl=0
Landing Page: http://nullrefer.com/?https://trxess...tNSEpUaPI3OipG
Facebook Post: http://nullrefer.com/?https://www.fa...80451262529158
Facebook Page: http://nullrefer.com/?https://www.fa...79759589264992
Redirect Path:
http://nullrefer.com/?https://trxess...ef9uEHlhumnPf1
http://nullrefer.com/?https://allpro...MjmvY9aGMy_AKq
http://nullrefer.com/?https://c.shar...mp/portal.html
http://nullrefer.com/?https://l.shar...0-0000-0000000
http://nullrefer.com/?https://ws.sha...ure/index.html
Download full image: https://imgur.com/tfaaGUq
Landing page: http://nullrefer.com/?http://spr.ly/...ExuSU0djU5ts1g
Facebook Post: http://nullrefer.com/?https://www.fa...12826582063048
Facebook Page: http://nullrefer.com/?https://www.fa...ancialMulligan
Download full image: https://imgur.com/VctM42o
Landing Page: http://nullrefer.com/?https://apply....3qy-yX6a5UinzQ
Facebook Post: http://nullrefer.com/?https://www.fa...56538908659021
Facebook Page: http://nullrefer.com/?https://www.fa...ageratescanada
Hope that helps!
Amy
Home > Facebook & Instagram > Follow-along Campaigns