Hey folks,
We run our own in-house dating/social skills info product offers.
We've traditionally done Ad --> Presell Page --> Video Sales Letter.
We used to run a 4-figure daily spend on Facebook to this funnel with a very healthy ROAS but that stopped working well a few years ago, and has almost completely stopped working today. Our offer angle still tests among the top CTRs in offer testing, and continues to perform very well for our affiliates, so we don't think it's the offer.
We're looking to try out some of the push ads networks as an alternative to Facebook. PropellerAds is having some trouble with our card so we're looking at ZeroPark first.
Before I dive into this and blow a bunch of money on landers that may not work there, I wanted to ask:
What landers are working on push traffic right now?
Will we be barking up the wrong tree if we send push traffic to a Presell --> VSL, or a "straight to VSL" funnel?
I'm reviewing YouTube ZeroPark tutorials and looking for ZeroPark landing page guides online but it's all about setting up the campaign. None of it seems to be about "here are the types of offers that are working" and "here are some examples of effective funnels."
Thanks for any input to shorten the learning curve!
Chase
Hi Amy,
Thanks for the question.
Our affiliates are mostly running email campaigns to our offer. So, their audiences are curated. Some of them do have front-ends on Facebook, but they're not running our offer as a front-end offer. Maybe I'm comparing apples to oranges here?
In-house we've been running Facebook traffic to presells like this one.
That worked great to a fairly broad targeting (all US males, interest: tinder), with about a 2.5x ROAS, consistently for the better part of 2018 through early 2019 before it quit on us.
Since then we've gotten campaigns that'll run profitably for 3-6 weeks at a time before dying off. Give them a month off and they could be restarted again for another 3-6 weeks. The "tinder" interest targeting doesn't convert anymore and we mostly have to use a buyer lookalike list to get sales. The past several months though even that does not work and we're struggling to get them profitable at all.
It might be a general downtrend in dating info products. I have a friend in the woman's dating info products space who's maintained a profitable 5-figures weekly ad spend for years on Google and Facebook who now isn't doing as well either. Seems like many folks are leaving the space and switching to other niches.
Still, our offer testing via Google Ads says this offer remains at the top of all the dating info product angles we compared it against, with only several dating app offers having higher CTRs. And affiliates have not seen a drop in their conversions when mailing. So it seems like the offer fundamentals should be sound.
We've tested different presell pages and VSL introductions but they haven't made a difference. Even worked with one of the big agencies (Jason Hornung's 7Mile) in 2020 trying to get something going but they couldn't do any better than we could on our own.
It's been a real head scratcher for us, going from a very solid campaign to a dud, while still performing well to organic traffic, affiliate traffic, and performing well in offer comparison tests.
At this point I figure the best thing to do (short of throwing out the offer altogether or switching to a different niche) is to quit focusing on Facebook and try something else.
Open to any suggestions!
Chase
I spoke with Dmitry, our onboarding manager, from ZP today.
He said they are seeing presell pages like ours on their platform, as well as VSLs.
No guarantee our funnel will work on there, but at least we won't need to be starting from scratch. He's putting together some sources for us to test.
They're apparently seeing a lot of success with sweepstakes and surveys on ZeroPark as well. I'm considering if there's a way we could use those, although it seems like those are much more targeted to very large, ubiquitous brands.
Chase
Thanks Chase for the detailed explanation! I understand your situation now. Basically your issue as far as I can see is two-fold:
-Audience targeting is not what it used to be (on FB, post IOS14)
-Traffic costs have increased on certain platforms
Several things that may be worth trying...
1)Push is a possibility. Adplexity push is a spy tool that can help - you can use it to check out dating campaigns on push traffic, what kinds of ads and pre-landers (if any) are being used with which types of offers:
https://push.adplexity.com/
(You can find a promo code for this in the "Discounts" subforum: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...or-STM-Members)
2)With some creativity you MAY still be able to get FB to work. Up your creatives game by testing a LOT of creatives - post IOS14 updates this has become even more crucial than before. Basically FB can now only depend on first-party data, so it's critical that your ads are effective in getting the RIGHT people to click on them. This is an important signal FB uses to bring you similar users. Here's a post with relevant info from Mirella Crespi's Ecom World presentation:
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...irella-Crespi)
3)Build your own traffic. Build some type of list that you can sell to and otherwise communicate with again and again for "free" - email, sms, messenger, etc.
This is one of the best ways to counteract the increasingly more expensive lead acquisition cost.
You can take a chunk out of your main product and make it into a lead magnet. Or make a new one from scratch. Run some FB lead ads. Set up the autoresponder sequence to nurture the list and go for the sale(s).
Hope that helps!
Amy
An afterthought:
4)Another possibility would be to increase the LTV of your customers. If you can develop new digital products to add to your funnel as a cross-sell or up-sell, that could instantly increase your revenues, which will allow you to sustain higher traffic costs and lower conversion rates - which are factors that have rendered your current funnel unprofitable.
Doing so will also allow you to increase the commissions you pay out to affiliates, to attract more affiliates to promote your offer.
And let's not forget that you'll be able to promote these new additions to your existing customers list as well - it would essentially be free money.
Amy
Thanks Amy! Many great suggestions here.
We’re big fans of email marketing. We’ve done four product launches over the past 4 years and email marketing drove them all. Having more products to offer on the backend is certainly key as well.
(curiously, we have failed to make lead gen from Facebook work. We’ve gathered north of 10,000 supposedly-targeted leads off several FB lead gen campaigns but sold very little to them. For whatever reason, presell —> VSL worked far better for us on Facebook than lead gen)
Adplexity looks great. We haven’t done ad spies in a few years so we’re probably behind the times. I’ll check out. Thanks for the discount code link as well.
The link to the Mirella Crespi presentation is super useful. Makes sense why our lookalike lists have plunged in usefulness. Gives me a few ideas to try as far as resurrecting our Facebook campaigns is concerned.
All very helpful stuff. I’m much obliged!
Chase
Hey,
If you'll need any assistance with AdPlexity - just PM me. Will be glad to help you discover some insights and features.
Regards,
Dmitry