My Trials and Tribulations With Promoting Dating Apps On Facebook (19)
My Trials and Tribulations With Promoting Dating Apps On Facebook
- Just a heads up, this is a guide that was requested on the forums. I spent around $1000 promoting 2 Facebook dating apps using Facebook Ads. I came out not making a profit, but learned a lot.
* The main thing i learned from this campaign is: the ONLY factor to profiting with dating fb apps is getting a high CTR. After testing 200+ ads, i learned 1 thing: the 'single' men on Facebook have been completely bombarded by dating ads over the last 2 years which has lead to extreme banner blindness. (So have most of the single community whether it be males or females, age 18 or age 60)
- There are 58,703,120 males listed on Facebook in the United States (age 18+)
- There are 13,174,620 males listed as single on Facebook in the United States (age 18+)
- There are 10,445,380 males listed as single and interested in women on Facebook in the United States (age 18+)
Why am i showing you this? Because this is how you have to target when running dating campaigns on Facebook.
You have to follow these rules, or you will 100% not get your ad approved.
So as you can see above, once you adjust your targeting to the 'facebook dating approval rules', you go from 58 million males to 10 million males. Now you probably want to select a tighter age group, such as 30-40, this narrows you down to 3 million males. You can target even tighter using keywords if you'd like too.
Lets talk about what i tested:
- I tried a couple campaigns with a couple angles
- Targeted men 25 - 45 (in tighter age groups)
- Spent $1000 total, made $440. = -$560
- I was running:
Facebook App Install - BeNaughty (25+ Male Only) US
Facebook App Install - Flirt (25+ Male Only) US & AU
- I tried about 200 images for the campaign. Around 120 got approved, i repeat submitted the bad 80 about 20 times over 8 days. They never got approved, even though i mixed them in with good images at a 1/10 ratio.
- I targeted males in AU as well; CTR was about 20% greater compared to US, but still under 0.11 for the images i submitted.
- I tried 2 campaigns related to celebs which I'll explain in more detail near the bottom
- I also tried a cheerleader campaign which I'll explain below as well
Important note:
- I've ran both these apps just a month ago making great profit -- this is because i had 1 very 'RISQUE' image that got approved and ran solid for a month before it was disapproved, so i know exactly how to make this campaign work. BeNaughty was the better converting app for me when i was running it in Nov/Dec.
Lets talk about what i noticed after testing:
- Be ready for many disapproval's for no reason! Facebook is picky with dating
- I learned very quickly that the single males on Facebook have seen WAY too many dating ads. I had a lot of great images and for them to get less than 0.1 CTR was absurd. The male 'single' market on Facebook has been pounded with images of girls and they're pretty much wearing goggles that block them from seeing those ads, which is why the CTR is so low. This dating image blindness goes for both men and women.
- My conversion rates for the US were between 4% & 7% for both BeNaughty & Flirt.
- My conversion rate for AU Flirt App was 8% steady (only 14 conversions total though)
- My CTR overall was around 0.075% (SHITTY!)
- My best image got a CTR of 0.11%
- My best CTR ad had a suggested bid price of $0.68 - $1.12
- I was able to bid $0.50 - $0.55
- My lowest click prices were $0.35
- Overall everything seemed normal except the CTR was unexceptionably low, and the reason is what i mentioned above, just an extreme over exposure of dating ads to the single community on Facebook. So i tried to overcome it by taking 2 different angles:
Angle 1: My Celeb Campaigns
- I targeted females, in the united states who are single and interested in men
- Age 25-29
- My angle was the movie "The Notebook"
- 403,440 single women 'like' "The Notebook"
- The guys name from the notebook is "Noah"
- Ad Title = "Find A Man Like Noah!"
- I used images of Ryan Gosling and images from the notebook
- Direct linked to BeNaughty/Flirt, then tried some normal dating offers as well
- CTR = 0.05% - 0.1% for my best ads
- Conversion rates were terrible!
- So i created a landing page and conversion rates went up a lot, but my CTR was still terrible. I tried a new batch of images, but nothing received above 0.1% CTR.
- I did the same thing with "Twilight/Edward/Robert Pattinson" (The main character from the twilight series) and got the same results
What to take from this:
1. For this type of campaign i highly suggest a landing page
2. Like the generic dating campaign; You need to get 0.25% CTR or more!
My Top Images (None received higher than 0.1% CTR)
Download: > stmforum.com/forum/extra/insuranceimages.zip
[File is temporarily unavailable - we're working to get it back online!]
My Conclusion
- Focus on getting high CTR. Conversion rates were similar across the board for most of my ads, it's the CTR for the ads that make the difference between a profiting campaign and a non-profiting campaign.
- If you can get a risque image past the ad reviewers, you will 100% profit. The thing is you risk getting your account banned if you try too many times. Also even if you do get it past, it won't necessarily stay approved. You may be disapproved the next day, a week or a month later.
Ideas to profit
- 'Girl next door' type of images work the best. Rather than model shots, etc..
- risque images approved = $, but risk getting account banned
- Try 'Italy - Smart Date App" I've heard amazing things, haven't got to try it yet. The market will definitely be less saturated so expect a higher CTR then US/UK/AU/CA.
- Mix up your targeting! As you can see i targeted males only, and that's what most affiliate marketers do because it feels more comfortable and they understand the male psyche the best ..target females, gays, bisexuals, etc.. It's niches with less competition, so your CTR will be higher.
Why targeting smaller niche 'singles' will yield better conversion rates
Lets guesstimate that only 2 million out of 9 million singles will install these apps. A LOT of the 2 million have been seeing these apps advertised for months now, so the chances of you getting them to install it is less and less everyday.
By targeting new markets/niches, not only will your CTR be higher, but your conversion rates will be higher because less of your market will have previously installed the apps your advertising.
Angle 2: My Cheerleader Campaign
This was just an idea to see how the Dating Apps convert to the whole male population on Facebook, instead of just the 'single' population. I posted cheerleading 'fails'. Photos of cheerleaders falling and such. My headline was "Pretty Cheerleaders"
- I targeted males 25 - 30
- Body copy: Think you like cheerleaders? You have no idea
- The whole campaign got approved but within minutes half the ads were disapproved
- The ads that continued running had a CTR of around 0.09%
- Best ad had 0.12% CTR
- I only tested BeNaughty app, and conversion rate was 2.34%
In the end, it was a good test and i learned targeting non singles with these apps probably won't work out
He thats a great writeup and guide. Shame it did not work out for you.
It seems there are plenty of people out there crushing it with dating app installs on facebook so I guess its just a case of trying trying trying trying until I find an angle that works.
I also know that people doing big numbers with FB and dating are International targeted.
There is so much against promoting dating in the established markets. Even when you get a winner because of getting a good racy image through you cant scale up because when you try to re submit more ads they get banned.
Its a little soul destroying especially after spending hours/days building for it all to fall flat because of disapprovals. Even with a good image its a struggle to get the CR to make it worthwhile.
International and narrow niche is definitely worth pursuing, I'm done with competing with the herd on major mainstream markets with dating.Too time consuming for too little return. I dont care how often I hear an AM say dating is killing it at the moment!
Thanks for sharing this. Good points.
Can you show us the LP you used , or something that looks like it?
I really don't know what to tell on a LP. I know it will just be some simple stuff, but still for some reason it holds me back
Hey marco, i'd rather not share this landing page. It broke a ton of copyright rules.
I based it 100% off e-harmonys landing page. --> http://www.eharmony.com/
- I replaced the main photo with this: http://static.technorati.com/11/01/0...tebook-003.jpg
- Then made a white rectangle box like the one you see aligned to the right with all my copy.
- "Meet A Man Like Noah" as the main header in the white box
- Then showed images of men and and a submit button
I've just been hit up by one of my AMs, telling me I need to start running traffic to the Flirt App on Facebook for "easy money"...
I've not tried Facebook ads yet, and I really should get my feet wet soon. I think I'd start with the UK market first. It's my home turf and lower volume than the US, so I won't lose my shirt (hopefully!)
I know you've probably mentioned this elsewhere, but what are you using to submit your ads to FB? Or are you doing it manually?
That one is hard to get approved and you should use some cloacking or switching urls on a redirect after approved.
But i am scared to do this with these offers.. I have heard some people are banned after promoting these offers, atleast that is what they think
I asked my AM about whether to cloak for the flirt app, and he said definitely not, and it wasn't worth risking your account for by cloaking.
Yes i wouldn't risk my account for that too.
Originally Posted by stackman
Nick
I'm submitting my ads manually. I have so much experience with it i can submit them like rapid-fire. I just open multiple tabs and copy and paste everything at record speeds.
I only used a landing page for my 'celeb dating campaign" (the notebook/twilgiht one). Other than that single campaign, when promoting the dating facebook apps you want to directly link 95% of the time.
Originally Posted by stackman
^^^
I mean, by no means was it allowed by 'The Notebook' owners whether it be Warner Brothers or whoever. Facebook technically allowed it because the ads were pics of 'the notebook'/ and said characters from the movie.
So... the lesson here is, its very hard to make money with facebook dating app ads?
Does anyone have any newer campaigns they ran recently?
Hey Stack, it looks like the images you linked to in your post are for the wrong campaign...I'm seeing insurance images. Can you still link to your top female images? Thanks.
Well, I guess if I really want to be the next Jordan (at least I have the will), I'll need to utilize blue ocean strategy to look for a new ocean with less saturated market share...
I wish the payout would bump again on AYI India 
find a man like noah ... super
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