Mobile Optimization Questions (10)
Howdy! Happy Friday Stackers!
Tonight's question is from Zealous. It reads:
"Hey STM. I have been running mobile campaigns the last couple weeks, focusing mostly on a prize/giveaway offer (a simple email submit, as I'm familiar with the psychology of these). Despite some epic attempts at angling, even photoshopping an image that yielded a significant increase in LP CTR/CR, I just haven't been able to crack this walnut. My latest attempt yielded one carrier that was profitable, but when I broke that carrier out with the same targeting, even it began to tank. I've now invested $100's in testing these angles... What should I do?"
What do we have to say guys? Should I drop this vertical entirely? Should I focus on optimizing for the carriers that are just BAD rather than TERRIBLE? What more can I optimize? Are my LP's just fundamentally piss poor (decent photoshoppery, simple, clear path, uses elements/layout similar to offer LP, less than 50kb each)? I'm on a decent VPS at BeyondHosting, should I upgrade and hire that one russian guy mentioned in the recent server optimization thread?
Not even factoring ~10% click loss, my most promising angles/LPs are at
15.68% CTR, 1.62% CR, -83.8% ROI
21.95% CTR, 4.88% CR, -51.2% ROI
^^ Broke out winning carrier on this, it then turned into: 24.53% CTR, 9.09% CR, -9.1% ROI
11.76% CTR, 2.35% CR, -76.4% ROI
I might be a bit of a masochist but I think I can at least double the CTR on the last one and increase trust in the process based on what I've learned from all this... Is it even worth it?
I need a 10% CR to break even at this payout. Am I completely fucked on this or what? I'm aware people throw major, major dough at mobile to make stuff work, and I'm prepared to do that if you guys think I can legitimately turn this one around, but damn, no other traffic source has been so brutal...
Oh and the network I'm running traffic on is LeadBolt, Android Only - Thanks Maynzie! (dick)
Rock on...
Edit: One more thing! There is a category that has yielded no conversions and is contributing about 15-20% of traffic across the board, so I can have my rep remove that...
and I'm bidding the minimum.
1. Prize/giveaway vertical still works.
2. Going from a beyondhosting VPS to a fully optimized server is not going to get you to where you want to be.
3. You can def get higher than 10% CR. Are you trying different offers and asking for high payouts? I know on some of those prize offers street payouts can differ by 50% depending what network you are on.
You are close with -9% ROI. Be a masochist and double that CTR. There is a lot of money to be made in it.
Originally Posted by Mr Green
God it's so painful losing, and losing, and losing... and losing.
But yes, only the few who put the work in will reap the rewards for the time being. Thanks boss.
And this was only one of the prize offers, I am going to try another offer/angle that I think will do better than this off the bat. I'm talking with my AM at nb this weekend and seeing what they can do about the payout. And yeah definitely looking at offers at other networks.
Some thoughts
- Shop around for highest payouts...and actually split test the networks to make sure there's no funny bizness.
- Have you tested different angles & different styles of landing pages?
- There's a LOT of countries and traffic sources to try. A LOT of different combinations.
I'm sorry if my advice is kinda vague. But man you just gotta keep testing. It's really as simple as that.
I agree you're so close gotta find a way to get over that hump.
Can anyone share an epic ROI turnaround story they had on mobile for inspirational purposes then?
As of now I'm scaling a PPC camp that is consistently turning 100%+ ROI, granted it's super niche and will probably cap out under $500 day on my current traffic source, and I realize mobile is basically unlimited traffic... but from cashflow ROI perspective it's hard to justify pushing and pushing this particular offer if I won't even be able to back out 50%+ with super volume.
@zealous I know this is an old thread - but how did this turn out for you?
I'm kinda in the same situation myself right now. Been running a sweepstakes offer (f5media) on LB for the past 3-4 weeks, trying to make it profitable. Can't seem to figure a way to turn if profitable, currently sitting at -30% ROI.
What I've done:
- Tested 30+ different Ads with different angles
- Currently split-testing 10+ LPs
- Narrowed down to 3 carriers (tho still getting traffic from other carriers, but that's the way LB works I think)
- Narrowed down handsets (hard to find a matching handset from my iMobiTrax stats to the LB device targetting options)
Spend: $1280
Rev: $913
ROI: -28.7%
( clooooose! )
A new LP might show promising results from the start, but then _always_ evens out over time.
I use this calculator here; http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/sp...heet-in-excel/ to compare variations of LPs/ADs against the control and getting rid of the crap.
Any help is much appreciated! If more details are required, let me know - I'll share everything 
Stian
I had to give up on this campaign - couldn't get it to turn profitable after a lot of testing. The main thing seems to be unstable traffic from various Devices & Carriers - and LB doesn't allow you to block CategoryIDs (not sure if this kinda system uses SiteIDs? as well)?
In this case, would you guys have split-tested even more angles? I did 3. Then found an almost positive one (-20% ROI) and started split-testing stuff on my landers.
Any input is much appreciated !
Stian
I've been here. Although I stopped the campaign after spending approx 1k, because the offer was taken down, I noticed the following improved my ROI.
- Making the LP colour match the offer colour;
- Specific words worked best so I tested close variations. I also used these terms in banner ads which worked better than other headlines used,
_ I was running a car finance offer and found images of exotic cars (Ferrari's) worked better than less expensive cars like BMW's or old Porsche's - the loan was up to 20k I believe. I would have thought they were unrealistic;
- A pay bump;
- A blue underlined link 'click here' in a button received higher CR's as the CTA,
I'm sure you've tested most of these, but one of the above may help...
How different where your 3 angles from each other?
Think about demographic when you run angles - it will help you move in the right direction.
You've already done some good groundwork. I would not give up if I where you.
- try a different offer?
- try a different country?
- try a different traffic source?
BTW - to "block" Categories on LB you need to copy your campaign and exclude it in the new campaign.
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