The value of top Video Marketing has been heavily explored in the past and nowadays businesses of all sizes have begun implementing video in their marketing campaigns. Video is a cheap way to get your message across and with Social Media platforms like Facebook taking full advantage of video to drive up engagement, it is only sensible that business and brands use video accordingly.
In the following article, we’ll be going over the top benefits of using your video on Facebook and how it has helped thousands of brands obtain killer traffic to their sites. In addition, we’ll be outlining some of the best tactics you can implement right now to put your brand on the map.
Audience
Facebook is the world’s biggest social media platform boasting over one billion users and while the organic reach of Facebook has dropped significantly over the past few years, their paid advertisement platform is one of the best available when used correctly.
Facebook is the second largest trafficked website and at any given time has more than five hundred million active users. In other words, there are roughly 500 million people right now on Facebook engaging in content from friends and brands alike. If you could only manage to obtain 1% of this traffic and direct it to your business, we’re talking about 5 million potential prospects visiting your brand. Now that’s impressive!
Mobile Users
Another important factor that brands and businesses must take into consideration is that the world is moving to searching the internet through mobile devices. It’s estimated that by 2019 that mobile users will surpass every other medium of exploring content online. Facebook is Mobile friendly and with 1 billion people using Facebook from a mobile device every month, it only makes sense to utilize the platform to reach your ideal customer.
Facebook videos are mobile friendly and is quickly becoming the main means for users to watch video.
Video and Social Behavior
Another killer reason why Facebook video marketing is so effective is due to the fact that users have all the means to share the content in a flash. With ‘Share’ and ‘Like’ buttons right below your video, you can tap into organic traffic much quicker than other platforms. In addition, Facebook gives you more exposure if the videos are hosted on their platform, meaning you’ll reach further demographics a lot easier than Youtube videos within their platform.
Hot Triggers – Awesome CTAs
One feature that Facebook videos have that is lacking on Youtube is the embedded call to action. When loading up a Facebook video, you have the option to embed a CTA at the end of the video. What this means is that once the user has finished watching the video, a clickable CTA is posted in the center of the screen. Typically, it reads “Learn more” or “subscribe” and once clicked will re-direct the user to the designated page.
In other words, after you have engaged your users and grabbed their attention, you can quickly send them to a relevant offer to help drive up conversions.
Boosting Virality Potential
Now let’s get into the true potential of marketing on Facebook with video. The Facebook advertising platform is one of the best in the world. You have the ability to reach millions of viewers if you understand how to properly boost your videos. I won’t go into the nitty-gritty details of boosting as that is a topic all on its own, however I will provide you with a general overview on how it works.
We already established that Facebook will show you more “love” if you upload the video directly on their platform. However, while the organic reach is dismal, the boosting potential can create a landslide of traffic coming your way.
The way you do this is by creating ‘audiences’ within the platform. You select ‘interests’ (which essentially are your keywords) of which Facebook will give you an estimated reach. You can continue to refine your reach based on geographic locations, general interests, excluding interests from a general interest and much more.
I strongly suggest you take time to explore their advertising options as many people have managed to boost videos into the millions of views on budgets as low as $20 USD.
The ‘Like-Invite’ Feature
This option isn’t available for all pages, however for the most part if your Facebook page has fewer than a hundred thousand likes you could take advantage of this feature. Essentially the “like-invite” feature (I don’t know if that’s what it’s called officially) allows you to invite users to like your page if they ‘liked your content’ even if they aren’t a fan or a friend of your brand.
In other words, if you manage to create a viral video. Let’s say there are 5,000 likes on the video and your page only has 3,000 likes; that means that there are potentially 2,000 people who could become fans of your page. You simply have to go down to where it says “These many people liked this post” and select the ‘Others’ link. This will bring up a list of people who liked your particular post. You’ll quickly notice that there are options that says “Invite to page”, simply click that and you could have a new fan on your business page.
This feature has helped people build solid communities really quickly by creating engaging content and taking advantage of the paid advertisement platform.
The Bottom Line
Video Marketing is no longer the ‘future of marketing’, it’s what’s happening right now! Facebook has worked hard over the years to incorporate video into their platform and many brands have seen the massive benefits of this integration. Seeing that people spend more time on Facebook than they do on Google, should give you the motivation to start incorporating video marketing on Facebook right now.
People are social creatures and the latest statistics and trends are clear on the fact that the Facebook community loves videos. Tap into the power of Facebook Video Marketing today!
The online marketing arena, like the real world, is full of shysters, con artists, and wannabes. They have so many different angles, tactics, and maneuvers that they’re hard to keep track of. But that will not stop us from revealing who they are. We are nice like that… 🙂
We are going to paint a picture of the online marketing companies or people that you need to watch out for. They are costly, and have a negative impact on your business. This list comes from real life companies that we have visited and consulted with.
So here we go:
1. The Do Nothing Guy (most common)
Description: These marketers can charge a lot or a little for their services. It doesn’t really matter to them because they don’t do anything to earn it. They capitalize on your lack of knowledge and will talk over your head so they can keep you confused.
It’s an easy trap to fall into due to the fact that once everything is set up and running, an online marketer can just sit back and relax. At least for a little while. Eventually rankings, ads, and leads will die, but that could take some time.
I have talked with a few small businesses who are paying upwards of $10,000 to $18,000 a month and not getting anything in return. Let me phrase that another way: There’s online shysters who are taking in $2160,000 a year and not doing anything for it. The problem isn’t they money. Some companies are worth way more than that. The problem is in quality of work one is getting.
They might of set up a PPC campaign, they might have built your website, and you might be turning a nice profit. And the worse case scenario is your company is booming so you think they are doing a great job. This is where the opportunity costs come in. You could be making way more money, but the do nothing guy is holding you back.
Fix it: Online marketing is not a set it and forget it type of process. There’s always more that can be done. Any guy that thinks he can just sit back and relax is going to be trampled by professional online marketers who are doing the work. Online marketing is not easy and it can take months to see some results. But once the system is figured out and leads start to come in. It can be a huge revenues source for your company.
Below will show you how to protect yourself from these types of dudes.
2. No Brains
Description: These online marketers have zero education and do not know what they are doing. They can talk the lingo, but fall short when it comes to actual performance. They have never been successful nor do they take the time necessary to learn the trade.
You know you are working with a “No Brains Guy” when you have hired your uncle, your cousin, your friend, or a referral from a friend who has watched a few YouTube videos and is now in the business. You may be his first client. There are a lot of “No Brain Guys” out there and it would shock you to know who they are.
3. Over Promising Salesman
Description: “Page One of Google for Lawyers in 5 Days Guaranteed!”
These guys are amazing salesman and will promise you the world. Profits, immediate results, huge returns, page one, ranks of all your keywords, etc.
One of my first employees called me a while back to tell me about an internet company called 180fusion. They are well known and you can read about them on the web. I am not trying to pick on them or call them out, I just want to be very open about what is happening out there.
She had 99 clients under her and was getting paid a ridiculously low amount of money. There’s no way that one person can take care of 99 different clients. Her job…was to try and keep the clients as long as possible before they realize they are being ripped off.
This type of online marketing company will call you endlessly to get you to sign up for their service. Their sales force makes up the majority of their company. Their survival depends on it because they lose clients as fast as they bring them on.
4. Cheapest Guy In The Room ($299 a month service)
Description: This is extremely common and my guess is that most of you have signed up for one of these types of services. I myself have been guilty of taking on clients for a low $299 and end up giving them a bad service because my time has to be spent with clients who pay. Let me tell you how they work.
They undercut legit companies because their model is based on the numbers. They will ask you to pay whatever you can afford to pay. $299, $1500 or $5000 it doesn’t really matter because once you sign up they are off to get their next clients. These companies are all about adding accounts as quickly as possible. They are famous for saying, “It’s only $299, they won’t cancel.”
Sure they will have one or two success stories but it is based off of luck. Think about it…if they can sign up 100 companies, one or two of them will be successful not matter how bad they screw things up.
Ask yourself, how much time can a company really put into my business for $299 a month?
Doctors, Chiropractors, Dentists, and other local businesses are great victims of these services, so keep your eye open. I am guessing, most of you have 5 or 6 charges a month around that $200 dollar range. I would cancel them.
Oh wait, it is only $299 a month. What if it is working? lol
5. Do It All Guy (Owner)
Description: Nothing bad to say about these guys because they are usually the owner or manager of the company. They are making things happen, working long hours, stressing about growth, and taking all the risk. I have been there and still am some days. My heart goes out to these guys because they just can’t seem to let go and let the professionals grow their business.
For Example:
Three weeks ago I met with the owner of a growing business. They were bringing in a $150,000 a month in revenue, which is pretty good for a startup.
The catch…
That $150,000 was all going out, and the owner was broke. Couldn’t afford to spend money on online marketing even though that is where his revenue was coming from.
What is the problem?
The owner is trying to do everything and is losing money in the process. He has no idea where his conversions are coming from, his website is a disaster, no up sells, no email campaigns, no content creation plan, and no tracking. He has started a great company that has huge potential but he will not let go so he can grow.
Like the other fraudsters, the “Do It All Guy” is usually harming himself. His ego has taken over. This must be stopped.
How to protect yourself from bad online marketing companies.
Now for the good part! We have identified the shysters, so now it’s time to get educated on how online marketing really works. That way you can know when to run.
1. How to hit page one of Google.
If any SEO company promises you rankings on the first page of Google in a short amount of time…(6 months or less) it is time to run. Google makes the rules, and they are very strict on how the game is played. There are always exceptions and it is easy to rank for keywords that nobody is looking for. I am talking about real money keywords. Ones that will actually bring you business. These keywords are extremely hard to rank for and you are competing against companies with millions to spend.
The only way to rank for competitive keywords is to create amazing content consistently and get qualified backlinks. This takes a lot of money, time, and effort. 4 blogs, 500 words+ per week is a good place to start.
If you can not afford to pay someone to do a good job than you might as well forget about it, because the 5 fraudsters above are not going to take the time necessary to get you ranked. It’s too much work!
2. How does Pay Per Click (PPC) work?
PPC is one of my favorites avenues because you can get immediate results. Every company should be running some type of PPC campaign even if it’s for remarketing only.
A PPC campaign is easy set up and it is even easier to forget about it. Some companies may check your account once a month others may not check it at all. This is where a lot of businesses can get in trouble. If you make a mistake in PPC… Google, YouTube, and Facebook will take your money within minutes.
Make sure you are monitoring your accounts daily, build out multiple landing pages, and start slow. It takes strategic planning to set up a profitable campaign and it may take a couple of months. Track everything down to a conversion.
This should give you a good idea of what to expect. Once again, the 5 shysters above are not going to put in the time, effort, or work…especially if you are paying them $299 a month.
3. How do email marketing campaigns work?
This is an area that you can create once and receive the benefits for years to come. I usually like to build out a 12 email sequence. Email provides you with a way to nurture and educate your audience after they have chosen to interact with your company. They should be carefully crafted and, ideally, you will want to build out different campaigns according to the needs of the customer.
Emails campaigns are the glue that holds everything together and it’s a must for marketing campaigns.
You can use Aweber, Infusionsoft, MailChimp or Constant Contact to create your sequences. The cost and time will be spent on creating the right content to help the audience convert. It’s that simple!
Not all marketing companies are bad and most of them have good intentions.
So here are some questions to ask yourself:
How much time should a company spend on your online marketing? How much time does it take to be successful?
Can you pay $299 a month and get 40 hours of work?
In my opinion you need 40 hours for a small startup and it can go up from there. Some companies need 20 employees at 40 hours a week. It just depends on your size and growth.
So that leads you to the next set of questions:
Do you bring someone in-house or do you hire it out?
Both options are great but both have their problems. If you decide to bring someone in-house you will want to make sure they are educated and know what they are doing. If you hire it out, you will want to verify that they are working and progress is being made.
Now for the final question:
How much should you pay? $10,000 a month? $5000 a month?
A professional marketer is not going to work 40 hours a week for free. Some of them could be worth $100 an hour, others $25 an hour. It depends on their skills and the results they are able to achieve.
This is where you have to put in the time and research necessary to hire the right people. If they are good, you will end up keeping them forever. If they are bad, your ship may sink with theirs.
The goal is that your business will become their business, and your growth their growth. Over time all cylinders will be firing and your online marketing efforts will pay huge dividends.
Tread carefully when you are hiring an online marketing agency. You only want to do it once…
Thanks for reading
How To Protect Yourself From Hiring The Wrong Online Marketing Company
We are finally to part 3 of scaling your business. It has been an eye opener thus far and I can’t wait to see what the next 6 months hold. If you haven’t read part one or part two you may want to.
Here are the links:
The other morning I was laying in bed in the twilight zone. I may be a little weird; I’ve had some crazy ideas come to me in the realm between fully awake and asleep. It’s like my brain is firing on all cylinders and the ideas start to flow.
It may sound crazy to some, but it happens to me all the time. One of these days I’ll tell you about the time I did calculus all night in my dreams, which helped be get a 99% on my calculus test.
Anyhow… I jumped out of bed and sketched our marketing blueprint.
As I looked at it, I could see a few holes that need to be filled and where we could adjust our remarketing and banner ad campaigns.
I’ll keep you posted on our results in the coming weeks. But for now, we have a complete online marketing blueprint. Here’s what it looks like:
As you can see, I am not the artist behind Ydraw videos. My chicken scratches will pass for a third grader and are fine for the time being, but I’m having this created professionally.
When I got done drawing I could see why we were generating so many leads. This Online Marketing Blueprint is a system that keeps getting better and better over time. To get the kind of results we are getting, each section has to be mastered. For example…Adwords is a big part of our business. We have put in a lot of time and effort to create the right text ads, keywords campaigns, display campaigns, etc. The same goes for Facebook, emails, and YouTube. Each section needs to be perfected.
It’s a lot of work, but very doable.
If you leave a part out…it may not work.
I just know that we have gone from 100 leads per week to 500 leads per week in a 3-month period. Which brings with it some growing pains, but those are great problems to have.
Here are the numbers from our Adwords accounts:
October 2015
Adwords
Spend: $8,083
Leads: 81
Cost per lead $99.79
Click To Conversion Rate was 3% to 9%
March 2015
Adwords
Spend: $10,653
Leads: 165
Cost Per Lead: $54.55
Click to Conversion Rate 13%
The Changes We Made to Adwords
You can see we’ve doubled our leads and cut our cost per lead in half. With the small changes we are making weekly, I can see this getting even better over the next couple of months.
Here are some of the changes:
We redesigned and simplified the website. I can’t stress the importance of simplification. Cut out steps and cut out the clutter. It made a huge impact on our conversion and I know it will make a huge impact on yours.
Create one call to action. What do you want the audience to do?
Google eliminated the right hand ads which gave us a little boost. This may have hurt a lot of other companies. We were always bidding high. It eliminated some of our competition.
Added more negative keywords.
Did A/B testing with text ads.
**added Gmail sponsored ads to the mix**
Gmail Sponsored Ads
I hate giving away secrets like Gmail Sponsored Ads because I know there are other video companies out their watching our every move. It’s a curse, but I want to make sure I give you as much value as possible.
In return I ask that you subscribe to our blog. It’s for the greater good. 🙂
Gmail sponsored ads have been a big focus of mine for the last couple of weeks. With Gmail sponsored ads you are able to run ads within Gmail.
We can place ads based on the account activity of a personal Gmail account. Think of all Gmail users out there. We are able to run promotions directly in their inbox.
The Gmail advert is set out in two sections in the Gmail inbox – a collapsed ad and an expanded ad, but essentially this is the same advert. The collapsed ad appears as a ‘new message’ in your inbox and when you click on it, this then leads you to another ad – the expanded ad. You pay for the cost per click (CPC) every time somebody clicks on the collapsed ad. The expanded ad then leads the user to your landing page; however, you do not pay for the click from the expanded ad to the landing page (this is free).
Here is what one looks like.
They are simple and have had a big impact on our Adwords account.
I created a simple tutorial video on how to set up Gmail sponsored ads. Watch it so you can see what I am talking about.
Now let’s jump over to Facebook and Instagram.
When we first started…here is what the numbers looked like:
Facebook and Instagram
(30 Day Time Period)
Spend: $4665
Number of Leads 446
Cost Per Lead: $10.45
Facebook and Instagram March 2016
(30 Day Time Period)
Spend: $6970
Number of Leads: 1461
Cost Per Lead: $4.77
Yay for Facebook and Instagram! Our leads have gone up drastically and our cost per lead has been cut in half.
Here are the changes we made to our Facebook and Instagram ads to achieve our results:
We basically had Facebook track anyone who hit our conversion page and created a lookalike audience that matched our conversions. It has been very effective.
Created a new whiteboard animation video that provided a little better messaging.
Increased our ad spend budget.
Allowed our good ads to keep running continuously.
That is exactly how we increased our leads.
Please note that we have created an overall system and you are getting a glimpse into this portion of our marketing campaigns. There are more videos and blogs coming in the near future (and most likely a book).
Now it is your turn.
Let us know if you have any questions. We would love to help implement our whole marketing strategy to your business.
Thanks for reading Incredible: From 100 Leads Per Week To 500 Leads Per Week. See How We Did It!
Last week we created Part 1 of scaling a business and within 10 days we immediately ran into a problem. Which forced us to scale back our ad spend and make adjustments to our sales force.
That didn’t take long… 🙂
That‘s business for you. Just when you think you have figured something out, another bottleneck arises. I have a feeling this is going to happen a lot on this Journey. Originally, I was planning on creating a 4 part series, but I think this is going to turn into a 10 part series. It’s important that you guys see our roadblocks and challenges.
Scaling a business, by increasing ad spend, is not as easy as everyone thinks. There are roadblocks, traffic issues, offer issues, funnel problems, shipping, etc.
So do not get discouraged when things pop up. That is to be expected.
The Problem With Our Sales Team
Each Friday I have my sales guy send me the total number of leads, new opportunities, wins, and losses. This last Friday was not great.
We have gone from producing 100 leads a week to 275+.
You would think if the leads more than doubled, the opportunities would more than double.
This was not the case. We had a slight increase in opportunities from the prior weeks but nothing like it should have been.
We overloaded our sales guy with leads and he did not have a system in place to keep track of everyone. New leads were not getting a called right away, and he didn’t have time to follow up.
That is bad.
High-ticket sales don’t just happen.
When selling a higher ticket item, you have to have a sales force that can call immediately and say the right things. For this, we needed a strict sales script.
Curtis and I have shied away from a sales script. Our policy was listening to the prospect, identify the problem, and give the solution. We were there to help.
This works great when you have years of experience. It doesn’t work so well when you have a new salesman.
Once the script was completed, it was important for the leads to be called immediately.
Value per lead drops every minute that passes after the lead is generated. You want to reach them while they are looking at your website.
Why?
Because your ability to create an opportunity diminishes as time passes. Contact rates drop over time and lead qualification rates drop over time. Plus, it’s harder to catch the lead at an available time.
As time passes, that individual may forget or look for other solutions.
This is where my competitive spirit kicks in. I can’t stand the thought of someone going to one of our competitors just because we did not follow up.
I have found that Insidesales.com does a great job of educating sales teams. Here is a link to one of their ebooks, The Ultimate Revenue Engine.
How Sales Reps Are Failing
Sales are not easy and we all appreciate what they do. They are the life-line of the company. Here’s some great insight from a marketer at Inside Sales.
“The average lead response time for a sample of 3,068 sales teams at 38 hours 30 minutes. The same study showed that the average number of contact attempts was just 1.36.
There is a reason why this level of response is inadequate.
Lead response research done by Dr. James Oldroyd, shows that the odds of reaching a new sales lead drop over 10x if you wait longer than the first hour of shown interest, and the odds of qualifying that lead decrease 6x.
InsideSales.com shows that at 1.36 contact attempts, a business only contacts just over 40% of leads.
Sales Reps, have to do better if you are going to scale up on leads.
This was our problem. We increases count form 100 to 275. This caused an overload.
Here’s how your sales force can fix the problem.
1. Use your CRM software
We use Infusionsoft as our CRM. They provide a lot of tools you can use to keep track of leads, opportunities, and closing. Use it.
2. Take Notes
When dealing with a large number of opportunities you have to take notes and keep track of conversations.
I can’t tell you how many times I get a phone from a prospective client asking me to recall our conversation 3 months earlier.
Notes make you look good.
3. Set a follow-up date and make them commit
Make sure that each and every conversation you have ends with some type of challenge/commitment.
“People change no faster than they make and keep commitments.”
Meaning as people commit to the next phone call or the next action, they are that much closer to becoming a customer. The more time they with you and your product, the better it is.
4. Make 6-10 Contact Attempts (lots of touches)
I am busy, and I am a businessman. When I am looking to purchase a new product, I have found it takes about 10 to 12 touches.
This might be too much for some people, but all I know is my purchasing behavior likely matches a lot of others.
For example, I’ve been looking to buy a new couch for my office. I found the perfect couch 45 days ago on Amazon. But I kept shopping. I wanted to find something that was a little lower in price.
I have looked at that couch online at least 7 times, I read the reviews, I compared, and I looked for other deals.
This is a normal buying cycle for me. I do it with everything.
Finally, yesterday morning I woke up and bought the couch.
You never know what the buying cycle of a prospective buyer is. So it’s best to follow up 6 to 10 times.
Or better yet…go until you get a definite Yes or No.
5. Call The Leads Within The First 5 Minutes
The quicker you call the higher your chances to turning a lead into an opportunity.
I can’t tell you how impressed people are when you follow up quickly. If you can call the prospect while he is searching for your product or service, you can answer any of his questions and resolve his doubts.
So there you have it…
This was the first roadblock we faced with scaling our business. It is not completely fixed, but we will get there.
Until next time…
If you liked these types of articles, let us know. We love advice. If you have ideas that you can share with our readers, leave a comment.
Thanks for reading. More to come.
Fixing Our Sales Team. Scaling A Business With Facebook, Adwords, and Instagram Part 2
I am excited to finally get this project going. Are you ready to start scaling your business? We are going to show you guys how to scale up your business using Facebook, Adwords, and Instagram Ads. Especially Video Ads.
When I say scale, I mean increase ad spend which will, in turn, increase your leads.
More leads equal more sales for you business.
This is part 1 of a 4 part series so keep an eye out for the other blog posts. This could turn into a 10 part series. I will keep going as long as you guys keep reading. Feel free to ask questions, make comments, and share this article. There are businesses that need it!
A lot of people have a problem with scaling. It can be really nerve racking and it takes a leap of faith: Faith that you have the right offer, faith that your product brings value, faith your funnel is set up correctly, and faith your message will bring conversion.
The reality is, you could bomb and lose money.
But…
That should not stop you from trying. You have to take a risk! If you want to grow your business, scaling is a great way to get rapid growth. It may take testing and tweaking. So make sure you are ready mentally to do this.
We know this first hand. Case and point!
Many of you know, Yinc does marketing for all types of businesses. We like to focus on video marketing but many of our clients need a lot more then just video ads.
We are currently working with a business that is ripe for scaling. Our cost per lead is around $1 and our cost per customer is around $9.
Their average customer spends around $70 on their first order, which puts us at a $61 gross profit.
On the surface this looks amazing. The numbers above are definitely scalable, but the company is basically breaking even. They have a net profit margin that is so tight that we have not convinced them to scale yet. This is where the Lifetime Value of a customer comes into play. If their customers order more product, instant profit. But they have to be willing to break even on that first order.
Like I said…it’s not easy.
During this process, you will learn about your product and offer. Take what you learn and make adjustments. It’s also important that your adjustments are made quickly. If you have a web guy that takes weeks to make a correction, you have problems. If you can’t create a Facebook audience in a hour, you need help. If you have no idea how to create an Instagram ad, you better educate yourself or get someone who knows what they are doing.
This is not a game for beginners. You will lose money and quite before you become profitable. I see this all the time!
This is not to scare you. I just want to make sure you have the little things adjusted before you decide to scale.
Over the last couple of years we have been content with the growth and profits but we want to add another 100k a month in revenue.
One of the biggest limitations of Ydraw is that each video is customized. It takes a lot of creativity and human capital to create a Whiteboard Animation Video. It’s even worse with 2D and 3D animation videos. For us to scale perfectly, we would need to have a turnkey video in place or we have to find a lot of new talent.
We don’t know if we want to do this yet.
So once we increase our sales another 100K a month we will put a freeze on our ad spend and decide if we want to go on another hiring spree.
Where We Currently Stand
When I talk numbers, I will only cover Adwords, Facebook, and Instagram. The numbers do not include referrals, SEO, repeat business, referral partners, etc.
We’ll be discussing Ads and Video Ads only. All the leads are coming from Ad spend.
October 2015 Ad Spend (not a good month)
Adwords
Spend: $8,083
Leads: 81
Cost per lead $99.79
Click To Conversion Rate was 3% to 9%
Facebook and Instagram (Zero)
Last October we were running the following:
Keywords Search Ads (Adwords) : These are just simple keyword targeted ads.
Gmail Sponsored Ads (Adwords): These are Gmail ads that pop up on the Gmail promotion tab
Video keywords Ads (Trueview adwords): These are YouTube display ads for specific keywords
Video Placement Ads (Adwords): Hand picked YouTube videos that allow ads
Retargeting (Adwords): Banner ads and video ads for visitors
Although we had great success with running Facebook ads, last October we had turned them off. We felt we needed to make some changes first.
Step 1: Scaling your online business. Online Marketing Assets
Do you have everything necessary to run an effective online marketing campaign?
You are going to need the following:
Website
Videos (30 second ad and a full length explainer video)
Everything should be branded correctly and have links out to your landing pages. I have created plenty of video tutorials to help you. Just visit my YouTube Channel.
When scaling, everything works together. Traffic we get from Facebook becomes part of our Remarketing campaign in Adwords. Our Search traffic on Adwords becomes part of our Lookalike audiences on Facebook and Instagram. The likes and shares on Instagram become part of our Remarketing group on YouTube. The point it…It’s a full system.
The Assets above are the foundation. Do not go any further until you have everything in place.
For those who have everything, I would suggest revamping or double-checking your work or go down the full checklist which I provided above.
Ydraw’s Adjustments
After looking over our numbers I realized we needed to make some adjustments to the website. I knew this for some time, but I’m busy and I didn’t make time to for the necessary adjustments.
I know…STUPID!
This seems to happen a lot with business owners. We get caught up in so many different things that we neglect making necessary adjustments; especially if things are going great and you’re making good money. It’s human nature to keep the status quo when all is well.
Our number 1 goal for the website is to collect a lead. We want their email address or we want them to pick up the phone and call. Calls have a much higher closing rate, but a lot of people are in research mode and will only leave their email.
That is ok.
Once we collect an email address they enter our Email Campaign.
Our website was ok at the time, but was random and lacked a clear call to action.
Plus, there were a couple of issues on Mobile that needed to be fixed.
Over Thanksgiving break we went to work on the website. The updated version would have a clearer CTA and would eliminate a lot of the clutter.
-Cost Per Leads
-Cost Per Customer
-Closing Percentage
-Profit Per Sale
-Life Time Value Of A Customer
If you are losing money every month, one of the numbers above is messed up.
Cost Per Lead is different for everyone.
If your industry is highly competitive you could be spending $50 dollars a click which could turn into a $500 cost per lead. This is not uncommon (Attorneys are known to spend this type of money on leads).
At Ydraw we can afford to spend $150 to $300 per lead or $2500 a customer, and still come out on top. You may only be able to spend $3 a lead.
Just make sure know your numbers.
Obviously, the name of the game is to get the lowest cost per lead.
We will get into this later but if you can only spend a couple of dollars to generate a lead, Adwords might not be the best place start. I would look at Facebook or Instagram. You will have difficulty reaching your goals with Adwords unless you find a way to increase your prices and profits per customer.
Either way, you have to test it.
Dan Kennedy says, “He who can spend the most per lead wins.”
Russell Brunson is always preaching that it’s ok to break even to obtain a customer. He will even lose money because he knows profit’s are made further down the funnel.
The Lifetime Value of a customer is important.
Fast forward to Jan 2016
It was time to start scaling up. The new website was up, Instagram ads were working and our Facebook strategy was in place.
Adwords
Spend: $8,185.35
Number of Leads: 117
Cost Per Lead: $84.62
Click to Conversion: 5.69% to 10.53%
Facebook and Instagram
Spend: $4665
Number of Leads 446
Cost Per Leads: $10.45
As you can see, the website adjustments made a big impact on our conversions. We saw a 35% decrease in Cost Per Lead and close to 87% increase in Click to Conversion.
You will also notice that Facebook and Instagram campaigns really added to the number of leads.
Our Cost Per Lead is way lower on Facebook and Instagram, but those leads are not as high of quality as Adwords.
There is a difference between people who are actively searching and people you interrupt. Facebook and Instagram are interruption techniques. Meaning they are not actively searching for our product or service.
There is a longer sales cycle, but the ROI is still big.
What I love about Facebook and Instragram ads are the shares, likes, and comments. Here is the Instagram video ad we are running.
A video posted by Whiteboard Animation (@ydraw) on
Take note of the comments and shares. This is powerful because we are getting free customers. When one person sees our ad and thinks their friend needs it, they share the ad.
This is like an instant endorsement.
These are factors that are extremely hard to measure. All I know is that things are working.
For example…
In one day Wes, our sales VP, had $18,000 in sales from Instagram Ads.
We spent around $150 on ads that day. The whole month of January we spent $4665 on ads for both Facebook and Instagram.
I do not have the exact amount of sales that came in from Facebook and Instagram, but it was a lot (still trying to track them more effectively).
These are exciting numbers.
The Plan Moving Forward:
Over the coming weeks I plan to increase ad spend by $3000 and make some more adjustments.
The goal is to lower or maintain the same Cost Per Lead.
Here are some key factors that contributed to our success in the month of January.
New Website Design
New Facebook and Instagram Video Ads
Lookalike Audience Created from Conversion
Increase Ad Spend
I will create a separate blog post about Lookalike Audiences because I think Facebook changed their algorithm a few weeks back. It was a good change because their effectiveness increased dramatically (more to come).
In the meantime, good luck scaling your ad spend. If you have questions, feel free to reach out to me. I would be happy to discuss your business.
I am excited for what 2016 holds.
Happy Scaling…
Thanks for reading.
Scaling A Business With Adwords, Facebook, and Instagram Video Ads. Part 1
