Today’s article is not for you if you don’t like details, so I would recommend that you share this with your inhouse Marketing Co-Ordinator or Marketing Manager as it contains the steps we use here at EDC to optimise our campaigns.
Yes this is our IP and I’m not precious about it.
Why?
Because I want you to stop relying on just Realestate.com.au or Domain.
A rising tide lifts all ships and we need to stop feeding the beast.
Our Ten Commandments for Optimising Facebook Campaigns to generate more leads are below:
- COST PER LEAD IS KEY
When looking at a lead gen campaign, the first thing to look at is the cost per lead on the ‘Campaign’ level. Anything above $30 per lead is usually bad – that means the campaign needs a thorough review of the ABCDs:
- Ad Set Targeting
- Budget per ad set
- Copy
- Display Images
Looking at the cost per lead of a campaign can be confusing. The ideal number is if you look at both the lifetime CPL and ‘last 7 days’ CPL and to make sure they’re not significantly different. And if they are, then what matters is the CPL of the last 7/14 days, as it measures how we’re using the budget currently, not from when we started the campaign 4 months ago.
- GO DEEP – ANALYSE THE CAMPAIGN ON THEIR AD SET LEVEL
You say “WOW, THE COST PER LEAD IS ONLY $22 – MAYBE I SHOULD SKIP OPTIMISING!”
The answer is, NO!
You need to look at the campaigns at the ad set level first:
- Budget – after launching the campaign for a few week and if you notice that one ad set is doing better than the other, then it’s time to change the budget! For example:
- Young Professionals’ budget was $400 a month, generated 20 leads at $20 a lead
- Downsizers’ budget was also $400 a month, however, it generated 40 leads at $10 a lead
This means you will need to allocate more budget to the downsizers’ market, as it generated more leads at a lower cost.
- GO EVEN DEEPER – ANALYSE THE CAMPAIGN ON THEIR AD LEVEL
It’s important to know which images and copy are working for each ad set – and you can tell which one is working best by the leads each ad generated and the link clicks it produced.
Usually, when you launch a campaign, we recommend you start with 6 images. In the following weeks, you can turn off the images/copies that aren’t working as well and keep 2-3 images. If these images have fatigued, you can add more images, or tweak the copy.
- WHAT ARE ALL THESE FORMS?
There are 3 forms that we tend to use for a campaign:
- Short form – super short, max. 10 lines or sentences, very factual and lots of stats to show why a buyer should buy ‘this’ development
- Medium form – 2-3 medium-length paragraphs, with more detail than short form, but still factual
- Long form – you can write the copy as long as you want, the most important thing is to make the copy relatable to each target market.
- STRONG CALLS TO ACTION IS SUPER IMPORTANT IN EACH COPY
No explanation required here I hope.
- APPEALING GRAPHICS
We have found that the most appealing images are:
- External house/building
- External facilities – bbq, backyard, swimming pool, outdoor lounge
- Nearby parks/landmarks
- Kitchen
- Living room/balcony
- Related lifestyle stock image
- I’M RUNNING OUT OF THINGS TO OPTIMISE. WHAT SHOULD I DO?
Recraft the whole campaign. Paraphrase the copy, re-add the images/ completely different sets of images/renders that was never used before, delete the detailed targeting and it’s time to expand the radius.
Suggest a new target audience – if you have optimised a certain ad set many many times and it’s still not working, maybe it’s time to review a new target audience. Look at the development’s competitors, who are they targeting?
- RETARGETING & LOOKALIKE
Retargeting and lookalike audience should be a basic for most digitl marketers as it always generates more leads when a campaign has fatigued. You can create this audience by extracting all of their previous leads and create a lookalike audience. Find the guide here: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/465262276878947
- MISCELLANEOUS SCORES ON ADS MANAGER – ARE THEY WORTH LOOKING?
Yes, they are! It might not be as important as leads or cost per leads, however, these are a few scores that you might want to look at:
- Relevance Score – a rating on a scale of 1-10 that demonstrates how well your Facebook ad is being received by your target audience
- Post Reactions – the number of likes one particular ad generated
- Link Clicks – the number of people that went to the website/landing page via a Facebook ad
- RECORD WHAT YOU’VE DONE
Don’t forget to record you’ve done to the campaign. Some marketers understand Ads Manager more than the others, so it’s crucial you don’t forget what you’ve done or not done.
In summary
A lot of clients we work with think that digital marketing is a dark art, but it’s not. Don’t be afraid to ask questions no matter how trivial they may be. Commercial sensibilities still count and money can’t buy experience. I started EDC with ZERO digital experience but I believed that there was a far more strategic and targeted way to generate leads outside of traditional marketing platforms.
