Hi Mike!

Here's a recent, but not totally current, screenshot of squeeze page performance. Yeah, the 40% is for http://www.charleylanger.net/mobile.html. I did no tweaking to get it there. I just followed the template that John and Scott gave us, and it worked amazingly well right out of the gate. I did tweak my desktop squeeze page, http://www.charleylanger.net, and it's at 30% (actually 32% right now).  

So far I've spent $200 and brought in 213 subs, for $0.95/sub. Not horrible, but not amazing, if you think of it in aggregate. However, I have two ad sets going, and one is performing 35% better than the other for the same audience. Today I shut off the weaker performer, and am focusing on tweaking the stronger performer based on what I've learned about my audience. I think--I hope!!!!--I can get my cost down to about $0.70/sub. Historically, my subscriber value was about $1.00/sub, which I have no guarantee will hold, but I feel comfortable enough to continue the testing and try scaling up some without the fear that I'm going to totally lose my ass!

Also, I should say that, for me, the ads seem to go stale at about three days. I'm sure how often one needs to change things up depends on how large the audience is. However, you absolutely must monitor your click through rates, and you need to be changing audiences or ads when your CTR goes down or you are going to be hating life. LOL!

That's it for now. I'll have more later.

Ok, I'm on a roll and want to share just a bit more. Here's a quick look at the ad that is doing well. I paid about $0.72/sub today with this ad set. Everything about my ad copy, images, and settings is intentional, and based on what John has taught and what I have learned about my audience.

First of all, I know that the largest part of my fan-base is female, and between the ages of 45 and 55. You'll notice that I have limited my audience to women 35 and older who have expressed interest in my "sound-alike" artists. You'll also notice that my ad is striving to appeal to emotion rather than intellect. I am not trying to get my audience to click by showing my handsome face and providing impressive press quotes -- I tried that approach in the ad that didn't do as well!! LOL!

Again, I have decided to limit my ad to the mobile platform. That is because: (1) I noticed from prior testing that most people were going to my mobile squeeze page, which obviously means the people who were clicking my ads tended to be mobile users, and (2) my mobile squeeze page converts better. Higher CTRs means lower ad prices, and better squeeze page conversions means more subscribers for the same amount of money.

Here's where I have made a departure from John's advice: I am bidding for optimized conversions. I've tried bidding for clicks, and optimized conversions has worked better for me. If a "click" meant a click to my squeeze page, I would absolutely only bid for clicks. But it doesn't. And, in my limited experience, Facebook has done a good job of tracking mobile conversions, which leads me to believe that they are using some sophisticated mobile phone signature (i.e., "finger printing") technology to track mobile users. I am only saying that you might want to experiment and see what provides the lowest cost for you.

One thing I will say about the optimized conversion approach is that you need to be patient. Set it at the beginning of the day and let the algorithm work its magic over the day. If you keep messing around with budgets, schedules, start switching ads off and on, etc., you'll confuse the algorithm. If you look at how this ad set did today, you can see that Facebook says I spent $0.72/sub. That actually was about right when I checked Aweber and reviewed how much I spent.

Ok. NOW that's it (for now)! LOL!

John Oszajca said
Awesome Charley, I have no issue at all with bidding on conversions, it's just not where I would start. But I think it's fantastic that you've been having success with it. I can't make everything out. What are you bidding per conversion and how long did you wait to establish a conversion price before switching over to conversion bidding? Really a fantastic job you're doing.

First of all, thanks for the kudos!

So... I tried bidding on clicks a few months ago and was frustrated that a "click" wasn't a click to my squeeze page. It was costing me something like a couple dollars for a subscriber. So I gave up.

After your training, I thought I'd give it another go. I just thought that, since Facebook says something like "most advertisers find that optimized bidding for their desired results to be most effective," I thought I'd try following Facebook's recommendation. I discovered yesterday that it can be risky to do that if you're not paying attention. For those who don't know, optimized bidding lets Facebook set the price for your desired result. I really wish I could just bid for clicks to my squeeze page on a news feed ad!! 

To anyone doing this, or wanting to do this, you should expect to screw up a few times. Prepare to be frustrated sometimes. But it can work very well.

Now I'm back to, "What did I do wrong yesterday?" LOL!

That's awesome Charley. Good on ya as I have never had any luck with any of FB's optimizing. I always pay through the rough if I go with that, and most I know report the same. But you're obviously doing something right on that one. I would warn anyone reading this that letting Facebook optimize your bidding is pretty risky. Most lose money with that strategy.

Yes, I would definitely warn people it is risky! I f'd up the other day!! LOL! But it is possible to do well, and so far I've had better luck doing it that way. 

 I'm going to try laser targeting using custom audiences, ad copy, photos, and squeeze pages. For example, make a custom audience of women between 35 and 55 who like smooth jazz and Massage Envy. Then make the ad copy, pics, and squeeze page all about relaxing to a free smooth jazz download. Maybe a pic of a woman getting a massage... Just thinking as I go... LOL!
 

Ok...well, Massage Envy + Smooth Jazz definitely limited the audience too much. Nevertheless, I am trying ads and squeeze pages targeted to women over 35 who like Massage Envy. I'll let you know how this goes. Here's a sample ad for the mobile squeeze page at http://www.charleylanger.net/s.....obile.html:

So, the hd focused on relaxation/massage did very well. I was able to keep my CTRs around 4%. My squeeze page was converting darn near 50%!! That was a fairly small sample… Around 35 subscribers or so. 

Total, during this whole recent experiment, I spent $440 and added 352 subscribers. That's $1.25 per subscriber, which is a bit over what my subscribers value has been in the past. The orders are coming in. we'll see! I was not able to repeat my experience of $.72 per subscriber

I know why John likes Facebook advertising. It really is a lot of fun!! Much more fun than any other PPC experience I've had. There are so many variables that they give you to play around with. And, in the end, $1.25 is not a bad price for a subscriber. These ones seem much more active than the subscribers that I got with Yahoo/Bing/Microsoft ad network. 

 i'm going to keep experimenting. I will probably have to set my bids lower, and pay less per click. That will, of course, limit my traffic.

L