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QuoteHey gang,
I am not having much success driving traffic with my facebook ads. I have a couple of simple questions.
1) If I am targeting a sound-alike band, is it best to go at one of the GIANT bands in my genre (one with millions of likes)? or should I go after some of the more mid sized bands (one with tens or hundreds of thousands of likes)?
My band plays rock. The an example of big fish would be Foo Fighters. A Smaller one would be Alkaline Trio.
(If you want to hear the song I am giving away without joining the mail list go HERE and play "Dancing Drunk")
2)Right Column/News Feed/Mobile. What ads are working best for people?
I am just starting so I dont have a lot of data. I threw down $15 yesterday and got 10 people to my page and got two sign-ups. At that point I was being charged $1.30 per click so I shut it down. My page might be Okay, but my ads just plain out stink.
Here is a copy of my new ad which is targeting American fans of Queens of the Stone Age, between the ages of 25-55.
Thanks a boat load!
Adam
After throwing down some more money on a few ads, here is what I have learned.
1)Go for the big bands, at least for the kind of music I am playing. I think the smaller bands have fans that behave more like a clique. They do not respond to ads.
2)Despite Facebook telling me to bid $30 per click for a right column ad, it will be a lot less. ($0.42 at the moment.)
3)I can watch John's tutorials for Facebook ads 3 times each and pick up something new every time. I have a lot to learn.
I'm still looking for any kind of insight on Facebook targeting and ads in general.
Thanks,
Adam
12:33 am
June 7, 2011
Offline
Hey Adam,
I usually have more success with the mid level bands than I do the huge ones. But it does depend. For example, an artist like Bob Dylan is so large that you have a lot of conversation surrounding him that doesn't necessarily indicate that the people talking are actual fans. And therefore it tends to be less targeted and not do well. There are even people who have liked the artists page because of their respect for the artist, but who don't actually engage with the music or the genre all that often. But each case is different and if you've found a big audience that works, that's what counts.
Newsfeed works best for me, but they can all be effective, and it depends a bit on the nature of the ad.
Keep in mind, it takes time for your prices to come down. So you can't decide much after just 15 clicks. The first clicks will always be high, but so long as you get a decent CTR they will always come way down as the ad continues to run.
What is your current click through rate on the ad? For newsfeed and right column separately.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
On a Queens of the Stone Age targeted campaign I got a click rate around 4% with a Newsfeed ad. It peaked around day 2 or 3 and then dropped to 2%. It was costing over a buck a click at the end so I shut it down. I was getting some conversions though.
I had a right column ad targeting Foo Fighters that stayed at a healthy 0.3%, even though my frequency crawled up to 2.4%. Those clicks started costing $1.25 after a couple of days, and I had no conversions on that campaign.
I blew some money targeting the Clash. I had the same problem you had with Bob Dylan, I think. Very few clicks and no conversions.
I am going to set one up targeting Fall Out Boy. We have some pictures that may speak to a more image driven rock crowd. Ill let you know how it works.
One question I have is when should I be killing my campaigns? I have been doing it by cost. When it stays over a buck its dead. Should I be editing it instead?
Thanks,
Adam
11:21 pm
June 7, 2011
Offline
Hey Adam, over a dollar a click for a campaign with a decent CTR is really high. The only exception being if the ad or campaign is very new and hasn't had a chance to settle yet. That frequency is very high for just a few days in as well.
what are your targeting options and what is your audience size?
As for when to kill an ad, I basically give an ad 3 - 5 days to see what it will do once it settles out and then I kill it when I stop getting subscribers for my target price. That varies depending on what I'm doing and what the subscriber value is for the list.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
I am setting up a new campaign now. I'll targeting Queens of the Stone Age because I got a decent conversion rate for the few clicks that I got last time I targeted them. Here is what I got.
Location: US & Canada
Age: 25-55
Gender: All
Interests: Queens of The Stone Age
Estimated Reach: 910,000
Right Column ad ONLY. (People love to 'like' my ad but don't go to the site. Right columns have been cheaper for me.)
Budget: $10 a day for now. I have been hitting a high frequency fast.
The suggested bid rate is $1.29 - $2.86! These have not been too accurate for me. I am going to switch my bid to "Get the most clicks to the website at the best price" because I dont have time to nudge my bid when I am at my day job. Let me know if you think this is a mistake.
I loaded up 4 pics. Here is the ad with one of them
Here is a link to my squeeze page if you want it, although traffic has been my issue, not conversions.
Let me know if you see anything that stands out as a mistake, and I will let you know how the ad goes.
Thanks!
Adam
10:42 pm
June 7, 2011
Offline
Hey Adam,
Page looks good. You have varied up the format by omitting the headline as the focus, but I kind of like it.
Those prices are just really high. That said, I do tend to focus on Newsfeed ads more than right column. Hopefully they come down. You might want to try running a separate ad set for newsfeed to see what you get as a bid range.
I have been doing a lot of "get me the most clicks/conversions possible" and have been having good luck with that approach. But I include all ad types, and then just run a report a few days in to see what the conversion prices are for each type, and pause anything that isn't performing well. Something to consider.
Good luck with the new campaign. Keep us posted.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
Yeah,
I did a split test with the logo themed squeeze page that I have and the MMM style theme. With the few click that I had earlier this week I saw much more action on mine. I probably could have used more testing to be sure it was working better for me, as I am not quite up to the 20-25% conversion rate. What I dont like about the logo is that it limits how much headline copy I can write before it pushes the picture below the fold.
Back to the ad results.
The ad started crazy expensive. $10 bought me four clicks! I was getting a bad price before but this is much worse. I checked in on it halfway through the day and the price was dropping so I decided to let it run a little. Probably a bad use of money from an investment standpoint, but I wanted to see if it would keep dropping.
I decided to look into the ads and see what was going on. I had loaded 4 pictures. Two of them still cost over $2 per click, but the other two dropped below a dollar ($0.78, and $0.82). I killed the under performers and created two new ads with the other pictures. The two new ads had the headline "Dirty Riff-Rock!" and the older ones said "Gritty Rock Fan?". I am about 34 hours into this campaign, is it too early to be making changes? I think I may have been killing/changing my previous ads too early.
My targeting was 910,000 people but my ad was served up to 5,979 people at a 3.21 frequency. I have no idea why. My click through rate is not as good as it was in previous campaigns. Only 0.125%, but going up. I probably would kill this ad by now, but I want to see if the price is going to drop more. I really want to know how these things arc.
My next campaign will be all ad types like you suggest John.
Alright, the price bottomed out and started coming back up again. This is about 42 hours into the campaign. I probably did not give the ad copy enough time, but they didnt take off and my old ads started to become stinkers. The CTR dropped on the best one to 0.0976% from 0.125% (Right column ad for anyone skimming the thread) and the price went up to $0.90.
I am shutting it off for now, but I can turn it back on if there are any ideas. I didnt connect with this audience very well.
I will be making a new campaign shortly. I want to try an Indie Rock audience to see if they are more receptive, but I got to get new copy for that crowd. I have always though we sounded a bit like the Kaiser Chiefs, so I might target them.
11:27 pm
June 7, 2011
Offline
Hey Adam,
Yeah, those arcs can be really inconsistent, and sometimes take a while to settle. Usually when things start going back up that means you've bottomed out, but not all the time. Ads seem to take 3 - 5 days to really start to drop, at least for me. But I also tend to go with $100 a day or so, so that may be quicker with a budget like that. I
I've also seen ads just shoot way up, only to drop way down the following day.
The road to success with this stuff is usually one where someone finds a combo that works right out of the gate and allows the user to get a feel for what metrics work. From there one's confidence goes up and it's easier to stay the course when you start a new ad. Otherwise you run into what you are running into where you need to lose money during that trial and error period. Unfortunately I don't really know a way around it.
The frequency getting that high that fast is odd. I haven't run into that. You might email ad support and see what they say. You can contact them in the left column of your ad manager. The first response is almost always useless copy and paste. But if you reply and push the issue they seem to elevate it to an actual thinking person.
There is an option to limit frequency to just one impression per person, per day. But some targeting effectiveness goes out the window so I don't know that I would recommend it just yet. I haven't personally used it. But you can find the option in the bidding tab (if I remember right).
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
Hi,
I’m in a similar situation to Adam so thought this was a more appropriate place to post this rather than start a new topic. After looking at Adam and Johns Conversation I think there is just inevitably a little bit of trial and error in this sort of thing. However it’d be mega useful if I could get some sort of 2nd opinion about how I’m doing before I spend more money on this…..
I’m new to the whole Facebook and online advertising thing and have run a few experiments over the last couple of weeks. I’ve made a bit of progress but would like some advice about how to convert the interest in the adverts into sign-ups.
Over the last 3 days I’ve run some Facebook adverts that have actually had people responding to them. I’ve been running 4 adverts. All have been at about $6-8 per day each so not much. They all have been focused on the phrase ‘britpop’. The adverts only vary on whether they are in the UK or US, news feed or audience network, and focused on ‘Britpop’ or ‘Britpop News’.
Over 3 days I’ve had about 30 FB likes, tons of people liking the posts, and 80 visits to my squeeze page. This seems like progress however I’ve only had 3 people sign up.
My cost per click are also reasonably high. (40c, 40c, 90c, $1.20)
I also set up a campaign to retarget people going to my squeeze page but as you can imagine it gets few impressions and 0 conversions so far.
Before I spend more money making variations of adverts I was hoping to get some advise about how to go forward and whether these numbers (although an improvement for me) are just not quite good enough and maybe the ‘Britpop’ approach should be scrapped and maybe just focus on individual bands instead?
My squeeze page is at http://www.palegreenthingsmusic.com
My plan is to make more of these to focus on specific bands as well.
Thanks,
Jack
Hey Jack,
It looks like your problem is a little different than mine. You are getting clicks, but no conversions. I was having problems getting clicks at a decent price.
I have not mastered getting conversions yet but there are a few lessons that I though were helpful.
1)Branding - In this one John goes over a similar problem that a user name Jon Chobra was having. He gives him some exercises that helps him focus his message. It was a lesson based on this message board post.
2)Squeeze Page Doctor - John takes the squeeze page from a band called Radio Nowhere and makes a few changes to in until it starts converting. Its a trial and error process, but in the end it works.
3)Split Testing - John shows how to send traffic to two separate pages so you much more accurate judgement of what is working and what is not.
Hope that helps.
Adam
John I tried a new ad set that has all ad types active. I am seeing a much better price. I am down to about $0.30 and dropping. I have a few more questions for you if you dont mind.
1) I have it set up as a "get the most clicks" payment. It looks like facebook is getting more clicks from the audience network. As I understand it this is Facebook targeted ads in third party apps/games. I am getting a lot of clicks from them but my conversions are lower than normal. (I suspect people are clicking the ads on accident while trying to play a mobile video game and then quickly close out of the squeeze page to get back to the game.) Do you find that these ads convert for you?
2) The squeeze template looks great for mobile, but it pushes the opt in below the fold are you seeing a decent amount of conversions for this? I was thinking of sending mobile users to a different squeeze page that has less copy so they don't have to scroll so far to see the opt-in.
3)How big is the audience that you are throwing $100 a day at?
4)Are you running multiple ad champagnes to multiple groups at the same time, and if so are you sending them to the same squeeze page?
Thanks again!
Adam
Jack Traynor said
Hi,I’m in a similar situation to Adam so thought this was a more appropriate place to post this rather than start a new topic. After looking at Adam and Johns Conversation I think there is just inevitably a little bit of trial and error in this sort of thing. However it’d be mega useful if I could get some sort of 2nd opinion about how I’m doing before I spend more money on this…..
Hey Jack,
It's hard for me to get a complete sense of the stats because I can't see the ad types and CTRs. But so far it does seem expensive. My initial impression is that there are two week spots. 1. Targeting a genre tends to be tough because there are such wide swings in what calls itself "Brit Pop" or any other genre. They can work, but it tends to be tough. So that is my initial concern.
My only other issue is that I think the headline of your squeeze page could use a little work. It states WHAT it is, but could do more to spark desire. I'd probably try changing up the headline and then create 2 or 3 ad sets, each targeting different audiences to see which audience works best. Then, once you have a winning audience, if the conversions are still low, split test different headlines until things get where you want them to be.
At a glance, it doesn't feel like you are too far off here. Just feels like it needs a little more spark. Whats going to make your potential fan stop what they're doing and think to themselves "That sounds cool"?
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
Adam Smith said
John I tried a new ad set that has all ad types active. I am seeing a much better price. I am down to about $0.30 and dropping. I have a few more questions for you if you dont mind.
1) I have it set up as a "get the most clicks" payment. It looks like facebook is getting more clicks from the audience network. As I understand it this is Facebook targeted ads in third party apps/games. I am getting a lot of clicks from them but my conversions are lower than normal. (I suspect people are clicking the ads on accident while trying to play a mobile video game and then quickly close out of the squeeze page to get back to the game.) Do you find that these ads convert for you?
2) The squeeze template looks great for mobile, but it pushes the opt in below the fold are you seeing a decent amount of conversions for this? I was thinking of sending mobile users to a different squeeze page that has less copy so they don't have to scroll so far to see the opt-in.
3)How big is the audience that you are throwing $100 a day at?
4)Are you running multiple ad champagnes to multiple groups at the same time, and if so are you sending them to the same squeeze page?
Thanks again!
Adam
Don't mind at all. That's what the forum is for 🙂
1. That partner option is fairly new and I haven't looked over the reports in a while so I really can't say. It could be as you suspect in which case you could just remove that ad type from the options. But it could also just be that their targeting is broader because of the new bidding structure. But that wouldn't be consistent with the better CTR so I'm honestly not sure.
2. The squeeze page for mobile works fine, but I feel like my conversions with the html mobile template I offer in an earlier IC lesson works a bit better for the reason you described. I don't actually have data to prove that. I'm just going off of the feel I get from talking to people who use it.
3. The audience size varies a lot. Anywhere from 20k to 2MM. Mostly between 500k and 1MM with a budget like that. FB once told me they recommend $25 for every 500k in audience. But I haven't find that to be essential.
4. Sometimes, but typically I just run one ad set in one campaign. At least for cold traffic. But I also run retargeting at the same time. There is nothing wrong with running multiple campaigns or ads to the same squeeze page. I just tend to find it all a bit much to focus on at the same time so I try to keep it simple.
Great job on getting the price to drop.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
Thanks John!
I cant believe I missed the mobile squeeze lesson, it's just what I needed.
One more quick question.
Do you find that giving away 3 songs gets you more subscribers than giving away just 1? If so, is it a significant amount?
-Adam
Hi Adam and John,
That link from Adam looks really useful! Definitely can see that a bit of editing on the headline can help a huge amount.
I ran an advert over night in the US and was getting a cost of about 15c a click so will focus on a squeeze page for that advert and get back with the results.
Thanks again for your help guys, and sorry for hijacking Adams topic a bit!...I'll start a new one when I've got more news.
Cheers,
Jack
Adam Smith said
Thanks John!
I cant believe I missed the mobile squeeze lesson, it's just what I needed.
One more quick question.
Do you find that giving away 3 songs gets you more subscribers than giving away just 1? If so, is it a significant amount?
-Adam
I don't have enough data to say with any certainty. I just tend to offer as much as I can/need to depending on the project. My belief would be that offering 3 tracks vs 2 track, with everything else being equal, would get you better results. That said, I think you can reach satisfactory conversion rates with just about any offer s long as the copy is enticing. My feeling is that when a person signs up, they are not so much saying that they want a download, rather they are saying yes to coming with you for the ride and seeing what you're all about. I point that out because that's why branding is so important. It's really about creating an enticing enough brand that people want to take the next step, more than it's about offering any tangible value. I think simply "being interesting" is the biggest challenge for all of us.
So long story short, if all you have is 10 songs, just give away one. If you have multiple albums, and plan to try and sell those albums to your list, I like the idea of giving away a track from each album, unless it confuses the branding.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
Jack Traynor said
Hi Adam and John,That link from Adam looks really useful! Definitely can see that a bit of editing on the headline can help a huge amount.
I ran an advert over night in the US and was getting a cost of about 15c a click so will focus on a squeeze page for that advert and get back with the results.
Thanks again for your help guys, and sorry for hijacking Adams topic a bit!...I'll start a new one when I've got more news.
Cheers,
Jack
Thanks Jack. Glad you're getting some cheap clicks. That's a great price so long as the conversions are there. If you can get just a 25% conversion rate then you will have subscribers for just .60, which is is really good. Keep us posted.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
Jack, do you mind if I ask a little more about your ad? What kind of picture and copy? and Targeting?
I finally broke down and did a sound-alike ad. I was avoiding them because I didn't want to sound like the poor-mans version of a chart topper. Also, I though I would have the same issues that the New Jacobin Club describe in there interview with John here. Simply put, I though a direct comparison would be viewed negatively.
I also set up a mobile squeeze page like the one in the lesson. The wordpress squeeze pages convert to mobile and look good, but the one from that lesson is much more simple and slick. It also has the added benefit of letting you see how many people are converting via mobile vs non-mobile.
I am still in the early stages of the ad campaign, but I am happy to say my adds started at $0.30 and are dropping. My new mobile page has converted 4 out of 10, or 40%! Its not a lot of data but it is enough to be optimistic.
Thanks for all the help, John.
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