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A blog about smart marketing and conversion optimization.

How Clever Zebo boosted a clothing retailer’s sales from Facebook Ads by 530%

January 9, 2017

We’re starting this year off with a look back at one of the great successes of 2016.

We learned a lot through optimizing a young but aspiring Facebook Ads account for an eCommerce brand that sells customizable men’s clothing.

I’m proud to say that within only a month, we managed to:

  • Increase conversion volume by 530%
  • Reduce CPA by 47%
  • Boost conversion rate by 347%

*Data was pulled from a 30-day “before and after” window.

How did weRead more…

Continue reading >

We’re starting this year off with a look back at one of the great successes of 2016.

We learned a lot through optimizing a young but aspiring Facebook Ads account for an eCommerce brand that sells customizable men’s clothing.

I’m proud to say that within only a month, we managed to:

  • Increase conversion volume by 530%
  • Reduce CPA by 47%
  • Boost conversion rate by 347%

*Data was pulled from a 30-day “before and after” window.

How did we do it?

Our initial Facebook Analytics review showed us two things:

1)  The 55-64 age segment was the best performing, followed by 45-54.

os-age

The 55-64 segment is the best performing, with a 49% higher conversion rate than the runner-up (93% certainty). The 25-34 and 65+ greatly underperformed against top segments.

2)  Although the majority of spend was focused on the ‘Mobile News Feed’ placement, the ‘Desktop News Feed’ placement was the top performer by a substantial margin.

fb-data-1

The ‘Desktop News Feed’ placement had a 260% higher conversion rate and an $184.81 lower CPA than the ‘Mobile News Feed’ placement (statistically significant).

We optimized each campaign as informed by these observations, and then immediately:

  • Launched a Lookalike campaign
  • Launched a Remarketing campaign
  • Put in place aggressive creative and copy A/B tests
  • Updated the account to Facebook’s new universal tracking pixel and standard events
  • Tested automatic and conversion optimized bid strategies

Thirty days later, our client was fired up to see more than a fivefold increase in sales from the Facebook Ads program. No fooling: it didn’t jump from 2 orders to 10 orders. The campaigns started out with a respectable five-figure budget and were humming in the vicinity of 500 high-ticket orders by month’s end.

The upswing was accompanied by a nice conversion rate bump, and we were able to cut the cost of acquiring a customer in half.

If you’re looking to scale and optimize Facebook Ads or other paid social advertising for your business, shoot us a note: igor@cleverzebo.com.

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Finally, LinkedIn lets you track conversions in the Ads dashboard

August 26, 2016

We’re pleased to announce LinkedIn has launched a native conversion tracking pixel (about time, am I right?).

LinkedIn has been slowly rolling this out, in hopes of making conversion tracking available to all advertisers by the end of August. If you’re like us, you previously used utm tracking / Google Analytics to track the effectiveness of your campaigns. No longer! With the new tracking pixel, conversions are now viewable directly within the LinkedIn dashboard.

Why doesRead more…

Continue reading >

We’re pleased to announce LinkedIn has launched a native conversion tracking pixel (about time, am I right?).

LinkedIn has been slowly rolling this out, in hopes of making conversion tracking available to all advertisers by the end of August. If you’re like us, you previously used utm tracking / Google Analytics to track the effectiveness of your campaigns. No longer! With the new tracking pixel, conversions are now viewable directly within the LinkedIn dashboard.

Why does this matter?

  • More granular insights into performance
  • You can now optimize your campaigns against conversion metrics
  • By assigning a ‘Conversion Value’ you can accurately track your ROAS

What’s even more exciting is the implications for the future of this channel. It’s not absurd to think we could see remarketing features, or the ability to automatically optimize by conversion data in the very near future.

How to set up LinkedIn Ads conversion tracking

To start tracking conversions, simply:

1.  Click ‘Conversion Tracking’ on the top right of the campaign manager.

Screen Shot 2016-08-26 at 1.07.24 PM

2.  Enter of URL of the website you want to track conversion for.

Screen Shot 2016-08-26 at 1.05.48 PM

3.  Add the code to all pages of your site (right before the end of the <body> tag).

Screen Shot 2016-08-26 at 1.05.58 PM

4.  Define the conversion and enter the destination URL(s) you want to track.

Screen Shot 2016-08-26 at 1.06.15 PM

5.  Hang tight and wait for LinkedIn to verify your conversion goal.

That’s it. Piece of cake!

If you’re looking to test LinkedIn Ads for your business, or need help scaling and optimizing your current LinkedIn Ads effort, shoot us a note at igor@cleverzebo.com.

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What we’ve learned so far about Facebook Lead Ads

May 6, 2016

Have you tested out Facebook Lead Ads yet?

We’ve been running some campaigns, and I wanted to share what we’ve learned so far.

Launched in late 2015, Lead Ads are very young on the Facebook platform, so we expect (or at least hope for) this to change and improve rapidly.

So far, here’s what we observe as a user in terms of benefits & shortcomings.

Benefits of Facebook Lead Ads

  • All extensive targeting options available (lookalike audiences,Read more…
Continue reading >

Have you tested out Facebook Lead Ads yet?

We’ve been running some campaigns, and I wanted to share what we’ve learned so far.

Launched in late 2015, Lead Ads are very young on the Facebook platform, so we expect (or at least hope for) this to change and improve rapidly.

So far, here’s what we observe as a user in terms of benefits & shortcomings.

Benefits of Facebook Lead Ads

  • All extensive targeting options available (lookalike audiences, demo targeting etc)
  • Simple to set up & customize
  • Decent reach / impressions
  • Very reasonable cost per lead, often ranging $7-22 CPL
  • Quality seems okay, i.e. not seeing an influx of “junk leads”

Shortcomings of Facebook Lead Ads

  • Impossible to export leads to CRM or other relevant systems without custom API work or integration tools like Zapier. You have to go to your Facebook Company Page, download a .csv file containing your leads, and do what you will with that file. Sheesh.
  • Only rigid form options available so far, e.g. no ability to define a custom call to action (must choose from phrases like “Learn More” or “Sign Up” etc)
  • Clunky UI. For example, lead forms cannot be edited or changed at all once they’re built. Marketers can only delete & create new forms, making for a messy ad management experience.

Seems like they needed to launch this thing in a hurry. At the time of writing, the above drawbacks hindered Lead Ads from being a truly powerful and mature contributor to our clients’ digital marketing programs.

Tip: if you need to push Facebook Leads into your CRM (e.g. Salesforce) or into your email marketing software (e.g. MailChimp), a fantastic tool that helps marketers hook these systems together with no need for a developer’s help is Zapier. Check it out.

No, it’s not a sponsored plug — I’m just a fan of the tool. You will be, too.

The alternative is getting your technical team elbows-deep in Facebook API documentation. Nobody wants that.

So far, Lead Ads are a promising new feature. We’ll look for this to evolve into a more customizable/flexible solution in the near future.

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