With 2.38 billion monthly active users, Facebook is still a great marketing channel when you are targeting very-specific audience segments.
That being said, you will find you can quickly spend money on Facebook with very little to show for your investment if you do not have a well-thought-out strategy.
In this case study, we’re going to share the exact ads we used to generate 10X return for a weight loss clinic that spent $31,876 on Facebook ads.
For the skimmers, here is what I’m about to share with you:
Ready? Let’s do this!
Here is the big problem with generating leads online:
Businesses do not follow up fast enough (or at all!) with leads to turn them into sales. Roughly 7% of businesses respond within the first 5 minutes and the same survey showed 55% did not respond within five business days. ??
At Custom Creatives, we understand the importance of sales follow up, which is why we instruct all of our clients to follow-up with leads within 5-15 minutes to increase the probability the lead will not turn cold.
Harvard Business Review agrees, too. After analyzing how long it took over 2,200 U.S. companies to respond to web-generated leads, researchers found the average response time for companies that responded within 30 days was 42 hours.
“These results are especially shocking given how quickly online leads go cold,” the study said.
Those who tried to reach leads within an hour were seven times likelier to have meaningful conversations than those who waited even 60 minutes.
For example, this client came to us and said:
“We do a lot of traditional marketing like radio and television and feel it generates okay results. Obviously, we are tired of the inconsistent results, so that’s why we are talking to you. We tried Facebook ads before but we were never able to attribute sales back to the campaigns. We were basically guessing. Can you help us?”
Knowing our client had a full sales team on-call to follow-up with leads made us feel confident Facebook ads were the right choice to help this client generate more leads at scale than any of their current advertising.
Since we already knew Facebook’s Offline Events feature makes it easy to track new signups for a service, we felt extremely confident we could generate get results. ?
For this client, we tested two different types of ad copy to start out.
We wrote one long-form style copy to incorporate a storytelling element since health and weight loss are very personal aspects of people’s lives.
We also created a shorter ad with direct response messaging to test against our theory that story-based selling was the best type of copy to go with for this campaign.
The ad below was the winner:
You’d think the short-form won out, but what this screenshot is not showing you is…the rest of the long-form copy!
As promised, here are the ad details:
Headline: Discover Stacey’s Secret to a Complete Transformation
Ad Text (Italics indicates copy visible on the screenshot):
It was just another typical day of hauling in the groceries. Only, this time, Stacey noticed how out of breath she was…
She hadn’t bought any more groceries than usual. And the walk from the car is only a few short steps. So, why did Stacey feel like she had just run a marathon? ?
Stacey didn’t have any immediate medical issues, but she knew she couldn’t go on with her current lifestyle. It was time for a change. But, Stacey didn’t want to flake out or start another fad diet she’d quit in two weeks. Stacey wanted to make a BIG change — a lifestyle transformation.
She began searching for a program that included everything she needed for complete transformations ? nutrition, fitness, and wellness. And, the ONLY program she found that she trusted to provide results?
[WEIGHT LOSS CLINIC]
We built for program based on her unique situation, Stacey couldn’t wait to get started. She learned the step by step process and began implementing her program. ? She was amazed by the results.! Everything felt so personalized to her:
✅ One-on-One Meetings
✅ Specialized Accountability
✅ Educational Programming
In just ☝️ year, Stacey went from feeling like she ran a marathon to ACTUALLY completing a marathon… then a triathlon! If someone had asked her to compete a year ago, she would have thought it impossible. But now, with the help from [WEIGHT LOSS CLINIC], Stacey knows nothing is impossible.
Tap [Learn More] to experience the specialized programming of [WEIGHT LOSS CLINIC].
Now, if that seems like a lot of copy, that’s because it is a lot of copy. But we do this for a few reasons.
First, after talking with the client, we discovered most of their new patients knew they should join a weight loss program, but it wasn’t until some intervening event occurred that before they got serious about making lifestyle changes.
Second, we also knew it would be difficult to meaningfully touch on the emotions that accompany the stress and anxiety of trying to lose weight and/or improve your health in very few words. Sure, it is possible, but it would not set our client up for long-term success.
Third, we wanted to create story-based ads that focused on the program results while also highlighting a common difficulty facing many prospective patients just prior to joining a weight loss program.
Finally, since we know how powerful of a tool retargeting can be, we use long-form posts on Facebook because a user must click “see more” within the ad itself to see all of the copy. Once someone does this, they become part of our “Engaged with Page” retargeting audience. Now, we can serve ads to these users at a much lower cost than before.
How much lower? In this campaign alone, sales generated from retargeting ads were 8.4X less expensive than sales generated from cold traffic (details below!).
Ad Objective: Conversion
Impressions: 931,314
(How many people saw the ad.)
Frequency: 1.76
(How many times people saw the ad on average.)
Clicks to Website: 4,025
Cost Per Click: $5.09
I know I know…
I told you the results in the title of the blog post.
But, before I share the revenue this campaign generated, consider this for a moment:
In the past, our client assumed it cost roughly $400 per sale on Facebook for a product that cost $2,800.
7X Return On Ad Spend (ROAS).
That’s not a bad ROAS, but we don’t even know if that is the actual ROAS. Remember, the client has assumed that’s how much it costs to generate a sale from Facebook.
We wanted to show our client Facebook could provide a steady, predictable stream of new business and that we can track it to prove ROI.
So, here were the results from our first 70-days:
New Leads: 102
Cost Per Lead: $280.76
New Purchases Generated: 117
Cost Per Purchase: $272.44
Revenue Generated from Purchases: $327,600
Total Cost: $31,876
ROAS: 10.28X
We were able to attribute 117 new sales to our campaigns. That means that, on average, 1-2 new patients signed up per day and this is not counting any others that signed up in the days afterward. Typically, these number should continue to rise as more people go through the clinic’s traditional sales cycle and follow-up.
For example, after the first 30 days of the campaign, there were 38 purchases attributed to ads running during that period. But after the first 60 days of the campaign, there were 69 total purchases attributed to ads that ran during the first 30 days. So, we expect attributed sales to continue to rise well after the publication of this article.
The sales for the full 70 days break down like this:
Don’t forget….Month 1 sales increased 82% after an additional 30 days of sales follow up and we would expect the same type of increase after 30 days of sales follow up on Month 2 traffic.
Did you notice that the cost per lead was actually greater than the cost per purchase?
How can that be?!
I know, I was stumped initially too, but then I remembered website traffic could call in directly to the clinic without having to fill out a web-form.
So, not only were we able to generate 117 new sales, but we also generated 102 new leads of people requesting a call-back and 82 new newsletter subscribers.
With this campaign, we’ve given our client a more reliable and cost-effective way to generate leads and sales while building brand awareness in the marketplace.
Our client now knows every $272.11 invested into Facebook ads will generate 1 new weight loss program patient.
I am not going to sit here and claim that this is the most elaborate or complex campaign out there, but there is a lot of nuance and strategy involved with running Facebook ads that many people overlook.
However, with this case study, my goal was not only to show you my results but also give you the details you need to make it work all by yourself. (If that’s what you want to do…)
Here’s the gist of what we covered for you people that scroll all the way to the end:
Not too overly complicated…Right?
But maybe you’re already running a successful business?
There’s a good chance you don’t even want to think about all this stuff; you want fresh leads for your growing business.
If that sounds like you and you’re interested in working with us on your Facebook ads…
Click here to book a time on a calendar so we can speak.
To create the best experience for ourselves and our clients, we only choose to work with those we are confident we can generate results for based on your current business.
If this is just a hobby to you or you’re just starting out, our services are probably not right for you.
All right enough with the pitch…
Learning what has worked for others is just the first step.
However, if you want to maximize your potential on Facebook, you need to understand the powerful tools that you have at your fingertips…
That’s why my partner put together this bonus, on-demand video that you can get access to below.
Here’s what we’re going to cover:
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