Here are the results of our latest test as of May 2nd, 2022.

For this week’s test, we’ll be focusing on an e-commerce client, and more specifically, their retargeting campaign that tracks Add to Carts and View Content in the last 30 days (so, no vistors), excluding buyers from the previous 30 days.

One of the ads that received the most budget, even before our optimizations, is this one.

A video, without any taglines or music, that resembles a recipe video, but for spices.

Admittedly, the results of this campaign were not great. The ROAS was under 2, despite the audience being a retargeting audience.

Following the Squad’s test from February 21st (which we’ll avoid talking about for now), we decided to create a relatively simple offer that has proven itself in the past.

We discussed it with the client, but they set a condition for us that was thankfully rather low when you consider this client’s average order value.

We took our two best ads, changed the copy and the headlines, and launched.

Compared to the generic version, the copy emphasized the urgent nature of the offer, the offer condition, and directly called out the target audience. Free shipping on all orders over $40 (the average order value is slightly higher). For those of you who follow our newsletter closely, you may remember our free shipping vs. 20% off test. Free shipping won that battle by a wide margin.

Over the whole month, these two ads got 63% of the campaign's budget and generated almost 70% of the revenues attributed to the Ads Manager. The average order value went from $45 to $51 in 1 month. Our free shipping offer largely helped, as these ads pushed that figure even further, to $54.

If you like this free shipping offer, but aren’t sure if it’ll work, bringing in an element of urgency can make all the difference. In this case, the offer increased the average order value attributed to our campaign.

Try it out for yourself!

Here are the results of our latest test as of May 9th, 2022.

The results you see above belong to a company of fitness/wellness coaches for a campaign seeking to acquire leads for appointments and training sessions.

So, the goal wasn’t to generate ‘purchases’ but to generate qualified leads that are interested in the services the coaches provide.

To achieve such results, we had to optimize the campaign in two distinct ways, the first of which we’ll be discussing in this email (stay tuned for Part 2 – a first for the Squad!).

It all began with this goal to generate more leads, a cold audience, and the following ads.

The text for each ad was extremely long and detailed everything a lead needs to know about the coaches and programs; a common practice in this industry.

Launched at the end of January, this campaign generated almost zero conversions during the following month.

We produced new ads, but without any luck.

Luckily, our client is very comfortable behind the camera and familiar with how we work. So we suggested he take the lead and film himself explaining the service offering.

The suggestion bore fruit: Our client filmed not one, but two videos between 15 and 25 seconds.

The first one explains the offer right away (a $100 gift), and the second one adds context to the offer (the reopening of gyms and sports centres).

We ran the ads, and strangely enough, they took several days to begin receiving budget. But when they did...

Our first victory, thanks to a UGC ad! The two videos are now a major player in all of our acquisition campaigns (to this day).

But the cost per result quickly increased, and so we had to go back to the drawing board for our second optimization...

Our May 16th test is here!

Last week, we ended our email with this image.

As a reminder, we launched a ‘Registration’ Conversion campaign using ads that our client had filmed himself in which we described the services our client offers, ending with a clear call to action.

The problem is that the success of this campaign didn’t last long. The cost per registration skyrocketed just a week after launching.

Despite having optimized the campaign, the results didn’t improve, and after 3 weeks, we decided enough was enough.

We decided to jump up a notch and skip the Ads Manager. Remember, in the PACSO method, when your settings, audiences, and creatives don’t work, it’s time to reassess your sales funnel.

Which is what we did, and here is the result:

The sales page introduced prospects to the offer and asked them to fill out a rather long questionnaire to create their profile. Following the questionnaire, prospects landed on a page where they could book a free call with one of the company’s coaches. After that, the funnel ends with a final thank you page.

Very quickly, we realized that the problem was the questionnaire.

While asking prospects for information is normal throughout the sales process, asking them twice is not recommended. And that was the problem. The ‘Book Me’ page also asked for mandatory information in order to schedule a call. This clearly was causing a bit of strife.

Under these circumstances, it’s better to simply cut out the pre-qualification step. Because the Book Me page still registers the prospects’ contact information, which our client can use for follow-ups if the initial call doesn’t occur.

During Week 4, we modified our sales funnel and generated the following results.

A drastic return on our initial costs! But, this was a Lead Gen campaign, and so returns on investments are calculated otherwise – not with just a simple ROAS stat. Following week 4, we analyzed how many bookings our client was getting to discover that bookings decreased…but only by a little! Our stats were still very acceptable when considering that our number of leads more than doubled.

By the end of March, these were our results.

This situation is a typical PACSO case. If minor tweaks don’t work, you need to dig deeper. As a reminder, PACSO stands for:

• Parameters: First optimization lever
• Audience
• Creatives
• Sales funnel
• Offer: Last optimization lever

For this client, we started by tweaking our ads, but that wasn’t enough, and messing around in the Ads Manager wasn’t enough, either. We had to go as far as to simplify our sales funnel!