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How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

stackfield.com

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Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#91

Post by doublerebel »

BillinghamJ wrote: post #51
ssharp wrote: post #15

I wanted to call this out: We solved the first problem through a separate tool, which labels the user with the originating source when registering. Yes, yes, yes, and yes. If you're spending any significant amount of money on advertising, you need to be doing this. Don't rely solely on third-party cookies and session unification attempts. If you have a USER table in your database/crm, add the five UTM fields to it! C…

How can this can be achieved this for mobile apps?

Localytics and Mixpanel can do tracking across platforms. And I'm sure there's more.

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#93

Post by andreygrehov »

I had a bad experience with Facebook Ads. There were a lot of people that were liking the advertised page, but at the end of a day, all of these people' accounts were inactive. They never actually liked or shared anything published on FB page they liked before via Ads. I have a feeling that Facebook is generating fake likes, trying to make an illusion that the campaign goes well, i.e. pushes people to spend more.

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#94

Post by morgante »

AlBentley wrote: post #21
dangrossman wrote: post #10

> Even these users churned after a short time. Why is that? We do not really know! You need to know this, and knowing it is as easy as asking. I e-mail every single person that cancels their subscription, and ask why they cancelled today and what we could have done to better serve them. I don't measure the response rate, but I write every mail personally and read every response, so I can tell you it's well over 50%.…

Our experience when trying this approach is 90% reply with 'lack of time' which is not the true reason but basically means the product didn't solve a major problem for them.

> true reason but basically means the product didn't solve a major problem for them.

How is that not a true reason?

If a product isn't valuable enough for users to spend time on it (or it doesn't save them time), you don't have product market fit.

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#95

Post by montibbalt »

dangrossman wrote: post #24
AlBentley wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our experience when trying this approach is 90% reply with 'lack of time' which is not the true reason but basically means the product didn't solve a major problem for them.

Not necessarily. I solved most "lack of time" issues by improving onboarding. People thought they didn't have the time because the setup steps seemed daunting or confusing, so they put them off indefinitely. Improving the "first login" experience, moving to a more walkthrough/wizard-based setup (only one thing to do on the screen at a time), and building more 3rd-party integrations that eliminated technical work allo…

It depends on your audience as well (surprise, you need to understand who will be using your product). What we've found through AB testing with the game I work on is that our best (read: highest-value) players are very experienced with this type of app even if they're not tech savvy, and a tutorial is a nearly meaningless roadblock to them because they already know.

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#96

Post by calsy »

robryan wrote: post #89
calsy wrote: post #87

Missing one of the most useful metrics and that is CTR. Take the startup campaign, 5880 Clicks / 716007 Impressions = 0.82% CTR. That is a pretty poor CTR and explains the high cost of website clicks. If the CTR was up around 2% the cost of website clicks would be halved. Would probably look at changing the ad content if CTR was this low.

It is low but not unusual for Facebook.

I advertise a few mobile apps on facebook and have an average CTR of 2.5%.

Point is if your ads are getting that low a CTR than you need to change the content, audience etc. No point in running ads for website clicks when no one is clicking on them.

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#97

Post by shostack »

blahi wrote: post #74
downandout wrote: post #26

There is an enormous difference between a user that is searching for keywords related to your product, and potential customers that probably aren't looking for your product that you have identified through Facebook targeting criteria. The Google user has a problem and is actively seeking a solution; the Facebook user fits what you believe is the demographic profile of someone that might be interested in your product.…

That's not the case at all. In fact, advertising on facebook (at scale) requires very complex measurement with statistical models. People need to understand that marketing (in this case advertising) is hard. Just because you can code or do something else and you are a generally smart doesn't mean you can figure out how to buy advertising after 20 hours and reading some blog posts straight from google's search results…

Dear god this. For most advertisers with a decent budget, measuring ROAS for FB on a last click basis across channels will lead to disappointment.

Unfortunately, developing a proper attribution model with post impression conversions (not just click based) is arguably the hardest challenge in the industry today. There is no one size fits all approach and even as someone who does this for a living and is well versed in the matter, I still haven't found a great approach. Incremental list testing isn't always easily done.

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#98

Post by blake8086 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #83
dangrossman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. I solved most "lack of time" issues by improving onboarding. People thought they didn't have the time because the setup steps seemed daunting or confusing, so they put them off indefinitely. Improving the "first login" experience, moving to a more walkthrough/wizard-based setup (only one thing to do on the screen at a time), and building more 3rd-party integrations that eliminated technical work allo…

Absolutely. I'm a picky user who will delete your app in 30 seconds if the setup path isn't obvious and reliable.

I think you're probably just a reasonable user.

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#99

Post by nuclear_eclipse »

ramblenode wrote: post #92

This is a superficial complaint, but please fix the misuse of decimal points and commas. They are distracting from what is an otherwise interesting read.

It's actually quite common in Europe to use commas for decimal points, and periods for thousands delimiters.

Re: How we unnecessarily burned 20k with Facebook Ads

#100

Post by ramblenode »

nuclear_eclipse wrote: post #99
ramblenode wrote: post #92

This is a superficial complaint, but please fix the misuse of decimal points and commas. They are distracting from what is an otherwise interesting read.

It's actually quite common in Europe to use commas for decimal points, and periods for thousands delimiters.

I learned something today.
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