Q4 Facebook Wobbles
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Online Store Success with me Jodie Minto. Today I am talking to you about the fourth quarter Facebook wobbles because we are the week before Black Friday, and if you're running Facebook and Instagram ads you have probably noticed that either your ad costs have completely blown out or completely stopped working. I just want to let you know first of all, what you can do instead, what else you can try and also let you know that this is normal. It happens every year!
I don't know why we're so surprised but it always happens and it's always so frustrating to let me share with you what's working for me right now. Let's hope that that gives you some other things and other tactics you can try instead.
So what is working for me? Well, right now on the Facebook ads platform is lead generation ads and this lead generation style ad, there are a few nuances here that make it a lot more successful than others.
I've tried in the past and one of my clients inside of eCommerce Ads Academy actually shared this is a tactic she's been using for lead gen ads, we set the objective as getting leads, but they often convert as well and they end up getting sales right off the back.
So you'll see there's a row as attributed to these lead generations ads which I've never actually seen happen before. So let me take you through what they look like. These lead gen ads, first and foremost create so that the viewer is asked to fill in their details on a Facebook form. We're not sending them off to an external URL. We're not sending them to our website. We're actually just asking them to fill in the Facebook form.
These are a bit fiddly to set up. However, they convert a lot better in that more people will actually sign up versus if you take them completely off Facebook which just comes up with a little pop-up box where they can put in their details so that's the first thing that's an important thing to incorporate on Facebook forms. As I said they are a bit fiddly to set up. It is something that I actually teach inside of eCommerce Academy and help set up and connect to Klaviyo for my clients there.
Then the other important piece of the puzzle here for these lead gen ads so that they convert is to share an offer, so sharing perhaps the same signup offer that you have on your website, for example, free shipping or 10% off or 15% off in the actual form. So what we're actually offering and asking them to do is to sign up to get the discount because it's the same as if they land on your website, you're offering it there anyway so why not put some money behind and say hey, would you like 15% off your next order or free shipping off your first order or whatever your you know, free gift with purchase or whatever your offer might be. We are using that as the lead-gen offer.
So we're running ads to Facebook on Facebook form and the offer is in my case is would you like 15% off your next order? Sign up to our weekly newsletter list in order to reveal this exclusive code just for you. And so they complete the form and then it stays on Facebook on the thank you page of the form that pops up and says thanks so much. You're all subscribed here is that a discount code. And then that ad is actually connected to Klaviyo where they then enter a list and a flow and get a series of emails saying thanks so much for signing up. Here's that discount code again. And then there's a follow-up one saying don't forget that code is about to expire. Here it is again, and here are some of our best sellers. So it works really well. And like I said within the seven-day attribution window on Facebook, you'll often see that they're getting sales right off the back of these lead gen ads. So they work really really well. So that is what is working in audit. You know it was an acceptable level of cost per lead.
The conversion that's my purchase conversion ads have definitely blown out as far as they've either kind of really slowed down in the number of conversions they're getting if any, and or if they are getting conversions, the prices anywhere between doubled and tripled, just in this last week,
We're one week out or 10 days out I think to Black Friday and everyone's hammering on in the ad space fighting for the auction, to get in front of people to advertise their black Friday sale, so if anything, I've wound down my spend on conversion ads and just focusing on that lead gen or with the ads that I am running with the purchase conversion objective.
I am simply just sharing my most successful, best-selling products and or ad creatives.
I'm not trying to test any new creatives under a purchase conversion or anything like that right now. I'll wait until things come down on the platform. So that's what's working and not working on Facebook ads itself, but this is also a really great time to ramp up your email marketing. Perhaps you have a special offer for Black Friday that you want to do, you don't necessarily have to call it Black Friday. I don't know why I have this thing where I just don't like the term Black Friday.
It just doesn't resonate with me for one because it's an American holiday. It's only something in Australia that we've recently sort of jumped on board with and it doesn't mean anything to me because we don't celebrate or I'm in my family. We don't celebrate Thanksgiving in Australia so I never even know when it actually is. It's not like you know, for me ingrained as Boxing Day sales. It's the day after Christmas. So anyway, if you don't want to call it a Black Friday sale, you certainly don't have to. There are different tactics that we use in our email marketing. And when I say we, I don't know why I keep saying we,, it's really just me now at the moment in iland co.
It's a one-woman show while it's currently listed for sale. So what I actually haven't even planned it for next week yet but what I will probably do is either one or two things. I will offer a gift voucher to everyone on my list and say this is a little thank you here's $30 to use off your next purchase over X amount of dollars. You know, it's eligible for next week. Here’s how to use it and then I'll send a series of follow-up emails about that, or I will do a Black Friday sale but I'll only do it off some of my slower-moving products. And perhaps I'll offer a further 20% off or 30% off just to get some revenue coming through given that the Facebook ads have slowed down so much that the sales revenue is not looking so great.
So that's what is working as I said for us right now when they can purchase conversion or usual ads kind of tank all of a sudden, we then opt to try for different objectives in the ad auction so like I said the lead gen or the purchase conversion ones I do run the trusted and proven ad creatives that have worked consistently well. They're the only ones that I'm using and they will be all promoting best-selling products. I'm not trying to test anything new. Plus, it's all about them targeting you know wrapping up your email marketing to your warm list and perhaps your organic social media.
So I hope that helps give you some ideas on what you can do because I know lots of people you know, freak out and obviously, we all need revenue to come in to continue running our businesses and this should be a really busy time of year but often it's yeah, if you rely heavily on unpaid ads it can occur can sort of come to a grinding halt pretty quick.
Thanks for joining me this week. Next week. I'm going to talk to you about whether or not to offer refunds, the pros and cons of offering a refund policy versus you know, credit note only and my thoughts on that. So thank you for listening. If you like this podcast and find it helpful, you would absolutely make my day if you could go on and give me a follow or a subscribe and leave me a little review. That would be awesome. And it's just nice to know that people actually listen because sometimes you just don't know.
Alright, have a great week and I will talk to you next week. Bye for now.
