Case Study: Facebook Sequence FAIL

Hey, everybody, this is Adam Arkfeld with ParaCore, and today we’re going to be talking about Facebook sequences and more specifically, when a Facebook sequence goes wrong. We have been building Facebook sequences for quite some time. Some people call them funnels. We call them sequences, not to be confused with funnels, like ClickFunnels. But essentially, a Facebook sequence is a progression, or a lifecycle, or a path that you take a consumer down as they start interacting with your brand. And we will often build first touch campaigns, we’re generating a lot of traffic and you’re introducing the brand to somebody, and it’s the first touch with your brand.

And then, after that, they start seeing different ads, and they start being retargeted, and they start seeing ads if they watch 10 seconds of a video, and so on and so forth. Earlier this year, we created this sequence for a real estate client, and it worked really well. We found that when a, we were actually trying to recruit new real estate agents for a broker and we found out when we were trying to get agents to convert and learn more about a broker getting them on the first touch was really hard because they just weren’t quite ready to make that move. I mean, you’re basically asking them to change jobs, so, to get one ad and say, “all right, do you want to change jobs?” And then, expect them to fill a contact form and change brokers and everything. One touch just wasn’t enough.

So, we built a more elaborate sequence where we continued to drip on them and show them ads based on how they were engaging with our marketing campaign, and this is more or less what that sequence looked like to a large degree, and it actually increased the performance quite a bit. Our cost per lead early on in this sequence was quite high, but then as they moved through, were retargeted in some of our videos, it started to decrease dramatically and as the campaign matured and more time went on, they were starting to see more leads from these residual Facebook touches and engagements. So we said, “hey, let’s take that exact same sequence” “and we’ll take it to another campaign,” and when we did that, we thought that it was gonna be amazing, work great like it did the first time, and it just didn’t, and so what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna go through the sequence that we built. I’m gonna talk a little bit about the business but not a lot to protect confidentiality, but then I’m gonna show you some of the results in the Ads Manager.

All right, so we build these in like a, the Google Drive version of PowerPoint. I don’t know what it’s called, I forget, but basically, here on the left-hand side is the first touch so we have a video ad, two image ads, and then, if you click on either one of those, you go to a landing page, and if you convert there, great. That’s called a first touch conversion in our world, you’ve converted on the first touch. They click the ad, they converted, outstanding. All right, so you, but if you don’t convert, then you are shown, and, if you’ve clicked the ad, then you go down here. If you don’t convert, excludes conversions, then you see a video ad, or if you watch 10 seconds of this video, then you see another video ad, so you didn’t click but you watched 10 seconds, then you see this video ad. If you watched 100% of the video, you go all the way to this image ad, which is more, it’s a higher-converting, more direct ad, to get people to this landing page, so you’re still being retargeted, but you didn’t actually click and see the landing page.

And so we have all these different types of basically break-offs, depending on how engaged you are, so the most, I don’t wanna say apathetic, but the least-engaged visitor that’s gonna go through the sequence sees a video, watches 10 seconds, sees a video, 10 seconds, a video, 10 seconds, or more, image, and then if they click here, then they’re going to this landing page and if they still don’t convert, then they’re gonna see a carousel ad with one image and three videos, and it’s gonna be a lead form, so it’s not gonna take them to a landing page, it’s gonna be a lead form; that’s the end of our sequence. So, it’s basically like five touches, one, two, three, four, five, right? So it’s a five-stage sequence and you fall vertically into different audiences and categories, so there are ways to expedite your way through the sequence. If you watch 100%, you will expedite to this image ad. If you click this video ad, you’ll go to this landing page, and then if you don’t convert on this landing page, then you will see the carousel ad.

All right, so this is a sequence that we’ve used a couple of different times; it tends to work well. However, we have a, we have a campaign now that we started running it on, where the, it was really, the campaign is really where you’re wanting to learn more about, like an investment, basically, so it’s not as big of a touch, like you’re not changing jobs, you’re not buying a $20,000 car, you’re not, it’s not like a huge commitment to just learn more, you’re really just trying to learn more about this type of investment strategy, and that’s it. So basically, see an ad the first time, click it, and convert to get more information about it, isn’t that big of a deal because your threshold, your commitment is just not that high, so what we saw was, in July, we originally saw the cost per lead at about $94 per lead. It’s quite an expensive investment, so this has more or less been working for the clients, been bumping around, kind of between 60 and 125 dollars, but anyways, in July, it was $94 per lead. It was really just lead forms, and that’s what we saw in July, and then we roll into August, and we did this five-stage, a cost-per-lead deal, and in the first stage, we saw $88, which was basically right in line with what we were expecting.

Stage 2, we saw a $96 cost per lead, so basically, we’re clicking this and converting on this landing page, but then Stage 3, we saw the cost per lead jump to $610, just a huge increase. Stage 4 went to $162, and then Stage 5 went to about $35, but there was just like was very, very, very little traffic, so while it’s great that someone got to Stage Five and then converted, I’m pretty sure it was just one lead, but I’ll show you the Ads Manager here in a second.

So what we saw in the first case, with the other client that we did this with, they took someone through the sequence and you were getting a lot of people down here further in the funnel converting because it was a really, really large commitment, basically changing jobs with a new broker. For this investment type of marketing campaign, it just was not a large commitment. They were just trying to get more information, so converting down here was a lot easier. As you got farther down, we just found that if they weren’t converting in Stages 1 and 2, they just really weren’t gonna convert in Stages 3, or 4, or 5, I mean, they were, you had some people, but just not a lot. And so here’s what the Ads Manager account looked like, and we essentially have this broken up into different stages so Stage 1 is lead forms, and then we have different types of kind of categories here, so we do have a retargeting campaign here, we’ve got lead forms, this is just leads, lead form, leads, leads, lead form, so we have a few different campaigns running different types of conversions for each one of these but essentially what you’re seeing, oh, we excluded this retargeting, so just ignore that, that’s a different deal, but oh, I’m sorry, no, we didn’t exclude that one. That’s just, oh yeah, that’s a different type of campaign, so I wish I could hide that, but I can’t. But this is Stage 1, so we see that the cost per lead is $112. There’s actually another campaign in here that brought it down a little bit lower to $88. Can’t get all the data on this one view, and then you go to Stage 2, and we’re talking about the more like $96-ish realm, and so that’s, I know this is saying $90. There’s just a little bit of data that’s not able to be included in here, so anyways, just slightly off, but anyways, it’s about $90. This was about $90, with that other campaign, and then you start getting over here and you see $588, and then $21, and that’s just huge, right?

So you have, that’s a $600 cost per lead, just one lead. You get over here, yes, there was three leads in Stage 4, which put us out about $162 cost per lead, and then you get down, you have closer to like a $34 cost per lead, cuz you include this. So, the exact like, is it 90 or 92 dollars, is not the most important thing here. What I really wanted to show is the cost per lead early on is kind of in the realm of right around $100, let’s just say $100 for easy conversation. When you get to Stage 2, it’s kind of $100, and then it just spikes up in Stage 3, Stage 4’s $160, and then Stage 5, you just have virtually no reach. It’s just not that many people looking not that far. They just weren’t even progressing down the funnel. They weren’t watching the videos to see 10%. They weren’t clicking on the ads. And so, what we saw was just the most conversions, lead forms and leads, were happening here, earlier in the funnel, in Stages 1 and 2, and then very few leads in Stages 3 and 4, with very high cost per lead, so building a, building a funnel is, I think, important, and this is, this is really, this campaign should really be a two-stage funnel. You really are getting a first touch out there, where you’re still getting a good number of leads, and then the second touch, and then anything beyond that is kind of, what we’ve experienced, at least in this situation, is kind of hit-or-miss.

So always be sure that you’re testing the funnels and making sure that they work in the various scenarios that you’re running, and what we recommend is we recommend building these sequential lead flows from putting it in a diagram and trying them with different clients, and if they don’t work for the different clients, then adjust them or keep track, and see how that works out because for us, this worked very well for a very particular client, and for another client, it just didn’t work well, especially in Stages 3, 4, and 5. It was really Stages 1 and 2 that worked. So, that’s a case study on Facebook sequences, and what we saw when we applied the same funnel to two different clients: vastly different results, so I hope that was helpful. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below, and my name’s Adam, I’m the owner of ParaCore. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next video.

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