All Campaigns are Not Created Equal
Thomas Jefferson’s infamous speech does not apply to digital marketing campaigns, unfortunately… Earlier in April, I published a blog about why channel tests were more worthwhile for SMBs on a tight marketing budget. I want to take this line of thinking a step further for SMBs that actually have more marketing dollars to work with. For those who are well versed in digital marketing, you’ll understand that there’s a difference in setting up a targeted Facebook ad campaign to increase attendance to an event compared to setting up a campaign (regardless of channel) with a custom landing page, form, goal conversion, and an automated lead nurture campaign. The former is not nearly as time consuming and doesn’t require the amount of planning as the latter. I digress. You’ll understand why I’m saying this as you continue reading…
Step 1: Select Your Channels
For the purpose of this blog, let’s assume we have a B2B company with a monthly ad budget of $1,800. In the past, the budget has been split three ways between Facebook, LinkedIn and AdWords PPC. Each channel has a different purpose: for Facebook and LinkedIn, the goal has to been build a targeted audience, increase engagement and drive traffic to the company’s website. For PPC, the goal has been to drive leads. While you’re planning next month’s strategy, you decide you want to change things up and do lead generation channel tests using the same channels.
Step 2: Allocate the Budget
Once you’ve decided on the channels and are set on a strategy, create a budget plan and decide where the money is going to be invested. Here’s an example of what that would look like:
- AdWords PPC: $1,000
- Facebook Ads: $500
- LinkedIn Sponsored Ads: $300
Typically when running channel tests it’s best to allocate equal amounts of money. The PPC budget will always be highest because it’s the best strategy when converting low funnel leads. You don’t want to take away from that and risk decreasing quality scores and ad rank. Facebook is higher than LinkedIn because it’s always wise to run a monthly Like campaign. Therefore, $200 of that will be allocated to that separate campaign and equal funds will be allocated to the actual lead generation test you’ll be running.
Step 3: The Busy Work
This step is by far the most time consuming but once it’s complete, the rest is (relatively) smooth sailing. For the past six months, you’ve been using two custom landing pages which were designed on WordPress for the PPC campaigns. The two landing pages focus on two different services the company offers. The extensive keyword and competitive research has been done as well as the original creation of the landing pages which have been generating leads on PPC to the tune of 3-5 per month. This is when the workload gets busy: because we are running the same lead generation test utilizing the same landing pages, you’ll need to create Facebook and LinkedIn versions of the landings pages so we can segment the traffic and understand where the leads are coming from. You’ll also need to create separate lead generation forms and thank you pages. Here’s how you do it:
- Take the first (service) PPC landing page and open it in its own tab on your internet browser
- Add a new page to your website and open it in a separate tab, as well, on a different screen (assuming you have dual monitors)
- Literally take everything from the PPC landing page and do the exact same thing to the new page – with the exception of the URL
- While you’re doing that, you’ll also need to create a new form to collect leads. Once complete, take that form ID and embed into the new page
- The new form must also redirect to a unique thank you page. Same as the previous steps, take the PPC thank you page and duplicate the content with the exception of the URL
- Access the company’s Google Analytics account and create a conversion goal using that unique thank you page (very important!)
- Once the new page is set up with its own unique form and thank you page, you’re ready to publish
- Rinse and repeat and do it all over again for the second (service) landing page and then do THAT all over again so you have a total of four separate landing pages, forms, thank you pages, and goal conversions
Just so you can understand the time investment, it took me about three hours to do something very similar to this. In my opinion, it’s well worth it because the end result is to be able to effectively gauge how well channels perform when using the exact same content. It’s a very powerful thing to be able to go back to the company at the end of the month and say, “Well, we’re seeing that LinkedIn generated 3x as many leads as Facebook. So next month, we’re going to allocate more money to that channel because we know it has a higher success rate.”
Step 4: Deciding on Creative
The PPC campaign is already set up because, as previously mentioned, its been running for six months with good success. Also, there’s not a whole lot of creative to consider beyond ad copy. Selecting the right keywords is the most crucial element of any PPC campaign and this process itself can be very cumbersome with in-depth research and analysis.
With Facebook, you’ll be running two website click ads where you get to choose custom images and ad copy. Additionally, you’ll target the ads to show up only on newsfeeds of people within your target audience.
On LinkedIn, it’s set up a little differently. The only ad option is a sponsored update and you don’t get to select a custom image. The image that populates will be associated with the landing page itself. You do get to customize the post message and target the post to display only on the newsfeeds of your target audience.
All three channels offer unique ways to target the right audience. The one consistency all three have is geo-targeting. We’ll talk more about the sophistication of ad targeting between social channels in later blogs on StrataBlue!
Step 5: Flipping the Switch
The moment of gratification has arrived. All of the planning, creating and executing has now lead you to the point at which you turn the campaigns on. I don’t believe I mentioned this earlier but the dollar amount assigned to each ad is $150. Two website click ads on Facebook with a monthly budget of $150 a piece and two sponsored updates on LinkedIn both with $150 each. This leaves nothing to question is regards to showing ROAS (return on ad spend) at the end of the month.
Step 6: Monitoring Campaigns and Analyzing and Reporting Results
It’s important to monitor the campaigns weekly to report back to the company to keep them in the loop on performance. At the end of the month once the campaigns have ended, the truth will be found in numbers. Your data sources will be Facebook Insights, LinkedIn, Google Analytics and AdWords. Inform the company which campaign performed the best based on lead generation and advise on next steps.
Want to continue the conversation? Let’s meet for coffee.
I’ve always found that the best conversations happen over a nice, hot cup of fresh brewed coffee. If channel testing is something you’d like to learn more about or do for your company, let’ talk! Either call us at 317-207-0195, email us at info@stratablue.com, or click the button below to fill our a brief form to contact us online! We look forward to hearing from you.
