At the start of our collaboration, the client approached us to increase the number of conversations through the company's social media. The previous contractor hadn't managed to reach the required KPI of 100+ conversations while keeping the target cost per conversation.
After auditing the ad account, we saw that the project wasn't always running the most effective campaigns and ad formats, and CTR was much lower than “normal” (0.3% vs. 1%). Some campaigns duplicated each other, which led to ads competing within the same account. It was clear that the account was large ($8,000 in monthly spend) but not well “maintained,” and its level of optimization could be raised.
While working on the project, we faced a number of problems for which we implemented specific solutions:
Problem 1: A KPI that doesn't drive growth
Problem description: The client's marketing team set a KPI of 100+ conversations a day. This was the main KPI, since conversations generated leads and sales. But when we dug into the project's analytics, we saw that revenue from products sold didn't depend on the number of conversations.
Solution: Based on analysis of conversations and sales, our team showed that certain products had a much better conversion to sale and a higher average order value, so these products needed focus when allocating budgets. The conversation-count KPI didn't let us split the budget across campaigns correctly, because campaigns that generated many conversations didn't always have a sufficient conversion rate to sale. This led to inefficient budget use and made it impossible to earn more profit from ads. So we asked to replace the conversation-count KPI with ROAS and focus primarily on revenue and return, even at the cost of fewer started conversations.
Impact on the project: This shifted the focus to metrics that really matter for the business — money earned — let us build an analytics dashboard that calculated ad campaign results for each individual product, and set up the right ad optimization logic in the ad account.
Problem 2: Facebook's low effectiveness in generating sales
Problem description: While working on and analyzing results, we realized that Facebook placements delivered very cheap conversations but almost no sales, unlike Instagram placements. With identical targeting settings, audience behavior on Facebook and Instagram differed significantly.
Solution: We decided to move most of the budget to Instagram, where conversations were more expensive but consistently led to sales, and to keep a small budget on Facebook to test other targeting approaches and ways of starting a conversation with the user.
Impact on the project: This change in strategy increased ad spend efficiency and improved return.
Problem 3: Frequent ad account shutdowns and payment issues
Problem description: The client's ad account was constantly being disabled, especially at the end and beginning of the month. The cause was a complex card management system used to pay for ad budgets.
Solution: Our team conveyed the importance of this issue to the company owner, because account shutdowns can send ad campaigns back into the learning phase, which in turn prevents stable results at the best cost.
Impact on the project: Raising the problem at the owner level started a discussion about changing the ad payment management system. And although the problem hasn't been fully resolved yet, work on a solution has begun, which is a positive change.
Problem 4: No system for tracking sales from Instagram Direct
Problem description: The main problem with funnels that lead users to a conversation is how hard it is to track the outcome: how good the conversation was, whether we managed to sell a product through it, and for how much.
Solution: Our agency has accumulated experience and a ready-made solution for situations like this. We asked the client's team to mark every Instagram Direct conversation with special labels. This feature exists by default in the Instagram app itself. Labels let you tag a conversation as “Lead,” “Sale” and so on. Information that a conversation has been labeled is passed to the ad account, which makes it possible to optimize ads not just for conversations, but for sales from conversations.
Impact on the project: This improved reporting and optimization, giving a clearer understanding of which conversations and campaigns convert into real sales, and made it possible to reallocate budgets more effectively.
Problem 5: Ineffective creative formats
Problem description: Previously, the client mostly had static creatives or slideshow-style videos. In our view, and based on click-through rates, these creatives needed quality changes to lower the cost of clicks and, accordingly, of the target action.
Solution: After studying the market, we developed additional creative ideas and suggested creating review videos for each product individually, as well as videos filmed by customers themselves (UGC).
Impact on the project: The first launches with the new creatives brought lots of conversations and sales, but the effect didn't last long. The creatives need further testing and a continued search for new hypotheses.
Despite the challenges, the collaboration brought certain results and important conclusions:
- KPIs are important, but they shouldn't limit opportunities for growth;
- In-depth project analytics, as always, yields plenty of insights and hypotheses for testing and optimization;
- Communication on a project is one of the core pillars that keeps it alive and growing.
