If you want to turn your business into an automated revenue-generating machine then this is for you. In this article, I’m going to go through an app marketing case study and show you the vital role paid advertising played in this campaign.
But first, let’s get this clear…
You really can’t circumvent the need for creating continuous awareness for your business. No doubt there are a number of ways to gain exposure but having worked behind the scenes of several campaigns monitoring the numbers I can boldly say there’s one thing we all badly want more than anything in business…
And that is CONTROL.
Why Control Is Important In Your Marketing
If you’re not in control of over 50% of the income-generating activities in your business, you’re at the mercy of unfavorable conditions.
And there’s no better way to tame all unfavorable conditions that could threaten business growth than to utilise paid advertising.
Don’t get me wrong organic growth is good, but paid advertising leveraging social media works better in driving exponential growth.
To make my point, let’s do a
little experiment…
Let’s say you want to go to Abuja, there are a
number of options to consider when planning for such a trip…
You could walk, you could
ride a bicycle, board a bus or take a flight.
All options will definitely
get you there but the time will differ.
According to Google Map from my location in Lagos State, it will take you about:
- 6 days to get there on foot,
- 13 hours to get there by bus (let’s not forget the terrible traffic jam)
- A little over an hour to get there by flight.
Going by foot is like trying to grow your business organically, it’s cheaper but it’s going to take you a long time and it exposes you to so much threat as compared to investing in paid social advertising (especially when done right).
Now, I know there’s a lot of talk about paid advertising by many so-called gurus, but the truth is numbers don’t lie.
And that’s why I want to share with you the real numbers behind a paid advertising campaign that we ran consistently for a client that didn’t just bring in likes, clicks or shares but money in the bank.
Don’t get caught up in the social media shenanigans of getting more likes and shares or comments because while they are good they don’t pay the bills or staff salary.
(Recommended: 5 Business Metrics You Should Pay Attention To If You Want To Scale Your Business)
The Challenge
The challenge for most business owners is that they look at paid advertising as an expense and not an investment, but with a shift in a mindset based on the knowledge that while spending money doesn’t promise returns, the sole purpose of investment is on the Returns
The skill is not in posting pictures on Facebook or any social platform, but in knowing how to turn paid advertising into PROFIT.
Real money in the bank is worth more to you than any amount of likes and shares you get on any social channel.
Let’s get down to business…
Today, I decided to do something special for you and I know you’d love it (especially when you see it done in your business).
The Case Study
We have a client who runs a software company that plays in a niche market, and back in 2018 we ran a campaign for them and it was a success so I pleaded with them to share with you the thought process behind the campaign with the online sales generated within that period and they agreed on the condition that we leave their identity undisclosed.
(Recommended: Digital Marketing: Should You Hire An Agency Or Hire An In-House Team?)
All of this was a segment of their business, to prove that paid advertising is truly the way to go if you want to scale your business.
To give you a broader
perspective I’ll step back a bit.
3 Types of Customers
There are basically 3 categories of prospective customers you’re going to have to engage during the course of doing marketing and they’re all at different stages of their journey(keep in mind the Know you-Like you-Trust you KLT factor).
Cold Audience
This accounts for a large number of your prospective customers that don’t know you.
Warm Audience
This segment of your prospective customers know and like you but just haven’t gotten to the spot where they can do business with you
Hot Audience
This segment is where your customers are because they know you, like you and trust you and are ready to do business with you.
Now moving a prospective customer up the pyramid is paramount for you and it could happen at varying time intervals depending on what you’re saying, the medium of communication, who you’re talking to and at what stage of their lives they are in.
Keep in mind the different phases they need to go through to get to the spot where they are willing to do business and your job is to nurture them long enough till they get to that point.
So back to the story…
Your customer is on a
journey throughout their lives and it is your job to make that journey a
pleasurable experience as much as possible with great marketing.
If you recall earlier, I spoke about control, and that should be the goal for every business owner…
To have as much control over the various variable factors, and the first step is to leverage the social channels to drive traffic and build your list.
Step 1: Where are you sending traffic to?
We created a landing page like the one below offering something of perceived value for FREE.
Step 2: The Ad
We launched a Facebook campaign in late 2018 with one goal in mind and that was to build a list of subscribers that we can sell to (and have more control in terms of communicating with them).
And this ad was to an
audience that mostly didn’t know about the product/brand directly (aka cold audience).
Step 3: The Results
We invested about $95 in the campaign and it worked brilliantly well with a reach of 147, 164 people, 241,226 impressions, 4,844 link clicks and of course, each click costs us about 2 cents (or NGN 7) …not so bad after all.
I’ll break down these nomenclatures so you can understand:
- Reach: The number of people that your ads was served to.
- Impression: The number of times the people saw it
- Clicks: The action people took on the ad
As mentioned earlier, while they are good metrics, they don’t pay the bills.
So, we can clearly say that for every 30 people that saw the ad 1.6 times we got 1 person to click to their landing page.
So with an exchange rate of NGN365 to $1, we invested about NGN 34,576.45 in paid advertising.
Sounds fair enough… doesn’t it?
But that’s not all.
The next step is to breakeven on that ad cost and generate PROFIT.
That campaign generated over 2,500 fresh leads, that had warmed up to us by subscribing for the FREE stuff.
And we already had an automated email sequence set up after they subscribed to engage and nurture them.
Almost like how it is when
you meet someone for the first time and you begin to engage them in a
conversation.
If you’ll observe how we are moving them up the pyramid. And we know this will definitely thin down to hot buyers who are willing to trust us and eventually buy something.
Step 4: The GameChanger
So right after the holiday in January 2019, we ran a 4-day email promotion to their subscriber’s list (which included the new subscribers) over a 17-day period using behavioral dynamic response marketing strategy.
The above is a snapshot from their Paystack account based on the online sales that came in (this doesn’t capture the bank transfers and other payment sources).
Now, let’s do the maths…
We invested $95/ NGN 34,576.45 in paid advertising and generated $1,131 / NGN 412,993.
That’s over a 1000% ROI
And we still have the list of subscribers to promote to and have full CONTROL.
We didn’t stop there but did a bit of segmentation of that list
Going Further
With a bit of segmentation of that subscriber’s list, we rolled it out again in February using the same 4-day email campaign approach and over a 9-day period and this time we brought in NGN 359, 986.
With no investment in ads this time.
And here’s the result.
Going Even Further
Towards the end of March, we tested the 4-day email campaign again and this time is brought in NGN 266. 993 over a 10-day period.
It got really interesting in May when we had a double peak month.
In other words, we tried it at the beginning and the end of the month of May over a 6-day period and a 9-day period respectively and they collectively brought in NGN 522, 982.
Step 5: Return on Ad Spend
So, with an initial investment of $95 in paid advertising, and email nurturing over a 5-month period we were able to turn that $95/ NGN 34,576.45 to $ 4,282 / NGN 1,562, 954.
The Returns On Investment was well over 40times the cost of advertising over the 5 month period and it also brought goodwill which will be capitalized on in the future.
In other words, NGN1 invested in advertising brought back about NGN 45.
Now, none of this is to brag in any way but to buttress the point of the power of understanding how to turn paid advertising to PROFIT for your business.
In addition, the income generated
might not mean much to you but think for a minute what your business number
would look like if you implemented it
And beyond that the ability
to scale your revenue at will with a few tweaks and investment in paid
advertising.
So to conclude this post, I’ll
ask again…
Would you rather try to grow
your business organically or take a shot at growing exponentially?
I’d let you be the judge of that:-)
But, I have a feeling I know
what your answer would be *wink*
Leave a comment or send an
email with your answer (and if you like what you read and want it implemented
in your business send us a message).