Now we have been working with some pretty traditional stuff but giving it a whole new twist with Facebook’s ability to mircotarget audiences and drill down to that set of people that will really respond to the marketing message. But now that we have the audience and they are ready to follow the call to action, what do we do with them then?

As I mentioned in the last post, we’re looking for conversions. And in this scenario, the conversion occurs when the user clicks to read an excerpt from Cal’s book. The hope is that the reader will then continue down the funnel and choose to purchase a book. When I started tracking the conversion rates, the numbers were fairly low. We needed a way to get people to perform the call to action.

Enter design and usability!

One of the things that I noticed first was that when users got to the landing page, that they were going straight for the top-level navigation. Under normal circumstances, that would be a good thing, but I wanted them to click a button further down the page. The client didn’t have the budget to build a dedicated landing page, so a page within the site would have to be modified.

Here is the landing page:

One little design element can make all the difference!

You’ve seen this before in my last post. What is new from the other version is the large badge in the bottom right corner of the first read image.

Chances are, the user will be attracted to the image first. Remembering the lessons in usablity from the web, I placed the badge in the lower right corner, where people tend to look for calls to action. The badge tell them “Right here! This is what you’re looking for!”

So far, conversions are up nearly 50% from a 14.29% goal completion rate just last week to a 24.19% goal completion rate today. Just from one little badge.

Sales are up, too. The numbers are still small, yes, but there was a whopping 850% increase in sales from the week before the change to the week after. Can’t argue with those facts. I’ll keep monitoring the stats and report back.

So when you are looking for a creative provider, make sure that they understand those tenets of usability, task-oriented design and the analytic that drive strategic creative decisions.

So let me give you a little more background: The user is presented with a Facebook ad that directs them to a landing page within the site. It is not a dedicated landing page per se, it is a page within the site that is germane to the ask in the ad. The user is instructed to read an excerpt from the author’s latest book. When a user clicks on the excerpt link, then we consider that a conversion goal achieved.

Landing Page for Facebook ads

This is a landing page screenshot for Cal’s Facebook ad campaign. In an effort to boost conversion rates, I added the badge on the first read. So far the numbers have gotten a small boost, running at about 11 15% since implementation. Actual landing page.

Conversion rates have been running from 0% on some days to over 20% on others, coming in at around 11 15% on most days. The research that I have done has indicated that I might be in the right range, although this is not quite a sales pitch nor is it an opt in. What I have noticed is that users are exploring the rest of the site which is good for brand engagement.

Email marketing opt-ins are coming in steadily at 1 per day, so a nice little audience is building which will make future marketing efforts that much easier.

More to come!

The smaller the audience, the more specific and compelling the marketing message can be. The practice of delivering messages to very small audiences is called microtargeting.

As a marketer that serves small businesses, I rely on Facebook’s ability to make microtargeting easier. I am currently working on a second round of Facebook ads for my client, author Cal Smith. With some research, we were able to microtarget based on similar authors.

Originally, we lumped all of those people together and delivered a fairly generic message. The ads performed fairly well, around .028% CTR. But the cost per click began to rise steadily and conversions are very low. So once that campaign ran its course, we looked at new ways to reach that market.

We broke the larger group into smaller groups, groups that centered on one author, not all of them. We selected the three authors that are most similar in style to Cal and created targeted messages that let the reader know why they were seeing that message.

So far, the ads are performing splendidly. CPC is extremely low and the CTR is close to .16%! I’m sure that it will level off, but so far, Cal and I are pleased.

Check back for updates!