Facebook & Google Ads Blog

Landing Pages vs Lead Ads: The $2,000 Facebook Experiment

October 21, 2016 31 Comments Tim Chard

Facebook Lead Ads are so simple. When the ad appears on your feed, you fill in your contact information without ever leaving Facebook.

In contrast, with Landing Pages, you have to go to a separate website where load times, intimidating forms, and distractions potentially take you off course from providing your contact info.

Thus, I hastily made a conclusion when setting up our company’s re-targeting campaigns: Lead Ads were the best type of ad to run!

I enthusiastically told my boss, our CEO. His face was expressionless. He disagreed.

“No,” he said. “We don’t know that. Here’s 2,000 dollars. Run an experiment.”

The secret underworld of online advertising and the one tool they use to kick ass

October 7, 2016 4 Comments Guest Post

Every morning I’d wake up hoping this ad was the one that worked.

Every morning I’d feel bad because it wasn’t. I felt like I was throwing money out the window.

After a while, I noticed that whether I felt good or bad that day depended on the performance of my ads. I knew the opportunity that would open up if it worked.

So I decided to study people who successfully run ads for a living and to discovered their secret.

How Amazon, Expedia and the QVC Convert Every Last Visitor (And How You Can Too)

September 30, 2016 Leave a Comment Brad Smith

Don’t listen to what people say. Watch what they do.

Ramit talks a lot. But his actions and his emails are where the value lies.

Similarly, you shouldn’t just read the ConversionXL’s when you’re trying to come up with ways to get your landing pages to convert better.

Instead, you should just go visit the top performing websites, like Amazon, Expedia, or (surprisingly) the QVC.

Start browsing, shopping, and going through their checkout funnels.

It’ll quickly become apparent why they’re good, and how you might be able to adapt the same approaches to your own site and pages.

Here’s how to convert like Amazon, Expedia, and the QVC.

AdEspresso’s Conversion Secrets: The Copywriting Tricks Our Customers Revealed

September 27, 2016 Leave a Comment Tim Chard

As you’ve noticed from previous posts in our series, conversion rate optimization entails a huge amount of data and testing – on almost every area of your site. Without ConversionXL’s help, we’d be lost in not only how to test, but what to test.

With their guidance, we’re targeting each critical arena of CRO, and in the last two weeks, we bunkered down on one in particular: our copywriting.

Copywriting is essentially sales writing and is used on-site to inspire a prospect to become a customer.

The question is – what words inspire this?

To find the answer, we reached out to those who knew our company best – our customers.

The 3 Questions to Ask on Your Lead Ad Forms

September 22, 2016 1 Comment Ana Gotter

Leads had long been frustrating to gather from social media ads before Facebook’s Lead Ads came along.

With mobile users being able to access a form quickly within the app (instead of having to leave to another, slow-loading, data-devouring landing page) and Facebook automatically filling out all the information it can, users are a lot more likely to convert.

Facebook’s Lead Ads are a valuable tool for businesses of all sizes, allowing us to gather information from relevant users to nurture leads. This is especially true considering the forms are so customizable, enabling us to ask almost anything that we want.

As many businesses and salespeople know, asking the right questions can make a world of difference when you’re trying to turn a lead into a customer and close a sale, so this post is going to take a look at the questions to ask on lead ad forms (and the ones you shouldn’t).

When Brands Go Small And Succeed on Facebook -The SMB Opportunity

September 15, 2016 4 Comments Animalz

With the news that Procter & Gamble is cutting their spend on targeted Facebook ads, all eyes are on the social media platform.

But Procter & Gamble isn’t getting off Facebook—they’re just finding that Facebook’s hyper-specific targeting features are not necessarily as powerful for their business as originally imagined.

Why? Because P&G sells toothpaste. Cosmetics. Dishwasher detergent. Facebook’s targeting capabilities are intense and hyper-specific, but P&G’s products aren’t products with well-defined, specific niches. Everyone needs to buy toothpaste, dishwasher detergent and shampoo.

And so, what P&G’s decision means for us marketers?

AdEspresso’s Conversion Secrets: The Scientific Formula for CRO Success

September 13, 2016 2 Comments Tim Chard

So much of marketing revolves around “testing” – whether it’s your landing pages, your email sequences, your ads, or your entire website.

And with every test – with every “competition” – we want to have something we call the winner. We want to definitively say, “this one was the best” – sometimes even at the sake of any statistical significance.

It’s taken a few weeks with ConversionXL, but I’ve finally stopped thinking in this zero-sum mindset. After watching how they formulate their tests, I’ve realized it’s not just a series of tests: it’s full-on science.

How to Use Facebook Ads and Direct Mail to Generate More Sales Leads

September 8, 2016 Leave a Comment Brad Smith

That ‘Save Time & Money’ headline on your homepage is lazy-ass messaging. One of the primary reasons? It’s too generic. Too clichéd. When every one of your competitors is saying the same thing on their homepage, it quickly becomes meaningless.

You see this on B2B websites especially, where the jargon-ridden content looks like it was literally Command + C / Command + V’d on every website in that industry.

The result is that ya’ll become indistinguishable from one another. Customers, left with no other choice, look for others point of differentiation to make sense of the noise. Namely, your price.

The bad news, though, is that this problem isn’t reserved for just your homepage copy. The same me-too, copycat approach also extends to your marketing tactics. You use the same messaging, in the same channels, and wonder why CTR’s and conversions look so… average.

Whereas the ‘unicorns’ are busy doing things differently to get outsized returns. Here’s how to extend that to your lead generation efforts.

Best WordPress Themes for Small and Medium Businesses

September 7, 2016 1 Comment Ana Gotter

Our websites are everything, and the look and layout of our website is an essential factor in how we brand ourselves as small and medium businesses.

For WordPress users (which is a large number of us), this is defined by the theme chosen for our site. It’s no surprise that a question I always see popping up in blogging groups is one asking about the best themes for small and medium businesses.

In general, pro themes are a good way to go for businesses. While you do have to pay for them, they often have better support and are updated more often. Even so, there’s still an abundance of pro themes to choose from.

To help you pick up the best one for your business needs, we selected six themes that are perfect for (most) small and medium businesses.

Academy

Landing Pages vs Lead Ads: The $2,000 Facebook Experiment

The secret underworld of online advertising and the one tool they use to kick ass

AdEspresso’s Conversion Secrets: The Copywriting Tricks Our Customers Revealed

When Brands Go Small And Succeed on Facebook -The SMB Opportunity

AdEspresso’s Conversion Secrets: The Scientific Formula for CRO Success

How to Use Facebook Ads and Direct Mail to Generate More Sales Leads

Best WordPress Themes for Small and Medium Businesses

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