ROI Factory

Facebook Advertising Analysis -- Part Two

Our first round of Facebook ads for moto.aero (a sister company) used the moto.aero logo as the graphic element and copy was about a broad range of motorcycle products and accessories. In this second round, we wanted to test an ad for a specific product, rather than the broad "motorcycle stuff" copy of the first round ads.  We also wanted to test the effect of adding the price and adding free shipping copy to the ads.

The Ads

(mouse over for ad names)

MC Radar w/logo and TPX no price, no shipping are identical except for the use of the moto.aero logo vs. a product image.  Headline and body copy are the same.  (TPX is the name of the motorcycle radar detector.)  TPX no price, no shipping, obviously, does not include the price or the fact that we offer free shipping.

TPX with price, no shipping allows us to compare the effect of adding the price and promoting free shipping.  Because of character count restrictions, we need to ensure that every word is contributing to increase response, and to eliminate any copy that isn't helping.

The Analysis

Learning

Unfortunately, we have to begin with our now traditional disclaimer.  Someday we may be able to figure out how to get visitors to break out their wallets and actually purchase products, but until then we have to work with the data at hand, which means our analyses are confined to clickthrough data.  Unfortunate, but there is still quite a bit of learning to be derived from the results of our tests.  

We learned in the first round of tests that an intriguing headline generated a 600% increase in CTR as compared to the generic "Motorcycle Accessories" headline.  In this round, we can compare the previous winner, Best Motorcycle Gear to MC Radar w/logo, and see that clickthrough rates are identical.  This suggests that the two headlines were equally effective and the use of the logo in both versions led to equal CTRs.  There was no difference between the performance of a category ad and a product ad when we used the logo as the graphic element.

However, when we swapped out the company logo for a product photo, response rates exploded.  This is great from a direct response standpoint, but we did sacrifice the branding impressions generated by showing tens of thousands of people the moto.aero logo.  Since our objective is to generate responses (and, someday, sales!) this is an acceptable trade-off for this campaign, but something you should consider when creating your own ads.

• Product image graphics generate much better Clickthrough Rates than logo graphics

The inclusion of price and free shipping suppressed response by 27% when compared to the ad without price or shipping copy.  It is possible that these clicks are more qualified and that the visitors are more likely to convert because they are already aware of the price, but without purchase data we cannot know for sure.  Maybe someday...

Also note that the average CPC is much higher for the poorer performing ads.  Although we offered to pay $0.50 CPC, the best performing ads cleared at almost half the offer price, while the weaker ads were bumping up against our CPC limit.  Higher CTRs lead to lower CPCs, which is nice.

• Ads with high Clickthrough Rates (CTR) clear at lower Cost per Click than low CTR ads

The common belief is that Facebook advertising is ineffective and inefficient, the theory being that Facebook users are not willing to interrupt their social sessions by clicking on ads.  We've seen, however, that Facebook can in fact generate clicks at very competitive CPCs.  As we can see in the data above, Facebook is doing an excellent job of promoting the best performing ads and ensuring that they receive more impressions than weaker ads.

• Facebook advertising can generate very competitive CPCs

Thanks for reading,

Michael

Please click here to subscribe, or click here to contact us, or click here to return to The Dogfood Chronicles main page.