facebook lead generation case study

11 Facebook Case Studies & Success Stories to Inspire You

Published: August 05, 2019

Although Facebook is one of the older social media networks, it's still a thriving platform for businesses who want to boost brand awareness.

With over 2.38 billion monthly active users , you can use the platform to spread the word about your business in a number of different ways -- from photos or videos to paid advertisements.

Because there are so many marketing options and opportunities on Facebook, It can be hard to tell which strategy is actually best for your brand.

If you're not sure where to start, you can read case studies to learn about strategies that marketing pros and similar businesses have tried in the past.

A case study will often go over a brand's marketing challenge, goals, a campaign's key details, and its results. This gives you a real-life glimpse at what led a marketing team to reach success on Facebook. Case studies also can help you avoid or navigate common challenges that other companies faced when implementing a new Facebook strategy.

To help you in choosing your next Facebook strategy, we've compiled a list of 11 great case studies that show how a number of different companies have succeeded on the platform.

Even if your company has a lower budget or sells a different product, we hope these case studies will inspire you and give you creative ideas for your own scalable Facebook strategy.

Facebook Brand Awareness Case Studies:

During the 2017 holiday season, the jewelry company Pandora wanted to boost brand awareness in the German market. They also wanted to see if video ads could have the same success as their other Facebook ad formats.

They began this experiment by working with Facebook to adapt a successful TV commercial for the platform. Here's a look at the original commercial:

The ad was cut down to a 15-second clip which shows a woman receiving a Pandora necklace from her partner. It was also cropped into a square size for mobile users. Pandora then ran the ad targeting German audiences between the ages of 18-50. It appeared in newsfeeds and as an in-stream video ad .

Results: According to the case study , the video campaign lifted brand sentiment during the holiday season, with a 10-point lift in favorability. While Pandora or the case study didn't disclose how they measured their favorability score, they note that the lift means that more consumers favored Pandora over other jewelers because of the ad.

Financially, the campaign also provided ROI with a 61% lift in purchases and a 42% increase in new buyers.

Video can be memorable, emotional, and persuasive. While the case study notes that Pandora always had success with ads and purchases, the jeweler saw that a video format could boost brand awareness even further.

In just 15 seconds, Pandora was able to tell a short story that their target audience could identify with while also showing off their product. The increase in favorability shows that audiences who saw the ad connected with it and preferred the jeweler over other companies because of the marketing technique.

Part of Pandora's success might also be due to the video's platform adaptation. Although they didn't create a specific video for the Facebook platform, they picked a commercial that had already resonated with TV audiences and tweaked it to grab attention of fast-paced Facebook users. This is a good example of how a company can be resourceful with the content it already has while still catering to their online audiences.

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame , a HubSpot customer, wanted to boost brand awareness and get more ticket purchases to their museum. Since they'd mainly used traditional customer outreach strategies in the past, they wanted to experiment with more ways of reaching audiences on social media.

Because the museum's social media team recognized how often they personally used Facebook Messenger, they decided to implement a messaging strategy on the Hall of Fame's official business page.

From the business page, users can click the Get Started button and open a chat with the Hall of Fame. Through the chat, social media managers were able to quickly reply to questions or comments from fans, followers, and prospective visitors. The reps would also send helpful links detailing venue pricing, events, other promotions, and activities in the surrounding area.

Since the Messenger launch, they claim to have raised their audience size by 81% and sales from prospects by 12%. The company claims that this feature was so successful that they even received 54 messages on an Easter Sunday.

Being available to connect with your audiences through Messenger can be beneficial to your business and your brand. While the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame boosted purchases, they also got to interact with their audiences on a personal level. Their availability might have made them look like a more trustworthy, friendly brand that was actually interested in their fanbase rather than just sales.

Facebook Reach Case Study:

In early 2016, Buffer started to see a decline in their brand reach and engagement on Facebook due to algorithm changes that favored individuals rather than brands. In an effort to prevent their engagement and reach numbers from dropping even further.

The brand decided to cut their posting frequency by 50%. With less time focused on many posts, they could focus more time on creating fewer, better-quality posts that purely aimed at gaining engagement. For example, instead of posting standard links and quick captions, they began to experiment with different formats such as posts with multi-paragraph captions and videos. After starting the strategy in 2016, they continued it through 2018.

Here's an example of one an interview that was produced and shared exclusively on Facebook.

The Results: By 2018, Buffer claimed that the average weekly reach nearly tripled from 44,000 at the beginning of the experiment to 120,000. The page's average daily engagements also doubled from roughly 500 per day to around 1,000.

In 2018, Buffer claimed that their posts reached between 5,000 to 20,000 people, while posts from before the experiment reached less than 2,000.

Although Buffer began the experiment before major Facebook algorithm changes , they updated this case study in 2018 claiming that this strategy has endured platform shifts and is still providing them with high reach and engagement.

It can be easy to overpost on a social network and just hope it works. But constant posts that get no reach or engagement could be wasted your time and money. They might even make your page look desperate.

What Buffer found was that less is more. Rather than spending your time posting whatever you can, you should take time to brainstorm and schedule out interesting posts that speak directly to your customer.

Facebook Video Views Case Studies:

Gearing up for Halloween in 2016, Tomcat, a rodent extermination company, wanted to experiment with a puppet-filled, horror-themed, live video event. The narrative, which was created in part by their marketing agency, told the story of a few oblivious teenage mice that were vacationing in a haunted cabin in the woods. At peak points of the story, audiences were asked to use the comments to choose which mouse puppet would die next or how they would die.

Prior to the video event, Tomcat also rolled out movie posters with the event date, an image of the scared mouse puppets, and a headline saying, "Spoiler: They all die!"

Results: It turns out that a lot of people enjoy killing rodents. The live video got over 2.3 million unique views , and 21% of them actively participated. As an added bonus, the video also boosted Tomcat's Facebook fanbase by 58% and earned them a Cyber Lion at the 2017 Cannes Lions awards.

Here's a hilarious sizzle reel that shows a few clips from the video and a few key stats:

This example shows how creative content marketing can help even the most logistical businesses gain engagement. While pest control can be a dry topic for a video, the brand highlighted it in a creative and funny way.

This study also highlights how interactivity can provide huge bonuses when it comes to views and engagement. Even though many of the viewers knew all the rats would die, many still participated just because it was fun.

Not only might this peak brand interest from people who hadn't thought that deeply about pest control, but interactivity can also help a video algorithmically. As more people comment, share, and react to a live video, there's more likelihood that it will get prioritized and displayed in the feeds of others.

In 2017, HubSpot's social media team embarked on an experiment where they pivoted their video goals from lead generation to audience engagement. Prior to this shift, HubSpot had regularly posted Facebook videos that were created to generate leads. As part of the new strategy, the team brainstormed a list of headlines and topics that they thought their social media audience would actually like, rather than just topics that would generate sales.

Along with this pivot, they also experimented with other video elements including video design, formatting, and size .

Results: After they started to launch the audience-friendly videos, they saw monthly video views jump from 50,000 to 1 million in mid-2017.

Creating content that caters to your fanbase's interests and the social platform it's posted on can be much more effective than content that seeks out leads.

While videos with the pure goal of selling a product can fall flat with views and engagement, creative videos that intrigue and inform your audiences about a topic they relate to can be a much more effective way to gain and keep your audience. Once the audience trusts you and consumes your content regularly, they might even trust and gain interest in your products.

Facebook App Installs Case Study:

Foxnext games.

FoxNext Games, a video game company owned by 20th Century Fox, wanted to improve the level of app installs for one of its newest releases, Marvel Strike Force. While FoxNext had previously advertised other games with Facebook video ads, they wanted to test out the swipe-able photo carousel post format. Each photo, designed like a playing card, highlighted a different element of the game.

The add offered a call-to-action button that said "Install Now" and lead to the app store where it could be downloaded. FoxNext launched it on both Facebook and Instagram. To see if the carousel was more efficient than video campaigns, they compared two ads that advertised the same game with each format.

Results: According to Facebook , the photo ads delivered a 6% higher return on ad spend, 14% more revenue, 61% more installs, and 33% lower cost per app install.

Takeaways If your product is visual, a carousel can be a great way to show off different elements of it. This case study also shows how designing ads around your audience's interest can help each post stand out to them. In this scenario, FoxNext needed to advertise a game about superheroes. They knew that their fanbase was interested in gaming, adventure, and comic books, so they created carousels that felt more like playing cards to expand on the game's visual narrative.

Facebook Lead Gen Case Study:

Major impact media.

In 2019, Major Impact Media released a case study about a real-estate client that wanted to generate more leads. Prior to working with Major Impact, the Minneapolis, Minnesota brokerage hired another firm to build out an online lead generation funnel that had garnered them no leads in the two months it was active. They turned to Major Impact looking for a process where they could regularly be generating online leads.

As part of the lead generation process, the marketing and brokerage firms made a series of Facebook ads with the lead generation objective set. Major Impact also helped the company build a CRM that could capture these leads as they came in.

Results: Within a day, they received eight leads for $2.45 each. In the next 90 days, the marketing firm claimed the ads generated over 370 local leads at the average cost of $6.77 each. Each lead gave the company their name, email, and phone number.

Although these results sound like a promising improvement, readers of this case study should keep in mind that no number of qualified leads or ROI was disclosed. While the study states that leads were gained, it's unclear which of them lead to actual sales -- if any.

This shows how Facebook ad targeting can be helpful when you're seeking out leads from a specific audience in a local area. The Minneapolis brokerage's original marketing and social media strategies weren't succeeding because they were looking for a very specific audience of prospective buyers in the immediate area.

Ad targeting allowed their posts to be placed on the news feeds of people in the area who might be searching for real estate or have interests related to buying a home. This, in turn, might have caused them more success in gaining leads.

Facebook Engagement Case Study:

When the eyewear brand Hawkers partnered up with Spanish clothing brand El Ganso for a joint line of sunglasses, Hawkers' marketing team wanted to see which Facebook ad format would garner the most engagement. Between March and April of 2017, they launched a combination of standard ads and collection ads on Facebook.

While their standard ads had a photo, a caption and a call-to-action linking to their site, the collection ads offered a header image or video, followed by smaller images of sunglasses from the line underneath.

Image from Digital Training Academy

To A/B test ad effectiveness of the different ad types, Hawkers showed half of its audience standard photo ads while the other half were presented with the collection format. The company also used Facebook's Audience Lookalike feature to target the ads their audiences and similar users in Spain.

Results: The collection ad boosted engagement by 86% . The collection ads also saw a 51% higher rate of return than the other ads.

This study shows how an ad that shows off different elements of your product or service could be more engaging to your audience. With collection ads, audiences can see a bunch of products as well as a main image or video about the sunglass line. With a standard single photo or video, the number of products you show might be limited. While some users might not respond well to one image or video, they might engage if they see a number of different products or styles they like.

Facebook Conversion Case Study:

Femibion from merck.

Femibion, a German family-planning brand owned by Merck Consumer Health, wanted to generate leads by offering audiences a free baby planning book called "Femibion BabyPlanung." The company worked with Facebook to launch a multistage campaign with a combination of traditional image and link ads with carousel ads.

The campaign began with a cheeky series of carousel ads that featured tasteful pictures of "baby-making places," or locations where women might conceive a child. The later ads were a more standard format that displayed an image of the book and a call-to-action.

When the first ads launched in December 2016, they were targeted to female audiences in Germany. In 2017, during the later stages of the campaign, the standard ads were retargeted to women who had previously interacted with the carousel ads. With this strategy, people who already showed interest would see more ads for the free product offer. This could cause them to remember the offer or click when they saw it a second time.

Results: By the time the promotion ended in April 2017, ads saw a 35% increase in conversion rate. The company had also generated 10,000 leads and decreased their sample distribution cost by two times.

This case study shows how a company successfully brought leads through the funnel. By targeting women in Germany for their first series of creative "baby-making" ads, they gained attention from a broad audience. Then, by focusing their next round of ads on women who'd already shown some type of interest in their product, they reminded those audiences of the offer which may have enabled those people to convert to leads.

Facebook Product Sales Case Study

In an effort to boost sales from its Latin American audiences, Samsung promoted the 2015 Argentina launch of the Galaxy S6 smartphone with a one-month Facebook campaign.

The campaign featured three videos that highlighted the phone's design, camera, and long battery life respectively.

One video was released each week and all of them were targeted to men and women in Argentina. In the fourth week of the campaign, Samsung launched more traditional video and photo ads about the product. These ads were specifically targeted to people who'd engaged with the videos and their lookalike audiences.

Results: Samsung received 500% ROI from the month-long campaign and a 7% increase in new customers.

Like Femibion, Samsung tested a multiple ad strategy where the targeting got more specific as the promotions continued. They too saw the benefit of targeting ads to users who already showed interest in the first rounds of advertisements. This strategy definitely seems like one that could be effective when trying to gain more qualified leads.

Facebook Store Visits Case Study:

Church's chicken.

The world's third-largest chicken restaurant, Church's Chicken, wanted to see if they could use Facebook to increase in-restaurant traffic. From February to October of 2017, the chain ran a series of ads with the "Store Traffic" ad objectives. Rather than giving customers a link to a purchasing or order page, these ads offer users a call-to-action that says "Get Directions." The dynamic store-traffic ad also gives users the store information for the restaurant closest to them.

Image from Facebook

The ads ran on desktop and mobile newsfeeds and were targeted at people living near a Church's Chicken who were also interested in "quick-serve restaurants." The study also noted that third-party data was used to target customers who were "big spenders" at these types of restaurants.

To measure the results, the team compared data from Facebook's store-reporting feature with data from all of its locations.

Results: The ads resulted in over 592,000 store visits with an 800% ROI. Each visit cost the company an average of $1.14. The ROI of the campaign was four times the team's return goal.

If you don't have an ecommerce business, Facebook ads can still be helpful for you if they're strategized properly. In this example, Church's ads targeted locals who like quick-serve restaurants and served them a dynamic ad with text that notified them of a restaurant in their direct area. This type of targeting and ad strategy could be helpful to small businesses or hyperlocal businesses that want to gain foot traffic or awareness from the prospective customers closest to them.

Navigating Case Studies

If you're a marketer that wants to execute proven Facebook strategies, case studies will be incredibly helpful for you. If the case studies on the list above didn't answer one of your burning Facebook questions, there are plenty of other resources and success stories online.

As you look for a great case study to model your next campaign strategy, look for stories that seem credible and don't feel too vague. The best case studies will clearly go over a company's mission, challenge or mission, process, and results.

Because many of the case studies you'll find are from big businesses, you might also want to look at strategies that you can implement on a smaller scale. For example, while you may not be able to create a full commercial at the production quality of Pandora, you might still be able to make a lower-budget video that still conveys a strong message to your audience.

If you're interested in starting a paid campaign, check out this helpful how-to post . If you just want to take advantage of free options, we also have some great information on Facebook Live and Facebook for Business .

Don't forget to share this post!

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Facebook Lead Ads: Best Practices and Case Studies

Tired of running Lead Ad campaigns on Facebook with little success? Maybe changing your approach will help.

People often complain that Facebook doesn’t offer quality leads. You might have heard that you either need to spend a lot of money on Facebook or turn to other platforms to get better leads.  But most of the times, generating low quality leads has nothing to do with the platform.

No platform can guarantee satisfactory results if a Lead Ad takes the wrong approach. And keep in mind that Facebook is still one of the best platforms to generate leads because of its massive user base and daily engagement rates. 

But the question is, how can you run effective lead generation campaigns on Facebook? 

For a start, we can learn from analysing some success stories with Facebook Lead Ads. 

In this article, we’ll discuss the best practices of Facebook Lead Ads and explore some case studies – plus reasons behind their success. By the end, you’ll have a clearer direction on how to run your campaign successfully.  

What makes a successful Facebook Lead Ad?

Facebook is a great platform to collect leads, but at the same time, it’s highly competitive. Therefore, generating leads successfully through Facebook Lead Ads requires more than just knowing how to create and publish an ad . Successful ads target the right people, attract them, and guide them through the process smoothly. 

However, it doesn’t take a lot of time and effort to learn and implement these practices in your lead ads. Here are the most important ones you should know.     

Targeting the right audience

Conveying the message to the right audience is the most important part of any promotional activity. It’s essential to ensure that your Lead Ad is targeting the right people. In order to do that, you’ll need to allocate some time to understand your audience, including their problems, preferences, and general profiles. This not only helps you during the ad creation step where you specify a target audience based on demographics, but also guides you in creating relatable and relevant messages. 

Using visually appealing design

As people scroll through the content really fast, your ad should have a wow factor that stops them from scrolling further. People only interact with visually appealing content. To capitalise on this, your ad creative should be attention-grabbing. It includes eye-catching images or videos and concise text that complements the visuals. High-quality graphics compiled with compelling ad copy can compel users to pause and consider your offer.

Simplifying your forms 

The goal of a Lead Ad is to generate leads. Though it sounds simple enough, there’s a catch: people are often reluctant to share their personal information. However, this hesitation can be mitigated by asking for only the most essential information. The less time and effort it requires to fill out the form, the more likely users will complete the form and click ‘Submit’.

Optimising ads for mobile 

With more than half of Facebook’s users accessing the platform from their mobile devices, you should want to optimise your ads for mobile. Therefore, make sure that your forms load fast and are also easy to fill out and complete on smaller screens. Remember, poorly formatted forms can lead to frustrated users and missed opportunities. Facebook Lead Ads are responsive by default, but always ensure they work just as well on smaller devices. 

Including clear call-to-actions

A Call-to-Action (CTA) button is not just an instruction, it’s a persuasive tool designed to encourage users to take action. Ensure your CTA button is clear, concise, and tells users exactly what they’ll get after clicking.

Testing and optimising regularly

The key to any successful marketing strategy lies in continuous testing and optimisation. Without creating and testing different versions of your ad, you’ll never be able to make the most of your campaign. Experimenting with different visuals, ad copy, CTAs, and forms helps you determine what resonates best with your audience. Use Facebook’s built-in A/B testing tool to compare different ad versions, and make informed decisions based on their performance to improve your lead generation efforts. 

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Successful Facebook Lead Ads: Case studies 

Let’s take a look at some successful Facebook Lead Ads examples and discuss the best practices that helped them achieve their desired results. 

1. Mira Clinic 

Mira Clinic, a Turkey-based cosmetic dentistry and plastic surgery clinic, ran a lead generation campaign featuring testimonial videos of clients and influencers. They A/B tested the ad, one with Leads Optimisation and the other with Conversion Leads Optimisation. As a result, conversion leads optimisation helped them generate 48% more quality leads.   

Elements of success

• Targeting the right audience : Mira clinic knows who their audience is, and as a result, they were successful in targeting them with the right message 
• Attention grabbing Ad Creative : The use of video with a compelling message worked perfectly to grab the attention of the target customers. 
• A/B testing : Testing various versions helped them find the one that generates quality leads. As a result they ended up generating 48% more quality leads, with each lead costing 36% lower.   

2. OSK Property 

This Malaysian real estate developer ran a Facebook Lead Ad campaign and earned 3 times more leads with Facebook Lead Ads using the right communication channel. They ran a split test comparing two lead-generation campaigns using the same creative – one campaign showing a form pre-filled with information from their Facebook profile, while the other redirected customers to automated question-and-answer experience on messenger. 

With the split test, they identified that though the ad creative was successful in attracting target audience, lead generation on messenger generated more quality leads. 

• Right targeting and messaging : With a message that resonates with their consumer base, OSK property successfully grabbed the attention of their audience 
• A/B testing and finding the right lead generation channel : Testing two different versions offering two different user journeys, the company figured out which approach their customers preferred. As a result, they were able to generate 3 times more qualified leads through Facebook messenger. 

The European FinTech company, SumUp, managed to generate quality leads and reduce its cost per lead by using lead filtering with Instant Forms. 

The company had been generating a huge amount of leads through Facebook Lead Ads. But there was an issue: Of all the collected leads, very few were quality leads. As a result, cost per lead was high. As they were struggling to attract accurate leads, they decided to test Lead Ads with a new feature – lead filtering. 

Lead filtering allows businesses to include a customised qualifying question in the Lead Form before people can submit their information. Thus, SumUp added a question, “Are you a business owner?” to their form. The question helped them filter the audience and collect quality leads by discouraging non business owners from completing the form. 

• Attention grabbing ad design : With an attention grabbing ad design, SumUp was able to attract a huge number of leads on Facebook.  
• A/B testing : Although the ads were collecting a lot of leads, there were very few quality leads, causing higher cost per lead. To fix that, they A/B tested their Lead Form with a new feature called lead filtering. Lead filtering helped collect quality leads and decrease cost per lead. 

4. Additive

Additive is a hotel marketing and sales automation agency. Running Lead Ads on Facebook helped them double their conversion rate and increase qualified leads by 3.7 times.

Additive’s ads featured stunning images of the luxury resorts and people. It also highlighted a €30 voucher for anyone who signed up. Additionally, they made the lead form submission process easier by using pre-filled lead forms with the customer’s name and email addresses added in already. They then conducted a multi-cell A/B test on different ad creatives which helped them identify the most engaging one.

• Stunning ad creative and enticing message : Additive used vibrant and high-quality graphics to grab the attention of people, and it proved to be a success. Plus, the enticing message in the form of a discount encouraged more people to click on the ad.  
• Simple lead form : Effortless lead form helped users to easily submit the form (details already filled out for them), resulting in a good conversion rate. 
• A/B testing : Testing different ad creatives helped Additive identify the best performing design. As a result, they were able to maximise lead generation. 

And now it’s your turn!

Now that you know how to create and run successful Lead Ad campaigns on Facebook, go for it! On that note, you probably also want your next steps to run just as smoothly. After generating your leads, your primary goal is to convert as many of them as you can into paying customers. And you might already know that running the sales process manually causes delays and human errors, leading to missed opportunities . 

Privyr is a mobile-first CRM that helps you run your sales process smoothly from your mobile phone. It seamlessly integrates with your Facebook Lead Ads and automatically imports new leads into your device, allowing you to contact them right away on popular messaging apps like WhatsApp. Not only that, the app also helps you set an effective follow up schedule based on your interactions with leads, personalise and streamline the messaging process, and easily distribute leads to your team members.

It’s super fast and easy to set up automated downloads and lead alerts for your Facebook Lead Ads, right from your phone. Watch our step-by-step guide above.

Sounds interesting? Try Privyr for free today .      

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A writer from the heart and marketer from the mind, Michael writes to help businesses implement effective sales and marketing strategies.

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The Ultimate List of Facebook Ads Case Studies (+ 38 lessons you can’t ignore)

by: 6 Comments

Without a doubt, Facebook is THE place to be to build audiences and generate revenue.

You know it, I know it… Every single marketer knows it.

But with it’s decreasing organic reach, you’ll need to rely on Facebook Ads more than ever.

That means your money is on the line, which is why you’ll want to know  what REALLY works and what doesn’t work  before you even get started.

So, to bust all the myths and speculations, we’ve been analyzing 13 Facebook Ads case studies from various well-known experts.

From campaigns spending $1/day to millions a year. Campaigns focused on bringing in hundreds of thousands in revenue as well as bringing in low-cost leads.

You’ll get to see it all in the following 13 Facebook Ads case-studies.

Case Study # 1 – What Noah Kagan Learned Spending $2 Million on Facebook Ads

This is the case study and key insights from Noah Kogan who has spent millions on Facebook Ads so far.

The advice and lessons learned from this case study will be far more insightful than people that have to spend some hundred or thousands of dollar on Facebook Ads.

Noah Kagan of AppSumo and SumoMe shared his experience spending $2 million on Facebook Ads across his different products.

Apart from promoting his key products ( AppSumo and SumoMe ), he showed how he earned $267 in profit from each Monthly1k course he sells.

He used Facebook Advertising to bring traffic to his website, increase his email subscription and later sell them the course.

Each email lead would cost him $3, and every 89th email lead went on to buy the course giving him $267 in net profit (after all deductions, cancellations, etc.effectively).

This is a classical example of how to best leverage Facebook Ads. People browse Facebook for casual fun, catching up with friends and family – but not to being sold.

It is best to use Facebook to drive them to opt-in to your lead magnet before pushing them your product.

They will be more inclined to engage with your Facebook Ads if it’s not asking for their credit card but rather giving some value without any cost to them.

Although, he provided a lot of insight from his million dollar spending on Facebook Ads, here are some of the key takeaways and lessons learned.

Lesson Learned # 1 –  Use data at hand effectively to target your Facebook ads strategically. Such as copying the success of your competitors , targeting the fans of your competitors and creating lookalike audience from existing customers and email subscribers.

Lesson Learned # 2 – Start with a small budget and capitalize on the ads targeting which is giving you the best ROI.

Lesson Learned # 3 – Keep your targeting narrow than being broad. Narrower audiences not only is easier to reach on a limited budget but are highly likely to convert. But narrow audience doesn’t mean it has to be small, rather an ideal size ( in between narrow and broad)

Case Study # 2 – $5800 Monthly Recurring Revenue Using Facebook Ads Retargeting

Design Pickle is a design-as-a-service that provides unlimited graphics designing services under a monthly retainer fee. Being a newer concept and a service that requires a direct interaction of humans ( as in passing design briefs and requirements), it is hard to promote the service using standard means.

Following the footsteps of how most SaaS businesses generate leads, they  ran a Facebook Ad Campaign in which they offered a Free Custom Design without the need for any credit card ( an equivalent to Free Trial)

They directed the Facebook Ads traffic to a long-form signup form so they would weed out potential customers from onlookers. This was deliberately done as people that go on to filling the long form were most likely to be interested in the services.

Although they were able to capture some leads, the best part came when they started using retargeting.

Want to get more results from Facebook Ads? Check out our free targeting training here.

Design Pickle identified that they could use retargeting with better effect. So they implemented a retargeting campaign on the sales page visitors which accounted for 17 of the 30 new customers.

More than 50% of their new customers just came from the retargeting marketing campaign, which justifies the fact that converting a retargeted visitor is much easier and efficient than converting a new one.

Lesson Learned # 4 – No matter how complex, unique or new (business model) type of business you have, Facebook Ads can still work for you.

Lesson Learned # 5 – Use the magnetic power of retargeting to bring back customers that already have shown interest in your products.

Lesson Learned # 6 – Build a sales funnel along with your Facebook Ads. Such as in this case, people that initially saw the ad but didn’t go on to fill up the form were retargeted again.

Case Study # 3 – What Will  $5/day on Facebook Get You?

With the tremendous growth of businesses interest in advertising and marketing their product on Facebook,   Buffer did a small experiment to see how a minimal investment of $5 on Facebook Ads can give them.

The $5 ad spend was tested for different objectives such as page likes, clicks to website and effects on boosted post.

And here are the results they achieved for every $5 spend on each of the activity below;

Page Likes – 9 Likes per day

Clicks to the homepage / landing page – 1 per day

Boosted post – 787 new people reached

So there is something for business seen on a small budget.

Here is the audience targeting they set;

As you can see, they’re targeting people who are interested in social media, excluding their fans.

Furthermore, just to give you an example of creating a Killer Facebook Ad, see this the ad buffer created for the Page Likes campaign.

Apparently, this ad comes across as very social/human (since it’s showing the team) – which is why it’s been working well for a “like” campaign.

So to get the best bang out of your Facebook Ads even on a small budget, try zooming in your target audience and create ads copy that reflect or resonate with them.

Lesson Learned # 7 – If you want to test the Facebook Ads waters or generate buzz for your product, a small budget can also do good for you. Not only it creates awareness for your business, but you might also score a handy traffic and some sales too in the process.

Lesson Learned # 8 – You don’t need a large budget to succeed with Facebook Ads. If you target and optimize the ads well, you still can get a good traction regardless of your objective.

Lesson Learned # 9 – When targeting for page likes, always make sure that you Exclude your current page followers.

Lesson Learned # 10 – Make sure the ad image / creative you select, must match with the objective of the ad.

Case Study # 4 – Facebook Ads Success with just $1 per Day

Similar to the Buffer experiment, this case study by Brian Carter , a prominent Facebook Marketing and Advertising Expert and Bestselling author of the book “ The Like Economy”  showed that even investing a minimum of $1/day on Facebook Ads  can give you a significant reach.

By consistently investing $1/day for 30 days, he was able to reach 120,000 people or 4000 people every day.

He in an active user of most advertising platforms and this is what he found as the cost to reach 1000 people using popular advertising channels.

Facebook Ads are far cheaper than the legacy advertising solutions (newspaper, tv, etc.), but also left behind its online competitors (Adwords and LinkedIn).

The objective of this case study or experiment was to show that even if you start with a minimal budget, Facebook Ads can still prove beneficial.

Most businesses can afford to spend $1/day on Facebook, can’t they?

Lesson Learned  # 11 – Budget is or should not be a roadblock for virtually any business. $1/day or $30/month is not a big deal for most businesses.

Lesson Learned # 12 – Even if you are investing more on other channels for traffic or lead generation successfully, it doesn’t hurt to spend a small proportion on Facebook Ads. You might get the same number of traffic, but the overall cost will be much cheaper than all other alternatives.

Check out more details about this case study here.

Case Study # 5 – $14,114 in revenue from $8,240.17 spent in Facebook Ads

This case study is purely about generating leads than anything else.

Brian Moran , the founder of SamCart , used  Facebook As to sell his courses and training products .

He tested three different targeting groups where;

• One group was his existing email list.
• The 2nd group was the lookalike version of his email list.
• And the third was custom audience he created using the native+ advanced targeting features of Facebook.

And after spending $8240 on the ads on these groups, he was able to get;

• $3496 in Sales from $1800 in ad spend from group 1
• $1546 in Sales from $895 in ad spend from group 2
• $9039 in Sales from $5153 in ad spend from group 3

Although all of the ads returned an ROI of 2:1, the 3rd group clearly outperformed the others.

So as seen, changing and testing around with your targeting can give you better results than standard targeting.

Typically existing subscribers are considered a gold mine to be reaped over and over but Brian proved that you can still succeed with Facebook Ads if you just get you targeting right.

Even if you don’t have a big list of subscribers, using native targeting features of Facebook can bring you in front of the right viewers.

Lesson Learned # 13 – Retarget or advertise your offer to existing subscribers as well. This is particularly helpful if you want to convert your blog subscribers into warm leads or paying customers .

Lesson Learned # 14 – Use lookalike audience effectively. Brian created a lookalike audience from his existing email subscribers that brought in $1546 in revenue from $895 in ad spend.

Lesson Learned # 15 – Fine tune your advertising to narrow down to your targeted audience as much as possible. Brian got the best response from the custom targeting he set up.

Lesson Learned # 16 – Just beside A/B testing your Facebook ad copy , split test between your targeting groups too. When seeing results from the third group, Brian invested more in it, and the results were equally rewarding.

Case Study # 6 – How an Advertising “FAIL” Can Actually Turn Into a “WIN”

This case study is rather interesting as it started off from a failure before they got their winning aha-moment.

Angela Ponsford started a Facebook Ad campaign for her client who wanted to sell a high-priced $990 home renovation program to women’s in 30-40 age range across the USA.

The idea was to build an email list via Facebook Ads and later show them ads for Free Webinar that will lead to the program she wants to sell.

When they run the ads, they performed well, but most of the people that were engaging with it were not the actual audience perceived.

She thought women in the 30-40 age group would take more interest in her program, but women above 45+ were engaging most with her ad and content.

The first few days just yielded in 2 sign ups at the cost of nearly $27 each. So she optimized the ad targeting and the ad copy in line with the results they achieved earlier.

The second run significantly improved the cost/lead, dragging it down to 4 leads at $5.43 each.

After several rounds of testing and tuning with targeting and ad copies, she was able to bag in 400 leads at a cost $507 and some happy customers that went on buying the program.

One of their best performing ads was shared 14 times which indicated that the ad copy was talking to the customer and performed well.

It is essential that you keep on monitoring and optimizing your campaign- especially at the start. Angela was able to reduce the cost/lead from $27 to just $1.27 in the end by continually improving the campaign in the line of results she was getting.

Unless you have a large budget to spend, test your campaign in small budget / test runs until you find what’s working or you might end up spending a lot of money with little results.

Lesson Learned # 17 – There is no barrier to the type and cost of the product you are selling – you can even sell a high priced product using Facebook Ads .

Lesson Learned # 18 – Do some preliminary ad test to fine tune on the audience and then invest more budget where you get the most gold.

Lesson Learned # 19 – The ideal audience perceived by you might not always be correct.

Lesson Learned # 20 – Sometimes the simplest of thing are most effective. By changing the word “Webinar” to “Workshop” on the ad copy, the CTR and leads doubled.

Case Study # 7 – 89% cheaper cost / lead with Facebook Ads

Google Adwords in arguably the most used platform when it comes to online advertising. Hundreds of thousands of businesses use its daily traffic and leads.

But, it’s still expensive to reach for some.

Dave Rogenmoser of The Market Results, identified that cost/lead for a high-end app and web development company ranges between $250 – $1000 / lead on Adwords.

Although $250/lead was a good deal for a $80,000 contract, they wanted more.

Fast forward, they leveraged the narrow-down targeting capabilities of Facebook to target startups that might be in need of app development .

Dave mentioned that the hardest part of the campaign for them was to set targeting for their audience. As we saw from earlier case studies, narrowing down on your target audience is much more beneficial than broadening it.

And he did exactly just that- zoomed in on funded startups that might be in need of app development.

With a spend of $993 across a week, they were able to score 34 leads which was far much quicker and cheaper than Google Adwords.

From the first week of the run, they were able to decrease their cost/lead to $28 a piece, 89% cheaper than what it takes from Adwords.

Want similar results? Check out our free targeting training here.

This goes to show you that how cost effective leads from Facebook can turn out to be when compared with other options.

Lesson Learned # 21 – Facebook Ads are cost effective as compared to Google Adwords when it comes to B2B leads generation.

Lesson Learned # 22 – Facebook ads provide narrower targeting which helps you to laser in on your ideal audience. Setting up the correct targeting is one of the essential parts of your campaign.

Case Study # 8 – 7 Mistakes Made While Spending $234.07 on Facebook Ads

At Connectio we often hear customers saying that they have none or very limited success via Facebook Ads. Either it was not giving the desired results or is turning out to be expensive for them.

This case study is especially useful for such Facebook Ad starter business that is struggling to find their way.

Philip Kleudgen, a web development, and marketing specialist for restaurant owners, shares his experience of how he started off with Facebook Ads- with no prior experience .

As like more people starting off with Facebook Ads, he made some classic mistakes such as;

• Targeting was not set correctly.  He was targeting a very little set of individuals.
• Used only one image and didn’t A/B test between different images or ad copies.
• Wasn’t tracking conversions correctly due to missing or improper configuration
• Keep running ads that were unprofitable.

After running the ad for week or so, he spent $234 on Facebook Ads with a meager CTR and earned less than the actual ad spend.

Although, he was at a loss at this campaign some valuable lessons learned.

But at such stage, most businesses give up rather than realizing their mistakes and optimizing their campaign accordingly.

So it’s important to review and analyze performance and mistakes in your Facebook Ads campaign before ruling the platform as a failure.

Lesson Learned # 23 – Take some pre-campaign time to research and identify your targeted audience. Ideally, have a separate ad set for each unique audience you are targeting.

Lesson Learned # 24 – If your objective is lead generation or sales, you need to set your conversion tracking and do it right. If you aren’t tracking your conversions correctly how would you analyze performance?

Lesson Learned # 25 – Have multiple images and copies of your ad in hand before starting a campaign.

Lesson Learned # 26 – Don’t spend that much money on ads or campaigns that are not giving any result.

Case Study # 9 – How Veeroll Sold 122 Subscriptions with $2.5k Spend on Facebook Ads in 2 Weeks

This case study is another classical example that Facebook can be effectively used to generate leads for B2B businesses. B2B businesses. It also shows how businesses can gain better results by using video ads and continually optimizing the campaign to improve performance. Veeroll along with other places started off their campaign on Facebook and sent all traffic to a webinar funnel . They were also tracking website conversions to know how many people referred from Facebook were converting on that landing page.

They set their targeting and created the ads. Initially, they were getting a higher CPC.

Although their primary objective was to show the video ads, they also tested the text ad along with it and they saw a huge difference between both.

This the stats on their text ad;

And compare that to the video ad;

They spent a little more on the video ads, but have 18X more engagement and were 3.5X more than the text ads.

So seeing the video ads were proving better, they went on creating multiple video ads.

This is one of the video ads they were using.

Specifically, implementing retargeting on the website helped them lower their CPC and improve their conversions.

At the end of 2 weeks campaign, they were able to have 122 signups that resulted in $11,000 of monthly revenue that too just from a $2500 in ad spend.

That is almost 400% is profit against the cost of Facebook Ads, not to mention that the lifetime value of these customers will be way much than this.

Lesson Learned # 27 – Don’t get faltered from initial road bumps. Review the performance and capitalize where most performance is achieved. Such as mobile users were engaging far more than desktop users in this case so apparently it makes sense to pour more budget here.

Lesson Learned # 28 –  Retargeted traffic gave better conversion then the cold traffic. Veeroll has the lowest CPC and conversion from retargeted ads.

Lesson Learned # 29 – Don’t just stick to conventional ad styles. Try video ads too. They have incredible engagement and lets you communicate more message than what it takes from text and image ads.

Case Study # 10 – Reaping $163,969 in revenue from $5989 of ad spend in just 34 days

This is an absorbing Facebook Ad Case Study as it not only achieved a remarkable result but worked on an approach that will work in any niche – yes any niche. It is also very helpful for startup businesses that have none or small following and email list.

Paul Romando’s  Facebook Ad’s campaign for his client returned a staggering $163,969 in revenue from a mere $5989 in ad investment.

That’s an insane 2737.80% of return in just 34 days of the campaign.

Paul’s success formula was simple.

Rather than going for the hard sell, he created a Facebook funnel, where leads first opted in on content ( lead magnet) around a product.

And later, for all those that opted in, Paul would show a different ad set that directly takes them to the sale page.

He calls this is the Elope Approach.

His multi-step Facebook Ad Strategy builds up a connection with your targeted audience before going for the sale. This helps in nurturing leads and segmenting people that are most likely to convert.

Particularly important was the Facebook Ad relevance score. A high Facebook Ad relevance score helped your ad not being flagged by Facebook and delivered to your targeted audience.

So when he showed the sales ads to his existing audience, a high relevance score for imminent as these people already knew him.

For most B2B businesses having a Facebook Sales Funnel is crucial. It might sound a lot of work but gains are immense, and you can use it over and over again.

Lessons Learned # 30 – Rather than going straight for sales, develop a Facebook funnel through a lead magnet. Once you have subscribers in your funnel, nurture them with you offer ads.

Lessons Learned # 31 – Use different ads / ad sets for the retargeted audience / warm leads. Since they already know about your product, take them straight to your money page.

For example, create a different ads / ad set for cold and warm leads and make sure that you exclude each one of them in the targeting set.

Case Study # 11 – How Wahida Generated High-Quality Leads With Just $10/Day

Sending people straight to a sales page might work in commodity niches such as online stores, but for B2B services it’s essential to capture the leads first.

This case study came from Wahida Lakhani, one of the students of Claire Pelletreau from her Ad Consultant Incubator program. She was able to manage a very low cost / lead for a client in health and fitness niche.

The idea was same as Paul Romano – generate leads using a lead magnet and then move on for the sale.

But she tweaked it a bit.

Rather than sending them to a lead magnet straight away, she added another layer. She sent the traffic from Facebook ad to a high-quality article on the blog and added a lead magnet as the content upgrade.

The original article was on creating “Easy Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars” but she added the details of the lead magnet “6 Vegan and Gluten-Free Recipes.”

This is uber awesome, provided you have an ultra high-quality article that drives CTR from Facebook and an equally irresistible lead magnet.To ensure they provided the detail of valuable content in the ad, she also added the lead magnet detailed information in the FB ad.

The results were 10/10 relevance score from Facebook, high CTR ( 5%)  and lead cost at just $0.65.

Want 10/10 relevance scores also? Check out our free targeting training here.

This was far less than the industry standard in health and wellness. So regardless of how competitive your niche is, there is still an opportunity for to score dirt-cheap leads.

Lesson Learned # 32 – Having a high-quality content helps in generating high CTR, better engagement, and lead generation.

Lesson Learned # 33 – Use your Facebook Ad effectively to list all the value you are providing. This will make your case stronger and gives the reader more reason to interact with your ad.

Lesson Learned # 34 – With a well thought out plan / funnel / strategy, you can shatter any industry benchmarks no matter how competitive your niche is.

Case Study # 12 –  How Mary Got 532 Subscribers in 43 days Using Facebook Ads

For startup businesses and bloggers, getting new subscribers for their blog is often challenging. They might end up producing high-quality content but fail to attract the subscribers/ optins they would expect.

This case study will help you understand that how can you use Facebook Ads to generate more subscribers for your blog.

Mary Fernandez shows how she gained new blog subscribers for just $0.43 each using video ads.

One common thing that she experienced in building blog subscribers for her clients was that personalizing the ad gave better results than a stock-photo ad.

Such as these are some examples of a personalized ad.

And this too;

Why these ads?

View the Facebook from the standpoint of a potential subscriber.

They are probably surfing Facebook to see what their friends are doing, following up with family and socializing but not to view ads.

If your ad looks like a traditional ad, there is a high chance that they will ignore it. But if they see something relevant or something which might not be another ad from the laundry, they are more likely to engage.

So where possible try to use a personal looking photo of you or your employees, instead of stock photos.

Lessons Learned # 35 – Facebook Ads can be used for any objective – even if its finding or increasing new subscribers for your blog.

Lesson Learned # 36 – Keep your ads as personal as possible. Your audience will be more likely to interact with your ad if it has a human effect / touch.

Case Study # 13 – How Servando got 500% ROI from a $20 Facebook Ad budget

This case study is especially useful for people and businesses that don’t have a product of their own but are promoting affiliate products.

We have often seen our customers using Facebook Ads for promoting affiliate offers, but they seem to struggle in creating an effective strategy.

One of the biggest mistakes they make is not using the landing page effectively.

It’s not difficult or impossible to send traffic from Facebook. If you set your targeting right, you will still be able to get the required traffic.

However, if you are promoting affiliate products on Facebook , don’t send them straight to a sales page but to a “bridge” page first.

This is what Servando Silva of Stream-Seo did. For the affiliate offer, he was promoting using two landing pages.

1 – One page that had a description of the offer and a Free Trial button that took them straight to the sales page.

2 – One that has an opt-in form ( just for email) and after submitting will lead to the sales page.

He spent overall $20 on ads on both the ads pages and was able to earn $100 in commission and 60 valuable leads.

Though the sales came from the first page, he was able to score valuable leads via the second ad and landing page.

Not only did he earn $80 over his $20 spend, but he also grew his list which he can leverage in the future.

From the 198 people that clicked on from his Facebook Ads , almost 119 clicked on to the affiliate link. So this shows that bringing quality traffic certainly works in your favor.

Lesson Learned # 37 – If you want the best ROI from your campaigns, don’t just focus on the Facebook Ad part – plan ahead where you will send the traffic and how will you capitalize on them.

Lesson Learned # 38 – Create multiple funnels and objectives from different ad sets and landing pages. Such as in this case he tested two ads on two different landing pages giving him multiple segmented audiences.

So there you have it – an in-depth review of the best handpicked Facebook Ads Case studies from nearly all types of businesses with variable objectives.

By reviewing the above case studies, it is evident that the success of Facebook Ads lies in multiple things. But it’s also clear that budget is not a primary factor, and you can succeed with even minimal of the budget.

What’s your favorite case study?

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Inflow: eCommerce Marketing Agency

Home > Social Media Advertising > Facebook/Instagram (Meta)

Facebook Advertising Case Study: How 2 Facebook Ads Increased B2C Sales by 785% in 30 Days

Editor’s note: This Facebook case study was originally published in June 2020. It has been updated for accuracy and to reflect modern practices.

In digital marketing, you never make promises you can’t keep or set goals you can’t reach. 

But, in some cases, ad copy, the right messaging, and the perfect opportunity all line up to produce results that blow away any conventional expectations. 

In this blog, we’re sharing an incredible Facebook Ads eCommerce case study featuring a former client of ours, Seltzer Goods . They’re a B2C brand that sells uniquely inspired home goods for modern living. 

Like most businesses at the start of the COVID-19 crisis, they saw a sharp drop in orders. But, instead of pulling back, they decided to double down and increase ad spend during this time — leading to substantial results, including:

• 9.68x return on ad spend (ROAS)
• 785% increase in monthly revenue
• $4.87 cost per customer acquisition (CPA)

But the success didn’t stop there. In addition to the improvements on the paid social channels, sitewide organic metrics increased significantly, too, with:

• 6.6% organic conversion rate
• 183% increase in monthly organic traffic
• 931% increase in brand query and product searches 
• 200% increase in non-branded search query impressions 

Today, we’ll tell you exactly how we made it all happen — so you can replicate these results in your social ad campaigns, too.

You can also schedule a free consultation with our digital marketing team to get started anytime.

Defining the Scope of the Project

Like many eCommerce businesses, Seltzer Goods was initially hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic . Their challenge to our team: Create more sales from their B2C products to offset the negative effects on their wholesale business. 

Fortunately, Seltzer Goods’ products lent well to the stay-at-home orders during early 2020, especially their artistically unique jigsaw puzzles . 

The brand had the right products and plenty of inventory to make a splash; it just didn’t have enough awareness of these products among consumers to create the desired sales.

So, we came up with a solution to drive the interest Seltzer needed.

The ingredients:

• 1 Facebook Ad
• 1 Instagram Ad
• Strong creative and ad copy for both
• A receptive (cold) audience
• Carefully scaled ad budget

Setting Up the Ads

Although Seltzer Goods had never run campaigns before on their Facebook Ad account, we knew social media advertising would eventually be a key to their success. So, before we even began our engagement, our team added a Facebook pixel to the eCommerce site.

This gave us a major advantage: Because Facebook had been collecting data on purchasers and site visitors for months, we were able to hit the ground running when creating well-informed ads.

The Campaign

Here at Inflow, we believe in the power of the “See, Think, Do” Facebook Ads strategy . It’s served us extremely well when working with other eCommerce stores , so we used this framework for Seltzer Goods, too. 

Because we wanted to reach new customers and see how they responded to our ad creative, we started with a single campaign that only targeted cold audiences (with no retargeting ads). By choosing a conversion-based approach optimized toward purchases, Facebook and Instagram would serve the ads to users who were most likely to take action — weeding out the window shoppers.

With this setup, we’d send more qualified shoppers into Seltzer Goods’ sales funnel from the very start.

When creating an ad set on Facebook, it’s easy to get lost in all the options you can select. 

For Seltzer Goods, we kept it simple and opted into all devices and automatic placements. This would give Facebook and Instagram’s machine learning more options to display the ads, leading to better results for our client.

Given the lower price point of the product and the likelihood that consumers would impulse buy, we used a one-day click delivery optimization, instead of the default seven-day click optimization. (We recommend using the latter only if your product costs more than $100 or if your potential customers have a longer buying cycle.)

The Ad Set Targeting

For our custom audience targeting, we started with an interest-based audience ad set that was closely related to the puzzles we were selling. 

Then, we quickly added in lookalike audiences for three segments of visitors that took action on the site:

• Key page visitors 
• AddToCart users
• Purchasers (once the seed audiences were sufficient)

Having the Facebook pixel properly implemented and firing on key events such as ViewContent, AddToCart, and Purchase expedited the data collection on the seed audiences and built better lookalike audiences faster. 

Pro Tip: Take note of the age of your lookalike audience. For example, a 14-day lookalike audience could look and behave dramatically differently from a 180-day lookalike audience, particularly during abnormal time periods such as pandemics, holidays, or Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

When implementing the lookalike audiences, we used the existing post ID from the interest-based ad sets. This allowed us to retain social proof (likes, shares, and comments) from the original ads, which would act as a positive signal to Facebook’s algorithm and potential buyers.

Next, we applied a clean and consistent naming convention structure from the campaign to the ad sets, the ads, and the UTM tagging on the back end of the URL. This streamlined our optimizations within the campaign and made reporting much easier. 

Additionally, it allowed us to leverage the power of Google Analytics alongside the native reporting from Facebook Business Manager /Ad Manager, which is crucial in understanding your attribution models and entire audience journey.  

For the best Facebook marketing results, we recommend incrementally scaling your budget over time. In the case of Seltzer Goods, we scaled up budgets by 10–15% every couple of days, as long as the ROAS was at least 5x.

A more significant increase can wreak havoc on well-performing campaigns and hurt ROAS or cost per acquisition (CPA) metrics when Facebook has to quickly adjust to new information and determine the best way to serve it. 

Breaking Down Our Ads

While targeting and budget are important for Facebook Ad success, you won’t get anywhere without first having an attractive, engaging ad. 

Facebook A/B testing is key to creating a top-performing ad that your target audience wants to see. By testing a few options, you can combine the best creative and copy to increase sales, rather than waste money running one ineffective ad at a time.

For Seltzer Goods, we started by running two different ad creatives against the same in-ad copy.

The Creative

When creating our Facebook ads, we selected single-image ads in a 1:1 ratio. 

Because the majority of social media consumption happens on mobile devices, the 1:1 ratio gives advertisers the best chance of showing the ads in an optimal format to a wider audience. 

This particular creative captures the fun, bright, and artistic essence of Seltzer Goods’ puzzles and makes it an ideal choice for Facebook and Instagram advertising. By capturing the user’s attention, it stops the proverbial scroll and lends itself to a closer look.

Ad Creative #1:

Ad Creative #2:

Remember, your ad creative (image, video, or carousel) is the most important factor in a successful ad. It’s the one thing that is exclusively yours and the best way for your brand to stand out in the crowded social feeds.

For this campaign, we chose to retain the same copy across both ad options for a few important reasons:

• It’s relevant. Seltzer Goods recognized the value of people staying indoors during the time period in which we ran the ad. 
• It’s positive. Exercising the mind is something that everyone — from doctors and nurses to grandmas, aunties, and your seven-year-old nephew — can agree is good for you. 
• It uses a natural call to action. The statement “Strengthen your puzzle game” is subtly woven into the text field and invokes a challenge to shoppers.
• It invokes a message of togetherness. Seltzer Goods’ Better Together series featured puzzles with modern designs from artists who meant something to the brand. It’s unique to Seltzer Goods, and, by highlighting this information in the ad, users had one more way to connect with the company. 
• It uses positivity and hope instead of hard sales. The copy’s headline, “Brighten Your Day One Piece at a Time” is certainly not your standard ad headline (“Get Your Puzzle Today!” or “Hurry, Supplies Are Limited!”) — but it sparked more joy for purchasers in a time of stress and uncertainty.
• It emphasizes a quick turnaround. During a time when out-of-stock issues abounded, using the phrase “In Stock & Ready To Ship” reassured consumers upfront that Seltzer Goods’ products were stocked and ready to go. 

Results & Takeaways

When it comes to paid social advertising, effective creative and copy are your not-so-secret weapons. Stay true to your brand, delight your customers with an ad creative, and you’ll win every time. 

At the same time, scaling vertically and horizontally can also reap huge benefits. But you need good audience data to do it right. 

The more recent your seed audiences, and the larger they are, the better lookalikes you can create — and the more sales you can drive through your campaigns.

Using these strategies, we saw great success with Seltzer Goods’ campaigns, including a 4.5x ROAS ( 9.68x ROAS with Facebook attribution) and less than $10 CPA ( $4.87 with Facebook attribution).

In total, this campaign accounted for 25% of Seltzer Goods’ monthly revenue . Sitewide sales during this period, however, were equal to the total from the last seven months of sales — a 785% monthly increase .

So, what did it mean?

Our Facebook Ads campaigns didn’t just affect social revenue. It also affected other channels, too. 

How Paid Ads Affect Other Channels’ Performance

After everything was calculated, Seltzer Goods’ paid social ads only accounted for 25% of the total revenue generated in this 30-day campaign. 

That leaves another 75% of the generated revenue unaccounted for, which we can attribute to other channels — organic, direct, and referral traffic  — that also experienced significant increases in performance.

In other words, Facebook and Instagram ads can (and often do) have a quantitative and qualitative positive effect on other channels, too . 

Below, you’ll see Seltzer Goods’ top-level source data for organic, direct, and referral traffic, comparing the first month we launched our initial Facebook campaigns to the month before.

In addition to the new cost-per-click (CPC) traffic, direct and organic channels skyrocketed in both traffic volume and conversion rate (185% to 533% and 351% to 903%, respectively), suggesting both an increase in demand and intent.

While we acknowledge that this particular time frame was opportune for puzzle vendors, we also know that no marketing effort exists in a silo. While other eCommerce clients have also seen increased demand, traffic volume, and transactions as a result of COVID-19, Seltzer Goods is a unique case — because the only marketing change we implemented was focused solely on Facebook and Instagram ads. 

Increased Referral Traffic

Our paid social campaigns increased the exposure of not just Seltzer Goods’ puzzle products, but also the brand as a whole. With that increased awareness came backlinks and referral traffic from BuzzFeed and Architectural Digest, as well as a better-established social media presence for the brand.

Using Google Analytics, we also saw that some of the referral traffic (such as that from BuzzFeed) found Seltzer Goods through Facebook and Instagram ads. It was quality traffic, too; for referrals from BuzzFeed, users, conversions, and conversion rates increased by 1,206%, 1,001%, and 18%, respectively.

The trend continued when we examined the organic side of these social platforms. For example, the organic Instagram referral source saw an almost 1,700% increase in traffic and transactions — which speaks to an increased level of engagement and intent from the users consuming Seltzer Goods content. 

Increased Organic Traffic

Google organic also showed strong improvement across the board. With a conversion rate of more than 6.6%, we wanted to dig a little deeper. 

Below, you’ll see a comparison between organic traffic during the time period the ads were running and the previous period — an 183% increase in users .

At the same time, we saw:

• 105% increase in total brand impressions
• 319% increase in clicks
• 105% increase in click-through rate (CTR)

Naturally, we wanted to know what types of queries were surging in organic traffic. What we found was highly encouraging for anyone struggling to convey the value of Facebook beyond the platform’s attribution model. 

For analysis, we split the site’s organic search queries into two primary categories and subcategories:

• Brand traffic + puzzle product-specific mention (“Seltzer Goods Ramen puzzle”)
• Non-brand traffic with a puzzle product-specific mention (“Ramen Noodle Bowl puzzle”)

Upon slicing the data further, we saw impressions for “Brand Queries + Puzzle” jump 931%, with an 831% increase in clicks. 

Even more exciting: The non-brand segment of puzzles showed nearly a 200% increase in impressions, accompanied by a 1,134% increase in clicks — the segment with the largest increase in CTR (315%).

So, not only did the paid social ads have an impact on the volume of branded search queries in the search engines, but they also had a remarkable impact on the intent of those queries (further reflected by the increased conversion rate). 

While this is a smaller portion of traffic, it reflects the target market we were engaging and lends credence to paid social’s impact as a branding effort. Remember: There were no active SEO adjustments made during this time that would have had an impact on organic traffic. 

This data is particularly encouraging for two reasons: 

• It shows the correlation between strong social media ad campaigns and organic traffic from a brand-awareness, upper-funnel perspective.
• It demonstrates the correlation between a strong social media ad campaign and its impact on the bottom of the funnel.

Invest in Paid Social & Reap the Rewards

Let’s be honest: It’s very likely that Seltzer Goods would have seen an increase in puzzle sales, given the demand brought on by COVID-19. 

However, without these strong Facebook and Instagram ads campaigns, the results would not have been as explosive across all digital channels.  

This new brand awareness that led to links and brand searches probably wouldn’t have increased to such a degree, nor would we have expected the lifts in organic social, either. 

It’s hard to parse the exact impact, but we strongly believe that we took a wave of potential performance and turned it into a tidal wave of sales.

Ultimately, Facebook and Instagram ads accelerated the incredible increase in traffic, expansion in traffic portfolios, and improvement in purchase intent. By combining relevant targeting and strong creative that embraces both the brand voice and the advertising platform’s capabilities, we were able to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time. 

All of these elements are critical in running a successful digital marketing campaign that has wide-reaching impacts across the entire digital ecosystem. 

“Inflow helped us quickly increase eCommerce sales in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. A multi-year strategy for growing sales and conversions was suddenly kicked into high gear. We really love their responsiveness, effort to understand our business, and determination to deliver the highest ROI possible.” — Gay Lam, Seltzer Goods

That said, this success wouldn’t have been possible without something worthwhile to advertise. With several products that radiate fun, brightness, and positivity, Seltzer Goods kept its advertising messaging and creative true to its brand. It delighted its customers by offering great experiences and first-class customer service, including handwritten notes with the purchases — all of which led to a COVID success story.

Follow this formula with your own brand, and you’ll win every time. 

Want an expert to do it for you? Whether you’re looking for more online sales or better lead generation , our team can create paid social media advertising strategies that impact your digital ecosystem, measure your results, and put you on a path for continuous improvement.

Request a free proposal from us anytime to get started.

In the meantime, read more of our Meta case studies below:

• Clothing Facebook Ads Case Study: 219% Increase in Social Ad Revenue
• How a Dual Paid Social & Search Strategy Earned Tactipup Record-Breaking Sales
• Furniture Facebook Ads Case Study: ROAS 0 to 29.5 in 3 Months
• How We Used Facebook Ads to Help Vitrazza Reach $1 Million/Month in Sales

Puzzle sales is a very innovative concept in this Covid-19 situation. This time very effective through social media.

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About The Author

Andrew Halfman (Alumni)

Andrew was a Senior Paid Strategist at Inflow, where he specialized in driving business results through the power of paid social media. He has more than six years of experience in digital strategy, spanning paid search, paid social, email marketing, and programmatic media.

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Facebook ads for lead generation: case study.

Did you know that every second there are an estimated 20,000 active users on Facebook? That’s a whole online world of potential custom that you could be missing out on if you aren’t using Facebook Ads.

Facebook Ads is a platform designed to provide results depending on your business objective. Reach, app installs, video views, conversions and catalogue sales are just a few of the options available for you.

We conducted a test using Facebook Ads’ ‘Lead Generation’ campaign type, which I will be sharing the results of in this blog.

The lead generation campaign allows you to collect lead information from people who are interested in your business. Rather than having a primary focus on driving users to convert on your website, they are encouraged to leave details (such as name, phone number, and email address) on the lead form on the ad itself.

Some of the benefits of these campaigns are:

• Multiple targeting options mean you can show your ads to a more concentrated audience based on factors such as age and gender, location, interests and behaviour
• Customised questions: get answers to self-written questions to obtain more specific information relevant to your business
• Contact information that the user has already shared with Facebook is pre-populated, which also makes for much more efficient mobile lead generation
• You can sync to your CRM to receive the lead form submissions immediately

Case Study:

The account used was a lead generation client looking to launch a short-term test campaign to increase their volume whilst keeping CPL under £5, so our main aim here was to drive as many leads as possible within given time constraints and locations.

When we initially set up the campaign we were required to create one ad set with a radius target around a location, expanding out to multiple other locations depending on performance.

With this in mind we used an ad set per location, targeting an audience that showed interest in topics relating to the business.

The client initially only wanted 1 location live, so we added a 10km radius around the location.

It was good start for CPL as an average of 3 leads a day were recorded at £0.73 CPL.

Given our time limitations we wanted to increase lead volume, so widened our location radius which saw a daily improvement from day 6 to 10.

Although there was a spike in CPL on day 13, our overall CPL was still under £1 for the week.

Following this positive performance we created new ad sets for different locations which were set live on day 21.

An instant improvement in lead volume was recorded as a result, with CPL under £2.

Our client reported that the lead quality was very good, so provided more locations to target.

From day 22 we had multiple ad sets live, targeting 20km around those locations. An instant uplift in lead volume occurred, averaging 75 leads a day.

For the month period that we were live, we recorded 682 leads at £1.47 CPL.

The targeting options available to us meant that we were able to succeed in providing good quality leads that met the client’s criteria, at a CPL that was 71% under the target. Following this success we’ve relaunched the campaign as this has proved to be an efficient and inexpensive way of gaining leads.

When looking at ways to gain leads, the Facebook Ads platform should be a definite consideration. With over 1 billion active Facebook users every day, there’s no question that this platform provides a wide and diverse reach to suit the majority of lead generation businesses.

If you’re interested in setting up a Facebook Ads account, or simply want to discuss your current strategy, feel free to contact us for a no obligation conversation.

Written by Anna Wood , PPC Analyst at Circus PPC Agency

A logical thinker and committed to delivering quality results for clients, with experience working on global brands.

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6 Surprising B2B Facebook Marketing Case Studies

Listen to this Article

One of our primary activities at the Brian Carter Group is Facebook advertising for clients. We’ve spent a good amount of that time over the last year doing lead gen campaigns for both B2B and B2C, sending people to lead gen pages from Facebook ads. And we’ve seen some great results.

Facebook Isn’t Just for Business-to-Consumer Marketing

There are a couple common misconceptions disproved by our case studies.

First is the misconception that social media can’t be measured beyond engagement and sentiment . We posted what were, as far as we know, the first Facebook profit case studies ever back in 2011.

We’re certainly not the only company proving you can get leads and sales from social media and track that success, but some marketing and PR folks still are not informed about what social media has been able to do in the last five years.

The other misconception is that Facebook is only for B2C.

“Facebook doesn’t work for B2B,” people say. “Users aren’t on there for work.” You’re right! People are on Facebook to be distracted. “I’m bored,” Facebook users say. “Show me something awesome!”

If that something awesome you show them happens to help with their work, they’ll click on it . That’s what the data tells us about B2B Facebook advertising.

Why Facebook works for B2B: Facebook users want awesome distractions. Show them something awesome that helps with their work, and they’ll click on it.

Besides, we live in an era where the line between home and work has blurred.

We have found that Facebook is a viable (and sometimes preferred) channel for B2B lead gen . Our case studies below prove it.

6 Business-to-Business Facebook Marketing Case Studies

Here are some of our B2B Facebook advertising case studies over the last 12 months:

• An attorney got a case worth $100,000 from Facebook after spending just a few hundred dollars on Facebook advertising.
• A cloud hosting company got new business leads from Facebook advertising and a whitepaper for $59 each. The most affordable ads brought in leads at just $29 apiece. The most expensive ones targeted CIO’s and cost $74.08 each.
• A new B2B financial industry business  discovered their offering wasn’t needed or wanted by the target audience. They discovered this (via extraordinarily low clickthrough rates) with an investment of just a few hundred dollars in Facebook advertising. They saved tens of thousands of dollars by not going further down that dead-end path.
• A financial industry event generated 305 registrations at $71.34 each, while ads reached 1.5 million people and generated clicks from 18,125 people.
• A marketing agency generated new client leads for $29.26 apiece.
• An SaaS company used a whitepaper to generate 504 leads and 92 new demo signups for $26 per demo signup. Notable here was that the target was people who worked at Fortune 1000 companies.

Based on our experience above, people do click and opt in for B2B offers while they’re on Facebook.

The Advantages of Facebook Ads

Facebook ads have four key advantages over AdWords and LinkedIn ads:

Facebook has the largest audience.  Google is almost as big, but you can only target people looking for what you have. Facebook lets you target people based on job title, company, etc. LinkedIn is much smaller than the other two.

Facebook ads are prominent enough for a lot of people to click.  Google also does a good job with this. As for LinkedIn’s self-serve ads, what’s the last one you remember seeing? Exactly. Unless you spend $10k per month, you can’t use their more prominent “enhanced” ads.

Facebook has the lowest cost per click.  Google ads average over $2.50 per click. LinkedIn ads average over $3.00 per click.

Facebook ads reward you for testing more ads and targets.  You can lower the cost by 50% or more with diligent testing . Google ad cost per click doesn’t change much with your testing. LinkedIn ad cost per click doesn’t change much either. Facebook ads reach more people, grab more attention, and cost a lot less if you diligently test ads.

7 Tips for Facebook Advertising Lead Gen Results

Now that you know Facebook ads work for B2B, why aren’t you using them for lead gen? Here’s how.

• Get Professional. Use the Facebook Ad Manager, not Boost Posts. You’re going to need all the features of Ad Manager. You can use Power Editor if you like, but it’s not required 99% of the time.
• Squeeze Your Leads. Create an effective squeeze page, rather than relying on your website to convert them (unless your website’s lead conversion rate average is 5% or higher). Use a tool like LeadPages or Clickfunnels to base your work on proven squeeze page templates.
• Track Conversions. Create and place your conversion tracking in the thank you page after  the squeeze page, and select Website Conversion ads as your objective.  This video will teach you how to set that up.
• Know Your Audience. Check out Audience Insights to learn more about your customers or prospects. It’s located inside the Facebook Ad Manager in the lefthand navigation. If your company isn’t listed, try a bigger competitor, industry magazines, or associations. See what other pages they like. Record this info to use for your ad targeting.
• Test Targeting First. Test your targeting first with a simple ad and basic image. There are usually at least five to ten ways you could target your prospects. Find the one or two audiences that convert best at the lowest cost per lead.
• Test Creative Second. Then test more creative images, headlines, and body text. Test 20–25 variations on your proven targets. You aren’t really doing Facebook ads well until you’ve created 15–20 ads.
• Optimize Ads Scientifically. With every review of the results, theorize why some ads or targets worked and others didn’t. Use those theories to create even better ads and continue to revise your theories.

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[Case Study] How Facebook Lead Ads Decreased Our Cost Per Lead by 80%

July 15, 2021

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Special thanks to Rob Tutty at Driftrock for his help and guidance in getting Facebook Lead Ads set up for Ladder! We have a culture of learning from the best at Ladder, whether it’s for ourselves or our clients. Rob’s help was instrumental in the success of this Lead Ads test.

When we first started talking about running Facebook Lead Ads for Ladder , I was skeptical.

I have a major distaste for all things Gmail when it comes to CRM email drip campaigns (lead ads tend to drive a high proportion of personal email addresses). Promotions tabs eat up all communication and result in low lead meeting booking rates. Further, I was generally anxious about reports that Lead Ads drive a lot of low quality leads.

But our friend Rob at Driftrock helped alleviate my concerns on the lead quality front. After a few calls where Rob helped me set up what amounted to the perfect Facebook Lead Ads campaign for Ladder, I set it live.

Here’s what happened:

• $2,000 spent over 2 months
• 249 leads generated at a $12 CPL
• 65 qualified leads generated at a $32 CPQL
• 80% decrease in our overall cost per lead , from an average of $100 to an average of $20
• 80% decrease in our overall cost per qualified lead , from an average of $300 to an average of $60

Compare that to our ideal cost per lead ($100-150) and our ideal cost per qualified lead ($300-400), numbers we’ve been hitting with AdWords over the past quarter, and you can see the value lead ads have driven for Ladder .

The fact that Lead Ads actually worked is a huge win for us at Ladder. So far this year, our primary pillars of growth have been content and AdWords, but neither are scalable in the same way that Facebook advertising can be.

Meanwhile, we’ve tried our hand at Facebook ads a few times over the past year, both as part of our 2017 marketing plan and our 2016 growth efforts. None of our Facebook tests have proven to be ROI-positive, unfortunately, driving plenty of clicks but few qualified leads.

Lead Ads working so well means we’re onto a third pillar of growth.

So what was the formula that worked so well?

It’s actually rather simple, and I’ll go through the entire setup below:

Download a PDF version of this case study!

FREE CASE STUDY >>

First off, let’s talk about the objective of this campaign.

Obviously, the only objective we could possibly go for in this case would be Lead Generation, which opens up lead forms as an option for the campaign. So I went into Facebook’s Power Editor and created a Lead Generation campaign.

From here, it was time to fully build out the ad set.

On Rob’s advice, we decided to go with a Lookalike audience based on all website visitors. On top of that we added a marketing interest overlay, further narrowed by an entrepreneurship interest overlay.

The reason for the deep narrowing of the Lookalike audience was because we wanted to make sure we were targeting people who exactly fit the persona of a marketing-focused entrepreneur as a potential decision maker at a startup.

The end result was an audience of about 1 million across the US and UK.

Finally, I set our budget at $35 a day, enabling us to reach our audience with a daily reach that wouldn’t result in the same ad showing multiple times to the same person.

Up next, creative.

Here we went with something simple that has historically shown high clickthrough rates for Ladder’s prior Facebook ads tests.

The copy was derived from a line of copy on our website:

“Your business isn’t based upon someone clicking an ad.

Your marketing strategy shouldn’t be either.

Access marketing success rates 300% higher than the industry average.”

Straightforward and powerful, this copy is all about showing Ladder’s value beyond just advertising and into full-funnel marketing.

Further, it talks about our success rate vs. the marketing industry as a whole. You can read about how we reached that success rate in our this blog post .

Finally, the headline and the link description.

“Industry-leading performance” hearkens back to our 300% higher test success rate.

“Talk to a strategist >>” is the call to action on our website, a piece of CTA copy that has time and again proven to convert at a high rate.

Next up, I had to put together the lead form.

The difficulty I had here was to balance ease of completion with quality of data, but for this very first test, we decided to err entirely on the side of ease of completion and get as many leads through the door as possible.

As a result, all we’re asking in our lead form is for name and email, two auto-filled form fields that require no additional work from the individual.

There’s no intro screen to the lead form either — we determined that the ad speaks for itself and the form is so easy to complete that an intro screen would decrease conversion rates. There is, however, a place after form submission where new leads can click through to the Ladder homepage.

Performance

From here, we ran the ad, and results were pretty immediate. In just the first couple days, we got over a dozen leads, and a quarter of them were qualified. This immediately indicated that we were on the right track.

Here are some overall performance statistics:

• Relevance score: 5
• Cost per lead: $12
• Cost per qualified lead: $32
• Form completion rate: 14%

We can definitely do a bit better on the form completion rate side, but overall these numbers are ones we’re happy with in initial testing.

Lead Quality

One of the harder parts of our Facebook Lead Ads campaign has been qualifying leads. If you’ve kept up at all with Ladder over the last two months, you might have seen our new Lead Qualification Workflow on our website. It helps us score leads on a scale of 0-10 and lets us decide which buckets (qualified & unqualified) they get routed to.

We don’t have that luxury here, and adding just any lead to our email automation could result in tons of unqualified calls for our sales team.

Thus far, it’s been a daily manual process of qualifying new leads and adding them to our CRM, which doesn’t take more than 10 minutes a day but is still less automated than we’d like.

For the future, we’re looking into better, more automated ways to do this qualification

Personal Emails

The vast majority of leads give us their personal emails. It’s what they have as their default Facebook emails. This is far less than ideal, but we’re working with what we have here. Ideally, however, we should be asking for work emails. That is another test for another time, especially now that we have the campaigns working and well-structured.

Soon, I expect that cost per lead will start to creep up due to ad fatigue. Part of this will be finding and expanding audiences, and part of it will be a creative refresh. Both are in our roadmap for the quarter.

And that’s it for Ladder’s Facebook Lead Ads case study. Have you found any success with Facebook’s Lead Ads? Let us know! Email me at stefan [at] ladder.io or Tweet at us at @LadderDigital!

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Lead Generation Case Study: 7 Examples of Success

Case studies are one of the most important lead generation strategies. A good case study not only proves a marketing company’s success, but also zones in on the strategies used to identify leads, customer pain points, increase sales, convert leads, and accomplish other goals.

But which lead gen strategies are the real winners?  

In this post, we’ll go over seven effective lead generation campaign case studies, the strategies involved, and the results that the brands received – so you can get inspired for your own strategy.

7 Lead Generation Case Studies to Inspire You

From startups to established enterprises, these seven case study examples will inspire you to take action and improve your own lead generation efforts.

Visual media company Twenty20 may be breaking ground in the stock image world, but they struggled to convert users into paid subscribers. They relied on an inconsistent sales process that didn’t deliver the growth they needed. As a result, they sought help from us.

The Challenge: Convert Prospects into Paid Subscribers

Twenty20 suffered from many barriers in its growth and needed to overcome them. Digital design is a competitive field, and prospects were choosing the competition.

There were also issues in their sales process. The team relied too heavily on their internal sales staff, using account-based marketing and cold calling tactics. They needed to stand out from the competition by using sales tactics with more value, all while improving their sales process.

Strategy: Optimize Digital Strategies

Instead of relying on a traditional lead gen process, we implemented digital strategies that optimized sales funnel marketing.

We focused on two core digital marketing strategies: search engine marketing and social media advertising . They used an Alpha-Beta-Gamma testing strategy to ensure that they converted prospects at all angles while keeping costs down.

Results: Converted Leads With Free Trial Sign-Ups

Twenty20’s website traffic increased by 403% while achieving the same consistent revenue per session.

We advertised to Twenty20’s target market, which reduced advertising expenses by 72.49%, and promoted a free trial rather than a paid service. Free trial sign-ups were enhanced, with MQLs at a 16.42% increase. Twenty20 no longer needed to rely on traditional advertising methods and its internal sales process.

Dive Deeper: MQL vs. SQL – Serve Up The Right Type Of Content To Your Leads

All great websites start with a prototype, and many web developers turn to Axure. Their software is optimized for website prototypes so that developers can build functional and realistic websites.

To become the best website prototype software, Axure needed to generate more B2B leads and specifically wanted to target SaaS services.

The Challenge: Generate Quality B2B SaaS Leads

Axure needed to generate more leads and attract new customers from B2B SaaS services . Their current strategy was generating website traffic but not new leads. However, advertising can be expensive, so Axure knew they needed help attracting new clients while decreasing CPL costs.

They partnered with us, PPC advertising experts , to accomplish Axure’s lead gen goals:

We noticed various issues in their strategy. First, they targeted countries whose traffic had no value. Their SEO and PPC campaigns optimized broad keywords, and the traffic from those keywords wasn’t converting. Their competitors were also ranking higher for those keywords.

Strategy: Target Quality Leads and Branded Keywords

By measuring where Axure was failing, we created lead generation strategies with value. They prioritized their marketing dollars to target countries that would provide high-quality traffic and were more likely to convert. They also ranked for converting keywords, which included branded terms .

Results: Generated Leads, Increased CTR and Reduced Costs

By putting Axure’s marketing dollars toward smarter avenues, they achieved a 32.04% CTR and reduced conversion costs by 0.51%, with an overall savings of 26.33%. Google Ad spending decreased by 60%, and they maintained an average of $10 CPL. Their cost per conversion decreased by 15.61% while maintaining a conversion rate of 7266.22%.

Thanks to their improved advertising efforts, Axure generated 1,113 leads from branded search alone and increased branded search impressions by 5,400%.

Dive Deeper: SaaS Lead Generation: How We Improved Axure’s Lead Quality Overnight

ThinSlim Foods

ThinSlim Foods was experiencing serious growth: 100-150% over the course of just a few years. They offer the ultimate solution to dieters – low-carb foods that are healthy and taste great.

They also had an effective advertising strategy, so much so that their paid advertising accounts were generating $70-$80K a month alone.

So, what needed to change?

The Challenge: Scale Conversions and Maintain a Better ROAS

ThinSlim Foods’ advertising solution was on the right track, but still needed improvement. Specifically, the company wanted to scale conversions and maintain a healthy ROAS. They also wanted to focus on paid search and social media services more than other marketing initiatives.

They knew they needed a professional digital marketing agency help to achieve this, so they contacted us.

The Strategy: Adjusted Messaging, Rebuilt Ad Structure and More

We implemented multiple services to convert more leads for the e-commerce brand:

• Adjusted messaging to align with the brand
• Rebuilt the Google Search Account to drive organic traffic through non-branded searches
• Retargeted all products
• Allocated the budget to relevant audiences
• Dynamic product ads
• Used “ dark posts ” on Facebook ads
• Dynamic search ads
• Display ads
• A/B testing in paid search headlines

Results: More Client Impressions, Conversions and Savings

The changes we made to their advertising strategy resulted in a 95% impression share for clients, up from the 40%. This resulted from switching ThinSlim Foods to a target CPA conversion mode, where they had more control over increasing or decreasing bids.

Many advertising services were also very effective. For example, dynamic product ads alone resulted in a 200% increase in conversion volume.

To save money, we spread the CPC budget across multiple campaigns. We also helped ThinSlim Foods target more keywords and expand its audience without increasing its budget. And we decreased TSF’s ad spend from $82K to $71K:

Here are other key results from the campaign:

• Increased Google Shopping conversion volume by 2.5x
• Increased Google Search conversion volume by 2.5x
• Profitable Google Discovery campaign
• Profitable Google Display campaign
• Increased Facebook conversion volume by 2.5x

Dive Deeper: E-commerce Advertising Strategy: How We Doubled PPC Sales for ThinSlim Foods (with a 3X+ ROAS)

Stanley Tate knows a thing or two about the student loan debt industry. After all, he also has massive debt to pay off. This is one of the many reasons why he created Tate Law: to represent other former students in the same position.

Tate was doing all the right things with his marketing strategy. He had a high-quality landing page, compelling copy and a strong CTA. But something was missing….

The Challenge: Create Engaging Content for His Audience

Tate knows how young people communicate, and bland legal web copy from landing pages doesn’t draw them in. Instead, he wanted his landing page to communicate in a way they’re accustomed to – using video and interactive media to engage his website visitors and promote his services.

Strategy: Interactive Chatbox Video

An interactive chatbox video was added to his landing page. This video combined the best of a chatbox and Zoom chat, resulting in personalized and interactive video content:

The video starts with an introduction that leads to a “How Can I Help?” button. Viewers can choose any of the options that fit their needs. This button leads to a video where Tate explains the basics of the services they need and invites the viewer to learn more about their pain points. They can also click the button to schedule a free call.

Results: Consultation Increases

Tate saw a 654% increase in calls from potential buyers after adding the video chatbot. His conversion rate also increased from 1.03% to 6.74%.

There are a couple reasons why this was so successful:

• First, the video is educational. Tate introduces himself as a lawyer who wants to help his clients and teach them the basics of student loan law. This immediately creates trust with the viewer.
• Second, viewers don’t have to jump through hoops to learn more about his services. They either click the buttons on the video or schedule a call. All actions are on the same page, so website visitors don’t have to go far to satisfy their demands.

Dive Deeper: 18 Engaging Video Content Types that People Love to Watch

Although fitness is integral for your health, the personal training industry is oversaturated.

This is the issue that was facing UK-based personal training company Intent91. Not only that, but as a small business, they didn’t have a lot of funds to work with.

The Challenge: Generate Leads

Intent91 needed a solution to separate itself from the competition and generate more leads. They wanted to abandon the pushy and intimidating sales tactics that other gyms and trainers used. Instead, they focused more on education and making their advertising strategy less demanding.

Strategy: Facebook Advertising and Social Media Listening

Intent91 invested a small amount – €51.07 GBP – in Facebook Ads . Their goal was to not only enhance brand awareness, but listen to their audience. They did this by experimenting with different CTA buttons.

Facebook offers numerous CTA button options, including:

• Message Now

From here, Intent91 developed a lead-first strategy. They posted more customer testimonials demonstrating that their personal training service helped clients achieve their fitness goals. They also prioritized video testimonials over written ones.

Results: Converted Leads With Educational Content

Of all the Facebook advertising buttons, Intent91 converted the most leads with the “Learn More” button:

This told the company that its audience values information more than pushy sales tactics.

The customer testimonial videos also generated more leads. This content created more trust with prospects, and Intent91 received more engagements.

What Intent91 discovered is that their target audience wants:

• to join a gym that’s less demanding
• to hire trainers that aren’t harsh
• a more personable experience in the fitness industry

They listened to their audience and converted more leads as a result.

Dive Deeper: How This E-commerce Store Doubled Its Revenue Using Our Facebook Ads Advice

BMC Software

BMC Software figured out the solution to complex IT problems: They released a platform that offers a scalable, open and modular platform, reinventing the technological side of their service.

However, they still struggled to convert B2B leads and attract new customers.

The Challenge: Strategic B2B Lead Gen Approach

BMC Software wanted to create a more strategic approach to its B2B lead generation efforts. The ultimate goal was to drive revenue growth and attract quality leads. Since tech has only become more competitive, they needed to dominate the competition and set themselves up as the premier B2B IT solution.

Strategy: Targeted Existing Leads

The strategy was simple: use their database to target new customers. Since they were attracting leads from their own resources, this decreased the CPL and avoided other budget issues. These leads were already familiar with BMC Software, so they traveled down the sales pipeline faster:

Results: Converted More Existing Leads

In this B2B lead generation case study, BMC Software saw results on different levels. There were improvements among their sales professionals. Targeting high-quality leads resulted in more conversions, expediting the sales process. This also improved the performance of internal sales team members, resulting in more productive employees.

In total, BMC Software attracted 5,000 leads . BMC Software not only converted existing leads, but increased the number of MQLs by over 2,500, resulting in a 49.5% conversion rate. This increased their revenue but enhanced growth, making them a more competitive force in the B2B technology sector.

Dive Deeper: 8 Key Demand Generation Strategies to Capture & Convert High-Quality Leads

Cornerstone OnDemand

Cornerstone OnDemand is one of the forces revolutionizing HR tech. They offer various SaaS talent management solutions for HR, focusing on training and retaining employees.

Initially, Cornerstone OnDemand only needed digital marketing help. However, they quickly realized their lead generation strategy also needed some help.

The Challenge: Increase Leads with a Digital Marketing Approach

Their Director of Digital Marketing originally left the company, so Cornerstone OnDemand needed to assess its digital marketing needs. The goal was to promote their software using various digital marketing strategies , enhance brand awareness, and use key channels to increase leads and new customers.

Strategy: Invested in a Multi-Channel Marketing Campaign

Cornerstone OnDemand sought help from a digital marketing agency that created a multi-channel approach .

They invested in paid ads throughout North America and Europe, focusing heavily on Google and LinkedIn . They included a combination of display, search, ABM and programmatic ads . They also developed a content marketing strategy and chatbot marketing automation. And, finally, they improved their web design.

The firm experimented with different CTAs to see which resulted in more leads. These CTAs included:

• Register for the webinar
• Schedule a demo
• Listen to the podcast
• Download assets
• Download our free e-book

Their marketing budget was also updated to invest more in these core channels, and spent consistently throughout the campaign. Their digital marketing firm used internal team members, external sources and stakeholders to fulfill these strategies.

Results: Increased MQLs and Conversions with an Excellent ROI

Cornerstone OnDemand gained 189 closed-won deals, 2,837 MQLs, 25% conversion rates, and a 274% ROI :

Their leads were gained across various channels, specifically Google, LinkedIn, Drift, and Demandbase. LinkedIn proved to be the most effective channel, with 937 qualified leads, and the programmatic ad campaign resulted in a 39% increase in page views.

The CTA to download the free e-book was the most successful, proving that their leads want to learn more about HR software before investing in a platform. Since they stuck to a marketing budget and only spent money consistently, their CPL was reduced.

Dive Deeper:   5 Tips to Build a Seamless Omnichannel Customer Experience

A Lead Generation Case Study Proves Results

There’s a reason why businesses should pay attention to a lead generation case study. These studies show how to create an effective strategy for lead gen and the tactics that brands have used to convert leads and gain new customers.

By studying these lead generation case studies, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of what it takes to attract and convert high-quality leads into loyal customers. Apply these insights to your own business and watch your revenue and growth soar.

Hopefully you got inspired for your own lead generation strategy, but if you just want someone to do the work for you, Single Grain’s experts  can help!👇

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Generating 3.53x Return on Ad Spend for an Event Company

Discover how llama lead gen used facebook, instagram, and linkedin to drive 155 attributed registrations (a $92,845 value) for a financial expo..

In June 2022, Fixated Events hosted an event called Limitless, Financial Freedom Expo in Scottsdale, Arizona. The event provides attendees the opportunity to learn from today’s top experts in business, economics, real estate, and finance so they can move forward on the path of financial freedom with confidence.

Through means of paid advertising on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, Llama Lead Gen created top-to-bottom campaign funnels to promote and drive registrations for the Expo. Numerous types of content and ad placements were implemented throughout the duration of the campaign.

#eventsmarketing

#eventcasestudy

#facebookads

#linkedinads

Campaigns were launched on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Each platform helped promote the messaging to its distinct audience. There were however clear winners when analyzing performance and effectiveness across similar audiences and reporting metrics, giving each media platform its strong and weak points. Overall, Facebook obtained more total Registrations, but LinkedIn converted attendees at a lower average cost.

Strategy & Goal

The primary goal was to drive users to Fixated's website, then convert Registrations for the Limitless Expo. The tactic revolved around paid social advertising on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

The total budget finished at ~$26,000 during the two-and-a-half-month campaign flight. Our assets included content provided by the Fixated team which LLG implemented with several variations to A/B test within each funnel step.

Following Registrations, our secondary KPIs (success metrics) included: Clicks, Views, Site Sessions, and Cost-per-Lead.

Registration Funnel

Campaign Flights

Top of Funnel (TOFU)

Engagement - Event Response

Campaign to promote the Expo. Allowed users to view & sign up for the LinkedIn event. Built an audience to retarget later in the funnel.

Middle of Funnel (MOFU)

Consideration - Message

Conversation ads were promoted on LinkedIn which delivered messages to the target audience's inbox. Chat-flow was setup allowing users to learn then Register.

Bottom of Funnel (BOFU)

Lead Gen - Images

Finally, a retargeting audience was used to drive Registrations from users who showed interest for the event earlier in the funnel.

Facebook, instagram

Awareness - Videos

Campaign to promote the Expo. Used videos to create awareness and build an audience to retarget later in the funnel.

Campaign to promote the Expo. Allowed users to view & sign up for the Facebook event. Built upon the Awareness audience to continue retargeting later in the funnel.

Lead Gen - Carousel/Images

Like LinkedIn, a retargeting audience was used to drive Registrations from users who showed interest for the event earlier in the funnel.

Campaign Targeting

Select geographic targeting strategies were used to get our ads in front of the most appropriate audiences. In addition to event-specific demographic targeting, we implemented ABM lists to discover audiences of similar demographics.

Overall, the platform targeting contributed to a majority of the ad spend and results. However, the Lookalike audiences were also impactful to the final results of the campaign.

Creative Types

Socially optimized videos between 0:06 - 1:00 were utilized to create awareness and build an audience in our top-of-funnel

Engagement creatives, which allowed users to provide Event Responses on Facebook and LinkedIn, were implemented within the middle-of-funnel

conversation

Conversation ads were promoted on LinkedIn which delivered messages to the target audience's inbox

Finally, bottom-of-funnel lead generation ads were shown to the retargeting audiences with the objective of converting Registrations

We discovered early on that the event's biggest name speaker, Robert Kiyosaki, and his wife Kim, were proving to be the highest performing asset for our ad creatives.

The ads which promoted these two, lead the way for Total Engagement and Event Registrations

Users were most influenced by the ads which presented "Rich Dad Poor Dad" author, Robert Kiyosaki

Creative insights, highest performing creatives.

V1 0:38 - Ad #1

Amount Spent - $438

Impressions - 23,178

Reach - 15,108

ThruPlays - 8,884

Interests Targeting - Ad #11

Amount Spent - $751

Link Clicks - 99

Event Responses - 69

Cost Per Response - $11

LI Conversation - Ad #3 (Offer)

Amount Spent - $474

Clicks - 832

Completed Registrations - 6

Cost Per Registration - $79

Price Bump Reminder - Ad #04 (DontMiss)

Amount Spent - $3,970

Clicks - 3,029

Completed Registrations - 34

Cost Per Registration - $116

Performance

Facebook/Instagram

Registrations

As expected, the BOFU campaigns obtained the most Registrations. Followed by MOFU and then TOFU (omitting the Maricopa County campaign).

Like total Spend, Facebook achieved about two-thirds of the Registrations. 155 Registrations were attributed between the platforms.

Registration Rate

The Registration Rate was significantly higher with the LinkedIn BOFU campaigns.

This contributed to LinkedIn having a lower Cost-per-Registration and higher ROAS than Facebook.

Registration Value

The Registration Value largely followed the levels of the funnel, increasing in Value from top to bottom.

Facebook had the greater total Value, but LinkedIn's was higher when comparing to Amount Spent.

Amount Spent

Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)

Overall the Return on Ad Spend was excellent. As expected our largest returns came from the bottom of the funnel.

The LinkedIn "Website Conversion" campaign was almost twice as high as all other campaigns.

What Worked Well

LinkedIn achieved a higher Registration Rate, lower Cost Per Registration, and higher ROAS.  Facebook obtained about two-thirds of the Registrations.

Both platforms had a Click-thru-Rate above industry standards. LinkedIn had an outstanding average Rate of over 2%.

LinkedIn and Facebook each had a positive ROAS over ~4X and ~3X respectively.

The BOFU "Pricing Discount" campaign achieved the highest amount of Registrations on both platforms.

After all campaigns were completed, we had a total spend of $26,305 and achieved 155 attributed Registrations at an average cost of $170 and a total value of $92,845.

Lifetime Metrics

Impressions.

Click-Through Rate

Cost-Per-Click

Attributed Registrations

Total Registrations

Return On Ad Spend

Ready to take your events  marketing efforts to the next level? 

Struggling to effectively and efficiently budget for your advertising campaigns? Save time, money, and resources by hiring Llama Lead Gen as your digital marketing expert.

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