All Forum Posts by: Michael McKay

@Ahmed K. Yes! Thanks again for the tip :)

UPDATE #17

After the test, it looks like the best top of funnel objective to build my audience has been Video Views. It was the cheapest way to build the retargeting audience and the age breakdown of people who received the ad was on the higher end compared to other ad sets. E.g. With the traffic objective, Facebook was serving my ads heavily to the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups, which are less likely to be motivated sellers.

With the Video Views objective, I'm now getting 10 second video views for 2-3 cents. Previously, I was around 7-8 cents per a 10 second video view.

I left on the lead generation objective top of funnel because there aren't enough impressions yet to draw a conclusion. The CPM (cost per thousand impressions) is $30, so there's only been a reach of 500 people so far.

Today, I'm going to set up some audience A/B tests. I'll keep everyone posted with the audiences I set up and the results.

UPDATE #16

My Facebook Ad was blocked without any reason given for the last several days. Facebook support finally got back to me and said it was a mistake and reinstated the account.

1. The A/B test for the best video is complete. A face to face video was the winner, but there were two very close runners ups out of 10 videos total. I'm going to re-test the top 3 winners once the test for the best objective is complete.
2. I just launched several campaigns to test the best Top of Funnel objective. I'm testing Reach, Video Views, and Traffic optimized for landing page views, and Lead Generation.
3. The only lead that came in so far, was a contractor looking for work who called the tracking number on my Facebook page.
4. $135 total spent so far on ads.

@Angela Russo Got it. What objectives are you typically using for top of funnel ads?

@Ahmed K. Got it regarding the the audiences. I'll test these after I text the objectives.

I like the idea of adding the additional video in the funnel. Right now my 10 sec video plays are still pretty low, but I could see this working well once those are higher and I need to filter.

I've been creating new tests in separate ad sets, so I think I'm good there.

@JT Rose Sounds good. I'll hold off on creating that LAL until I'm at 1,500. As of today, I'm at just over 1,000 ten sec video views, so it shouldn't be long until I'm there.

I had my VA look into the tax delinquent list a few months back in CT. It's not as readily available here and she hit some roadblocks, but I should probably dive more deeply into this and pre-foreclosures. I just reached out to a realtor friend, who sources a lot of off market deals in the area, to see if he has any ways to source this.

That makes sense that website conversions would be higher quality/more motivated. I'll make sure to test this after some of my other A/B tests wrap up.

I love the idea of the high frequency reach campaign before a cold calling or direct mail campaign! I'm not doing any cold calls or direct mail right now, but if I add those in the future I'll definitely try that strategy. For now, I'll add the traffic objective to the objective A/B test I mentioned in my post above and see which works best.

@Ahmed K. Thanks for the insights! I'm running an A/B test right now of animated video vs face to face video. As soon as that's complete, I'll run another A/B test for Reach vs Video views optimized for Thruplays. Hopefully, this can lower my cost per Thruplay.

Re: Audiences- Do you think I should run an audience A/B test after the A/B test I mentioned above or before? When you say filtering out buyers, are you doing that by excluding certain interests or based on your ad copy?

What do you mean by your last point "Top of funnel structure"?

@JT Rose That makes sense. Right now my only audience that's above 1,000 people is the 3 second views. My 10 second view audience is just under 500 people. Should I use the 10 sec view audience for the 3% LAL once it hits 1,500 people? Or is there a better audience to base this LAL list off of? 

I don't have any skip traced lists at the moment, but I do have MLS access so I could pull a list from there and upload the names, city, state and zips like I saw in one of your videos (if that's better than the 10 sec view list). I wouldn't have phone numbers though. One example of a list I could pull would be people who have owned properties more than 15 years.

In campaign 2 the only options Facebook gave me for optimization was leads. I used the lead generation objective for the campaign. Do you think it makes sense to create a 2nd campaign and use the same ads, but optimized for conversions?

I do have my pixel set up, but I'm not using the traffic objective in any campaigns at the moment, so not getting too much website traffic.

What are your thoughts on using the Reach objective at the top of funnel? That's what I'm currently using (details on page 3 of this thread), but I'm wondering if I should switch this to another objective like traffic or video views.

Thanks for all the tips!

@JT Rose Do you have any insights on how things are going so far? Is this in line with what you usually see or are my campaigns set up wrong/performing sub par?

Middle of Funnel

I'm running two campaigns in the middle of funnel.

Campaign 1- Convert 3 sec video viewers to 10 sec video viewers

I thought that people who watched videos for 3 seconds might be interested, but a 3 second view shows a pretty low level of interest. My idea behind this campaign was to see if anyone who watched the videos for 3 seconds would watch another video for 10 seconds. If they watch it for 10 seconds, then they will get targeted in the lead generation objective campaign.

• Audience: Watched any TOFU video for 3 secs. Excludes anyone who watched any TOFU video for 10 secs or more or engaged with ad (any type of engagement).
• Objective- Video views
• Ad optimization- Thruplay

Video engagement- Image uploaded here for better quality

Campaign 2- Lead generation

With this campaign I'm trying to capture a leads by retargeting the audiences I've built using other ads. I created 2 ads set in here.

• Audience: Watch any of the TOFU or MOFU campaign 1 videos for 10 secs or more, engaged with any of the above ads, my pages, or website. Excludes anyone who has already submitted a lead form on Facebook or submitted their contact info on my site.
• Objective: Lead generation
• Ad set 1: Dynamic creative using images
• Ad set 2: Video. I did not use dynamic creative here because I wanted the copy to match the problem I talk about in each video.

Ad set 1- Performance and clicks- Image uploaded here for better quality

Ad set 2- Performance and clicks- Image uploaded here for better quality

Other things I've done so far

• Turned off Instagram placements for top of funnel. I did this because IG was heavily serving my ads to 18-24 year old and the chances that they have a property to sell is very low.
• Disabled the original dynamic creative TOFU campaign and replaced it with the two TOFU campaigns mentioned in my original post.

@Luke Marsh I've spent about $75 so far, but no leads yet. 90% of that has been spent at the top of funnel trying to build retargeting audiences, but my retargeting CTR's are pretty low which has me a little stumped. Maybe the retargeting audience isn't big enough yet. Here's the campaigns I've set up so far with some screenshots.

Top of Funnel

Originally I was running a dynamic creative TOFU campaign with 10 different videos (5 animated, 5 face to face with subtitle), but I wasn't getting good insight into which videos were working so I split this into 2 A/B test campaigns. My theory was to see which of each type of video performed best and then run another A/B test with the best animated video vs the best face to face video.

The goal of my TOFU campaigns has been to create a retargeting audience based off 10 second video views or ad engagement (all types).

The audience for all TOFU campaigns has been wide open. I set it to the Orange, CT + 15 miles with no interest targeting.

A/B Test Campaign 1- Animated Videos

• Testing creative to see which animated videos performs best 
• Objective- Reach

Video engagement- Image uploaded here in better quality

Performance and Clicks- Image uploaded here in better quality

A/B Test Campaign 2- Face to face videos

• Testing creative to see which animated videos performs best
• Objective- Reach

Video engagement- Image uploaded here in better quality

Performance and Clicks- Image uploaded here in better quality

Should I try a different objective instead of reach? I chose this objective because I thought it made sense to try to reach the most people in my market for the cheapest cost and then use other objectives on retargeting.

Is there anything else I should change based on what you see?