Jeremy Litwicki owns Profit Addiction and writes about ways to help you build profitable Internet marketing campaigns.
Every marketer, including myself, loves to write about the successful campaigns. As a blogger/marketer, continually telling people about how you suck and cannot make money just would not build credibility. Unfortunately, this creates a HUGE misconception that every Internet marketer who has a blog automatically turns every campaign to gold. Personally, when I started Internet marketing, I would read about somebody making great money online and figured it was something that just took time to learn, and after the learning curve, you are set and will make consistent money and can automatically create a profitable campaign.
Wrong.
There is a learning curve, sure, and the more time you invest in your marketing efforts will definitely increase your chances for success. However, I can build two campaigns simultaneously and one can turn out to be a $X,XXX/day earner while the other is losing $XXX/day. It just happens.
The point of this post is to let you know that not every single campaign will be a winner. Very rarely will a campaign be profitable during the initial tests. Many times, even after spending time and money to try to make a campaign work, it still will not work.
Here are 3 reasons why you are continuously failing on your campaigns (specifically Facebook) and a solution for each.
Lack of Overall Focus
This is very common with beginning marketers and sometimes a trap that anyone can fall into. Whenever I notice campaigns are not working as I want, I take a step back and evaluate my business and what has been going on. More often than not, during these times of slow growth, it is almost entirely due to the fact that I have not been focused.
Focus, in terms of a marketing campaign, can mean a handful of different things:
- Testing too many offers
- Lack of research (usually due to too many offers)
- Jumping onto every ‘hot’ new trend
If you read my blog, I have mentioned the fact that being/staying focused is very important to your success.
If you notice you are not seeing the results you hoped for, especially if you have had some success in the past, chances are you need to take a step back and regain your focus.
You can improve your lack of focus by building ONE new, solid campaign. It will probably turn out better than your previous thrown-together campaigns that you were spending less time on.
Too Little Focus on CTR
I have found the key to profitable campaigns on Facebook lies heavily in achieving a high CTR (click-through-rate). I did a case study about ways to increase CTR on Facebook and published a post about it on my blog. I was very happy with the results, and given the 40,000,000 impressions served, I figured it was enough data to support my claims.
Spend more time and money developing a solid CTR by performing intelligent split-tests and you will notice it is not as difficult as you thought to double, triple, or even ten-fold your original CTR!
Lack of Creativity
I actually wrote another post about being creative on Facebook and how if you do nothing but copy other campaigns, you are not only severely decreasing the chances of continued success of the person you copied, but you are nearly guaranteeing that YOUR efforts will not be profitable either.
Creativity goes a very long way. Here are a few examples of how I created some of my best performing ads:
- Modified an existing picture – Anybody can go find a picture of a person for dating, but very few will modify them with borders, additional color, special effects, etc.
- Created a picture – I am not an artist so you don’t have to be either. This could be as simple as opening MS Paint and scribbling. You would be surprised how some of your creations will perform.
- Talked with friends – Do you promote dating? Do you have any single friends? Ask them what would make THEM click on an ad. Get inside the head of your target market and use that to your advantage.
- Used fresh images – Usually I have access to a profile where I can see what ads are being shown to my target market. When building a new campaign, I find images I have not seen before so they are fresh and usually give me higher CTR.
As a marketer, creativity is your fuel. Use it to your advantage. If you are not very creative (I never have been, actually), you will have to work a little harder at this. With practice, it is not difficult to train yourself to think more creatively.
ProfitAddiction’s Million Dollar Closing Tip:
If you say to yourself “this idea is really stupid”… Try it anyways.
Seriously.
