You may or may not know that FunnelDash goes beyond just building awesome Facebook ads reporting software. Before FunnelDash, Zach started a digital marketing agency where he and his team still do Facebook ads management for information marketers and SaaS companies.
Recently, Zach’s agency built an evergreen funnel for one of our clients who is a coach and consultant. They’re pretty darn proud of this funnel, because they got this client an ROI of 405%. That means for every $1 they put into Facebook ads, they got $4 out in profit.
This funnel also built a substantial email list that this client can continue to market new products and services to, and make into loyal customers and evangelists for those products, which increases the client’s ROI even more..
We’re going to show you how Zach and his team created this funnel, why it worked and how you can do the same for your clients.
Before the Evergreen Funnel
This client signed on with Zach’s agency after he did a Facebook ad audit for them. He used the exact same ad audit methods we outline in this blog post, but he hadn’t built FunnelDash yet. He had to do this one the old-fashioned way, with spreadsheets and pivot tables.
This client hadn’t done a lot with Facebook ads. The majority of their traffic was either organic or from affiliates. This was a whole new marketing channel for them and they weren’t quite sure how it was going to go.
They chose one product to focus on for this initial funnel. It was a product they had promoted to their list, but never to a new audience.
The funnel itself was fairly simple:
- Facebook prospecting ad campaigns to drive new leads to an opt-in page.
- The opt-in page collects email addresses in exchange for a lead magnet.
- An email sequence follows up with new leads, taking them to the sales page.
- Facebook ads remarketing campaigns to new leads that don’t respond to the emails, taking them to the sales page.
Building the Facebook Ads Campaigns
The first thing Zach’s agency did was take a hard look at the audience demographics for this client. There was quite a bit of information already, from the audit done prior to them becoming a client.
The team created a client avatar, based on the information they already had. They also used the information from our extensive testing in the prospecting campaigns to further optimize their ads, which helped them develop a clearer picture of the client’s audience.
This particular client’s audience demographics are:
- Primarily women.
- Mostly from the U.S.
- More than half are college educated and married.
- More than half are iPhone users.
The team also looked at the audience’s most common job titles, and the top Facebook pages they followed.
Knowing this about the client’s current audience helped the team better optimize the ads and targeting for the campaigns when it came to building new prospecting audiences.
The budget was split equally between the prospecting and remarketing campaigns. That way there was a good base to build new audiences from, but also a substantial amount to put toward converting those new leads into customers.
The Prospecting Campaign
Zach’s team used the prospecting campaign to introduce the client and their offer to new audiences and build trust with them. Each ad led to a landing page that gave away a lead magnet related to the product the client was selling.
The lead magnet was part of the trust-building exercise. It needed to show that what the client was selling was a quality product that would deliver the value we were promising.
The team also ran ads to posts on the client’s blog that were relevant to, or promoted the product. Again, there was an email collection form at the blog post to make sure information was captured from as many of these visitors as possible, usually with an additional lead magnet or content upgrade.
In terms of the ad spend, the team looked for for $1.20 to $1.40 per quality lead while maintaining profitable cost per sale.
Your prospecting campaign tells you some important information about your funnel.
If you’re getting lots of clicks, but not a lot of leads, you may need to work on your opt-in page or find a more compelling lead magnet.
If people are buying from your prospecting campaign, you know that your funnel is working well. It shows that your targeting, the positioning of the ads, as well as the opt-in and sales pages are compelling and work well together.
Testing Strategies
The team tested multiple ads and multiple audiences during this campaign, including:
- Similar interests
- Similar niches
- Products and services our known audience was interested in or used.
The cold traffic audiences were based on demographics similar to our client’s audience, including:
- Locations
- Gender
- Age brackets
- Devices
Lookalike audiences were based on:
- Leads
- People who purchased
- Our client’s email list
- Top 25% of website visitors
In terms of the ads themselves, the team tested:
- Types of ads (image, video, carousel, etc.)
- Different images
- Different ad copy
- Facebook ad settings that relate to how Facebook itself operates, in terms of ad placement and optimization.
What the team found for this particular client was that copy that focused on the results and benefits of the product worked best. Images that showed our client got a better response than pictures of the product or a stock photo. The client’s picture helped build trust, showing there was a real, relatable person behind the product.
The team was also careful to exclude all remarketing audiences, everyone who visited the client’s website or who purchased the product. That way they weren’t wasting money showing our ads to people who already knew about, or had purchased from our client. They also weren’t annoying them, which can affect future purchases.
Follow-Up
Everyone who opted into the landing page or blog posts was sent a follow-up sequence of 3-4 emails that sent them to the sales page.
(Please note: 3-4 emails is common for a follow-up sequence. However, this is something you need to test for each campaign. You may need more or fewer emails, depending on the audience and the product.)
Once the team had this list of leads, they moved on to…
The Remarketing Campaign
For this campaign, the team focused on audiences who already knew about their client, and preferably knew about this product.
They created audiences based on various remarketing options that Facebook offers, including:
- Everyone who signed up for the lead magnet.
- Everyone who signed up for content upgrades from blog posts we featured in the prospecting campaign.
- Visitors to the sales page or website based on how many days it had been since they visited (7, 30, or 180 days).
- Frequency of visits to the sales page or website. (We used the top 25% of visitors.)
- Length of time people watched the video ads.
- Page engagement.
- Post engagement.
The remarketing ads took people who clicked straight to the sales page. Now that these audiences had been introduced to this client and this product, the goal was getting the sale.
In the remarketing campaigns, the team found that ads with testimonials from happy, successful customers worked well to push leads into becoming customers themselves, along with an urgency headline, telling them the special promotion was closing soon.
As always, you will want to test different ads for your clients’ campaigns, to see what resonates with their audiences.
The Results
This client put $117,000 in ad spend into this campaign, and it’s been running for the last 6 months.
So far, they’ve gotten:
- 52,689 leads
- 958 sales
- Just under $400,000 in revenue
This is an evergreen funnel that requires minimum maintenance from the client. Zach’s team expects it to continue converting at the same rate.
Plus, the client continues to build their email list and learn more about their audience.
Overall, this funnel is definitely a winner for this client, and for Zach’s agency. You can take what we learned here and apply it to the next evergreen funnel you build for your clients. If you follow the same basic steps, you should have good results.
(Please note: We cannot guarantee any particular results for your next campaign if you follow the same steps. There are too many variables, including your client, their product, their audience and their goals. However, this is a solid formula for an evergreen funnel and we do recommend you use it in future campaigns.)
What Zach’s Digital Marketing Agency Does for their Clients
Running a campaign like this for any client takes more than just managing the Facebook ads.
Zach’s agency works closely with clients to make sure their campaigns run smoothly and they get the best results possible. This level of service is one of the ways the digital marketing agency keeps its clients, long-term. They know they’ll get good service, as well as good results, so they stay with the agency.
When drawing up a proposal with any new client, one of the things the team discusses is who will create the ad creative and funnel assets. Will the digital marketing agency do it, or will the client handle that aspect.
Regardless of the answer, the team works with the client on ad creation. That way they have some control over the ad types and positioning so they can run more effective tests.
The team also reviews every step of the client’s funnel, whether they’re building it or not. They want the funnel to be fully optimized so it will convert, once they’re driving traffic to it. That includes images and copy on opt-in and sales pages, lead magnets, emails, videos, and any other assets in a client’s funnel.
The goal is to test everything to see what works, fix what doesn’t and make the entire funnel work holistically so the clients get the best results.
And, of course, our agency uses FunnelDash to manage their clients’ campaigns and report to them on a weekly and monthly basis.
Zach originally created FunnelDash as his digital marketing agency’s ideal Facebook ads reporting tool. Since then, we’ve seen how effective it can be for other agencies, as well any business running Facebook ads for themselves.
FunnelDash cuts down drastically on the amount of time you spend searching for data inside your Facebook ads account, poring over spreadsheets and creating pivot tables, all so you can find the information you need to manage and scale your clients’ campaigns.
Our customizable dashboards take the metrics that matter to your clients’ campaigns from their Facebook ads accounts and present them in an easy-to-understand format, so you can find the data you’re looking for and see what’s working, and what’s not, much faster.
Having this data allows you to run more efficient and profitable campaigns for your clients. Plus, you can use each dashboard as a reporting tool, so your client is always up to date on the progress of their campaign.
Knowing that you’re managing their campaigns effectively and increasing their sales makes your clients happy and loyal your digital marketing agency for a long time to come.
Get your free 14-day trial of FunnelDash and use it to effectively manage your clients’ campaigns.
Have you used FunnelDash to get great results from one of your clients’ campaigns? Tell us about it in the comments
