[Case Study] How I Took A Company's Ad Channel From $0 to $23 Million

Company description: A Private Equity (PE) / Fintech business, serving investors, RIAs, Brokers & PE Funds.

Project: Build out a new advertising channel for retargeting purposes, and to increase lead gen & throughput across the marketing & sales funnel.

Table of Contents

The Challenge & Opportunity

The company was driving traffic to its website using Google & YouTube ads.

These ads were sending people to a form/survey, with the goal of generating leads.

However, there were people who did not convert from the first touchpoint, and there was no guarantee they would come back to the website once they bounced.

This meant those people we were spending money on to bring to our site were falling through the cracks, and we were bleeding ad spend. 

We were retargeting on YouTube, but our conversions were not where we wanted them to be.

We knew if we could diversify, and retarget people from other channels to bring them back to our site, it would help our bottom line. 

Objective

Diversify our advertising dollars by building out a new advertising channel that would bring visitors back to our website; and then, capture those visitors, resulting in more leads, at a cheaper cost.

What I Did

4a. The Strategy & platform

Given our niche, I chose Facebook as the new advertising channel. 

The next part was, “What are we gonna say to people on Facebook to get them back to our site?” 

I decided to use a freebie we had. The idea was, if they didn’t convert on the form/survey page, they were probably more top of funnel (TOF) in their journey.

So, it’s best to give them some type of appealing “Bait”.

We had a few different freebies as marketing collateral, but there was one guide that a lot of our contacts were downloading on the site…

So, for obvious reasons, I used that one in my ads.

And for the record, I tried the forum/survey page on Facebook…

But my “Bait” resulted in an 800% lower Cost-Per-Lead. 

I wanted to use this as the bait to get people coming back to our site.

4b. Tracking Setup & Creatives Assembly

First, I set up the Facebook pixel & linked it to our Google Tag Manager (GTM).

4c. Copywriting & Video Editing/Post-Production

After we had all our tracking setup for the next ad channel, I wrote the video ad scripts & sent them to an investor in our niche. 

(Because it’s best to have the person in the ad be as identical to your customer as possible). 

Once I got back the footage, I did the video editing & post-production.

And then I wrote all the ad copy. 

Now that we had the pixel setup, the UTM tracking, and all our creatives & copy assembled, it was time to launch the ads and start getting results! 

Excitingly, I launched the ads. 

But, there was a huge problem…

One I felt would happen before publishing the ads…

But I decided to let “data” tell me if it was worth worrying about. 

Well, the data certainly told me something:

5. The Huge Problem I Overcame Using One of My Most “Proprietary” Methods…

I have a funny method I like to use called the “Buyers Thermostat” Method. You can learn more about that strategy here…

For right now, I won’t reveal much of the method itself. I’m just gonna be concrete with what the problem was and how I addressed it. 

See, the most important thing for conversions between an ad and landing/sales page, is the congruency between the ad and the landing page. 

If I say get apples on my ad, and then show oranges on the lander, it won’t convert well. 

Well, specifically, I said in the ad script I wrote for the person to tell the viewer to “download a FREE guide” about opportunity zones. 

EXACTLY for the reason I just mentioned. 

Well, they didn’t. 

It was more of a “learn more” kinda thing, and there were some other things omitted.

THE PROBLEM:

People clicking on the ad didn’t really know what was gonna be waiting for them on the next page. 

So the page itself was not converting. 

The reason was, the page was NOT polarizing at all. 

It was a bland page…

Now, if the video said, "You’ll be downloading this free guide"

People would know that’s what they're going to do on the next page, so the page could still convert, even if it was bland. 

But since it didn’t…

People were 'curiously clicking'…

...and then landing on the non-polarizing page, that did not compel them to hand over their information (email, phone, portfolio size, etc.)

Below is the page before, and you’ll see the page after further down the page.

Previous opt-in page

THE SOLUTION:

I could’ve had the investor re-film the ad, and done some other creative things, but that would’ve been a slow process. 

So I decided to re-write & build a new page. 

POLARIZING language that would stop the person who clicked on the ad right in their tracks, and demand them to hand over their information:

(New opt-in page)

What’s great here, is we’re still getting the exact same information we’d get with our form earlier, but here it’s a lot cheaper. 

In fact 800% cheaper than our original cost per lead. 

And for those who wanted to speak to someone right away and buy/invest. 

I tactically created a HUGE problem for them on the next page…

Using my experience in direct response funnels in a private equity industry. 

I made sure to congratulate the lead but then introduced them to a new problem that they would likely need to address as soon as possible. 

Here’s the page:

(New thank you page)

Results:

While I am unable to share the specific investment amounts placed or transacted, due to investor confidentiality, I can tell you 154 contacts were influenced by my campaign. 

And the channel went from $0 to $23 million in leads in just 30 days.

If you operate a business and would like me to help you generate more leads like I did for this business, feel free to reach out.

It’s best to message me on social media. And don’t worry, you won’t get “appointment setted” by an appointment setter or go through some weird ManyChat automation…

Click on this link here to send me a message, and so we can get connected together.

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