Recently we helped one of our clients run an incredibly successful marketing campaign. Using Facebook Ads and a custom landing page, we developed a strategy to reach total strangers to the client’s brand and the results astounded us.

Our Case Study

Here’s some context for you – this particular client provides curriculum to a niche audience using a subscription model. Every month users can use their credits to download teaching material from the client’s website.

The Audience Funnel

Using Facebook Ads, we wanted to execute a targeted marketing strategy that would hit stakeholders at four different levels:

1. Total Strangers (Never interacted with the brand, never visited the website)
2. Acquaintances (Interacted with the brand or visited the site)
3. Friends (Downloaded some free resources but never signed up for a paid account)
4. Family (Subscribers)

Above is a fundamental model that you could take and apply to your marketing strategy for your brand right now. Essentially this you’re creating a targeting model that mirrors your sales funnel.

We used Lookalike Audiences, the Facebook Pixel, Engaged Custom Audience, and the Exclude function in the Saved Audience Builder to help us get the right users in focus at each level of the funnel.

The First Ad

Our first ad was designed to reach the first audience, Total Strangers.

When targeting “strangers” with ads, provide as much value as possible in a highly-consumable format. No downloads, no forms, no nonsense.

In the copy we made sure to highlight the fact that this was a FREE lesson outline. We even mentioned that there was “No download required!”. Making this stipulation helps to break down barriers and encourage users to click through. Ideally we wanted them to put in their email and download the PDF version so we could follow up on the lead but we wanted to prove ourselves to them by providing value first.

Our goal with this ad was not sales. We merely wanted to start getting people familiar with the brand. This would bring them into our funnel where we could then market further offers to them with better results.

The “Blog Post-esque” Landing Page

In the spirit of offering readily-consumable content, we created a blog-post-style landing page that was actually a free lesson outline. Building this was easy—all we had to do was trim down the curriculum our client already had (their primary product offering) into a basic outline and format it like a blog post.

Think about your business and ask yourself this—what existing material could we repurpose as valuable but free content for our target audience?

The Lead Magnet

The free lesson outline was a lead magnet all by itself. But we decided to add one small piece to the puzzle before running the ad. On the landing page, we included a CTA that encouraged readers to download a PDF version of the outline. If they did, we would also throw in a matching graphic that they could use either as a promotional piece or while delivering the material.

In the PDF version of the outline, we went one step further and provided a coupon code for the curriculum subscription which would give users extra credits when they signed up. This would be a huge surprise to anyone downloading and would at least get them to check out the pricing page on the client’s website!

The Results…

With just this one ad and in just one month, our client saw a sharp increase in subscription sales that resulted in an ROI that surpassed expectations all around. The first months sales alone saw profits beyond the costs of content creation, strategy, ad management, and direct ad costs. The best part about this is that with a subscription service, if acquisition costs are covered in month one, the rest is pure profit.

tl;dr

• Use Facebook Pixel to segment your audience by degree of relationship
• Provide valuable freebies in ads targeting strangers (lead magnets)
• Retarget those who show interest (downloads) and optimize for sales