Ad HustlerConfessions Of A Serial Internet Entrepreneur

I got a question via emai from a reader today and figured i’d answer it publicly

First off, you have an awesome blog and your Local Online Advertising related articles are really helpful. Your post are inspiring and by doing some testing I have run into a weird situation.  Perhaps you could provide me with a hint or two.

On Facebook, if I bid on a CPC basis, I get a CTR of 0.089 to 0.1. Now, for the same add, if I bid on a CPM basis get plenty of impressions but my CTR is suddenly at 0.010%  to 0.012%.

I have tested it with different add variations, and if I found a winning add combination, stopped it and created a new add based on a CPM model my CTR is suddenly down.

have you noticed similar patterns? Have you found a solution, or perhaps have any tip?

By the way, if you want to try or test anything on the German market, I can help with any translation.

It’s a very legitimate question for a new Facebook Ads advertiser to ask.  In the past, this wasn’t the case.  If you converted a CPC ad to a CPM ad the click through rate would be pretty similar.  In fact a lot of affiliates were doing this to get cheaper ads by bidding CPM.  Around a year ago, Facebook made a change to their advertising system which rewarded CPC advertisers with more clicks and CPM advertisers with more impressions.  I guess their logic was that CPC advertisers wanted only clicks and CPM advertisers wanted only impressions (which we all know isn’t true).  The way they seem to accomplish this is by running CPM advertisers in lower quality positions.  Here is the letter Facebook sent out around that time.

Upcoming system change:

As you know, we continuously work to make our ads system more accurate in order to further improve the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns. Among other ongoing improvements, we are refining our ads delivery system to better reflect the goals of our advertisers. This change will take place over the next few weeks and, assuming current bids remain unchanged, will mean that:

CPC advertisers (advertisers who have chosen to bid “cost-per-click”) may receive more clicks.
CPM advertisers (advertisers who have chosen to bid “cost per thousand impressions”) will continue to receive impressions but may receive less clicks.

Do I need to do anything?

As a CPM advertiser, you are indicating to our system that it’s more important that your ad is seen by your audience rather than clicked i.e. you have chosen to pay for impressions, not clicks. If your main objective is to increase awareness of your business with an ad impression, there is no need for action. However, if your most important objective is to drive clicks on your ads, you should change your bids from CPM to CPC.

I hope that answered your question.

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I was on Techcrunch last week and read an article about a startup called BO.LT – At first I thought it was just another URL shortener but it has a feature that may be a game changer for affiliate marketing.

You are able to give BO.LT a webpage.  It then makes a real-time mirror of the page and allows you to edit the page on the fly.  Imagine you see an affiliate offer that has a pretty decent offer page but you want to make a landing page with some more persuasive language on it.  Many affiliates already make landing pages that look similar to the offer page.  This would allow you to strip out all of the text and images you don’t like, add the text that you know will convert and then redirect them to the offer page.

It’s basically an on the fly landing page builder.  The only feedback that would make it better is if they would allow you to host the created landing page on your own domain.

Figured i’d share so you can check it out.  It’s currently a closed system that you need to apply to but I got in quickly.

Disclosure: Ad Hustler received ZERO compensation for this post.

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AIM Conversation:

Ad Hustler: hey {AM NAME} where in the system is {OFFER NAME} i dont see it and i may try something with it
Affiliate Manager: hey
Affiliate Manager: i have to get your own link set up for you
Affiliate Manager: what kind of traffic
Ad Hustler: thinkin of {TRAFFIC TYPE}
Ad Hustler: anyone doin well with that?
Affiliate Manager: ahh
Affiliate Manager: can’t run in {TRAFFIC TYPE}
Ad Hustler: ahh ok

Listen, if an offer doesn’t accept a certain traffic type, that’s cool, and I respect the advertisers wishes.  Doesn’t sales 101 say that you would suggest to me a similar offer that DOES accept my traffic type to try to get me to run SOMETHING with you?  I haven’t ran with this network since my old AM left so you would think they would try to get me to run again.  This was the end of the conversation.  Some affiliate managers take their affiliate relationships for granted and it can bite them in the ass.  Your job as an affiliate manager isn’t to just answer a simple question, it’s to try to solve the affiliates problem as best you can.  That’s what differentiates an average affiliate manager from a GREAT affiliate manager.

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I’ve owned a successful ecommerce site since before I even knew what affiliate marketing was.  One thing i’ve always done is offered extremely limited support.  My site has no phone number you can call and only a contact form.  The honest reason for this is that I never thought there was much of a need to deal with idiots asking idiotic questions on a daily basis.  It always seemed like it would be a waste of time since at one point I worked for an ecommerce site and answered the phone calls and saw first hand how idiotic they were.  Don’t get me wrong, we offer excellent service.  You get exactly what you order, delivered quickly and we accept all returns.  We under-promise and over-deliver on every order and that has lead to a very loyal customer base.

I was ordering something from another website and saw a live help popup.  It asked me if i had any questions and indeed I did so I typed my question and got live help.  I was impressed with the service and decided to look into the software that was hosting the live help popup.  It was a company called Olark.  I found it was really easy to install, full of features and cheap so a marketing test was born.  I decided to try this live help app on my ecommerce website.

To make sure things were handled appropriately, i dealt with all of the live help chats myself over the course of 3 days.  If anyone can sell someone something it’s me so I figured having myself handle the chat’s would give us the best chance of success (for a test, i’d never do it full time).

My Process:

1. Got an Olark account and installed the script (very easy)
2. I used a function called the “welcome assistant” which initiates a conversation with the website visitor after xx seconds.  I chose 60 seconds.
3. The “welcome assistant” would send out a random message from a bunch that I entered.  Example: Hi, this is {Name}.  Can I answer any questions or help you find anything?
4. If someone answered the “welcome assistant” i would get the message in my AIM client and chat there.

One of the things that is kind of cool about these chats is that you can actually see what the person is looking at.  Just like if you were a salesperson at a store and guide them towards the best product (or the most profitable).

My test results (this isn’t the most scientific of case studies):

Time: 3 Days (Approx 24 hours logged into live chat)
Chats: 16
Increase in Immediate Sales: 0

Observations:

• The vast majority of visitors have no interest in contact by the site, however, some obviously do.
• Most of the people who want to chat are tire kickers aka window shoppers.
• None of the people I spoke to actually bought.
• A few of the people I spoke to were super appreciative of the help I gave and told me they would only buy from us from now on – but they didn’t buy anything after our chat so either they are lying, or will be buying in the future (this is where tracking becomes difficult)
• People who initiate a chat seem to spend a LOT more time on the site then people who don’t.
• People want advice about what they should do or what they should buy.

Overall, i’d consider this test a fail for live chat.  Olark is a pretty sweet service though.  Maybe it would work better on a higher priced more complicated product or service.

I would like to try another case study in the future where I put the live help on an affiliate landing page and see how it increases conversions.

Have you tested live chat on a site you own?  If so, did it lift your conversions?

P.S. My Favorite Live Chat:

Website Visitor: do you ssuck dick
Me: Yes
Website Visitor: i love yo ass
Me: thanks it is pretty sweet
Website Visitor: i was just wondering since we have some cemminstree can i ha’ yo numba showty
Me: 867-5309

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Disclaimer: NO compensation was received for mentioning Olark in this post