Case Study – Camping supplier
Who’s the Facebook ads client?
This client was an outdoor and camping specialist, based in the southwest of England. The brand provides an extensive range of equipment, clothing and rations for simple camping trips as well as catering to those interested in more extreme outdoor pursuits.
What challenge was the brand facing?
Constant ad restrictions and a lack of knowledge of how to move forward.
The client was continually having issues with its Meta ads, due to historical restrictions, and was growing increasingly frustrated at actually getting his Facebook ads launched and gaining stability in the account.
He also knew that the ads landscape had altered considerably in the past couple of years and felt unable to keep pace with the constant changes.
He knew his brand could do well through Facebook and Instagram advertising, yet he didn’t have the time to dedicate to it, nor the knowledge to build a cohesive sales funnel.
So what did you do first?
After a deep dive into the client’s account, it was clear that when ads did run, they did well. The account had huge potential, but there were some issues that needed to be fixed first. These were:
- Business Manager: bringing in all the client’s assets into the one Business Manager and ensuring 2FA was used by all team members.
- Historical restrictions: this involved a lengthy call to Meta support (and more than one call until I chanced upon a Pro who, quite frankly, happily went the extra mile to help me – a rare find!)
Learning point
The outcome of point 2 above is a great lesson to all brands considering Facebook ads for their business. After much digging around, I discovered that historical content on the client’s organic Facebook page had showed ‘weapons’ (penknives and crossbows).
Whilst these were still a part of the client’s current product range, he had not posted images of these on his organic social for some time. This was not good enough for Meta though, and it was these historical posts causing all the ad rejections. LESSON: always be mindful of what you post on social, even if you don’t intend to run ads!
How did you structure the initial campaigns?
We started with a £1,500/month budget. This was split into a simple funnel.
Top of funnel: Two campaigns: broad interested based, and 3% lookalike
Bottom of funnel: Retargeting View Content and Add to Cart but not Purchased.
Creative utilised single image ads, as well as carousels and catalog ads. Also organic social posts were pulled into engagement campaigns.
After a few months, the account was able to run Advantage Shopping Campaigns and all high-performing ads were moved into this campaign.
The budget was increased and we also ran a lead generation campaign to gain email sign-ups as the client had always experienced strong sales from his email list.
Average TOF CTR 4%
Average CPC 0.06p
Email sign-ups £1
What kind of results did you achieve?
Key stats:
- 4% average click-through rate top of funnel.
- 0.06p cost per click (one of the cheapest I have ever seen in ecommerce).
- £2.54 average CPM (cost per thousand impressions)
- £1 average cost of gaining an email subscriber
During my time working on this account, the total ad spend of £15.7K contributed to £67.3K of sales. ROAS was an average of 4.2 on 7-day attribution and 4.8 on 28-day attribution.
The account was still not without issues though. Despite knowing what was causing the previous ad rejections, and being very mindful of what images were used going forward, this did not stop the ad rejections from still happening.
Jumping on to support each time meant most ads were approved after manual review. Frustrating – and so easily prevented had the client realised the implications of his historical posts.
Learning point
Although the client’s historic organic content had caused issues with running the ads, their commitment to an ongoing, strong organic presence was also one of the contributing factors that helped the ads work at such a cheap price. Their video content and engagement with comments helped their ads gain traction.
LESSON: don’t neglect your social content or your engagement. Not only does it help your ads, it also helps build the know, like and trust with your audience. Stick to the rules though!).
To find out more about adhering to Facebook’s rules of compliance in your organic social posts, click here.
To get in touch to find out more about my Facebook ads services, click here.
Quiz: are your Facebook ads set up for maximum returns?
You’re running Facebook Ads. The results are… ok. But your bottom line isn’t improving and you’re wondering if sales could be better.
Is your set-up correct? Are you testing enough copy and creative? Are you missing any easy fixes that could significantly impact your return?
Take this 5-minute quiz and find out if your campaigns are set up for peak performance.
It’s totally free AND you receive personalised results!
