From Leads to Customer in 1 Week

Facebook Ads Channel for Fintech Startup

From Leads to Customers

Case Study: Facebook Ads Acquisition Channel in a Week

Working with a VC funded startup meant high pressure to show certain growth numbers within stipulated intervals of time. One such situation led the CEO to demand a predictable acquisition channel within a week.

A week!

Selecting the acquisition channel

Here’s a blog post I have written on how to choose your acquisition channels. I followed a similar process.

And paid ads are typically the best quick acquisition channels. They are also more predictable than other channels – we can increase our budget to increase our leads. The only question was which ad platform to use?
The two shortlisted choices were Facebook ads & Google adwords. Both would likely yield results, but still managing it all – creatives, messaging, target segmentation et al within a week was still tight.

I was already working with this brand so the challenge was accepted. Otherwise I might not take it up because I would first have had to understand the business, target group, brand positioning before I launch marketing campaigns – and that would take time. But since I was already hands-on with the brand, I took up the challenge.

Facebook or Adwords – what would be your choice?

Mine was Facebook.

The reasoning was very simple, since I needed to deliver this on priority, I took the platform I was most comfortable with and that was Facebook. I had already run many campaigns on Facebook by myself for smaller startups and via a third party agency for larger projects. So I was well versed with it.

I don’t have adequate exposure to adwords even now. Somehow I have never gotten comfortable with it. I did start work on it for an international client recently but it was a very small time spend compared to everything else I was doing for them (like email marketing).

So Facebook it was.

Want to Take Charge of Your Acquisition Channels?

Here’s a blog I have written on Choosing Acquisition Channels. I have looked at the various factors to consider while figuring out which acquisition channel to tap for specific goals. If you would like to work with me to fine tune your acquisition channels email me priyanka(@)digiwhirl.com 🙂

I quickly looked at the various ad type options and went with the lead generation type – where prospective folks can fill their details on Facebook itself.

My Typical Process To Set Up Facebook Ads

About 5 different message variations were created with multiple creatives for each.
A 3 day trial run was conducted as lower budget to see which of the ads work best (typically I conduct a 7-10 day trial run but in this case it was shortened).
There were some clear out-performing ads. The budget for these was increased. The other ads were also kept running to see if they were late bloomers or some such.
And BAM – leads started coming in.

The startup customer service representative was roped in to start accessing those leads. Cause the lead access for Facebook was tricky at that time. There was no email notification of a new lead. We had to manually go and access the lead excel sheet from the Facebook page. The customer service rep was given the low down on that. This allowed a seamless flow of the newly generated leads into the customer service / sales pipeline.

Soon the Facebook lead acquisition cost stabilized at 200 INR per lead.

This was an amazing cost for that industry domain. In fact a top investor in the country had suggested that online lead costs would be at 1800 INR or so. But on Facebook we got it only at 200 INR. (And much later when they tried out adwords, I was told the costs were even lower).

So we started generating leads within a week (or maybe close to 10 days) from Facebook with ads.

Relevant graphs showed an uptick and investors would be happy.

However, as all good stories go there was a problem.

Problem: The leads weren’t converting. Typically we would like a conversion ratio of 1/10 at least with every step.

1 of 10 people who signup in those ads should move to the next stage of funnel. But it wasn’t happening. In fact when the customer service reps called them to take things further, the people were largely non-responsive.

Solution: I sat down with the customer service lead and took them through the entire ad process. We showed them exactly how the ads worked. And while I couldn’t really see it, the customer service rep spotted the issue.

We were not prepping the people who filled the form with what would happen next. So we added a note in the ad setup which briefed them that on filling this form, they would receive a call from our customer rep in a day.

And voila! This improved the situation significantly and leads started converting.

Involving the customer rep lead was key in a successful outcome here.

Now we had a clear acquisition channel set up for this startup. The initial lead generation happened in a week. But the rest of stuff like stabilizing to a specific lead acquisition cost and then improving conversion rate took a couple of weeks more.