Behind the scenes of my 5 Day Challenge Facebook Ads campaign

This past week, despite a last-minute dose of COVID, I have been filling up my very own five-day pop-up Challenge group with leads from Facebook and Instagram ads ready to start for Monday.

I love running my own Challenges and it's what led me to set-up and start The Social Ads Squad last year as I had already spent two years using ads to drive leads to my website optimisation services and paid membership in my other business.

Seems surreal to look at the figures now when I remember how painful spending that first ￡100 on ads felt at the time!

I have spent well nearly ￡30,000 to drive leads to my Challenges since then and here are A few things that I have learned from that time that I hope will help you if you're reading this and thinking about using social ads to drive more leads to your own Challenge groups.

If you don't have a clear offer you won't get leads

Let's start with the basics...if you have a confusing offer then you won't get leads.

You need to express as quickly as possible what pain point you are helping with and the fact that you have a solution to help the user reading the ad with it.

It might not be that easy to write all of that into one headline or one opening line (the most important part of an ad) so you may need to infer you can help by asking about the pain point.

Just for context - my five day Challenge is called The Supercharge Your Website Challenge and we usually bring in around 300-1000 users (depending on the time of year) to work through five daily tasks that get them to look at who their website is aimed at and whether it's doing the things they need their website to do.

We found simply asking users to reflect on their website for a few seconds (something many business owners do not do) allowed them to realise they probably need help with it and then are led to want to find out more.

I've seen plenty of Challenge ads that don't address the problem in that first line or even say they are running a Challenge!

I've also seen plenty addressing problems that aren't really problems and that might be why your own Challenge ads aren't converting.

Being able to hang and get help in a Facebook Group for five days seems to be something that appeals to the single-person business owners that we reach.

They have neglected their website for years and now in five days they could turn it all around? And ask those so-called "stupid questions" (no question is stupid when it comes to websites btw!) they have been putting off asking online?

You can see why it's appealing to them.

If you are asking that same audience how to become better sales people or create a business plan in five days then perhaps this isn't a need they have in their business right now, or not one they believe can be fixed in five days.

The need has to be there and you are the person ready to provide it, and ads will amplify that.

Still images of the Challenge host still convert the best

As you can see in the ad image above and below, there is no image representation of me helping users with their websites.

I'm not sat at my desk side by side with a client pointing at a computer screen as we fix their website together.

The Challenge week is me giving advice for five days and so it makes sense to be front and centre in the ads, showing off me and my personality.

When I first started I used stock imagery, which tanked.

I can't believe I referenced myself in this ad and then didn't show a picture of me? Why would anyone want to click to find out more?

I then started to use professional pics I had taken of me in and Brighton and these worked much better.

If someone is thinking in a split-second if they want to join you for five days in a pop-up Facebook group it helps for them to see who they are going to hang out with during that time.

Your face is your future when you are running Challenge groups and if you don't look like the type of person the user you are targeting with ads wants to hang out with ( we target women aged 35+) then it's going to be a mismatch for the week.

The two still images below have performed insanely well for over two years now and I think it's because they are bright, colour-rich and show me looking really friendly and approachable.

You can see that they sit in the top five best converting ads of all time in the table below...

The orange cushion / green mug picture of me doesn't do so well these days partially due to saturation. That first image has been my profile image, used on all of the promo I do on my website and more.

Ad fatigue is real and you need to be prepared to swap the images out that did really well for you before every 2-3 Challenges that you run and always be testing new images to try for next time.

Right now selfies with cats convert just as well and we know this because of the testing we did over a year ago!

Ad costs have gone up BUT you can still get leads for under ￡5 here in the UK

It's true, those lovely figures from the table above aren't indicative of what Challenge leads cost from Facebook and Instagram ads right now.

It was possible to get leads into your Facebook group for ￡1-￡3 but Facebook has this way of knowing that you are doing some sort of promo and finds a way to increase the conversion cost.

When we run email list building ads they are much cheaper so I'm not sure if there is something in the algo that looks out for the words "Challenge" in your copy and sticks a premium on the price. That would be cynical of me (ha!)

We tested this and removed the word "Challenge" from the ads for a while but it didn't improve the CTR or the lead cost.

If the offer is good and you are targeting the right audience your ads will be affordable as you are getting the right people into your funnel who will be willing to review an offer and buy from you later on.

Just note that the more people you want to get into your Challenge group, the higher the cost will become over time.

The Facebook algorithm is lazy and wants to show your ads to the right people first and once they have been targeted then has to work harder. This means higher CPMs and lead costs ultimately.

Because of this we usually only run Challenge ads for a maximum of three weeks in advance of the Challenge starting.

Interest-based audiences are converting better than Lookalike audiences

A year ago we were only just seeing the beginning of the impact of the iOS14 updates that meant that many Apple device users would be able to opt out of retargeting.

This meant that Lookalike audiences that used Custom audience data made up of Challenge landing page visitors views used to convert really well for us.

Since the update we saw our Lookalike audiences tank hard and had to find a viable replacement.

Interest-based audiences have filled that gap really well and we're able to target users who are interested in all key website platforms with our ads (perfect for the DIY website builder looking for five days of free advice!) plus target general 'small business owner' interest groups too.

Again, to make these work the ad copy and creative needs to do the heavy lifting so that the users can clearly identify if the Challenge is for them or not.

We started to run a Lookalike audience of previous Challenge sign-ups on the side but the cost per lead was triple of what the interest-based audience was.

We'll back to give it another go and test another time as I'm convinced that the tech behind how the audience is created will catch-up at some point and produce better quality CPMs. Meta's livelihood depends on this as we all used to rely on LL audiences in the Challenge world prior to the iOS14 updates!

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By design we have a nice petite group of 300 participants signed up for this round of the Challenge. I'm looking forward to doing a big Challenge again someday where we have 3000 but for now really happy to have spent just shy of ￡1500 to get in that number of leads.

If you want to take part then we open up and share the first task tomorrow so you haven't got long!

SIGN UP HERE: https://superchargeyourwebsite.com/5-day-challenge

If you want help using ads to drive leads into your own Challenge group then why not get in touch and start a conversation in my DMs?

We have worked on Challenges for business coaches, marketing professionals, fitness pros, art experts, branding queens, LinkedIn experts driving thousands of leads into pop-up Facebook Groups.

We also work with clients who want to use ads to drive leads to one-off promotional Webinars, Masterclasses and Workshops.

We walk the walk at The Social Ads Squad and would be delighted to see if we could help you.

As always, thanks for reading!