Oi oi, it's Friday!
Even with the 'rona limiting people's weekend options, that 'friday feeling' is still there.
Speaking of COVID there has been a lot of criticism and press on Trump's approach to testing...
But it wasn't always this way.
During the 2016 election Trump's team ran 5.9 million ads on Facebook spending over $44 million from June to November alone!
What their team did was to test, research and survey the reactions to certain key topics and stories to various age groups and demographics throughout the country and identified which hot topics and policies resonated most with individual audiences.
By conducting these huge tests they could then effectively segment and reach those audiences with the issues that would most likely convince and persuade them that Trump was the right candidate, especially important in the US's voting system as they knew where the key states could be won and lost.
Even going as far as to test which headlines and images delivered higher click through and engagement rates and deploying further ad spend on those that performed best.
But each different group of voters would be shown hugely different ads, presented as stories and information to gradually build awareness and attention.
Spoiler alert: This happens in elections all around the world, by all sides of the political spectrum and wasn't just a one-off thing by Cambridge Analytica for Trump/Brexit etc.
Spoiler alert 2: The same parties will own other Groups and Pages that can pump out ads and rhetoric for both sides of the argument to create more passion and arguments online to help entrench people in thier beliefs and build loyalty. Prior to 2020 the largest black rights activist group on Facebook was actually owned by a Russian media company... proper mindfuck isnt it!
But before I go down that rabbit hole I don't want the takeaway from this email to be about politics.
What Trumps campaign did well was these 3 steps:
1. Test content to identify the audiences they were most likely to convert
2. Keep testing different messaging and ads to those audiences to see what was relevant.
3. Double down on ads to resonate with those different customer segments to keep them loyal.
Doesn't this sound like an approach that any business can benefit from.
The sad truth is, some of the brightest minds in advertising and consumer behaviour are working 24/7 on the strategy and performance of election campaigns worldwide, not helping small businesses leverage the power of social media advertising.
However, we can take the principles and frameworks that work for these multi-million dollar ad campaigns and learn from them.
Split testing ads improves cost-per-acquisition by an average of 72%.
Plus doesn't it make sense to find out more about what your audience actually cares about, or what content makes them click and makes them buy!
The average user has clicked on over 12 ads in the past 30 days, is one of them yours? Or are you still procrastinating over running ads as you aren't sure?
And retargeting can increase conversion rates by 150% (!!!!) so make sure your business is getting right back infront of those customers who nearly purchased from you and are close to making a decision.
Cheers and have a great weekend people,
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