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The Ultimate List of Facebook Ads Case Studies (+ 38 lessons you can’t ignore)

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Without a doubt, Facebook is THE place to be to build audiences and generate revenue.

You know it, I know it… Every single marketer knows it.

But with it’s decreasing organic reach, you’ll need to rely on Facebook Ads more than ever.

That means your money is on the line, which is why you’ll want to know  what REALLY works and what doesn’t work  before you even get started.

So, to bust all the myths and speculations, we’ve been analyzing 13 Facebook Ads case studies from various well-known experts.

From campaigns spending $1/day to millions a year. Campaigns focused on bringing in hundreds of thousands in revenue as well as bringing in low-cost leads.

You’ll get to see it all in the following 13 Facebook Ads case-studies.

Case Study # 1 – What Noah Kagan Learned Spending $2 Million on Facebook Ads

This is the case study and key insights from Noah Kogan who has spent millions on Facebook Ads so far.

The advice and lessons learned from this case study will be far more insightful than people that have to spend some hundred or thousands of dollar on Facebook Ads.

Noah Kagan of AppSumo and SumoMe shared his experience spending $2 million on Facebook Ads across his different products.

Apart from promoting his key products ( AppSumo and SumoMe ), he showed how he earned $267 in profit from each Monthly1k course he sells.

He used Facebook Advertising to bring traffic to his website, increase his email subscription and later sell them the course.

Each email lead would cost him $3, and every 89th email lead went on to buy the course giving him $267 in net profit (after all deductions, cancellations, etc.effectively).

This is a classical example of how to best leverage Facebook Ads. People browse Facebook for casual fun, catching up with friends and family – but not to being sold.

It is best to use Facebook to drive them to opt-in to your lead magnet before pushing them your product.

They will be more inclined to engage with your Facebook Ads if it’s not asking for their credit card but rather giving some value without any cost to them.

Although, he provided a lot of insight from his million dollar spending on Facebook Ads, here are some of the key takeaways and lessons learned.

Lesson Learned # 1 –  Use data at hand effectively to target your Facebook ads strategically. Such as copying the success of your competitors , targeting the fans of your competitors and creating lookalike audience from existing customers and email subscribers.

Lesson Learned # 2 – Start with a small budget and capitalize on the ads targeting which is giving you the best ROI.

Lesson Learned # 3 – Keep your targeting narrow than being broad. Narrower audiences not only is easier to reach on a limited budget but are highly likely to convert. But narrow audience doesn’t mean it has to be small, rather an ideal size ( in between narrow and broad)

Case Study # 2 – $5800 Monthly Recurring Revenue Using Facebook Ads Retargeting

Design Pickle is a design-as-a-service that provides unlimited graphics designing services under a monthly retainer fee. Being a newer concept and a service that requires a direct interaction of humans ( as in passing design briefs and requirements), it is hard to promote the service using standard means.

Following the footsteps of how most SaaS businesses generate leads, they  ran a Facebook Ad Campaign in which they offered a Free Custom Design without the need for any credit card ( an equivalent to Free Trial)

They directed the Facebook Ads traffic to a long-form signup form so they would weed out potential customers from onlookers. This was deliberately done as people that go on to filling the long form were most likely to be interested in the services.

Although they were able to capture some leads, the best part came when they started using retargeting.

Want to get more results from Facebook Ads? Check out our free targeting training here.

Design Pickle identified that they could use retargeting with better effect. So they implemented a retargeting campaign on the sales page visitors which accounted for 17 of the 30 new customers.

More than 50% of their new customers just came from the retargeting marketing campaign, which justifies the fact that converting a retargeted visitor is much easier and efficient than converting a new one.

Lesson Learned # 4 – No matter how complex, unique or new (business model) type of business you have, Facebook Ads can still work for you.

Lesson Learned # 5 – Use the magnetic power of retargeting to bring back customers that already have shown interest in your products.

Lesson Learned # 6 – Build a sales funnel along with your Facebook Ads. Such as in this case, people that initially saw the ad but didn’t go on to fill up the form were retargeted again.

Case Study # 3 – What Will  $5/day on Facebook Get You?

With the tremendous growth of businesses interest in advertising and marketing their product on Facebook,   Buffer did a small experiment to see how a minimal investment of $5 on Facebook Ads can give them.

The $5 ad spend was tested for different objectives such as page likes, clicks to website and effects on boosted post.

And here are the results they achieved for every $5 spend on each of the activity below;

Page Likes – 9 Likes per day

Clicks to the homepage / landing page – 1 per day

Boosted post – 787 new people reached

So there is something for business seen on a small budget.

Here is the audience targeting they set;

As you can see, they’re targeting people who are interested in social media, excluding their fans.

Furthermore, just to give you an example of creating a Killer Facebook Ad, see this the ad buffer created for the Page Likes campaign.

Apparently, this ad comes across as very social/human (since it’s showing the team) – which is why it’s been working well for a “like” campaign.

So to get the best bang out of your Facebook Ads even on a small budget, try zooming in your target audience and create ads copy that reflect or resonate with them.

Lesson Learned # 7 – If you want to test the Facebook Ads waters or generate buzz for your product, a small budget can also do good for you. Not only it creates awareness for your business, but you might also score a handy traffic and some sales too in the process.

Lesson Learned # 8 – You don’t need a large budget to succeed with Facebook Ads. If you target and optimize the ads well, you still can get a good traction regardless of your objective.

Lesson Learned # 9 – When targeting for page likes, always make sure that you Exclude your current page followers.

Lesson Learned # 10 – Make sure the ad image / creative you select, must match with the objective of the ad.

Case Study # 4 – Facebook Ads Success with just $1 per Day

Similar to the Buffer experiment, this case study by Brian Carter , a prominent Facebook Marketing and Advertising Expert and Bestselling author of the book “ The Like Economy”  showed that even investing a minimum of $1/day on Facebook Ads  can give you a significant reach.

By consistently investing $1/day for 30 days, he was able to reach 120,000 people or 4000 people every day.

He in an active user of most advertising platforms and this is what he found as the cost to reach 1000 people using popular advertising channels.

Facebook Ads are far cheaper than the legacy advertising solutions (newspaper, tv, etc.), but also left behind its online competitors (Adwords and LinkedIn).

The objective of this case study or experiment was to show that even if you start with a minimal budget, Facebook Ads can still prove beneficial.

Most businesses can afford to spend $1/day on Facebook, can’t they?

Lesson Learned  # 11 – Budget is or should not be a roadblock for virtually any business. $1/day or $30/month is not a big deal for most businesses.

Lesson Learned # 12 – Even if you are investing more on other channels for traffic or lead generation successfully, it doesn’t hurt to spend a small proportion on Facebook Ads. You might get the same number of traffic, but the overall cost will be much cheaper than all other alternatives.

Check out more details about this case study here.

Case Study # 5 – $14,114 in revenue from $8,240.17 spent in Facebook Ads

This case study is purely about generating leads than anything else.

Brian Moran , the founder of SamCart , used  Facebook As to sell his courses and training products .

He tested three different targeting groups where;

• One group was his existing email list.
• The 2nd group was the lookalike version of his email list.
• And the third was custom audience he created using the native+ advanced targeting features of Facebook.

And after spending $8240 on the ads on these groups, he was able to get;

• $3496 in Sales from $1800 in ad spend from group 1
• $1546 in Sales from $895 in ad spend from group 2
• $9039 in Sales from $5153 in ad spend from group 3

Although all of the ads returned an ROI of 2:1, the 3rd group clearly outperformed the others.

So as seen, changing and testing around with your targeting can give you better results than standard targeting.

Typically existing subscribers are considered a gold mine to be reaped over and over but Brian proved that you can still succeed with Facebook Ads if you just get you targeting right.

Even if you don’t have a big list of subscribers, using native targeting features of Facebook can bring you in front of the right viewers.

Lesson Learned # 13 – Retarget or advertise your offer to existing subscribers as well. This is particularly helpful if you want to convert your blog subscribers into warm leads or paying customers .

Lesson Learned # 14 – Use lookalike audience effectively. Brian created a lookalike audience from his existing email subscribers that brought in $1546 in revenue from $895 in ad spend.

Lesson Learned # 15 – Fine tune your advertising to narrow down to your targeted audience as much as possible. Brian got the best response from the custom targeting he set up.

Lesson Learned # 16 – Just beside A/B testing your Facebook ad copy , split test between your targeting groups too. When seeing results from the third group, Brian invested more in it, and the results were equally rewarding.

Case Study # 6 – How an Advertising “FAIL” Can Actually Turn Into a “WIN”

This case study is rather interesting as it started off from a failure before they got their winning aha-moment.

Angela Ponsford started a Facebook Ad campaign for her client who wanted to sell a high-priced $990 home renovation program to women’s in 30-40 age range across the USA.

The idea was to build an email list via Facebook Ads and later show them ads for Free Webinar that will lead to the program she wants to sell.

When they run the ads, they performed well, but most of the people that were engaging with it were not the actual audience perceived.

She thought women in the 30-40 age group would take more interest in her program, but women above 45+ were engaging most with her ad and content.

The first few days just yielded in 2 sign ups at the cost of nearly $27 each. So she optimized the ad targeting and the ad copy in line with the results they achieved earlier.

The second run significantly improved the cost/lead, dragging it down to 4 leads at $5.43 each.

After several rounds of testing and tuning with targeting and ad copies, she was able to bag in 400 leads at a cost $507 and some happy customers that went on buying the program.

One of their best performing ads was shared 14 times which indicated that the ad copy was talking to the customer and performed well.

It is essential that you keep on monitoring and optimizing your campaign- especially at the start. Angela was able to reduce the cost/lead from $27 to just $1.27 in the end by continually improving the campaign in the line of results she was getting.

Unless you have a large budget to spend, test your campaign in small budget / test runs until you find what’s working or you might end up spending a lot of money with little results.

Lesson Learned # 17 – There is no barrier to the type and cost of the product you are selling – you can even sell a high priced product using Facebook Ads .

Lesson Learned # 18 – Do some preliminary ad test to fine tune on the audience and then invest more budget where you get the most gold.

Lesson Learned # 19 – The ideal audience perceived by you might not always be correct.

Lesson Learned # 20 – Sometimes the simplest of thing are most effective. By changing the word “Webinar” to “Workshop” on the ad copy, the CTR and leads doubled.

Case Study # 7 – 89% cheaper cost / lead with Facebook Ads

Google Adwords in arguably the most used platform when it comes to online advertising. Hundreds of thousands of businesses use its daily traffic and leads.

But, it’s still expensive to reach for some.

Dave Rogenmoser of The Market Results, identified that cost/lead for a high-end app and web development company ranges between $250 – $1000 / lead on Adwords.

Although $250/lead was a good deal for a $80,000 contract, they wanted more.

Fast forward, they leveraged the narrow-down targeting capabilities of Facebook to target startups that might be in need of app development .

Dave mentioned that the hardest part of the campaign for them was to set targeting for their audience. As we saw from earlier case studies, narrowing down on your target audience is much more beneficial than broadening it.

And he did exactly just that- zoomed in on funded startups that might be in need of app development.

With a spend of $993 across a week, they were able to score 34 leads which was far much quicker and cheaper than Google Adwords.

From the first week of the run, they were able to decrease their cost/lead to $28 a piece, 89% cheaper than what it takes from Adwords.

Want similar results? Check out our free targeting training here.

This goes to show you that how cost effective leads from Facebook can turn out to be when compared with other options.

Lesson Learned # 21 – Facebook Ads are cost effective as compared to Google Adwords when it comes to B2B leads generation.

Lesson Learned # 22 – Facebook ads provide narrower targeting which helps you to laser in on your ideal audience. Setting up the correct targeting is one of the essential parts of your campaign.

Case Study # 8 – 7 Mistakes Made While Spending $234.07 on Facebook Ads

At Connectio we often hear customers saying that they have none or very limited success via Facebook Ads. Either it was not giving the desired results or is turning out to be expensive for them.

This case study is especially useful for such Facebook Ad starter business that is struggling to find their way.

Philip Kleudgen, a web development, and marketing specialist for restaurant owners, shares his experience of how he started off with Facebook Ads- with no prior experience .

As like more people starting off with Facebook Ads, he made some classic mistakes such as;

• Targeting was not set correctly.  He was targeting a very little set of individuals.
• Used only one image and didn’t A/B test between different images or ad copies.
• Wasn’t tracking conversions correctly due to missing or improper configuration
• Keep running ads that were unprofitable.

After running the ad for week or so, he spent $234 on Facebook Ads with a meager CTR and earned less than the actual ad spend.

Although, he was at a loss at this campaign some valuable lessons learned.

But at such stage, most businesses give up rather than realizing their mistakes and optimizing their campaign accordingly.

So it’s important to review and analyze performance and mistakes in your Facebook Ads campaign before ruling the platform as a failure.

Lesson Learned # 23 – Take some pre-campaign time to research and identify your targeted audience. Ideally, have a separate ad set for each unique audience you are targeting.

Lesson Learned # 24 – If your objective is lead generation or sales, you need to set your conversion tracking and do it right. If you aren’t tracking your conversions correctly how would you analyze performance?

Lesson Learned # 25 – Have multiple images and copies of your ad in hand before starting a campaign.

Lesson Learned # 26 – Don’t spend that much money on ads or campaigns that are not giving any result.

Case Study # 9 – How Veeroll Sold 122 Subscriptions with $2.5k Spend on Facebook Ads in 2 Weeks

This case study is another classical example that Facebook can be effectively used to generate leads for B2B businesses. B2B businesses. It also shows how businesses can gain better results by using video ads and continually optimizing the campaign to improve performance. Veeroll along with other places started off their campaign on Facebook and sent all traffic to a webinar funnel . They were also tracking website conversions to know how many people referred from Facebook were converting on that landing page.

They set their targeting and created the ads. Initially, they were getting a higher CPC.

Although their primary objective was to show the video ads, they also tested the text ad along with it and they saw a huge difference between both.

This the stats on their text ad;

And compare that to the video ad;

They spent a little more on the video ads, but have 18X more engagement and were 3.5X more than the text ads.

So seeing the video ads were proving better, they went on creating multiple video ads.

This is one of the video ads they were using.

Specifically, implementing retargeting on the website helped them lower their CPC and improve their conversions.

At the end of 2 weeks campaign, they were able to have 122 signups that resulted in $11,000 of monthly revenue that too just from a $2500 in ad spend.

That is almost 400% is profit against the cost of Facebook Ads, not to mention that the lifetime value of these customers will be way much than this.

Lesson Learned # 27 – Don’t get faltered from initial road bumps. Review the performance and capitalize where most performance is achieved. Such as mobile users were engaging far more than desktop users in this case so apparently it makes sense to pour more budget here.

Lesson Learned # 28 –  Retargeted traffic gave better conversion then the cold traffic. Veeroll has the lowest CPC and conversion from retargeted ads.

Lesson Learned # 29 – Don’t just stick to conventional ad styles. Try video ads too. They have incredible engagement and lets you communicate more message than what it takes from text and image ads.

Case Study # 10 – Reaping $163,969 in revenue from $5989 of ad spend in just 34 days

This is an absorbing Facebook Ad Case Study as it not only achieved a remarkable result but worked on an approach that will work in any niche – yes any niche. It is also very helpful for startup businesses that have none or small following and email list.

Paul Romando’s  Facebook Ad’s campaign for his client returned a staggering $163,969 in revenue from a mere $5989 in ad investment.

That’s an insane 2737.80% of return in just 34 days of the campaign.

Paul’s success formula was simple.

Rather than going for the hard sell, he created a Facebook funnel, where leads first opted in on content ( lead magnet) around a product.

And later, for all those that opted in, Paul would show a different ad set that directly takes them to the sale page.

He calls this is the Elope Approach.

His multi-step Facebook Ad Strategy builds up a connection with your targeted audience before going for the sale. This helps in nurturing leads and segmenting people that are most likely to convert.

Particularly important was the Facebook Ad relevance score. A high Facebook Ad relevance score helped your ad not being flagged by Facebook and delivered to your targeted audience.

So when he showed the sales ads to his existing audience, a high relevance score for imminent as these people already knew him.

For most B2B businesses having a Facebook Sales Funnel is crucial. It might sound a lot of work but gains are immense, and you can use it over and over again.

Lessons Learned # 30 – Rather than going straight for sales, develop a Facebook funnel through a lead magnet. Once you have subscribers in your funnel, nurture them with you offer ads.

Lessons Learned # 31 – Use different ads / ad sets for the retargeted audience / warm leads. Since they already know about your product, take them straight to your money page.

For example, create a different ads / ad set for cold and warm leads and make sure that you exclude each one of them in the targeting set.

Case Study # 11 – How Wahida Generated High-Quality Leads With Just $10/Day

Sending people straight to a sales page might work in commodity niches such as online stores, but for B2B services it’s essential to capture the leads first.

This case study came from Wahida Lakhani, one of the students of Claire Pelletreau from her Ad Consultant Incubator program. She was able to manage a very low cost / lead for a client in health and fitness niche.

The idea was same as Paul Romano – generate leads using a lead magnet and then move on for the sale.

But she tweaked it a bit.

Rather than sending them to a lead magnet straight away, she added another layer. She sent the traffic from Facebook ad to a high-quality article on the blog and added a lead magnet as the content upgrade.

The original article was on creating “Easy Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars” but she added the details of the lead magnet “6 Vegan and Gluten-Free Recipes.”

This is uber awesome, provided you have an ultra high-quality article that drives CTR from Facebook and an equally irresistible lead magnet.To ensure they provided the detail of valuable content in the ad, she also added the lead magnet detailed information in the FB ad.

The results were 10/10 relevance score from Facebook, high CTR ( 5%)  and lead cost at just $0.65.

Want 10/10 relevance scores also? Check out our free targeting training here.

This was far less than the industry standard in health and wellness. So regardless of how competitive your niche is, there is still an opportunity for to score dirt-cheap leads.

Lesson Learned # 32 – Having a high-quality content helps in generating high CTR, better engagement, and lead generation.

Lesson Learned # 33 – Use your Facebook Ad effectively to list all the value you are providing. This will make your case stronger and gives the reader more reason to interact with your ad.

Lesson Learned # 34 – With a well thought out plan / funnel / strategy, you can shatter any industry benchmarks no matter how competitive your niche is.

Case Study # 12 –  How Mary Got 532 Subscribers in 43 days Using Facebook Ads

For startup businesses and bloggers, getting new subscribers for their blog is often challenging. They might end up producing high-quality content but fail to attract the subscribers/ optins they would expect.

This case study will help you understand that how can you use Facebook Ads to generate more subscribers for your blog.

Mary Fernandez shows how she gained new blog subscribers for just $0.43 each using video ads.

One common thing that she experienced in building blog subscribers for her clients was that personalizing the ad gave better results than a stock-photo ad.

Such as these are some examples of a personalized ad.

And this too;

Why these ads?

View the Facebook from the standpoint of a potential subscriber.

They are probably surfing Facebook to see what their friends are doing, following up with family and socializing but not to view ads.

If your ad looks like a traditional ad, there is a high chance that they will ignore it. But if they see something relevant or something which might not be another ad from the laundry, they are more likely to engage.

So where possible try to use a personal looking photo of you or your employees, instead of stock photos.

Lessons Learned # 35 – Facebook Ads can be used for any objective – even if its finding or increasing new subscribers for your blog.

Lesson Learned # 36 – Keep your ads as personal as possible. Your audience will be more likely to interact with your ad if it has a human effect / touch.

Case Study # 13 – How Servando got 500% ROI from a $20 Facebook Ad budget

This case study is especially useful for people and businesses that don’t have a product of their own but are promoting affiliate products.

We have often seen our customers using Facebook Ads for promoting affiliate offers, but they seem to struggle in creating an effective strategy.

One of the biggest mistakes they make is not using the landing page effectively.

It’s not difficult or impossible to send traffic from Facebook. If you set your targeting right, you will still be able to get the required traffic.

However, if you are promoting affiliate products on Facebook , don’t send them straight to a sales page but to a “bridge” page first.

This is what Servando Silva of Stream-Seo did. For the affiliate offer, he was promoting using two landing pages.

1 – One page that had a description of the offer and a Free Trial button that took them straight to the sales page.

2 – One that has an opt-in form ( just for email) and after submitting will lead to the sales page.

He spent overall $20 on ads on both the ads pages and was able to earn $100 in commission and 60 valuable leads.

Though the sales came from the first page, he was able to score valuable leads via the second ad and landing page.

Not only did he earn $80 over his $20 spend, but he also grew his list which he can leverage in the future.

From the 198 people that clicked on from his Facebook Ads , almost 119 clicked on to the affiliate link. So this shows that bringing quality traffic certainly works in your favor.

Lesson Learned # 37 – If you want the best ROI from your campaigns, don’t just focus on the Facebook Ad part – plan ahead where you will send the traffic and how will you capitalize on them.

Lesson Learned # 38 – Create multiple funnels and objectives from different ad sets and landing pages. Such as in this case he tested two ads on two different landing pages giving him multiple segmented audiences.

So there you have it – an in-depth review of the best handpicked Facebook Ads Case studies from nearly all types of businesses with variable objectives.

By reviewing the above case studies, it is evident that the success of Facebook Ads lies in multiple things. But it’s also clear that budget is not a primary factor, and you can succeed with even minimal of the budget.

What’s your favorite case study?

11 Facebook Case Studies & Success Stories to Inspire You

Updated: August 05, 2019

Published: August 02, 2019

Although Facebook is one of the older social media networks, it's still a thriving platform for businesses who want to boost brand awareness.

With over 2.38 billion monthly active users , you can use the platform to spread the word about your business in a number of different ways -- from photos or videos to paid advertisements.

Because there are so many marketing options and opportunities on Facebook, It can be hard to tell which strategy is actually best for your brand.

If you're not sure where to start, you can read case studies to learn about strategies that marketing pros and similar businesses have tried in the past.

A case study will often go over a brand's marketing challenge, goals, a campaign's key details, and its results. This gives you a real-life glimpse at what led a marketing team to reach success on Facebook. Case studies also can help you avoid or navigate common challenges that other companies faced when implementing a new Facebook strategy.

To help you in choosing your next Facebook strategy, we've compiled a list of 11 great case studies that show how a number of different companies have succeeded on the platform.

Even if your company has a lower budget or sells a different product, we hope these case studies will inspire you and give you creative ideas for your own scalable Facebook strategy.

Facebook Brand Awareness Case Studies:

During the 2017 holiday season, the jewelry company Pandora wanted to boost brand awareness in the German market. They also wanted to see if video ads could have the same success as their other Facebook ad formats.

They began this experiment by working with Facebook to adapt a successful TV commercial for the platform. Here's a look at the original commercial:

The ad was cut down to a 15-second clip which shows a woman receiving a Pandora necklace from her partner. It was also cropped into a square size for mobile users. Pandora then ran the ad targeting German audiences between the ages of 18-50. It appeared in newsfeeds and as an in-stream video ad .

Results: According to the case study , the video campaign lifted brand sentiment during the holiday season, with a 10-point lift in favorability. While Pandora or the case study didn't disclose how they measured their favorability score, they note that the lift means that more consumers favored Pandora over other jewelers because of the ad.

Financially, the campaign also provided ROI with a 61% lift in purchases and a 42% increase in new buyers.

Video can be memorable, emotional, and persuasive. While the case study notes that Pandora always had success with ads and purchases, the jeweler saw that a video format could boost brand awareness even further.

In just 15 seconds, Pandora was able to tell a short story that their target audience could identify with while also showing off their product. The increase in favorability shows that audiences who saw the ad connected with it and preferred the jeweler over other companies because of the marketing technique.

Part of Pandora's success might also be due to the video's platform adaptation. Although they didn't create a specific video for the Facebook platform, they picked a commercial that had already resonated with TV audiences and tweaked it to grab attention of fast-paced Facebook users. This is a good example of how a company can be resourceful with the content it already has while still catering to their online audiences.

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame , a HubSpot customer, wanted to boost brand awareness and get more ticket purchases to their museum. Since they'd mainly used traditional customer outreach strategies in the past, they wanted to experiment with more ways of reaching audiences on social media.

Because the museum's social media team recognized how often they personally used Facebook Messenger, they decided to implement a messaging strategy on the Hall of Fame's official business page.

From the business page, users can click the Get Started button and open a chat with the Hall of Fame. Through the chat, social media managers were able to quickly reply to questions or comments from fans, followers, and prospective visitors. The reps would also send helpful links detailing venue pricing, events, other promotions, and activities in the surrounding area.

Since the Messenger launch, they claim to have raised their audience size by 81% and sales from prospects by 12%. The company claims that this feature was so successful that they even received 54 messages on an Easter Sunday.

Being available to connect with your audiences through Messenger can be beneficial to your business and your brand. While the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame boosted purchases, they also got to interact with their audiences on a personal level. Their availability might have made them look like a more trustworthy, friendly brand that was actually interested in their fanbase rather than just sales.

Facebook Reach Case Study:

In early 2016, Buffer started to see a decline in their brand reach and engagement on Facebook due to algorithm changes that favored individuals rather than brands. In an effort to prevent their engagement and reach numbers from dropping even further.

The brand decided to cut their posting frequency by 50%. With less time focused on many posts, they could focus more time on creating fewer, better-quality posts that purely aimed at gaining engagement. For example, instead of posting standard links and quick captions, they began to experiment with different formats such as posts with multi-paragraph captions and videos. After starting the strategy in 2016, they continued it through 2018.

Here's an example of one an interview that was produced and shared exclusively on Facebook.

The Results: By 2018, Buffer claimed that the average weekly reach nearly tripled from 44,000 at the beginning of the experiment to 120,000. The page's average daily engagements also doubled from roughly 500 per day to around 1,000.

In 2018, Buffer claimed that their posts reached between 5,000 to 20,000 people, while posts from before the experiment reached less than 2,000.

Although Buffer began the experiment before major Facebook algorithm changes , they updated this case study in 2018 claiming that this strategy has endured platform shifts and is still providing them with high reach and engagement.

It can be easy to overpost on a social network and just hope it works. But constant posts that get no reach or engagement could be wasted your time and money. They might even make your page look desperate.

What Buffer found was that less is more. Rather than spending your time posting whatever you can, you should take time to brainstorm and schedule out interesting posts that speak directly to your customer.

Facebook Video Views Case Studies:

Gearing up for Halloween in 2016, Tomcat, a rodent extermination company, wanted to experiment with a puppet-filled, horror-themed, live video event. The narrative, which was created in part by their marketing agency, told the story of a few oblivious teenage mice that were vacationing in a haunted cabin in the woods. At peak points of the story, audiences were asked to use the comments to choose which mouse puppet would die next or how they would die.

Prior to the video event, Tomcat also rolled out movie posters with the event date, an image of the scared mouse puppets, and a headline saying, "Spoiler: They all die!"

Results: It turns out that a lot of people enjoy killing rodents. The live video got over 2.3 million unique views , and 21% of them actively participated. As an added bonus, the video also boosted Tomcat's Facebook fanbase by 58% and earned them a Cyber Lion at the 2017 Cannes Lions awards.

Here's a hilarious sizzle reel that shows a few clips from the video and a few key stats:

This example shows how creative content marketing can help even the most logistical businesses gain engagement. While pest control can be a dry topic for a video, the brand highlighted it in a creative and funny way.

This study also highlights how interactivity can provide huge bonuses when it comes to views and engagement. Even though many of the viewers knew all the rats would die, many still participated just because it was fun.

Not only might this peak brand interest from people who hadn't thought that deeply about pest control, but interactivity can also help a video algorithmically. As more people comment, share, and react to a live video, there's more likelihood that it will get prioritized and displayed in the feeds of others.

In 2017, HubSpot's social media team embarked on an experiment where they pivoted their video goals from lead generation to audience engagement. Prior to this shift, HubSpot had regularly posted Facebook videos that were created to generate leads. As part of the new strategy, the team brainstormed a list of headlines and topics that they thought their social media audience would actually like, rather than just topics that would generate sales.

Along with this pivot, they also experimented with other video elements including video design, formatting, and size .

Results: After they started to launch the audience-friendly videos, they saw monthly video views jump from 50,000 to 1 million in mid-2017.

Creating content that caters to your fanbase's interests and the social platform it's posted on can be much more effective than content that seeks out leads.

While videos with the pure goal of selling a product can fall flat with views and engagement, creative videos that intrigue and inform your audiences about a topic they relate to can be a much more effective way to gain and keep your audience. Once the audience trusts you and consumes your content regularly, they might even trust and gain interest in your products.

Facebook App Installs Case Study:

Foxnext games.

FoxNext Games, a video game company owned by 20th Century Fox, wanted to improve the level of app installs for one of its newest releases, Marvel Strike Force. While FoxNext had previously advertised other games with Facebook video ads, they wanted to test out the swipe-able photo carousel post format. Each photo, designed like a playing card, highlighted a different element of the game.

The add offered a call-to-action button that said "Install Now" and lead to the app store where it could be downloaded. FoxNext launched it on both Facebook and Instagram. To see if the carousel was more efficient than video campaigns, they compared two ads that advertised the same game with each format.

Results: According to Facebook , the photo ads delivered a 6% higher return on ad spend, 14% more revenue, 61% more installs, and 33% lower cost per app install.

Takeaways If your product is visual, a carousel can be a great way to show off different elements of it. This case study also shows how designing ads around your audience's interest can help each post stand out to them. In this scenario, FoxNext needed to advertise a game about superheroes. They knew that their fanbase was interested in gaming, adventure, and comic books, so they created carousels that felt more like playing cards to expand on the game's visual narrative.

Facebook Lead Gen Case Study:

Major impact media.

In 2019, Major Impact Media released a case study about a real-estate client that wanted to generate more leads. Prior to working with Major Impact, the Minneapolis, Minnesota brokerage hired another firm to build out an online lead generation funnel that had garnered them no leads in the two months it was active. They turned to Major Impact looking for a process where they could regularly be generating online leads.

As part of the lead generation process, the marketing and brokerage firms made a series of Facebook ads with the lead generation objective set. Major Impact also helped the company build a CRM that could capture these leads as they came in.

Results: Within a day, they received eight leads for $2.45 each. In the next 90 days, the marketing firm claimed the ads generated over 370 local leads at the average cost of $6.77 each. Each lead gave the company their name, email, and phone number.

Although these results sound like a promising improvement, readers of this case study should keep in mind that no number of qualified leads or ROI was disclosed. While the study states that leads were gained, it's unclear which of them lead to actual sales -- if any.

This shows how Facebook ad targeting can be helpful when you're seeking out leads from a specific audience in a local area. The Minneapolis brokerage's original marketing and social media strategies weren't succeeding because they were looking for a very specific audience of prospective buyers in the immediate area.

Ad targeting allowed their posts to be placed on the news feeds of people in the area who might be searching for real estate or have interests related to buying a home. This, in turn, might have caused them more success in gaining leads.

Facebook Engagement Case Study:

When the eyewear brand Hawkers partnered up with Spanish clothing brand El Ganso for a joint line of sunglasses, Hawkers' marketing team wanted to see which Facebook ad format would garner the most engagement. Between March and April of 2017, they launched a combination of standard ads and collection ads on Facebook.

While their standard ads had a photo, a caption and a call-to-action linking to their site, the collection ads offered a header image or video, followed by smaller images of sunglasses from the line underneath.

Image from Digital Training Academy

To A/B test ad effectiveness of the different ad types, Hawkers showed half of its audience standard photo ads while the other half were presented with the collection format. The company also used Facebook's Audience Lookalike feature to target the ads their audiences and similar users in Spain.

Results: The collection ad boosted engagement by 86% . The collection ads also saw a 51% higher rate of return than the other ads.

This study shows how an ad that shows off different elements of your product or service could be more engaging to your audience. With collection ads, audiences can see a bunch of products as well as a main image or video about the sunglass line. With a standard single photo or video, the number of products you show might be limited. While some users might not respond well to one image or video, they might engage if they see a number of different products or styles they like.

Facebook Conversion Case Study:

Femibion from merck.

Femibion, a German family-planning brand owned by Merck Consumer Health, wanted to generate leads by offering audiences a free baby planning book called "Femibion BabyPlanung." The company worked with Facebook to launch a multistage campaign with a combination of traditional image and link ads with carousel ads.

The campaign began with a cheeky series of carousel ads that featured tasteful pictures of "baby-making places," or locations where women might conceive a child. The later ads were a more standard format that displayed an image of the book and a call-to-action.

When the first ads launched in December 2016, they were targeted to female audiences in Germany. In 2017, during the later stages of the campaign, the standard ads were retargeted to women who had previously interacted with the carousel ads. With this strategy, people who already showed interest would see more ads for the free product offer. This could cause them to remember the offer or click when they saw it a second time.

Results: By the time the promotion ended in April 2017, ads saw a 35% increase in conversion rate. The company had also generated 10,000 leads and decreased their sample distribution cost by two times.

This case study shows how a company successfully brought leads through the funnel. By targeting women in Germany for their first series of creative "baby-making" ads, they gained attention from a broad audience. Then, by focusing their next round of ads on women who'd already shown some type of interest in their product, they reminded those audiences of the offer which may have enabled those people to convert to leads.

Facebook Product Sales Case Study

In an effort to boost sales from its Latin American audiences, Samsung promoted the 2015 Argentina launch of the Galaxy S6 smartphone with a one-month Facebook campaign.

The campaign featured three videos that highlighted the phone's design, camera, and long battery life respectively.

One video was released each week and all of them were targeted to men and women in Argentina. In the fourth week of the campaign, Samsung launched more traditional video and photo ads about the product. These ads were specifically targeted to people who'd engaged with the videos and their lookalike audiences.

Results: Samsung received 500% ROI from the month-long campaign and a 7% increase in new customers.

Like Femibion, Samsung tested a multiple ad strategy where the targeting got more specific as the promotions continued. They too saw the benefit of targeting ads to users who already showed interest in the first rounds of advertisements. This strategy definitely seems like one that could be effective when trying to gain more qualified leads.

Facebook Store Visits Case Study:

Church's chicken.

The world's third-largest chicken restaurant, Church's Chicken, wanted to see if they could use Facebook to increase in-restaurant traffic. From February to October of 2017, the chain ran a series of ads with the "Store Traffic" ad objectives. Rather than giving customers a link to a purchasing or order page, these ads offer users a call-to-action that says "Get Directions." The dynamic store-traffic ad also gives users the store information for the restaurant closest to them.

Image from Facebook

The ads ran on desktop and mobile newsfeeds and were targeted at people living near a Church's Chicken who were also interested in "quick-serve restaurants." The study also noted that third-party data was used to target customers who were "big spenders" at these types of restaurants.

To measure the results, the team compared data from Facebook's store-reporting feature with data from all of its locations.

Results: The ads resulted in over 592,000 store visits with an 800% ROI. Each visit cost the company an average of $1.14. The ROI of the campaign was four times the team's return goal.

If you don't have an ecommerce business, Facebook ads can still be helpful for you if they're strategized properly. In this example, Church's ads targeted locals who like quick-serve restaurants and served them a dynamic ad with text that notified them of a restaurant in their direct area. This type of targeting and ad strategy could be helpful to small businesses or hyperlocal businesses that want to gain foot traffic or awareness from the prospective customers closest to them.

Navigating Case Studies

If you're a marketer that wants to execute proven Facebook strategies, case studies will be incredibly helpful for you. If the case studies on the list above didn't answer one of your burning Facebook questions, there are plenty of other resources and success stories online.

As you look for a great case study to model your next campaign strategy, look for stories that seem credible and don't feel too vague. The best case studies will clearly go over a company's mission, challenge or mission, process, and results.

Because many of the case studies you'll find are from big businesses, you might also want to look at strategies that you can implement on a smaller scale. For example, while you may not be able to create a full commercial at the production quality of Pandora, you might still be able to make a lower-budget video that still conveys a strong message to your audience.

If you're interested in starting a paid campaign, check out this helpful how-to post . If you just want to take advantage of free options, we also have some great information on Facebook Live and Facebook for Business .

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