As familiar as we are with social media you would think it would be easier to understand how to run successful ad campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Yet often the lucrative success that “social media experts” write about in books or present in their seminars doesn't come as easily. Fortunately for us, due to a policy change, Facebook has now vicariously opened a priceless tool to help you improve your advertising campaigns run through ads manager and more specifically on Facebook.
In April, to be more transparent, Facebook began requiring business pages to list all their active, paid advertisements. This change allows anybody to view all of the running advertisements by simply navigating to a company’s “Business” page and clicking a tab on left of the screen that says “Info and Ads.”
I was curious about what I might find looking specifically at lending companies on Facebook. Over the course of a few days, I was able to analyze the current advertisements of multiple lending companies and I quickly realized that for many lenders the ability to search through and farm Facebook ads would be a handy tool in multiple ways. For example, you can see exactly what your competitors are doing (at least as far as Facebook ads go) and act and react accordingly. Searching through ads will also help you to expand your creative horizons and fuel your ability to make unique and successful advertisements in the future.
We will cover three different lending companies that were found to have great Facebook advertising techniques.
Lift Credit
When I looked at Life Credit's page, they were running 16 ads, with little variation from each other. It’s clear that Lift Credit has tapped into an important element of Social Marketing, testing. No one can really know how well an ad will perform without running tests.
Low-cost testing is one of the key components that makes Social Marketing so powerful. The ability to constantly adjust your ad until it hits your desired metrics is incredible. Don’t be afraid to run multiple test ads; at the time of my analysis, Lift Credit was running ten ads with the same text. The only difference in these ten ads was the imaging and their geographic targeting.
By keeping the text the same and changing the images, Lift Credit was effectively running A/B image testing within three geographic regions. This showed them how each region responds to various images. Since my initial analysis Lift Credit has reduced the number of running ads, leaving the most effective ads.
Another thing to note is that Lift Credit efficiently recycles their content, like the two high-quality images above. Remember, it’s ok to reuse content especially if it converts!
Sofi
What I like about SoFi's social marketing is they know what they want. By looking at their ads I could quickly tell that Sofi’s intentions were to position themselves as a financial expert among millennials and drive downloads of their app. A clearly defined goal will help you identify how you are going to hit your target market. You will also be able to maximize your social budget by focusing on what’s most important.
To help millennials with their financial goals Sofi ran twelve ads with “learn more” CTAs, six of which led to very specific blog posts like “How to Pay Off your Veterinary School Debt.” The other half pointed to pages about retirement, interest, or tools like a student loan calculator. By generating specific and helpful content Sofi remains relevant among their target customers.
In today's marketing environment it’s critical to contribute information that is helpful to customers. If you can direct them to a blog post or website to help them solve a problem your chance of earning their business increases dramatically. It's also important to find a balance between promoting your helpful content and the lending solution you offer.
Striving for a content/solution balance, Sofi ran another twelve ads dedicated to getting people to sign up for an app that was under development. When your metric is downloads, it is important to make it easy to sign up for the download and therefore collect information necessary for your lead. Sofi accomplished this by using an auto-filled form that is generated inside Facebook. It takes just two clicks to sign up rather than typing out any information! It’s perfect for Sofi’s millennial target and will be helpful in generating more leads of your own.
Earnest
Out there somewhere is a small lender who is thinking that they don’t have the budget or the team to be an effective advertiser in the social world. Well, look at Earnest. When I came across Earnest they were running several ads that proclaimed their transparency by telling the viewer how much the ad image cost, it was only $30.
It’s possible to make great social ads on any budget. Use stock photos or emojis and make your ads compatible across multiple platforms (i.e make your images square so they can be used on Facebook and Instagram without any image warping.) Even a low-cost ad can make a considerable impression if you dial in your target, spend time running some tests, and have a clear call to action.
