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[Case Study] How we Got 259% ROI Using Native Advertising

This is Part 3 of a 3-part series on native advertising.  Be sure to read Part 1 and Part 2 before reading this case study:

In the first two posts of this series, we defined native advertising and outlined a method for rolling out a native ad in less than an hour.
But what does a native ad campaign look like?
And… more importantly… do native ads produce an ROI?
In this 3rd article of the 3 part series on native advertising we’ll break down one of our native ad campaigns in detail.

We started with the product…

At Digital Marketer, we sell information.
But we’ve trained students in Native Ad Academy to successfully sell everything from pet sitting to kitchen supplies/remodeling using native advertising.
In our case, the product was our flagship blog training program, Authority ROI.
We had a traditional video sales letter that sold the Authority ROI product that looked like this…
Traditional VSL

We built a “native worthy” landing page…

In the Native Ad academy training we begin with writing “native worthy” landing pages because the landing page is the single biggest difference between a native ad and a traditional ad.
If you get the landing page right, your ad is a snap to create.
Our goal was to sell our blog training program to prospects looking for a complete course on planning, building and launching a blog that makes money.
We settled on a case study that would outline “…six ways we broke the rules and transformed a blog into a high-profit authority site” as our “native worthy” landing page.
Note: Learn more about creating “native worthy” landing pages in Part 2 of this series, How to Get Started with Native Ads in 60 Minutes or Less.
Here’s what the post looked like…
Native Ad Landing Page
There are 3 things that make this blog post a great native ad landing page…

  • Proof – We’re showing that the system we teach in the product works.  We’ve built this blog to over 1 million in sales per month in less than a year.
  • Value – This post is nearly 3,000 words of our best advice on building a blog that makes money.  This article has tremendous stand-alone value.
  • Relevance – The content in this post is useful to the specific target market for the product it aims to sell.

Throughout the copy of the case study and wherever it was natural, we included links to the product offer.
It looks like this…
Native Ad Landing Page to Video Sales Letter
and this…
native-ads-to-vsl
and this…
Native Ad Landing Pages to Video Sales Letter
All in all, we included 6 different links to the video sales letter in the native landing page.

We bought traffic to the “native worthy” landing page

For this native ad promotion we bought traffic from Facebook and Twitter and used in-feed ads exclusively.
Here’s the Facebook ad…
Native Facebook Ad
We spent a total of 2,063.36 promoting this Facebook ad…
Facebook Native Ad Spend
We had a reach of 375,111 for 5,019 “Engagements” with the post at a cost of $.41 per post engagement.
This resulted in $5,810.30 in sales…
Facebook Native Ad Sales
This is an ROI of 181%.
We also ran Twitter in-feed native ads to this “native worthy” landing page.
Here is the simple Twitter Promoted Tweet we used…
Native Ad Promoted Tweet
It’s just a slight modification of the case study headline.
We spent $602.68 on Twitter native ads for 58.7K impressions and 1,803 “Engagements” on the tweets.
Native Ad - Twitter Spend
This resulted in $3,771.55 in sales for the product…
Twitter Native Ad ROI
This is an ROI of 525% from Twitter native ads.
These are the totals across the entire campaign,

  • 433K Ad Impressions
  • 6,822 Engagements
  • $2,666.04 in ad spend
  • $9,581.85 in sales

ROI = 259%
As for the “native worthy” landing page itself, this post (because it is valuable and not just an offer) received lots of organic (free) traffic…

  • 885 Facebook “Likes”
  • 194 Tweets
  • 94 LinkedIn Shares
  • 66 shares from Google+

Do this now…

This case study illustrates the reason we are shifting more of our advertising dollars to native advertising.
Do your business a favor…
Watch this presentation from Ryan Deiss to learn more about native advertising and our Native Ad Academy training.

Digital Marketer

Digital Marketer

Digital Marketer stands behind its tagline, "It's Just Smarter", due to its frequent and widely focused delivery of tactical, test-based information and online optimization best practices, designed to show readers what's truly working and what isn't within online marketing.

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