Decrease Facebook and LinkedIn Cost per Demo With Visual Metaphors and Memes

By using visual metaphors and memes as ad creatives on LinkedIn and Facebook, Reply.io decreased their cost per demo by more than 60%.

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TL;DR

• The company: Sales engagement platform, Reply.io.
• The goal: Decrease LinkedIn and Facebook ad cost per demo.
• The tactic: Use visual metaphors and memes as ad creatives.
• The result: 60%+ decrease in cost per demo, and 375% increase in CTR.

What’s the fast marketing tactic?

In place of standard product ads, Reply.io wanted to try a more eye-catching strategy on LinkedIn and Facebook. They tested using visual metaphors and memes to convey their key messages.

The team made use of ChatGPT to brainstorm and generate multiple metaphor ideas based around their messages, and to turn them into design briefings. 

Here are some examples of the final outputs: 

• The message “Reply.io is what you need to scale your sales,” illustrated as an image of Alice in Wonderland drinking for instant growth. 
• The message “Reply.io is a cutting-edge growth tool,” conveyed as “If aliens could take something high-tech from earth, they would take Reply.io.”
• The message “Reply.io is all you need to automate your sales and start your outreach,” conveyed as an image of a powertool branded as Reply.io, with the message “If sales managers were construction workers, Reply.io would be all they need.”

What was the result?

Following two months of testing these metaphor ads versus Reply.io’s more “standard” product ads, the metaphor ads led to:

• 69% decrease in cost per demo scheduled from LinkedIn ad leads. The quality of the demos remained similar across both types of ads.
• 375% increase in LinkedIn ad CTR (click-through rate), from 0.4% to 1.5%.
• 66% decrease in cost per demo scheduled from Facebook ad leads. The demo quality was similar across both types of ads, however, the leads from the metaphor ads lacked urgency. 

Get more ideas on how to improve your social media creatives with the Facebook Ads Creative course.

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