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I’m looking into starting a new ad campaign through ExoClick for my adult website, but I really need some advice. We’ve lost out massively on their ads before (we’re not really looking to spend on brand promotion, we’re looking to increase sales), and we’ve reached a dead-end in our efforts.
Everyone on my side has looked at this again and again, we’ve reviewed the ads, reviewed on-page content, read through pages of how-to information and FAQ’s, and after spending £200 and getting 1,700 clicks we made absolutely NO sales at all from their traffic.
Is there anyone here who has experience of ExoClick and can tell me what the hell we’re doing wrong? Anyone have any information on whether it’s actually a rip off or not? Is it only used by companies for brand awareness and no one expects to gain any sales?
We’ve looked into various things to optimize the effort, for instance only running ads after 11pm to avoid skint teens from clicking, and showing high price items (with the price) to encourage clicks from those with money to spend. No matter what we do it seems as though we may as well just pop outside and light up a stack of cash.
We did ask ExoClick about this and they basically said to only use RON campaigns and to then decide which sites are sending us the best traffic, but with absolutely no sales at all from their traffic so far, how can we decide which is the best traffic? We need to see sales from these sites to be able to decide which sites are best for us and then targeting them specifically.
Surely we should be getting at least ONE SALE from more than 1,700 visitors?!
Your thoughts and opinions are greatly appreciated.
I have used them extensively as a media buyer for clients. What I found that is relative to your question is two things:
1) Unfortunately, 1700 visits is not nearly large enough a sample size to judge your ad or the traffic It is a lot like national presidential polls in that regard, where anything short of 6 figures is not a true representative of what to expect.
2) The only product types that have consistently converted in the black are live cams and dating (sadly usually fake-ass ones) sites. I think the casino guys do pretty well too, but that is not something I know much about other than they seem to keep buying.
Also to your question:
“Is it only used by companies for brand awareness and no one expects to gain any sales?”The other I see is that the people most aggressive with traffic buys anywhere – not just Exo – are generally keeping their margins up with aggressive sales tactics like cross sells and pushing traffic to sites as a means to build email lists.
It is not pretty – but it is the truth from what I have seen anyway.
We’ve managed to control the spend more effectively now, and we’re finally getting better value for money. We’re looking at alternative ways to drive traffic to newsletter signup rather than sales, as we do see the majority of sales coming from subscribers. The problem we now have is establishing what to create for free to encourage that subscription.
It’s been an expensive learning experience, but I do feel we’re finally getting somewhere. Now I just need to work out what the free content should be to encourage those clicks and sign up.
£200 sounds like a lot for only 1700 clicks? Or maybe that’s just the going rate?
Yep, that’s what we thought too. The original campaign was set up incorrectly, targeting premium sites. Basically we were throwing money at the “best” in their network without knowing that the traffic was so bad, and that 99.99% of those clicking would never buy anything.
We’ve argued about this here for a while now. The way I see it, guys who use tubes have no intention of buying anything, that’s why they’re wanking over 2 minute clips. If they’re not willing to pay for a site membership of maybe £20 a month, why would we think they would want to spend £20 on a toy?
On the other side of the debate, there’s the argument that we can create the “perfect campaign” to better target those with money to spend. For instance, only targeting surfers using a Mac, only on gay videos, only after 11pm, and advertising a high price item they might already be familiar with (subconsciously promoting the message that only buyers should click). The logic is that gay men have a higher disposable income, Mac users are generally in higher income bracket, and the number of skint teens watching tube videos declines later into the night.
I’ve kind of agreed to test out the suggested methods to better optimize the effort and see what happens this month.
I believe we’ve more than halved that cost in the second run of ads. And we’re getting more newsletter subscribers too. It seems we’re doing something right. We just need to tip it over the edge to make it as profitable as it can be.
I think we’re going to continue drilling down to get the perfect ad at the perfect time for the perfect viewer, then target them for newsletter sign up first of all. We just need to find something to hook them in, like a free report or booklet only open to subscribers. Once we have customers on a list it becomes a hell of a lot easier to sell.
I think we tried them last year, but it didn’t work out very well. I might have another look at them later, it might do better for newsletter subscribers, if we can come up with something guys will want to register for.
