Hi, Im Ezra (that’s me holding a baby) and this is The story of how I made 520 Ecommerce sales that generated $41,254.34 in revenue from $775.50 in ad spend with Pinterest Advertising.
September 19th, 2013, was shaping up to be just another average Thursday until… Pinterest, the world’s fourth largest social network, announced the impending roll out of their advertising platform.
At that point, I’d already had my eye on them for quite some time. With warp-speed growth, a user base of 70% women, and an average user household income of over $100,000, Pinterest was shaping up to be an eCommerce marketer’s dream!
I mean, c’mon! The whole point of Pinterest is for users to search and make lists (boards) of the things they want. For an eCommerce retailer, there’s nothing better than that: a large group of people with disposable income telling you exactly what they want by searching for it. I knew it was only a matter of time before Pinterest monetized their platform by letting advertisers display messages to their users.
As you can imagine, I was STOKED when I heard that Pinterest ads were finally here! I was even more excited when I found out the ad platform was going to be a combination of query based visibility (read: people seeing ads based on what they’ve searched — a la Google) AND contextual visibility (read: people seeing ads based on demographic data points like age and gender — a la Facebook).
Unfortunately for me, Pinterest was only letting in a few fortune 500 retailers to test, so I was going to have to wait. Disappointed as I was, I didn’t let it get me down; the eCommerce business is a long game where patience and consistency pay dividends, and I’ve been playing for a while. I remember when Google Adwords were 3 cents a click; I remember when Facebook launched and we were able to generate full price eCommerce sales for under $5 each.
If you’ve been in the game a while, you may have noticed there’s a pattern with the launch of these social ad networks: traffic starts off cheap and gradually gets more expensive. This has to do with targeting. When a new platform launches, they are still working out the kinks in the system and dialing in its targeting capabilities and platform functionality, so ads are cheap. As they hone the targeting and tracking, it becomes easier to show advertisers a positive return on ad spend, and as a result ad prices go up. Basically, new social ad networks use cheap ads to attract advertisers as paying beta testers for their fledgling platforms. Win-win!
Okay, now back to my story. Fast forward to the big news of early 2014: Pinterest opened a waitlist!
You’d better believe I jumped on that thing QUICK. I’d already seen several case studies they had released with data from the lucky few Fortune 500 brands that got access right off the bat in 2013. The results were phenomenal: I’m talking SIGNIFICANT ROI. At this point, I was chomping at the bit to get my campaign going!
All my excitement was for naught; they left me out in the rain for 9 whole months! But then one day I received the email I was beginning to feel would never come.
I felt like Charlie with one of Wonka’s golden tickets. I WAS IN!! The party had officially started.
*Note, you won’t have to wait this long to get access, as they are opening up more accounts every day. I applied for another business and was approved in less than a month.
I was like a kid in a candy shop as I began to check out their system. Sure enough, it was query based targeting combined with contextual data points. This means I get to choose the keywords for which I want my ads to show up AND I can set location, language, gender, and a couple other contextual data points. And on top of all of this, Pinterest is a native advertising system! Translation: the advertisement blends in with the platform so that the user can’t easily tell the difference between an ad unit or paid placement and any other piece of content on the platform. At this point, I was BEYOND STOKED!
My go-to sales funnel for this type of situation — creating a new ad campaign on a new platform — is a lead generation funnel. This is where you use your advertisement (in this case a promoted pin) to send someone to a page where your only goal is get their email address (generate a lead).
These pages can be social contests like raffles, giveaways, photo contests, etc. that require an email address to enter; or free PDF, Infographic, or e-Book downloads where the user must enter their email address to access the content; or even just a page with a promise of something on the next page, for example: “Get this free video that teaches you the 5 step process to a better golf swing by entering your email address below.” You get the picture. It’s just like it sounds; the goal of a lead generation campaign is to generate a list of leads.
I LOVE lead generation campaigns for several reasons. They provide quick insight into how much traffic (clicks) will cost on a new platform; they generate a list of subscribers that you can follow up with; they are easy to create. But, here’s the thing: lead generation campaigns have ONE GIANT PROBLEM. They don’t make you any money!
Of course, you can create an automated sales sequence that follows up with your prospects and turns them into customers by sending them content, offers, webinar invites, and the like. But all of that takes time, energy, and effort — and since time is of the essence when engaging with a new platform, I decided NOT to use a lead generation campaign for my first promoted pin test.
Instead, I used a traditional direct response advertising campaign, with the goal of generating customers right away. Direct response campaigns are a little simpler because the basic ones don’t require long-form follow up sequences. When I show you the funnel in a little while, you’ll see that I ended up doing a bit of follow up anyway, but first let me show you the results!
Not only that, but the number of visitors I received from Pinterest ads is DOUBLE what Pinterest says they sent me, meaning I’m actually getting 9 cent clicks.
As you can see, I’ve spent $775 from which I’ve generated $21,969 in revenue. I used a google analytics tracking URL in my promoted pin so I could track back exactly how many visits and sales came from Pinterest ads. We have not seen this level of high quality traffic since Google Adwords way back in 2003. It’s ridiculous!
Here’s another interesting tidbit for you: the traffic I’m getting from Pinterest ads is spending nearly 3 times as much time on my web page as my Facebook ads traffic, and it’s converting 5 times better.
You may be wondering why I said I made $41,254.34 in sales from $775 in spend but my analytics only shows $21,000. Well, here’s where it get’s really interesting. Take a look at my direct sales and Google organic sales; I had NO direct traffic or Google organic traffic before I turned on this campaign. None. Zero. Nada. Now I’m getting 5-10 sales per day from each source. This means people are seeing my ad, remembering it, and then coming back later to search for me and buy from me.
Compare these stats from before and after I turned on the campaign for Pinterest. In the month before I had ZERO traffic and sales. In the month after I have TONS of traffic and sales!
So what was the direct response funnel I used? How did I actually do this? Hint: I did not send people form Pinterest directly to my website. Instead, I sent people from a promoted pin to an article engaging them in a story about my brand and products. From there, the interested prospects clicked through to my eCommerce store.
You’ll notice I’m not even sending people to a long form sales page after the article; I’m sending them directly to my eCommerce store. This is straight-up direct response; from an ad right through to a sale with no followup sequence in place whatsoever. NO email opt-ins, retargeting ads, nothing. It’s just a simple article engagement page to an eCommerce store. (Note: I have not yet turned on retargeting, but I imagine that I can pick up an extra 30% in sales like I normally do when I use retargeting ads long with my sales funnels. I’ll keep you posted.)
There’s a HUGE opportunity here for eCommerce retailers. The Pinterest ads network is just starting out, and its only going to get bigger and more robust. If Facebook and Google are any indicators (and they usually are) we have a year or two of extremely cheap, high quality traffic in front of us before Pinterest gets to be any kind of competitive (read: expensive).
can’t wait to share what I’ve discovered with you. Oh, and I should mention: this funnel is not just for Pinterest ads. We are using it on Facebook and Google as well. It’s the best funnel we’ve ever created for direct response advertising to an eCommerce store.
In 2007, when Christopher Nolan was filming his future blockbuster The Dark Knight, they didn’t yet know how successful it was going to be, and so people actually bothered to do all sorts of publicity press about it. On June 14, 2007, a number of nerd blogs were granted press access to a promotional photo of the Batman suit, which had been revamped since Begins. Now, the suit is revamped for every movie, usually for simple reasons like: it’s hot, it’s heavy, it’s difficult to get in and out of. And when there’s continuity of creative personnel, the returning actors and directors like to try and streamline the process of not having to wait on the mechanics of the giant bat-suit in the room. Later that same week, Entertainment Weekly published this same promotional image (with a bizarre claim of exclusivity) and the all-important caption:
[T]he cowls of past suits were firmly attached to the neck and shoulders of the costume — necessary to maintain that iconic silhouette and to prevent the actor from moving around inside the mask. The new headpiece — modeled after a motorcycle helmet — is separate from the neck, so star Christian Bale can now swivel his noggin side to side, or nod up and down.
“The first time an actor playing Batman can turn his head!” trumpeted the blogs, forgetting that Bat-actors prior to 1989 wore costumes made of cloth, which wasn’t quite so restrictive.
I’m 36, and I had just finished my seventh grade year when Batman came storming into the theatres in 1989. I had seen the trailer for it a month earlier in front of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and I spent that summer suffused with Batmania. I repeatedly poured over a flyer of Warner Brothers Batman merchandise that I’d acquired at a screening of UHF, not just wishing that I had the cash for the garish, sideshow denim jackets, but also scanning the photographs for details about the costume, which I drew and redrew, trying to deconstruct and understand every gadget and widget of the costume. At age 13, I’d had enough experience trying to make Halloween costumes that I understood that a dress pattern from JoAnne Fabrics looked like one thing on the paper packet and a completely different, disappointing thing on one’s body. The 1981 Superman Movie Book had showed me that even Kirk Alyn had “baggy tights” in the original Superman movie serial, and despite desperately trying to catch reruns of Batman, I was always disappointed with Adam West’s barrel chest. But this new armored costume, while a departure from the lean ideal of Neal Adams and Jose Garcia-Lopez’s iconic work for the DC Comics Style Guide, caught my fancy with its attempts at real-world practicality.
While I was too young and too broke to do anything beside dream about those gaudy Batman baubles, Batman made a reputed $500 million in merchandising in addition to the $285 million worldwide gross in ticket sales. So when the sequel was announced, the marketeers jumped on board. Choice Hotels, Diet Coke, and McDonalds all featured ad tie-ins, and when the film came out, they were rebuked for marketing to children who were younger than the PG-13 content suited. The script was primarily by Daniel Waters, of Heathers notoriety, and it belied the “POW! BAM! ZOOM! Comics are for kids!” mentality that seems forever associated with superheroics. The 1989 film may seem laughably corny by today’s standards, but I remember the grim, unrelenting confrontation between Jack Napier and Jack Palance and being thoroughly creeped out by it. It took me three or four times to watch the Joker crispy-fry his dubious crime syndicate colleague with his joy-buzzer without peeking at it through protectively splayed fingers. That sort of nastiness only works on the very young, and the young turned out in droves to see it. A Concord Monitor article by Emily Laber has quotes from children as young as five years of age going to see it. And yet, the popular perception according to the previously linked AP article seems to be that Batman was too dark, and Batman Returns would alleviate that problem. Marketeers certainly believed that line, despite a crop of subsequent parental protest by those irate that PG-13 might actually mean what it stood for.
I remember attending the high school graduation of my senior friends when I was a sophomore and being surprised at the number of people excited about the imminent release of Batman Returns. People older than I, cooler than I, were eager to talk to me about my anticipation of Returns because they could be unabashedly thrilled by the prospect of more Bat-action. And since I was an odd comic nerd, inexplicable but harmless, letting their anhedonic defenses down in front of me would have no social repercussions. It didn’t last, of course. One of my best friends walked out of the film because her boyfriend found the Catwoman psychotic break scene too tedious and maudlin to be borne. The ironic humor and the lack of cleanly executed action scenes didn’t quite appeal to the masses. I mean, the film topped a year that made almost $5 billion based on ticket sales that had risen to a whopping $5, and one in five tickets sold that year was for a Warner Brothers film. So it didn’t do badly by most standards, but when it was announced that Burton wasn’t directing the third film, and that Keaton wouldn’t be starring, there weren’t many people I spoke to at the time who seemed very put out.
I like to tell my students that I’m an official, franchised member of Batman, Incorporated, and will produce my official Batman Card upon request. But, upon reflection, I decided that I also needed to walk the walk. Figuratively and literally.
I’ve played around with the new Brave and the Bold cartoon, as I’m always willing to at least try a new spin on the Batman character, but come away dissatisfied. It’s not just that the character is bright and poppy and has a permanent cowl shadow more reminiscent of Adam West’s mask than the effects of actual light sources — after all, I don’t begrudge the Batman that smiles over in DC Kids‘ Super Friends. No, cuteness is not my problem, it’s just not being written for me, despite the presence of Blue Beetle, Plastic Man, and a bat-utility belt that comes with a frickin’ lightsaber! My friends with children seem to enjoy it, so it’s clearly reaching some demographic that simply doesn’t overlap with my little Venn radius.
No, my Batman-related joy has been almost entirely British in the recent past. I stumbled upon an announcement that Lily Allen was releasing a song on her new album called “Guess Who, Batman?”, which had a marvelous campy Riddler quality to the whole thing. And when I heard that Allen felt that she was “becom[ing] a character in a comic” and two songs off the new album, I became quite excited about this whole thing. The first single — if pre-release internet buzz-leaks can be called “singles” — “Everyone’s at it” was quite catchy, and the interesting Madonna-parody ironic self-awareness of “The Fear” definitely intrigued.
This was all well and good because after seeing Ms. Allen on both Never Mind the Buzzcocks and The Big Fat Quiz of the Year, I had given her variety show Lily Allen and Friends a try and found it to be the dullest collection of pseudo-hip tripe I’d encountered in quite some time. The BBC told me it was boffo with the kidz, and I was relieved to discover that this was merely so much spin. Not that I wanted a charming young person with glasses to fail utterly, but it was so, so, so dull, that I just wanted to chalk it up to overenthusiastic marketeers and forget all about it.
It turns out that, reviewing my iTunes data, that I don’t have much by Ms. Allen, and that what I do have, a) I only repeatedly listened to a very select few songs, and b) I may have confused her frequently with Kate Nash. Embarrassing and predictable, I know. Still, it does make the fact that I enjoy the first two “singles” from It’s Not Me, It’s You that much more of a nice surprise. Check out this post from Pretty Much Amazing for a vast sampling of tracks from the record, including the vulgarity-titled one, which is the song rumoured to be the Batman track. I don’t hear it myself, which may be why the Caped Crusader’s name no longer graces the track list. Which sort of makes this entire thread a bit moot.
So let me close with this, instead: if you really loved me, you’d be bidding to get the naming rights to a recently discovered species of bat. Sure, the current bidding is at five thousand dollars, but isn’t it worth it to have the name rhogeessa batmanueli forever ensconced in the Museum of Natural History? What price nerd infamy?
Well, I did not dress up for Hallowe’en this year. The intent was dress up as Trapper John from Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H, complete with Hawaiian shirt and golf umbrella, but I had the devil’s own time finding a red and white tropical shirt in later October. Not entirely sure why — it strikes me as just the time of year that one might need a primary-coloured equatorial pick-me-up in one’s wardrobe, but apparently both department stores and secondhand shops disagreed with me.
This isn’t the first time I haven’t dressed up on Hallowe’en, but it’s the first time in a long time. And this is the result of a rather slippery slope… a few years ago, I decided that it wasn’t worth it to pay upwards of a hundred dollars on pieces and components to make a Hallowe’en costume just perfect, and since then I’ve even stopped planning my costumes months in advance. So this costumeless year is the clear result of eroding standards, and for that I apologize.
By means of recompense, I offer you the following pictures of people dressed up as Batman. The first is my niece, Gabriele, Jokerized through the Dark Knight: Ha Ha Ha application for the iPhone. You know and I know that she’s been Jokerized, but when she sees the picture, she claims that she’s Batman in it. And who’s going to argue that point with a four year-old. The next was just blogged by Kiel Phegley and reblogged by the Comics Reporter, and the third and fourth are something I found and saved back in April: Andy Warhol dressed as Robin, the Boy Wonder. Enjoy.
EDIT: This seemed thematically appropriate, so I’m adding it on: the last image is Ms. Macdonald of Stately Beat Manor dressed up in the clan emblem.
It’s been a while since we’ve had a Batman-themed post, so here’s a still from the newly-released trailer for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming sequel, The Dark Knight:
I realize that this isn’t the most dynamic, stunning, or cinematic image from the trailer. It’s not Bruce Wayne cradling his bat-mask despondently, it’s not the Joker standing in the middle of the street, it’s not the infamous bat-cycle, it’s not Batman’s silhouette against the Gotham skyline. Nope, it’s Gary Oldman with a moustache and some other bloke. Not especially promotional.
Until! Until you realize that the some-other-bloke in particular is none other than Nestor Carbonell. Carbonell has been doing a good job for himself recently playing a series of hot, vaguely psychotic toughs in fare like Cane, Lost, Smokin’ Aces, and Daybreak, but I choose to believe that the reason why he was cast in this role was not due to his rakish good looks and his suave, leaderly demeanor. No, I think it’s a fabulous nerd cameo, because Carbonell has played Batman’s Latin analogue in the live action series of The Tick. That’s right: the second Batman movie features Batmanuel.
Best nerd cameo ever, I claim. Although, like on Lost, it may make it a little difficult for me to take his scenes seriously.
From Heidi MacDonald comes the news that Batman, according to one scholar, exemplifies the Jewish ideals of struggle and self-sacrifice. I don’t have a lot to say about this, primarily as I am not intimately familiar with the Jewish ideal of struggle. But also because, well, it’s not really news; it’s angle.
I quibble with the concept of “angle” in news, as I worry that stories are published, not because they have useful information, but because they have a cute hook. And that informative pieces are skewed by the need to sidle into the story through the angle. I remember reading, many years ago, a newspaper article about a blind lawyer. The article was confused as to whether it was a profile of an individual overcoming adversity, a portrait of the technology that enabled him to operate on an equal level with his sighted colleagues, or the fact that he viewed himself as a “crime-fighter” and sent his vanquished foes photocopies of his license with the name “Batman” over his name. The last bit? All angle. It gives the profile an edge to keep the reader beyond the headline, a way of getting them into the story. He’s not just a lawyer, he sees himself as a Force for Justice. In the comics press, the angle would be that a blind lawyer identified with Batman and not Daredevil. And if the article hadn’t pre-dated the Ben Affleck film, the mainstream press article could have used that angle as well.
Regardless, the mere fact of Cary Friedman’s writing wouldn’t have had sufficient oomph to catch the eye of editors and readers without the Batman aspect, the Batman angle. And while the obvious question is, “Yes, but it is news?”, I posit two alternate queries: a) Sure, Batman’s Jewish. What isn’t Batman? He’s everything. b) Of course he’s Jewish. What superhero isn’t representative of some Jewish ideal?
Superheroes representing religion came forefront in the public consciousness when Bryan Singer has Superman crucify himself for the sins of humanity in this summer’s Superman Returns. Many people were dissatisfied with the whole Superman = Christ imagery, but it didn’t bother me, as I felt it was portrayed with more grace and dignity than the doves and halos that tend to populate every John Woo flick. Also, I had always associated Superman with religion since listening to Michael Shapiro speak on NPR about the 100 most influential Jews of all time, a list that began with Moses and ended with Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, creators of the extraterrestrial boy in blue. And since a great many superhero creators were Jewish, so I naturally associated Superman more with Moses than Jesus, but it’s difficult for Americans not to find or make Christ parallels in anything, given enough time, and Superman’s had an awful long time to slowly morph from his original intent to the pure American boy scout he is today.
Batman, though? Sure, he might represent the mantle of personal suffering, and maybe he does sacrifice his own happiness to help “repair the world”, but I’ve always associated Batman more with Catholicism than with Judaism. Probably because of the classic jokes, but also because of the pervasive crucifixes used in scenes where Bruce Wayne visits his parents’ graves. Adherents.com, a website dedicated to the cataloguing of information about religious beliefs, notes that former Batman writer and editor Elliot S! Maggin always considered Batman to be Episcopalian, and I consider that to be the final word on the matter — particularly since the Episcopalians are more tolerant of homosexuality.
A final Bat-comment: I haven’t read Frank Miller’s All-Star Batman and Robin; I’ve skimmed it. I’ve skimmed the first issue, which featured some ludicrous dialogue, and some ludicrous artwork. Jim Lee is well-renowned for the hyper-idealized physiques of his figure work, which are rippling and sexual and refined in a superheroic sort of way. I have grown to find them both stiff and tiresome, despite the fact that are technically quite excellent. Issue number one featured a two page — ahem! — spread of Vicki Vale getting dressed, and the third issue pushed the veil of irony even further by having a lengthy T&A segment starring a woman who beats up a bunch of guys after growing past tired of being objectified. There’s some interesting writing going on prior to this last sequence, because Miller can’t avoid playing arround with narrative structure. But because I’ve only skimmed it, I can’t honestly say that it justifies the rest of the OTT schtick.
Miller’s Batman: Year One and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns are the conceptual and thematic bookends of the contemporary Batman mythos, and so one naturally wants to give Miller the benefit of the doubt when it comes to redefining and reinterpreting the character for the current generation and reflecting the current worldview. His Dark Knight follow-up, Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again was worrisome, and All-Star is baffling, but this newest press release seems to indicate that the premiere bat-scribe has gone bat-shit crazy.
During his WonderCon panel, Frank Miller discussed his next graphic novel. Once again, Miller returns to the world of the Batman, this time with Holy Terror, Batman!. Though the title plays with Robin’s classic catchphrase, the book deals with a serious subject. Gotham has been attacked by Al Qaeda and Batman sets out to defend the city he loves. The book, which Miller has inked through 120 pages, is expected to run roughly 200 pages total.
Miller proudly announced the title of his next Batman book, which he will write, draw and ink. Holy Terror, Batman! is no joke. And Miller doesn’t hold back on the true purpose of the book, calling it “a piece of propoganda,” where ‘Batman kicks al Qaeda’s ass.”
The justification for this is that Batman and DC superheroes have always been vehicles for American public sentiment, and that Batman fought Tojo and Hitler in the 1940s, and he should continue to participate in American martial wish-fulfillment. However, due to my current faith in Miller’s “satirical” edge or his ability to judge what core aspects of a character woudl appeal to a contemporary audience — and again, I haven’t closely read this stuff, I am going merely upon impressions gleaned from skimming — I predict that this book is going to be a massive train wreck. Back in the hype height of Sin City, it was anecdotally suggested that Miller was going to write and illustrate a comic about the life of Jesus, and comicdom went nuts! It was thought that this was going to be boundary-pushing, inventive, dangerous stuff, and the collective were eager for some daring, provocative stuff. I see now that this current Batman vs. Osama comic is born out of the same envelope-pushing sensationalist instinct, and I hope it comes to a similar nonexistent fruition.
Also? There’s already a comic called Batman: Holy Terror. Calling a book “Holy Terror, Batman!” therefore loses a significant amount of its punch.