Find out how we used a ManyChat bot to deliver $3.81 webinar registrations for a speech coach and then turned 16% of those attendees into purchases.

The Client

FCS is a nationwide recruitment firm in the US, focusing on behavioral health opportunities. They help employers to solve one of their most frustrating problems: finding highly qualified, motivated candidates for their behavioral health position openings.

They’ve been in business since 1982, and have over 3 decades of experience in Behavioral Health Recruitment. 

The Challenge

FCS came to us looking to find high quality, pre-qualified leads for their recruitment service. They requested leads to complete an application form detailing their job history, qualifications and a copy of their resume. FCS was looking for leads within their specific niche, ready to find a new job, and willing enough to complete the equivalent to a job application form.

We first started running ads using a lead magnet with advice on how to write the perfect resume. After receiving their free lead magnet, users were encouraged to apply for the free recruitment service. The lead magnet performed well and generated low cost per signup, but the conversion to leads who completed the application was low at 2.9% and CPL was $272.74 from 21 leads.

We tried different ad creatives for the resume lead magnet in our attempt to capture the right type of opt-ins – ones that would lead to completed applications. But all that did was alter the success of the resume opt-in, not the success of the application form.

We wanted to achieve the benchmark of completed applications coming in between $100-$200, as the cost per application usually increases when the user is asked to provide a lot of information. Each converted lead would typically result in between $10,000-$30,000 for the recruitment firm, dependent on the job role of the candidate placed.

The Solution

We started with the basics. Back to the data!

Of those who opted-in for the lead magnet, only 2.9% applied for the job-matching service. It became clear that not everybody who signed up for tips on how to improve their resume were necessarily the people trying to find a new job in the behavioral health sector.

We rationalized that a resume improvement opt-in could be appealing to anyone at any time of their career, or to people who were playing with the idea of finding a new position, but not ready to take action yet. Essentially, this type of lead magnet wasn’t exclusively appealing to those looking to find a new job.

That 2.9% conversion also told us that maybe the application page wasn’t compelling enough to drive applications.

We decided to remove the lead magnet entirely and send users directly to the application page. We used the same conversion campaign, optimized for leads and the same ad set with the same audience. We even used the same image which had delivered a good response rate for the resume lead magnet.

We altered the ad copy to make sure we were capturing the attention of our target audience. We also adjusted the landing page to make it more irresistible for visitors to complete the application!

The Results

We blew the benchmark out of the water…

Cost per lead reduced from $272.74 to $64.65. So far, we’ve delivered 28 leads at the new, reduced CPL. We also increased conversion from 2.9% to 5.2%.

From the same amount of ad spend, the previous strategy delivered 18 leads over a period of 69 days. With the new strategy we delivered 28 leads over a period of 35 days.

There are always multiple variables to consider when running funnels for clients – such as the niche, the avatar, the number of steps expected of the user… to name just a few! But this client, and these results, really demonstrate the importance of testing strategies that may seem unorthodox or counter-intuitive. Usually we wouldn’t go directly to a cold audience, especially with such a detailed application form before warming them up – but the results showed us that this strategy delivered the best performance!

Update...

Since the strategy update discussed in this blog, we’ve made a further strategy tweak and reduced the cost per lead down even more, down to $35 per completed application across 104 new leads.

To achieve this, we moved to utilizing lead forms within Facebook, rather than sending users away from the platform to a funnel. The lead form asks all the same questions as the funnel did and captures all the answers within the Facebook platform. We also narrowed the audience down further within the behavioral health niche.

Another Update...

We're still holding steady at $30-$40 per lead on Facebook and have added a steady flow of leads from Google as well. We've added over $4 million in potential business to their pipeline with 70% of those leads being heavily qualified.