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12 Comments

Finally found a good acquisition channel

And it's plain old search ads 😂

I cannot believe it took me that long to lean into them.

I actually did try some adwords right when I started, but at that point my landing page wasn't really great and I picked keywords which were super competative so once I saw spend going through the roof I just paused them.

I then spent months trying out different ad channels - Facebook (as much as I hate them), LinkedIn, Twitter, but none of them really had any effect.

Thankbox is a product that people either need now (e.g. someone in their company is leaving and they need to organize a card) or they forget about it. So, in retrospect, paid search was always going to work.

A couple of weeks ago I finally decided to try search ads again, but instead of going straight with google I decided to try Bing ads.

Incredibly, the very same day I saw a couple of Thankboxes being created by people coming from those ads. Over the next several days I had over 10 new users creating and buying Thankboxes that I could only attribute to the Bing ads.

I am super thrilled as I think that this can finally be a stable channel that can bring enough traffic to more than pay for itself. I think I'll start experimenting with Adwords again in order to get exposure to the biggest search traffic via Google.

  1. 2

    Great tenacity - Keep trying new things!

  2. 2

    You don't seem to have much competition in the coworker farewell niche. I ran a quick search such as: "gift ideas for someone leaving a job" and didn't see your Google Ad.
    I also checked Bing and didn't see it either. Maybe I got something wrong and couldn't understand your idea and the problem it tries to solve?
    Your current competitors are the online retailers who sell little gifts such as mugs and cards.

    1. 3

      Hey Alex - thanks a lot for testing this out and your suggestion!

      Our Bing ad actually got annoyingly put under review yesterday (for whatever reason 🙄) and it's off for 48 hours until they either put it back or tell us to re-do it.

      I just started Adwords yesterday so I'm still only covering several keywords. Already got about 5 or so conversions from that today, though! I'll definitely be expanding that list as I learn more about Adwords and which keywords make sense.

      1. 1

        No matter how hard I tried to find your website in Google Ads, I couldn't... Maybe I was searching for something else and didn't get your startup's idea right?
        Anyhow. If you get conversions from the paid ads, that's good. Keep it up.

        1. 1

          Alex I am currently only running ads in the UK, so that would be why.

  3. 2

    Keep us posted, very curious about it!

  4. 2

    Very useful. Thanks

  5. 1

    @ValCanBuild this is awesome! I've found Bing can be great but the search volume is obviously like 10% that of Adwords

    Your price point is $4.99 and if you plan on scaling ads I would try to create a new SKU just for ads so you can offset your acquisition costs or at least introduce an email-only sign up to get more conversions from your ads and hopefully convert those users via an email drip funnel

    1. 1

      Hey, thanks for advice - could you please clarify what you mean by creating a new SKU just for ads?

      1. 1

        @ValCanBuild We run a marketplace connecting Creators to Clients. Since we offer so many services, we have specific landing pages for each.

        For instance, for Airbnb or VRBO owners, we have this landing page: https://joincapture.com/vacation-rental-photographer/

        The pricing on this page is different than our other services, hence a different SKU.

        What I'd suggest you do is create a landing page for a specific use-case for your gift cards, say it's a birthday party, and then I'd develop a specific $9.97 e-card that has features only for birthday parties, thus justifying your higher price and getting a better ROI from your ad spend.

        Does this help?

        1. 1

          Ah yeah, I got you. Yep, I already have different landing pages (for bdays, christmas, new baby etc) but never thought to price the product differently on them. Thanks for the idea!

          1. 1

            Happy to help! Since ads cost more than organic traffic, you gotta price it appropriately.

            Let me know if you want me to review your landers, happy to send anything obvious I see

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