TryMetric
Spend less time checking Facebook Ads with automation.
Big week for us, got our first Agency account.
About two months ago we went against every conventional bootstrap startup wisdom and decided to run Facebook ads to our MVP.
At the time we only had our reporting feature ready (automation still in the works).
Why?
We had a couple of questions to answer.
- What's our initial CPL/CPR (Cost per Lead, Cost per Registration)
- Would users actually pay for our service as is?
We had been working on the MVP for about 3 months, and our trial users were only other agency buddies that we asked to trial the app.
They were the ones that helped us shape the first list of features and test out the app for us.
We were scratching our own itch and replacing 3rd party tools we were using internally in our agency but we had no idea still how we would go about customer acquisition or growth.
A little background, TryMetric was born from our agency, KonvertLab, we're a FB and Google Ads agency for SaaS companies.
A lot of our previous clients came to us to figure out their CPAs for them but most of them had raised money so had a decent budget to test.
Our initial plan was to go to somewhere like AppSumo and do a lifetime deal.
However, this would've only answered one of our questions.
It would've given us a nice base of users who could recommend features but we already had that from our network.
We thought about many other options but we focused on what we had:
- A great promotional video
- All branding + website assets finished (https://www.trymetric.com)
- Tons of experience acquiring customers through FB Ads for SaaS companies
We decided to run a small test on FB with our promotional video to see what the initial numbers looked like.
Our goal long term is to figure out a simple formula of
LTV - CPA = Profitable.
We needed to find a scalable channel regardless.
Initial FB Ads Test Results:
- Total Spend: $300
- Total Leads (Opt-ins): 17
- Initial CPL: $17.65
- Trials Started: 5
- Initial CPR: $60
- Paid User: 1
- CPA: $300***
We planned on spending $1000, but we shut the ads off here.
I personally enrolled everyone of our trial users and even though it was such a small sample set, every single one of them said that they would've upgraded to a paid account had the app been finished and the automation feature was live.
Obviously, we took that with a grain of salt, but still, the fact that we were able to get a $17 CPL was enough validation for us to know that we had enough interest and a viable funnel, therefore, a viable business model.
These were also results that we got without any optimizations or a completed funnel. The fact that we even got these numbers had us really excited about the possibilities.
We decided here to stop the tests and finish building out the rest of the automation feature.
We just completed the automation feature a couple of weeks ago and we've been testing it vigorously with our initial base of trial users.
Lastly, the 1 paid user that we acquired from our test run upgraded from our $49/month plan to $199/month!
For this upcoming week.
Our main feature set is done and we spent the past week finalizing our FB ads funnel so we can turn them on again this week.
We'll keep you updated with how things shape out.
Finally after over a week of scripting, acting, shooting, re-shooting, re-editing & creating animations, I've finished our explainer video for TryMetric.
➡️ Watch the Video Here
My goal with this video (which is heavily inspired by Descript's Explainer) was to quickly get across the value of TryMetric while also keeping the audience entertained to watch all the way through (and even maybe get a laugh along the way).
How much did it cost?
It was super low-budget & did all the acting & scripting with a good friend of mine. Here's the breakdown of cost:
• Song & Audio Files (+ Rights) : ~ $63
• 3D Template Files: $33
• Voice Over (+ Rights): ~$84
• Editing & Revising: $175
Total: $355
We tried to keep costs low, at least for this first version, also being on lockdown made it a bit more interesting to figure out how to shoot it from inside my apartment only, but I'm really proud of the final outcome & have had some friends say really good things so far.
Really looking forward to hearing some feedback as well on the video!
How do I get access?
Of course, if you want Beta access, just sign up at this link.
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IMO, you can't go wrong with humor in a video and this one has tons of it. Nice job getting this created with a low budget
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Thanks @AlexH - had to get scrappy, especially with being on lockdown.
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Really enjoyed this video! Congrats on making it live, just curious which facebook APIs/permissions were key to creating the app?
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Hey @yoshyosh,
We appreciate the positive comment!
We use Facebook's Graph API to pull the ad account data.
We grab their access token upon registration (through FB Login).
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Nice work this actually looks great!
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Super cool app!
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Thanks @MaxenceRoy!
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That's gooood. You should provide this as a service to other SaaS founders.
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@8bit I said I’d tag you when it’s live 😎
What is Metric? Check it out here:
https://trymetric.com
In short:
Metric allows you to spend less time checking Facebook Ads.
Metric sends alerts, reports, & runs automations based on conditions you set - all so you can maximize your return on ad spend.
Who is this solution for?
People (or agencies) who manage Facebook Ads campaigns (Google coming soon) and are tired of constantly checking FB for routine insights.
Metric allows you to send customizable reports to Slack based on the information you care about. In addition to that, you can be automatically notified if you're projected to overspend your ad budget you set or if your ROAS drops below a specified threshold on specific campaigns/ad sets/or ads.
Basically Metric is watching your account constantly for you & sending you information that is important.
We've built this tool after using as an internal tool for our SaaS Ads Agency for over 3-4 months now & finding that it really caused us to improve our performance of accounts when we got key insights fed to us at regular intervals per client to our Slack.
How did we build the landing page?
After looking for a few options, we decided to go with Webflow. I really am glad we did because it gave me a chance to really learn this tool and it's way better than WordPress in a lot of ways.
Also instead of allowing people to just sign up & use the app, I've set up a waitlist automation via Webflow -> Zapier -> Mailchimp so we can let people access the platform in waves.
We've already surveyed potential users & began doing live demos for the friends on our alpha list - so far, really positive feedback!
The next steps will be to grow the waitlist which I think will be much easier when the explainer video is done being edited (took 2-3 days of scripting, filming, & reshooting to come up with something I'm proud of).
We hired a voice actor from Fiverr (because I suck at voice acting) which is already sounding way better.
The explainer video style we went with was very much inspired by Descript. I think they have the best explainer I've seen so far.
If you manage Facebook Ads & use Slack, I think you'd really enjoy checking out what we have to bring to the table!
(Explainer video coming REALLY soon!)
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neat!
landing page is clean. i like the
.gif...my only question is... is this really a big issue? aren't people already staying on top of their ad spend? or is that really getting out of hand for your customers?
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Thanks a ton @8bit I'm not even an animator but I managed to hack it together.
Good question - looks like I need to work on my positioning / messaging.
The real advantage to the software is getting notified of insights you might not have caught manually or would've caught too late.
Example, you get a ping randomly on Slack during the day:
"Your ROAS went down 14% in the past day on Campaign X"Then you go to investigate the issue, saving money.
The internal tool we built has similar features & gave us a daily pulse of each ad account in slack based on that accounts most important metrics, so that even if we didn't check Facebook that day, we'd have a high level overview of what's going on.
I think the automation piece will be the huge value ad. Automations will run even while you sleep.
Example: Ad CTR falls below a certain number, set a rule to automatically shut if off.
Essentially you can setup a series of automations & checks so that you can prevent first before they become fires & spend less time babysitting the ads account. We've noticed the benefits firsthand, hence building out into a full-blown SaaS.
Does that make more sense of the value?
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got it.
why did you say this:
I think the automation piece will be the huge value ad.
this makes me think that you haven't test-driven this feature...? or, it's been validated already?
i'm also thinking through if i'd use this... definitely not for where we are as we have nothing to advertise / sell in that way... hmm.
:)
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We've actually already test-driven the 'read' features (reports, alerts, etc) with our own ad accounts & then the alpha users this week (very positive feedback & consistent regular usage after setup) that just passed but the 'write' features (pause, scale, increase bids) will be much more carefully rolled out.
We're super paranoid of something breaking so we plan on extensively testing it on our own ad account(s) first just like we did with the 'read' features, then slowly rolling out it in batches, ensuring everything is functioning perfectly each step of the way.
If you're interested, I'll send you the explainer video when it's done being edited next week John!
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i'd love that.
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Would love some landing page feedback 🙏@8bit @joseabilio @Spike @kmadej @maxk42
Any advice at all is HIGHLY appreciated!
1 Comment
looking great so far. Wish there was a lifetime offer. struggling through med school and had to discontinue services that were monthly, and replace them with things i can buy and pay for once. what would happen is that i would sign up for tools but would be too busy with school. Like i'd buy now to use later (when i'm not busy). by the time i get around to the tool, i've been billed so much, that i'm forced to discontinue the service, before i even get to touch it.