There are rarely situations like this: a rather unknown Czech company hires a British actor for the launch video of a product with significant international ambitions. And the company has scored five of the top ten most sought-after Czech clients before the media even discovered the service.
This is the story of ROIHunter.com – a project developed by a Czech company called Business-factory.cz based in Brno. In an exclusive interview, BabelGuide got all the answers from the creators of a tool that is soon expected to earn them PMD (Preferred Marketing Developer) badge from Facebook. So what’s so cool about it?
ROIHunter.com
Adam: For our lazy readers – let sum up what your tool does and why the public should be interested.
BF: The reason why both clients and Facebook like us is simple: results. It brings our clients better ROI so they can invest more in the Facebook platform.
Adam: There are other FB Ads tools out there – can you sum up the unique selling points of ROI Hunter? And add a few words on your business model too.
BF: ROI Hunter is mainly used for e-commerce clients. It connects Facebook Ads API + Google Analytics + XML feed + CRM. There are several unique things about this platform:
– it can merge data from the xml feed and Google analytics to calculate which products are the best performers and then create automatically ads for them.
– it keeps a history of titles and descriptions used in each e-shop category and traces their CTR so that clients can reuse the best creative content.
– you can write your own rules which automatically keep your ads fresh and your cost of sales under the desired level. It also checks to make sure that the product you created an ad for is still available.
– you can play with different targeting options, modifying different factors and it gives you the opportunity to run remarketing campaigns too
– the platform has its own API with a testing lab so you can connect the tool to CRM, read statistics from the tool, modify the automatic rules, etc.
– everything is synchronized and all statistics are calculated in real time so you can adjust your business practices appropriately.
Our platform can bring you high volume of well-targeted traffic that is automatically optimized. Of course, it’s not easy to set up and master this platform right away, but we provide our clients with support and training. You pay a few percentage points of your spend to use the platform, but the benefits far outweigh the costs.
Adam: You’re about to have a case study published on Facebook-studio.com, which will be about your cooperation with Zoot – one of the leading fashion e-retailers in the Czech Republic. You say that you managed 20,6% cost of sales (last touch attribution) and 10x ROI when we also take assisted conversions into account. Can you give us more details?
BF: The results depend on your objectives. Generally you have to pay attention to not only the last touch but also assisted conversions or other attribution models. The percentage of new visits is also very useful – because you don’t want to simply target the same people over and over again. You want to reach out to new customers in order to increase your business. Marketers should watch not just conversion rates and revenues, but also % of New Visits. Here is example of one e-shop running very similar traffic from Google CPC and from our platform for 1 week:
Facebook vs. Google
I shouldn’t say this, because we’re also a Google Partner, but Facebook can be better even at last touch. It depends on a variety of factors (e.g. what kind of goods you sell, how much time you have spent optimizing, how loyal your customers are, etc) but our platform can help almost anyone.
Adam: As I understand it, you test RHS ads first and then use the most successful as newsfeed ads. You also use customized audiences to target people who have already visited the site – was this the main source of traffic?
BF: You can generally bring in more new people via RHS but newsfeed ads are better at conversions. The advantage of ROI hunter is that the platform is fast – so it’s more fun to try various approaches. The best thing is that you still have automatic rules which boost ads in the beginning and kill the ads that aren’t performing well.
Half of the test traffic came from remarketing, but as you can see from New Visits, we brought in a lot more new people than Google. The results could be even stronger, but it’s dependent on the attribution model used by the client – in this case they only evaluated Last Touch which isn’t optimal for Facebook. Since then, the client has moved forward and wants to go deeper into attribution models so I believe we’ll be able to provide even better results. Facebook is generally great at assisted conversions!
Adam: Over the last few months, we’ve heard a lot about the decline of the organic traffic from Facebook. Do you think ads are the only way? Or do you believe you can still get decent organic traffic that can be turned into leads?
BF: The quality of the page & its fans is important. A decline in organic reach is usually a reflection of people who aren’t really interested in your posts. Facebook’s algorithms pick up on that. The question is, why aren’t people interested in those posts? Are they true fans of my page? Would any of your friends be interested in such posts? In addition, Facebook has had to make more room for newsfeed ads so it’s quite logical that they’ve modified some of their practices.
One good example is the various social fashion aggregators like Shop Simple. The trick is not just posting an ad for the product, but posting something inspiring that people might actually like – which in Shop Simple’s case was the creation of different outfits. This is a much more social approach.
Adam: Your company didn’t originally start with a focus on Facebook. Can you tell us more about Business-factory.cz and its history?
BF: Before ROIHunter, we developed a lot of apps, mainly for media houses, for example a real-time voting app for the TV competition VyVoleni. We started out in SEO and natural language processing. We have run campaigns on Facebook for 4 years now and have been developing our Ads API platform for nearly 2 years. Originally we worked more with Google, but now we only use Google for international marketing (we run campaigns in 17 countries) and focus more of our attention on Facebook. We’ve discovered that we can convert more traffic from Facebook than from Google.
Adam: ROIHunter wasn’t developed as a start-up, but you first created it for internal use, right?
BF: That’s right. The reason we created an internal platform was that we wanted to improve traffic for our customers, but we couldn’t manage the campaigns in an efficient way. We tried a lot of other platforms but they were all missing something we needed. So, we developed an internal platform to handle the Ads API in the way that we needed for our clients’ e-shops. Because Facebook liked the way our platform worked and its results, they convinced us to completely rebuild our original platform (based on SAAS philosophy, real-time, universal appeal, UX friendly) and offer it to public. It was a huge advantage because we gained a lot of experience from creating the original internal tool and we could use that when working on the new platform.
Adam: How big is the company now? Are you looking for investors or strategic partners? Or do you have some already?
We have a few offers but we don’t have any investors. Our company has about 30 internal people + a lot of freelancers who we work very closely with.
Adam: Which other Czech or foreign companies are testing ROIHunter? Who is your ideal customer – I understand that this is a tool for mid-size and bigger businesses, right?
BF: I cannot name the Czech companies because we don’t want to share our client list with the public. But I can mention at least two big spenders from abroad: Koketna (in Czech Rep known as BFashion) or HoodBoyz.
Adam: Can you tell the readers more about your pricing / business model?
BF: The platform is most suitable for e-commerce-based companies that want to improve their Facebook marketing results. There are a lot of SAAS platforms which run in real time and are also focused on this segment but they are much more expensive. For example, the minimum charge at Nanigans is 30k USD per month | an 8% Facebook fee, plus 10k USD for training! We know that the Eastern European market is different and we have modified our business model accordingly.
We do require minimum amounts but we also provide free training and ongoing support. We only want to cooperate with companies who are serious about Facebook marketing and have potential to improve their performance on this platform. Our monthly percentage fee ranges from 4-8% depending on the budget of the company. The minimum fee for usage of the platform is 100 EUR per month, so it wouldn’t make sense for clients spending less than 1k EUR per month. Of course, the more you spend the more support you can expect from our side because what we want is to grow with our clients. If we see that you have potential, we can help not only with training and additional support on Facebook but, by modifying the platform to bring you more money that you can then reinvest in your Facebook marketing campaign.
Adam: It’s quite clear that you want to expand abroad rqpidly. Which markets are you aiming for?
BF: We wanted to listen to the feedback from our Czech clients and focus on the Czech market first, but we’ve grown very quickly, so now we’re also looking for customers from other EU countries and from South America.
Adam: I’m sure you have further plans to improve your tool – what can you share with us?
BF: We are currently working on a system that would automatically promote new products via defined rules. We’re also listening to a lot of feedback from Facebook and trying to incorporate features that they think might be useful.
Adam: When we met you said you weren’t afraid that Facebook would be able to implement the features that make you unique – like tight implementation of Google Analytics and feeds. Do you think other companies are more vulnerable? Will tabs / stats survive?
BF: Generally, in the online environment of SAAS, you can’t expect your tool to live forever 
Especially in this area – Facebook is developing very fast towards giving marketers a friendlier environment. Who knows? One day native statistics might be so good that other vendors will have problems. Also tabs can be changed a lot.
Adam: Good luck with ROI Hunter!
BF: If you want to learn more about it, I definitely suggest trying it out – there is a free trial for one month, so why not give it a go?
