CASE STUDIES

How we doubled membership ad revenue for a professional association

Platypus Media x Chartered IIA - Facebook Ads Case Study

The Chartered Institute of Internal Auditors (Chartered IIA) is the only professional association for internal auditors in the UK and Ireland. Established in 1948, the Institute’s policy work raises the profile of the internal auditing profession and represents its members to regulators, government and the media.

Visit the site: https://www.iia.org.uk

What was happening?

Operating an annual membership model, the Chartered IIA wanted to increase the number of subscribers signing up for their site. Their previous agency had offered generic, one-size-fits-all advice and had run the same version of the same ad across all platforms, which had resulted in poor performance. When we started the project, the Institute was in a tender process and is now working on a new website/CRM.

Francesca Monaco, the Institute’s Head of Marketing and Digital Channels, saw the challenge posed by trying to boost memberships before the updates took place—they needed to run the campaign, but could not allocate the same budget as with the previous agency because of their poor results.

On completion of a Mini MBA, she had reached out to her network, which was where Platypus Media’s name came up. Francesca took a small calculated risk with us, pursuing a new paid media campaign but with a lower budget.

Platypus Media x Chartered IIA - Facebook Ads Case Study Ad Mockup

How we worked

Both the Institute’s website and user journeys were complicated, and they needed to simplify their landing page and focus on new affiliate memberships. Thankfully, the team at the Institute were very open and ready to test out new strategies.

We started by creating fresh graphics and editing the Institute’s existing video content to make them suitable for social media. Then we added clear, engaging, and essential messaging about their 2024 membership to these assets.

Next, we ran ads across LinkedIn and Facebook, targeting people who needed the services on offer. We also used lookalike audiences built on their existing website visitors.

The Institute already had several great offers for new members. By varying the wording of these offers (save £148 vs 38% off when you join today), we were able to increase the YoY conversion rate by 325%.

Running this range of ad copy variations and different assets gave us a broad range of options, which meant that we could spend their budget in the most effective way — an approach that enabled us to reduce their cost per conversion by 77%.

When I spoke to Sarah, my first thought was, ‘This girl knows what she’s talking about. She was very granular and seemed committed before we even commissioned her, which I thought was really promising.

I spoke to several agencies, but none of them impressed me as much as Sarah did. One agency seemed reluctant to take on the project because it was too challenging. Another seemed interested, but they weren’t sure they could achieve the results we wanted. Sarah on the other hand, was straightforward and efficient, she understood our goals and was ready to start right away.

Looking back, I would have trusted Sarah, even if she’d come back to us and said, ‘Don’t try yet because of your systems. Just wait till you get the new website.’. But she didn’t. She came back and said, ‘Here’s what we can do with what you’ve got—do you want to test it out?’ Which was a breath of fresh air for me.

Francesca Monaco, Head of Marketing and Digital Channels at the Chartered IIA

Testing, testing…

On commissioning Platypus Media, Francesca had set a goal to break even on ad spend. She wanted to test Facebook ads, against the suggestions of her old agency. Their thinking had been that the Institute’s market is with professionals, who are all on LinkedIn, and their Facebook ads had been slow to pick up.

We wanted to try both—and to surpass Francesca’s goal to match the return on ad spend against the previous year. We made a start by closely monitoring our progress and making changes as and where needed.

The results?

We managed to increase the Institute’s ad conversion rate three times over and with just 40% of the budget of the previous agency’s spend.

Year-on-year Facebook Ads results in brief:

Ad Spend: –57%

Conversions: +91%

Conversion rate: +324%

Cost Per Conversion: –77%

Revenue: +106%

Data correct as of 03/03/2024

I would definitely recommend Sarah and the Platypus Media team because I have seen what they can do. The results speak for themselves.

Francesca Monaco, Head of Marketing and Digital Channels at the Chartered IIA

Can we help you?

With a bigger and even better team in 2024, we can help you say goodbye to gut feel and wave a big hello to data with powerful, data-driven Google Ads + Facebook Ads that work—swimmingly well.