The 6-question post-mortem I run on every dead campaign
A failed campaign you don't autopsy is just an expensive feeling. Here's the form I fill out before I move on.
The setup
Dating offer, $400 spent, $260 revenue, ROI -35%. Dead. Now what.
The move
Six questions, answered in writing:
— Where did it break? Funnel stage: impression, click, LP, or conversion?
— My CTR was fine (1.1%) but LP-to-conversion was 0.8% vs offer average ~2%. Break was the LP.
— Was it the offer, the angle, or the traffic source? (Cross-check: same angle on a different source.)
— What did I assume that turned out false? I assumed the offer's own LP was optimized. It wasn't.
— What's the cheapest test to confirm the diagnosis?
— Keep, kill, or rebuild?
The numbers
LP was the culprit. I built my own pre-lander, relaunched the SAME traffic, LP-to-conversion went 0.8% to 1.9%. The campaign that lost $140 turned +18%.
The lesson
Most "bad offers" are bad funnels. Diagnose the stage before you blame the whole thing.
What I'd do differently
Run the post-mortem at $200 spend, not $400. Illustrative numbers.
Arb Files
@ArbFiles