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Ask Me Anything - Facebook Ads [2M+ Ad spend]

Xeon

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Video ads > Carousel > Single Image.

For video ads, are you referring to those expensive production ones, with models and entire video crew?
Or can a slideshow saved in video format be considered one as well?
 
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Pritesh

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For video ads, are you referring to those expensive production ones, with models and entire video crew?
Or can a slideshow saved in video format be considered one as well?

No, for ecommerce product demo videos with text above describing features work best.
 

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If I'm testing 5 ad creatives (ad designs), and I'm a new tiny eCom biz, how much should I spend on testing each one? Some folks say $5 / day for 7 days is enough to see how each one performs. What's your thoughts?
 

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If I'm testing 5 ad creatives (ad designs), and I'm a new tiny eCom biz, how much should I spend on testing each one? Some folks say $5 / day for 7 days is enough to see how each one performs. What's your thoughts?

Are they in a single ad set? 1k Impressions per ad creative should be enough to show you the winner in terms of CTR and CPC, but make sure that each creative reaches the 1k mark.
 
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Xeon

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Are they in a single ad set? 1k Impressions per ad creative should be enough to show you the winner in terms of CTR and CPC, but make sure that each creative reaches the 1k mark.

Thanks!
 

Matt_2190

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Thank you @Pritesh

I changed my ads from traffic to conversions, as you suggested in the other post.

I'm spending slightly more, but sales are also more numerous. Now I'm only using that goal. :)

Now I am taking new photos of the product for do the tests, but sometimes I have some difficulties. If you had to choose photos of products, which do you think perform best? Those of the product on a colored background (more "professional"), or that of a product that is used (perhaps made by the smartphone, which seems "amateur")?
 

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If I'm testing 5 ad creatives (ad designs), and I'm a new tiny eCom biz, how much should I spend on testing each one? Some folks say $5 / day for 7 days is enough to see how each one performs. What's your thoughts?

you can also set a rule for ad set to stop running when it reaches "impressions > 1,000"

hope that helps. sorry to hijack @Pritesh 's thread
 
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Pritesh

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Thank you @Pritesh

I changed my ads from traffic to conversions, as you suggested in the other post.

I'm spending slightly more, but sales are also more numerous. Now I'm only using that goal. :)


Glad to hear you've taken action on my advice and seeing results right away.
Yes, the cost per click metric will obviously be high because you're going after good traffic and not traffic that will just "window-shop" your products.

Now I am taking new photos of the product for do the tests, but sometimes I have some difficulties. If you had to choose photos of products, which do you think perform best? Those of the product on a colored background (more "professional"), or that of a product that is used (perhaps made by the smartphone, which seems "amateur")?

From my personal experience, 9/10 times an amateur photo of the product will always outperform a professionally made product image on a colored background or white box.

A professionally taken photo just looks like a stock image and falls in the banner blindness category. I'd also try adding some weirdness or try to induce the feeling of "something's off" with the ad creative, I know it's pretty vague, but the more weird or outrageous your product image is the more people will stop their scrolling and actually look at your ad text. If you can't do that a simple red border to the image or a red arrow pointing to the product also works.
 
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Let me preface by saying non-targeted traffic can never get you stable cpc metric, there are just so many factors involved in it that you'd be looking at $0.05 cpc one day and $0.90 the next. However, there is a way to almost guarantee stable cpcs within your range.

Here's a campaign structure I'd do if getting the cheapest US traffic is my goal. Note this involves a lot of testing, but once you find the perfect combo, you'd be unstoppable.

First, you make a sandbox campaign to find out your winner interest + creative combo.
In the campaign, I'd first test on just one interest which creative delivers the lowest CPC.

So just one ad set (PPE Objective) with one big interest 1Mil+ audience and test 5 creatives. I'd also test run a dynamic creative adset if you want to test headline and ad copy as well. Duplicate the adset 3 times so you get statistically significant results (You don't need to do this if you're budget-constrained)

Now you must have a single post id which is a clear winner. Now every single adset and test we do going forward will use this post id and nothing else.

Next, we test what objective brings you the cheapest CPC. PPE Or traffic.

In the same sandbox campaign, make an adset with traffic objective optimized for landing page views. Again, duplicate the adset 3 times so you get statistically significant results (You don't need to do this if you're budget-constrained).

now it would be clear which Objective-Adset-Ad combo delivers you the lowest CPC. Turn everything else off and verticle scale that adset by duplicating it in the same campaign 2-3 times.

Repeat this process for more interests, you can use the same post id on different interests as well rather then repeating the entire process if you're budget-constrained.
Now you have a bunch of Objective-Adset-Interest target-Ad combos, here it's upto you which you want to turn off or keep it going.

it is important to find the winner post id first, because the more social proof you stack onto a post id, the cheaper your metrics get.
Ok, so narrow down to best Objective-Interest-Ad combo and social proof.

Finally, if you're looking at doing ad arbitrage using FB ads, think again, you'll get banned sooner or later.
I see your concern. It was as honest question as one could post (meaning nothing shady) so all the more thank you for taking time to write in-depth reply.
 

Xeon

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What's your thoughts on the Dynamic Creative feature in the FB ads creator:

401d56821e72540bdddafb07e6f47140.png


Is this actually good, or is it better to manually do it?
 
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Pritesh

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What's your thoughts on the Dynamic Creative feature in the FB ads creator:

401d56821e72540bdddafb07e6f47140.png


Is this actually good, or is it better to manually do it?

Yes, I suggest using it if your budget is slightly higher to test ad copy, creative as well as the headline.
When you go to Breakdown in ads dashboard, you'll see different ad combos that performed exceptionally.

So depending on your test budget, from cheapest to expensive:
Manual A/B testing of ads, Dynamic Creative, Direct Conversion Purchase.

Remember the more variations you add of headline, creative and ad body, the more you'll need to spend per variation in order to get statistically significant results.

One drawback of Dynamic creative is that you cannot turn off a variation like in ads test if one variation is taking up all your ad budget. For example, at 50-100 impressions fb finds a few combos that receive 90% of the ad budget, so the rest of your variations remain untested.

In manual A/B test, this can easily be countered by turning an ad off once you get 1k impressions so the ads getting little/no impressions can reach the 1k mark so you have similar metrics to compare and find a winner.
 

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Sure, Facebook has a language filter as well as location filter. You can even add in interest for more laser-focused targeting options.





Dont they ban you from this type of targeting, its like targeting hispanics ?
 

Xeon

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Question : I remember reading people talking about a technique whereby you run a FB ad with Traffic Objective, then run an Engagement Objective to the same ad for social proof at the same time, to further boost the ad's reach. Is there such a thing?
 
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Pritesh

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Dont they ban you from this type of targeting, its like targeting hispanics ?

Why would they ban you for using their own targeting options?

Just don't call them out specifically in ad copy like for example "Hey Hispanics in California" that will surely trigger the FB bot and ban your account for indiscrimination.

Question : I remember reading people talking about a technique whereby you run a FB ad with Traffic Objective, then run an Engagement Objective to the same ad for social proof at the same time, to further boost the ad's reach. Is there such a thing?


Like I mentioned earlier, those techniques worked great in 2017, but nowadays you don't want to send junk traffic to your website to taint your pixel. There are other ways to get social proof and frankly you don't need much of it

Anyways, testing it can't hurt right? So here's the process I used to do to get social proof and in turn lower cpc/CTR metrics.

Directly run PPE campaign on that post ID. You'd get a bunch of dirt-cheap social proof and traffic to your website. Simultaneously run a conversion-based campaign to take advantage of lower metrics. Be sure to monitor comments though, as you'll get a bunch of low-quality audience visiting and commenting on your post.
 

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What advice would give to someone like me who is about to get started with FB ads with limited budget ?
 

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a31370aac9a55082038abc9c3f6c33e1.png


In my Ads table, I see the above. Is 'Below average / Bottom 10% of ads' something to be concerned about?
 

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a31370aac9a55082038abc9c3f6c33e1.png


In my Ads table, I see the above. Is 'Below average / Bottom 10% of ads' something to be concerned about?


I wouldn't be too concerned as long as its getting me conversions.
 

Xeon

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If the goal is to get new followers to a social media account like Instagram, what would be the best campaign Objective to select?
 
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Pritesh

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If the goal is to get new followers to a social media account like Instagram, what would be the best campaign Objective to select?

I've never run campaigns to promote Instagram pages, for facebook page its usually
Engagement -> Page Likes, but that doesn't work for Instagram.

I'd guess Just engagement campaign and placements Instagram would work, not sure.
 

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From your service thread you mention you don’t work with e-commerce.

Is it generally especially difficult to run e-commerce ads profitably when compared to other business types? Is there another reason why e-commence clients aren’t your bread and butter?
6. No e-commerce, Shopify, dropshipping, FBA, life coaches, spiritual gurus, grey area/disallowed businesses when it comes to Facebook/Google policies whatsoever
 

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From your service thread you mention you don’t work with e-commerce.

Is it generally especially difficult to run e-commerce ads profitably when compared to other business types? Is there another reason why e-commence clients aren’t your bread and butter?

Compared to the ideal businesses I work with as mentioned in the thread, running ads for eCommerce businesses take a LOT of time, effort and testing to be worth it for me.

And let's be honest, unless it's a patented unique product, why would I bother running ads for someone else, when I can dropship myself? I do have my own ecom stores generating me easy passive income.

The initial testing is huge time and money investment for ecom and its very risky for me to charge a retainer every month when the client can easily cut me off as soon as I get a winning ad and keep the ads running themselves.
 
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What about ecommerce takes so much more time and effort do you think? Assuming it’s a successful products and brand already. What makes it so much more complex than services?

To get it going, it usually takes average testing of around 100+ ad creatives and 20-30+ Interests. Compared to running ads for other businesses that's a lot, but the scalability of ecom is also huge so it pays off for the client, not for me.
 

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To get it going, it usually takes average testing of around 100+ ad creatives and 20-30+ Interests. Compared to running ads for other businesses that's a lot, but the scalability of ecom is also huge so it pays off for the client, not for me.

I finally understand why people with extreme low budgets don't get much out of FB ads. It's a game that whales with boundless $$$ play.
 
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To get it going, it usually takes average testing of around 100+ ad creatives and 20-30+ Interests. Compared to running ads for other businesses that's a lot, but the scalability of ecom is also huge so it pays off for the client, not for me.

The ugly truth.

I've managed the spend of over $7 million on Facebook/IG combined for about two dozen companies over the past 4 years.

People who strike it big with their first creative can be said to have gotten lucky. But even they aren't immune to creative testing, because that killer creative burns out within a month or so. (Yes, you can bring it back, but you gotta wait a while to do so and generally on a different non-overlapping audience).

It's not uncommon to have one killer creative that burns out and then the rest of the creatives that are tested don't do nearly as well. This is why a testing protocol is absolutely paramount, and why some portion of ad budget needs to go to testing at all times. There's no getting away from it.

The best possible scenario an advertiser can have is to have a set of awesome creatives (10-15) that all work extremely well... on the broadest possible traffic. That puts your ad in the top .01% of ads on the entire platform, and that's how real scale is found. Broad appeals with a variety of creatives constantly being shuffled. Back when I was working for a skincare company, we had an ad that spent literally $4 million and reached almost 20% of the entire female population of the USA over the course of 2 1/2 years.

But guess what... EVEN THAT BURNS OUT! And it's not even possible for the vast majority of companies, which cater to a specific niche. And those burn out even quicker.
 

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The ugly truth.

I've managed the spend of over $7 million on Facebook/IG combined for about two dozen companies over the past 4 years.

People who strike it big with their first creative can be said to have gotten lucky. But even they aren't immune to creative testing, because that killer creative burns out within a month or so. (Yes, you can bring it back, but you gotta wait a while to do so and generally on a different non-overlapping audience).

It's not uncommon to have one killer creative that burns out and then the rest of the creatives that are tested don't do nearly as well. This is why a testing protocol is absolutely paramount, and why some portion of ad budget needs to go to testing at all times. There's no getting away from it.

The best possible scenario an advertiser can have is to have a set of awesome creatives (10-15) that all work extremely well... on the broadest possible traffic. That puts your ad in the top .01% of ads on the entire platform, and that's how real scale is found. Broad appeals with a variety of creatives constantly being shuffled. Back when I was working for a skincare company, we had an ad that spent literally $4 million and reached almost 20% of the entire female population of the USA over the course of 2 1/2 years.

But guess what... EVEN THAT BURNS OUT! And it's not even possible for the vast majority of companies, which cater to a specific niche. And those burn out even quicker.

Couldn't agree more.
I personally test a bunch of creatives and angles and then shortlist 5-10 and run them 1-2 at a time in a rotation. When I find an angle that works, I start making subtle variations to keep creatives fresh.

Also, a wide audience targeting is the way to go, more so now. I usually test with 5-10 Million audiences and then after the pixel is sufficiently seasoned, you can take off all the targeting options and fb will find you buyers. Non targeted adsets usually outperform Interests or even LLA audiences over time.

What you said about striking big with first creative is also true. If you laser-target an extremely niche audience, who are passionate about your niche, obviously those people will resonate with your product and probably buy it. But, you won't be able to scale it unless you have a wider hook to target people beyond those passionate few.

Guys, when you look to hire a "media buyer" or someone to run ads for your dropship store, please think about this:
Everyone in the entrepreneurial space knows how easy it is to setup a dropship model ecom store, if someone is telling you they are good at running ads for an ecom store, why wouldn't they do it themselves? These guys simply have watched a few courses and want to test the methods with your store and your money. Do not fall for it.
If someone is good at churning out 100 different ad angles and audiences to test your product, and willing to run ads for your store, they are lying!

I finally understand why people with extreme low budgets don't get much out of FB ads. It's a game that whales with boundless $$$ play.

Continuing from my above points, either you have the time or the money.

I didn't have big pockets when I started advertising my ecom store, but whatever I earned I poured all into testing ads, testing angles and audiences. It took me at least 4 months and around -$1400 loss (after calculating ad spend, Cost of goods and fees, store revenue etc) after I saw my first profitable month.
I scaled it very slow, but I did my testing relentlessly. What profits I made, I again invested it into running more tests. That store survived more than 14 months now.
 
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Guys, when you look to hire a "media buyer" or someone to run ads for your dropship store, please think about this:
Everyone in the entrepreneurial space knows how easy it is to setup a dropship model ecom store, if someone is telling you they are good at running ads for an ecom store, why wouldn't they do it themselves? These guys simply have watched a few courses and want to test the methods with your store and your money. Do not fall for it.
If someone is good at churning out 100 different ad angles and audiences to test your product, and willing to run ads for your store, they are lying!

I disagree. It's not actually easy to make a dropshipping store work long term. It's really hard and highly unlikely. Takes half a day to set up, and maybe you're profitable out the gate, but if you pick a good product, chances are someone else is going to figure it out too. If you have a single dropshipping store that's been running profitably and consistently for over a year, it means you've picked a good product and have excellent ads. Not everyone who knows how to split test knows how to pick products, nor do they know how to actually make good creative.

Many of the guys who SUCCEEDED with dropshipping and now doing Facebook ads... guess what? They're doing it because their original store failed. And why did their store fail? Because they couldn't compete anymore. The business model wasn't good enough, their offer wasn't good enough, and they eventually ran out of money to test. You can only bleed for so long.

It's not that they're lying. It's that they know they can't compete and they'd rather use their tactics for an entrepreneur who has already figured out the offer side. There's more money in that compared to a dropshipping store. That's the reality. It's 2020: dropshipping is too easy and the entry barrier is gone.

Of course, there are people out there who want to get their feet wet after buying a course. You definitely don't want to hire those people.

Never hire a media buyer or agency to start up your business for you. Instead, hire a media buyer or agency when you've got an offer working and an idea of what actually works for the offer. The hire will take a lot of time off your hands and allow you to start doing other things, like expanding into new channels, investing in product development, and courting investors.
 
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Xeon

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I didn't have big pockets when I started advertising my ecom store, but whatever I earned I poured all into testing ads, testing angles and audiences. It took me at least 4 months and around -$1400 loss (after calculating ad spend, Cost of goods and fees, store revenue etc) after I saw my first profitable month. I scaled it very slow, but I did my testing relentlessly. What profits I made, I again invested it into running more tests. That store survived more than 14 months now.

I'm curious : during that 4+ months of testing ads without much success, did it occur to you it might be a product (need) issue and not so much about the ads? Did you felt like giving up at one point and find a better product?
 

Pritesh

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I'm curious : during that 4+ months of testing ads without much success, did it occur to you it might be a product (need) issue and not so much about the ads? Did you felt like giving up at one point and find a better product?

Nope, I selected a niche and tested a few products in that niche. I've chased shiny objects a lot in the past, from my research I have seen products in that niche working for other brands in the past and even today, so it's just the messaging and audience I needed to nail down.

In my opinion, any product can be made to work if you find the right hook for it. There obviously may be some highly target problem solver product that a pocket of an audience is hungry to buy, that would work right off the bat. But such products can't be scaled unless you figure out a mass appeal hook which works on a wider audience.
 

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