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How soon should I start seeing results from FB ads?

Marketing, social media, advertising

ianaav

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Hi everyone! I have a small e-com business in skincare (my own products) and recently hired an FB ads manager. I know the first month goes for testing and setup, then we just see what works and scale.
Its been 2 months now and we had 2 sales, granted its a new brand in a very competitive industry and product is not cheap 70$. My budget is 2k per month for ads.
For those with experience, how much time would you give to get some traction? Thanks!
 
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Fox

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To get a detailed answer with the most useful advice it will be best to post up some breakdown of the different steps involved in someone buying your product and show where people are dropping off.

For example, if you have noone clicking off FB then that is an ad issue.
But if clicks are good but noone buys you have a conversion issue.

Post up some more details.
 

ianaav

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Hi Fox, yes that makes sense.
We have direct conversion campaigns and these were the ones that had the sales.
As I mentioned I'm very new to this, we drive traffic to the blog and our quiz on the website. I was told its too early to do retargeting for now.

My CTR is very low 0.29% I suppose?
 

Pratik_ITpro

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It depends on the Target Audience, Locations, Competition etc. However I suggest you to check the previous results achieved by the Manager you hired. It may help you.

Between 3-6 Month you should see the progress as per current inputs you shared.
 
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liero1

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wow, now that sounds terrible tbh and I hope your guy is not burning your money.

Thing is, normally you have two broad campaign types, awareness and conversion. Awareness you don't expect sales, but it feeds your website with very cheap traffic (I get about 0.08 / visitor). Main function of the traffic is to FEED the conversion campaign data modelling - you model audiences via custom audiences and set up look a like audiences based on your visitors first , then when enough data on cart shoppers, then at the end on purchasers. Retargeting as well at some point but I think many people overestimate those campaigns (are the sales incremental!?).

It takes a while to kick off, but if that system is in place and he does the right thing AND your product is actually OK (you can't sell sh** if the products are not fitting some kind of customer need) this should not take more than a few weeks to deliver sales.
 

100k

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The guy you hired sucks.

It doesn't take 2 months.

It takes 7 days to test out campaigns (SOMETIMES 1-2 months - but that's only when the person that's running your ad campaign doesn't have any experience in the niche).

Hire someone that's got experience running (profitably) skincare campaigns - ask for proof.

Figure out what angles work - come up with like 5 different angles, and 2 different images for each angle.

Angles can be things like;

"Skincare for the professional business lady"

"Skincare cream that every mother should try at least once"

"Skincare that millenial women are going crazy for"

"Why can't mature women stop raving about this skin care product"

"The skincare that side-chicks use to steal husbands & boyfriends"

"Only use this skincare if you're single because men will be all over you"....

Run them all at the same time... so you can find out what audience & copy generates engagement. Kill those that aren't getting cheap clicks/good engagement or have high bounce rate.

You need optimize for initiate checkout, get 100+ visits to that part of your site.

Then you need to create look-a-like audience from the people that hit your checkout page.

Then create a new campaign that uses that LLA and this time optimize for purchases.

Then when you've got 100+ purchases you can create a new LLA from the people that bought.

Keep the 1st LLA campaign running if its profitable, otherwise pause it and just run the 2nd one with the purchase LLA data.

Hope that helps.
 
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RazorCut

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The-J

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2 months at $2k/month? So you spend $4k for 2 sales?

That's really bad.

You stated your ad CTR is 0.23%. Evidently your landing page conversion rate isn't good either.

What is he doing with your ads, and what kind of ads are you running and to where?

I've spent a few million on skin care ads, and I can tell you that if we spent 5x CPA without a sale we'd turn those ad sets off and look at the following numbers: Ad CTR, landing page view completion rate, add to cart rate, checkout initiation rate, checkout completion rate, landing page conversion rate.

Your front end angles, I guarantee they suck. At such a low ad CTR they're not bringing in anyone. But more important than the angles (on click through rate: angles have more of an effect on conversion rates down the funnel) are the visuals: the creatives. A good creative with a shit angle will still get a CTR of at least 1%.

What audiences is your ad buyer running to? Some audiences are more receptive to skin care than others, and when you're starting out, you probably shouldn't be running to super broad female audiences.

I'm generally not so quick to blame the ad buyer but no ad buyer worth their salt would let $2k be spent with zero return unless something worthwhile was being learned. They should have seen those ROASs and gotten on a call with you to discuss strategy.
 

uroz

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Some great tips from you guys! I will soon be dipping my toes in to FB ads and I am overwhelmed by the infos I keep getting from all sides. Any good source you might recommend on how to tacke this. My audience is quite specific spread into multiple EU countries. Thanks!
 

RazorCut

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Some great tips from you guys! I will soon be dipping my toes in to FB ads and I am overwhelmed by the infos I keep getting from all sides. Any good source you might recommend on how to tacke this. My audience is quite specific spread into multiple EU countries. Thanks!

If you are considering running your own advertising campaigns then bear in mind it will take time, effort and perseverance.

As a bare minimum join some Facebook Ad and funnel specific groups such as Adleak already quoted and ClickFunnels. You probably won't be able to get into some of them, like Adleaks Gold/Platinum (paid groups) and AdvancedMarketers but there are quite a few decent ones out there.

Check out your competition using the Facebook Ad Library.

Go through Facebook's Ad tutorials to get you started and then work your way up from there.
 
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uroz

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To verify my product the plan is to start it myself. If I see that all I have figured out in my head is working somewhat as planned I'll get someone else to do the ads and increase the ad spend.
 

GoodluckChuck

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How do you get sales now? Can you build a look alike audience off your main traffic source? That might cut the learning curve.
 

James Klymus

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If you've spent $4000 you've probably had a lot of website visits, is that true? If you do have a lot of website visits, then start a retargeting audience of people who have visited your store and remarket to them.

Another major thing is most people don't impulse buy things on Facebook, Especially when they don't know you or your brand. I tried to sell ecom products on Facebook this way for a long time, and the products that worked the best were cheaper impulse offers (Sub $20 range).

There's so many ways to go about advertising though. A few off the top of my head:

Doing a free plus shipping offer: You may have seen when a company sells something for Free! Just pay shipping. It may sound silly to us, but I have collected thousands of emails for free by doing this.

This would require a very cheap product, because you don't want to charge more than $5-7 for shipping.

You can even send them into a funnel where they can be upsold higher priced items right away.

If you don't decide to sell them right away, then you at the very least have an email list that you can promote to and make look alike audiences from. Plus it is an email list of people who have spent money with your company, which any business owner knows is GOLD.

Collecting email addresses: Data nowadays is why tech companies can be valued so highly. If you have an email list of hundreds of thousands or millions of people who have purchased from you, you have an incredible asset and tool to market and even exit down the line. This is how I'm growing my current business ventures.

Ways that I collect emails are pretty straight forward. Since you'll collect emails from purchases and abandoned carts naturally, I'll talk about how you can get them without a purchase.

For one, you can offer some free guide, tutorial, or other freebie on your Ad, in exchange for an email address. For example: a PDF on the 10 best makeup hacks. I'm not in the beauty industry, so you'll probably know what works more than I would.

The point is to give them some sort of free value while getting their email in exchange. That tells us they're interested in the niche we operate in and we can continue to advertise and email them with offers and value.

Even just brand awareness: This isn't really something I do, mostly because I havent had a ton of money to start out businesses, but it's something a lot of big brands do.

You know the way Coke, advertises? It's almost never a free plus shipping, or give us your email offer. It's usually just a fancy promo video with happy people drinking coke or doing some fun activity.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QDdNUxWGwk


This is to build brand awareness, there is no direct call to action. You could make a promo video and advertise to a cold audience, then within Facebook you can retarget people who have watched a certain percentage of your video (ex. 90% of your video watched)

Again this is one way to go if you have deep pockets, and patience. But over the years, I have preferred a more direct response approach to advertising, and getting SOMETHING for my ad dollars (Email, data, a purchase).

I would also recommend learning Facebook ads your self, then getting your hands dirty by running them. This way you have an idea of if the people you hire for it are good or not.

There is no set time frame to start seeing results. I've had sales and people take my offer just hours after running my ad, and I've spent thousands with no results. It's not a plug and play system, it's involved, and you have to understand your margins, costs, customer life time value, how much you're willing to spend on an ad before cutting it and so on...

Hopefully that helps, and if you need more help with your ads feel free to message me if you want to talk more.
 
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Last edited:

ianaav

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It depends on the Target Audience, Locations, Competition etc. However I suggest you to check the previous results achieved by the Manager you hired. It may help you.

Between 3-6 Month you should see the progress as per current inputs you shared.
This is my first agency and its a starting brand so nothing to compare yet. But yes I know it depends on many factors. Cheers!
 

ianaav

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The guy you hired sucks.

It doesn't take 2 months.

It takes 7 days to test out campaigns (SOMETIMES 1-2 months - but that's only when the person that's running your ad campaign doesn't have any experience in the niche).

Hire someone that's got experience running (profitably) skincare campaigns - ask for proof.

Figure out what angles work - come up with like 5 different angles, and 2 different images for each angle.

Angles can be things like;

"Skincare for the professional business lady"

"Skincare cream that every mother should try at least once"

"Skincare that millenial women are going crazy for"

"Why can't mature women stop raving about this skin care product"

"The skincare that side-chicks use to steal husbands & boyfriends"

"Only use this skincare if you're single because men will be all over you"....

Run them all at the same time... so you can find out what audience & copy generates engagement. Kill those that aren't getting cheap clicks/good engagement or have high bounce rate.

You need optimize for initiate checkout, get 100+ visits to that part of your site.

Then you need to create look-a-like audience from the people that hit your checkout page.

Then create a new campaign that uses that LLA and this time optimize for purchases.

Then when you've got 100+ purchases you can create a new LLA from the people that bought.

Keep the 1st LLA campaign running if its profitable, otherwise pause it and just run the 2nd one with the purchase LLA data.

Hope that helps.

Thank you for the detailed response. The first month was spent doing research and setting up everything. It sounds like this is what he is doing actually, but it's taking a while. As I said its a new brand and the product is premium. I will question this now, lets see what he says.
 
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ianaav

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2 months at $2k/month? So you spend $4k for 2 sales?

That's really bad.

You stated your ad CTR is 0.23%. Evidently your landing page conversion rate isn't good either.

What is he doing with your ads, and what kind of ads are you running and to where?

I've spent a few million on skin care ads, and I can tell you that if we spent 5x CPA without a sale we'd turn those ad sets off and look at the following numbers: Ad CTR, landing page view completion rate, add to cart rate, checkout initiation rate, checkout completion rate, landing page conversion rate.

Your front end angles, I guarantee they suck. At such a low ad CTR they're not bringing in anyone. But more important than the angles (on click through rate: angles have more of an effect on conversion rates down the funnel) are the visuals: the creatives. A good creative with a shit angle will still get a CTR of at least 1%.

What audiences is your ad buyer running to? Some audiences are more receptive to skin care than others, and when you're starting out, you probably shouldn't be running to super broad female audiences.

I'm generally not so quick to blame the ad buyer but no ad buyer worth their salt would let $2k be spent with zero return unless something worthwhile was being learned. They should have seen those ROASs and gotten on a call with you to discuss strategy.

Oh gosh good I actually asked. I have been patient as pretty much everyone told me that we need 3 months to gain traction.
 

ianaav

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I agree with James. Unless you're really short on time, your $4k would be better spent educating yourself instead of educating a freelancer.

I am sitting on 2k inventory of product so better find someone that knows their stuff. I honestly just don't want to get into ads and would rather focus on other things. But yes 4k should probably bring more results.
 

ianaav

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Sep 8, 2017
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If you've spent $4000 you've probably had a lot of website visits, is that true? If you do have a lot of website visits, then start a retargeting audience of people who have visited your store and remarket to them.

Another major thing is most people don't impulse buy things on Facebook, Especially when they don't know you or your brand. I tried to sell ecom products on Facebook this way for a long time, and the products that worked the best were cheaper impulse offers (Sub $20 range).

There's so many ways to go about advertising though. A few off the top of my head:

Doing a free plus shipping offer: You may have seen when a company sells something for Free! Just pay shipping. It may sound silly to us, but I have collected thousands of emails for free by doing this.

This would require a very cheap product, because you don't want to charge more than $5-7 for shipping.

You can even send them into a funnel where they can be upsold higher priced items right away.

If you don't decide to sell them right away, then you at the very least have an email list that you can promote to and make look alike audiences from. Plus it is an email list of people who have spent money with your company, which any business owner knows is GOLD.

Collecting email addresses: Data nowadays is why tech companies can be valued so highly. If you have an email list of hundreds of thousands or millions of people who have purchased from you, you have an incredible asset and tool to market and even exit down the line. This is how I'm growing my current business ventures.

Ways that I collect emails are pretty straight forward. Since you'll collect emails from purchases and abandoned carts naturally, I'll talk about how you can get them without a purchase.

For one, you can offer some free guide, tutorial, or other freebie on your Ad, in exchange for an email address. For example: a PDF on the 10 best makeup hacks. I'm not in the beauty industry, so you'll probably know what works more than I would.

The point is to give them some sort of free value while getting their email in exchange. That tells us they're interested in the niche we operate in and we can continue to advertise and email them with offers and value.

Even just brand awareness: This isn't really something I do, mostly because I havent had a ton of money to start out businesses, but it's something a lot of big brands do.

You know the way Coke, advertises? It's almost never a free plus shipping, or give us your email offer. It's usually just a fancy promo video with happy people drinking coke or doing some fun activity.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QDdNUxWGwk


This is to build brand awareness, there is no direct call to action. You could make a promo video and advertise to a cold audience, then within Facebook you can retarget people who have watched a certain percentage of your video (ex. 90% of your video watched)

Again this is one way to go if you have deep pockets, and patience. But over the years, I have preferred a more direct response approach to advertising, and getting SOMETHING for my ad dollars (Email, data, a purchase).

I would also recommend learning Facebook ads your self, then getting your hands dirty by running them. This way you have an idea of if the people you hire for it are good or not.

There is no set time frame to start seeing results. I've had sales and people take my offer just hours after running my ad, and I've spent thousands with no results. It's not a plug and play system, it's involved, and you have to understand your margins, costs, customer life time value, how much you're willing to spend on an ad before cutting it and so on...

Hopefully that helps, and if you need more help with your ads feel free to message me if you want to talk more.

Thank you James, thats really helpful.
 
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The-J

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Oh gosh good I actually asked. I have been patient as pretty much everyone told me that we need 3 months to gain traction.

3 months to gain traction, not 3 months to get a single profitable sale! Traction means that you're able to consistently reach people. It's fine to lose money overall in your first month if you learned something from it, but not to just blow it for 2 months straight with no knowledge gained or improvements made!
 

minivanman

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Dang, for $4k I could have sold more than 2 for you in facebook buy/sell/trade groups or Craigslist. You could pay someone $4k to stand out on the corner and sell them and I bet they would have sold more than 2.

I guess on the bright side, you have 2 people to find out if they reorder from your reorder plan.... you do have one of those don't you?
 

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