How to get 1 cent clicks on Facebook

[MisterBHZ]

Found this awhile back & it was a really good read with pretty good tips. Thought I'd share it for those getting into FB ads.

Here are some tips to achieve the mythical 1 cent FB ad clicks. • r/socialmedia

 

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[theag]

This was a year ago and there have been several algorithm changes. Take this advice with a grain of salt.

Agreed, but those tips are surprisingly close to what I currently get best results with. So definitely worth a try.

 

[MisterBHZ]

Let me share some value with you guys.

For me, using the CTW/Traffic objective has always been Grade A TRASH. Gourmet garbage. Top of the line horse shit. No matter the audience, no matter the budget, no matter if its .60/click or .01/click its all been premium cut a$$.

For some reason FB tends to send me the worst traffic when optimizing for clicks. Starting to believe its just fake/bot clicks. How do I know this? I get horrible engagement when they get to my site.

BTW, I'm unable to use the Conversion objective because of how my site is set up. I'm using a 3rd party store embedded into my site.

Now, what has been working for me is video. Had my best sales month ever in March. I make iPhone 7 quality videos & I use them as ads with a call to action button. I also add a CTA pointing to my link in the copy. I found out when people click this link it is considered direct traffic in google analytics (all my sales come from direct...best kind of traffic in my opinion).

What I've been doing is using Video Views as my objective & optimizing for that. Why? Because video views acts similar to post engagement ads. You get people watching your video, liking it, commenting, sharing it & sending you messages. You reach more people & get super cheap views & clicks to your website & low cpm. When they get to my site, great engagement. Real people are engaged unlike those trash a$$ clicks to website objectives.

When I started doing this, I tested out $1/day ads across 3-5 different audiences. When I'd get sales, I'd hit them up & they'd say..."I saw your shit on FB."

Never ever had this type of result using CTW even when I was doing $100/day. But somehow $1 ads destroy them? Can you say...WTF?

Now I have ads with super high engagement (social proof) that I can leverage to new people.

So guys, if you are using CTW and not having results, try different objectives.

I hope this helps someone.

 

[theag]

Are you still going super broad with only age & gender targeting? I've been playing around with that lately.

Right now either whole country or just a broad interest. No age/gender targeting. Website conversions objective. In the past I did lookalike only but it stopped performing for me. My guess is that the "double-optimization" (lookalike + optimization in the ad set basically use the same algorithm) leads to fb hitting the same people over and over again. This especially becomes a problem if you already spent a higher budget (100k+) on a product on fb in a smaller country. Will give CTW objective a try soon.

 

[The-J]

This was a year ago and there have been several algorithm changes. Take this advice with a grain of salt.

 

[theag]

CTW objective is usually horrible for me too. If you need cheap clicks (for whatever reason) and have high CTR ads, PPE objective is mostly the way to go in my experience. On some campaigns I also get good and consistent ROAS with PPE instead of just cheap clicks, even on very broad audiences.

I usually use website conversion objective with standard link ads, but experiment with the event its optimizing for (LP click-through, add to cart, purchase), and of course bidding, targeting and ad copy/image.

Video hasnt worked well for me so far, but since its doing very well for everybody else my videos probably just suck.

I'm running a bit higher budgets though as 100 or 10 per day doesnt really move the needle for me. Usually about 500-1k/adset/day, depending on bidding, with multiple adsets per account and seperate account for each product. Which is still pretty small potatoes compared to some of the mindboggling daily spends I have seen.

Currently running lower to focus on developing better backend/optimizing site/new products, which is where the real money is made... Good FB optimization only gets you so far unfortunately and if you focus too much on it instead of improving your site, developing your backend and creating additional products (for the same "theme") you will stagnate at a certain revenue level and have problems scaling further, as I'm painfully experiencing right now.

Also much less stressful at lower budgets when FB is not F*cking with you all day every day lol..

FB's image/video compression is a real pain in the a$$. For images I found that it helps to create them in 2x the recommended size, so for link ads 2400x1256 instead of 1200x628 and save as uncompressed PNG. Got the best results with that. I'm only uploading ad images via the power editor ad creation though. I think the compression is even more severe when you create the ad on your page via the "Write something..." form.. Maybe the same method works for videos but havent tested it.

 

[The-J]

I think this thread could be #notable soon. Facebook is a giant ball of mystery for a lot of people and most people who are having success cannot accurately explain why their methods work (or are simply not explaining them... which, to be fair, there's a lot of reason not to).

 

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[theag]

The way I see it, this advises sending ads to a broad audience. This means getting our ad in front of the wrong people most of the time. Why not get super specific with your audience instead, and have most of your impressions go to a more relevant audience?

In theory yes, in practice no.

 

[theag]

Though no mobile targeting right? I just ran an ad but couldn't find how to target mobiles or exclude desktops, I guess they've removed that feature? Or am I missing it?

Mobile newsfeed only.

 

[theag]

If you have a really good ad that has lots of engagement & social proof with a CTR of 6%+...would it be better to switch to CPM instead of CPC?

Never run either of them, except for remarketing or similar very small and very targeted audiences, as FB doesnt use optimization algorithms for pure CPM or CPC. Always chose to optimize for the objective of the campaign, be it website clicks, conversions, ppe, or whatever. This was formerly known as oCPM.

 

[Sanj Modha]

Is that important?

I look for Return On Ad Spend (ROAS). Ill take $10 CPC if it makes me $20 all day long.

People seem to confuse FB with PPC when it isn't. You pay for CPMs. Everything else is secondary.

 

[theag]

I've been testing testing with wifi & without wifi. Tend to get the same results to be honest. What I have found out is that FB spends my budget much slower with only wifi users.

Same here, so I just leave it unchecked. Spends much more reliable.

Of course the prerequisite for all mobile traffic is that your site loads fast (I aim for 100-200ms max). People wont be bothered to wait for sites that are slow as F*ck and especially wont buy from them. If your site is extremely slow (1000ms+) and you send paid mobile traffic to it, you're basically burning money and should fix that first. Especially important for non-wifi traffic.

 

[CycleGuy]

Video is great. Does anyone experience a very poor quality upload even when picking "upload in HD" on fb? I hate that the quality suffers from the original to the fb upload.


Also FB success story from the weekend. I have built my niche fb audience to 16k followers and now directly market to them and their friends. It has been very solid for returns lately. Before the audience was that size I had a specific regional group that I marketed to that performed well. No my follower base direct marketing outperforms that group. Which means a better return on advertising.

We had a popular boost that sold a product. We only spent $32 on paid advertising and the profit on the product was just over $1,800. The sale only took a few days as well.



Also side note, if you boost a post and see engagement in likes, you can invite those people who don't already like your page to like it. I do this on another page right now I manager to help build the audience without spending more on "Ads for likes".

 

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[The-J]

Video is the cheapest impression around right now... in my experience. Even a shittily made video to the right audience can result in high returns if it's engaging.

Video is an easy sell to companies, too, for those of us who do more B2B services.

 

[TheDillon__]

Just my $0.02

Should we even bother with trying to get the cheapest clicks?

The way I see it, this advises sending ads to a broad audience. This means getting our ad in front of the wrong people most of the time. Why not get super specific with your audience instead, and have most of your impressions go to a more relevant audience?

Though the clicks might be cheap, what's the quality like? How many of these one-cent clicks will it take to actually convert into a sale, versus a click that you paid $1 or $2 for?

That said, I feel like it's a bad sign for your margins if we're breaking bank on $1 clicks. (I'm also an inexperienced little newbie, so this could be totally off base.) But I feel like if you bring a $1 click to your website, and it leads to a >$1 earnings, then that's positive EV.

 

[CycleGuy]

#4 is a big rule I follow. If you don't have a cool, clear, and unique image the ad fails.

I don't know how many big spenders waste thousands with stock photos that cause little to no engagement.

I feel like people on social media are almost conditioned to ignore stock images on sponsored advertisements.

 

[GSF]

I've had similar experience running ads for ecommerce. When I followed the guru advice and did website conversions objective with narrowed audience and interest targeting I got +$0.50 clicks and no sales. I then ran exact same ad creative for same product but did campaign with web clicks objective, broad audience and broad interests- $0.08 clicks, 3% ctr, and sales at 2% conversion.

 

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[GuestUser450]

OK. Here's a question for you. Which ad would you kill? A $0.10/click ad making zero sales or a $10/click that makes $20/click?

Low CPC is the wrong question.

ROAS is about maximizing the spend, and in turn, the conversion. I'm not arguing that clicks without customers is anything other than waste.

But if you assume cheap clicks are worthless, you might be overpaying/under-optimizing your creatives - that's the point of thre thread.

If you could lower the $10/click to $7 by shooting for .01 clicks, you wouldn't ignore a 30% reduction in acquisition cost, right?

 

[PaulRobert]

Now, what has been working for me is video.

Same here. Running traffic campaigns with video and have seen conversions go up. What is also an interesting factor is that many times people will google you when seeing your ad and then purchase. So the conversion isn't recorded from Facebook but from Google.
This can also skew your recorded results on FB.

 

[MisterBHZ]

CTW objective is usually horrible for me too. If you need cheap clicks (for whatever reason) and have high CTR ads, PPE objective is mostly the way to go in my experience. On some campaigns I also get good and consistent ROAS with PPE instead of just cheap clicks, even on very broad audiences.

I usually use website conversion objective with standard link ads, but experiment with the event its optimizing for (LP click-through, add to cart, purchase), and of course bidding, targeting and ad copy/image.

Video hasnt worked well for me so far, but since its doing very well for everybody else my videos probably just suck.

I'm running a bit higher budgets though as 100 or 10 per day doesnt really move the needle for me. Usually about 500-1k/adset/day, depending on bidding, with multiple adsets per account and seperate account for each product. Which is still pretty small potatoes compared to some of the mindboggling daily spends I have seen.

Currently running lower to focus on developing better backend/optimizing site/new products, which is where the real money is made... Good FB optimization only gets you so far unfortunately and if you focus too much on it instead of improving your site, developing your backend and creating additional products (for the same "theme") you will stagnate at a certain revenue level and have problems scaling further, as I'm painfully experiencing right now.

Also much less stressful at lower budgets when FB is not F*cking with you all day every day lol..

FB's image/video compression is a real pain in the a$$. For images I found that it helps to create them in 2x the recommended size, so for link ads 2400x1256 instead of 1200x628 and save as uncompressed PNG. Got the best results with that. I'm only uploading ad images via the power editor ad creation though. I think the compression is even more severe when you create the ad on your page via the "Write something..." form.. Maybe the same method works for videos but havent tested it.

I literally just ran an ad as Ppe minutes after reading your post...already getting sales. More proof to try & use other objectives guys.

 

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[kkoasdfawfqwe2]

Just my $0.02

Should we even bother with trying to get the cheapest clicks?

The way I see it, this advises sending ads to a broad audience. This means getting our ad in front of the wrong people most of the time. Why not get super specific with your audience instead, and have most of your impressions go to a more relevant audience?

Though the clicks might be cheap, what's the quality like? How many of these one-cent clicks will it take to actually convert into a sale, versus a click that you paid $1 or $2 for?

That said, I feel like it's a bad sign for your margins if we're breaking bank on $1 clicks. (I'm also an inexperienced little newbie, so this could be totally off base.) But I feel like if you bring a $1 click to your website, and it leads to a >$1 earnings, then that's positive EV.

I strongly disagree with this.

I have spent at least $150k on FB ads, and while that may be some, it sure is not that much compared to a lot of people here. But it means I have purchased enough advertisement space for myself to see some patterns in the Facebook algorithm.

Allow me to elaborate.

Your theory would hold true, if the Facebook algorithm would just deliver the same amount of impressions spread evenly over all age groups and gendertype, but it simply does not.

You will notice after spending maybe $200-300+ (or even less in some cases) on a very broad FB ad, that when you breakdown e.g. 'Age', some specific age groups will receive way more impressions than others, and that age group typically also has the cheapest clicks.

After delivering a certain amount of impressions, the algorithm will begin seeing specific patterns in CTR from specific age groups or a specific gender and thus optimize from there. So the more you spend, the less impressions will be delivered to the age groups/genders and other people who do not engage with your ad.

Since I don't work for Facebook, I cannot gurantee this of course, but this is my experience and it always works exactly like that for me. So remember that your first couple of $100 (or less) on your ad is purchase of data to feed the algorithm, so that your ad will perform the best onwards.

Don't be afraid to target broad!

 

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[Sanj Modha]

Let me share some value with you guys.

For me, using the CTW/Traffic objective has always been Grade A TRASH. Gourmet garbage. Top of the line horse shit. No matter the audience, no matter the budget, no matter if its .60/click or .01/click its all been premium cut a$$.

For some reason FB tends to send me the worst traffic when optimizing for clicks. Starting to believe its just fake/bot clicks. How do I know this? I get horrible engagement when they get to my site.

BTW, I'm unable to use the Conversion objective because of how my site is set up. I'm using a 3rd party store embedded into my site.

Now, what has been working for me is video. Had my best sales month ever in March. I make iPhone 7 quality videos & I use them as ads with a call to action button. I also add a CTA pointing to my link in the copy. I found out when people click this link it is considered direct traffic in google analytics (all my sales come from direct...best kind of traffic in my opinion).

What I've been doing is using Video Views as my objective & optimizing for that. Why? Because video views acts similar to post engagement ads. You get people watching your video, liking it, commenting, sharing it & sending you messages. You reach more people & get super cheap views & clicks to your website & low cpm. When they get to my site, great engagement. Real people are engaged unlike those trash a$$ clicks to website objectives.

When I started doing this, I tested out $1/day ads across 3-5 different audiences. When I'd get sales, I'd hit them up & they'd say..."I saw your shit on FB."

Never ever had this type of result using CTW even when I was doing $100/day. But somehow $1 ads destroy them? Can you say...WTF?

Now I have ads with super high engagement (social proof) that I can leverage to new people.

So guys, if you are using CTW and not having results, try different objectives.

I hope this helps someone.

Video works well because it's cheap (for now) and it gets much more viral traffic vs the rest. But the best ROI for me has always been WC to banner ads. I still use both.

On the main topic, I always say ask better questions. What do you want your ads to do? It's simple but it's powerful. Let me show you why...

CTW might be garbage if you're using it to make direct sales on an ecommerce store. But let's say you're running an elaborate funnel with plenty of upsells/downsells, follow up sequences? CTW is perfect because you can send of ton of cheap clicks to your store and mop up the visitors with retargeting campaigns.

Also, let's say you're running local ads - a cosmetic surgeon wants more prospects/leads (not sales). Why not use CTW to send them to an opt-in page which captures name/email/phone number? Now FB has rolled out the Lead Gen objective but a few years ago I was using CTW to run lead gens and getting paid $5/email. It was the easiest money I've ever made in my life.

 

[theag]

First off, thank you all for the immense value!



Do you use Shopify or a similar platform? Because I am unable to make my product page faster than 5 seconds on shopify and a free theme. Please teach me GURU, on how to speed up my site.

I'm using Magento 1 with a completely custom frontend that I built from scratch myself. Hosting on AWS with every possible option to increase speed (nginx, PHP7, Varnish cache, CDN, Minify CSS/JS/HTML, optimized images etc). Dont know how it works on Shopify.

 

[theag]

I do direct selling. I'm unable to run WC because of how my site is setup.

You can set up conversion events for basically every possible action on your site, it doesnt have to be a purchase. Just needs some JavaScript to fire it. Clicking a button, ajax forms, time spent on page, even for scrolling more than x% of the page. Might be worth looking into and try to run WC.

 

[Dylan_91]

Thanks for this post

EDIT: Here's a good article that was written, literally today, on Facebook advertising that may help with analyzing that with the above link.

The Decline of Organic Facebook Reach & How to Outsmart the Algorithm

 

[MisterBHZ]

Here's another tip for mobile only ads....check the "only when connected to wifi" box.

When people are on wifi it's more likely they are not on the go & at a place to have time to check out your offer.

 

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[GuestUser450]

Is that important?

Yes because:

ROAS is harder to control since it's FB.

 

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[Sanj Modha]

Yes because:

OK. Here's a question for you. Which ad would you kill? A $0.10/click ad making zero sales or a $10/click that makes $20/click?

Low CPC is the wrong question.

 

[3things]

At the end of all of this, as I've been trying to bash into people at work there's only 2 metrics that really ever matter - your CPC and your EPC (earnings per click). To a great extent, you have more control over your EPC via the price of your item, optimising your customer value/order value etc. (That's not to say you shouldn't optimise your ads to reduce the CPC along the way of course, but better to focus on increasing the EPC long term.

 

[MisterBHZ]

If you have a really good ad that has lots of engagement & social proof with a CTR of 6%+...would it be better to switch to CPM instead of CPC?