Paid Advertising Crash Course

[SM Switi]

Thank you so much for sharing this

 

[Azure]

Google has decided to now quietly spend 2x more your budget, even though you set a limit, on high traffic days.

How you gonna budget now monthly? If you have high traffic early in month, you could have $0 at the end to spend

Charges and your daily budget - Previous - AdWords Help

I have a feeling that this is the beginning of the end for accelerated ad delivery and Google is essentially forcing us to get rid of its use.

There are also rules you can use to limit your spend. Check spend every hour and pause if spend is to high. A bit of a patchy work around, as you could still overdeliver in the hour.

 

[GabrielDC]

Thanks for this post, I learned a lot!

 

[AdamMaxum]

I talked with a potential client today.

I realize something new every time I interact with new clients, which is great. But many times it is also concerning.

More and more people decide to set their marketing budgets on some random advice they get that says, "X percentage of your revenue should be marketing" or "this is what I can afford and if you make me more money, I can spend more gladly".

While those strategies might have some merit, it's typically the wrong mindset.

Example:

The Problem ( and backstory )

Say you have a budding Personal Injury attorney in Scottsdale. He does OK but he don't have a lot of money for his new practice.

At best, he has $750 a month to spend monthly on PPC. ( this is a very real and typical example )

He picks running on Adwords as his marketing platform and his clicks in this vertical and location come out to be near $60 a click on average.

With his $750 monthly budget, he needs to set a daily budget at $25 a day.

$25 a day budget... but the clicks are $60 each. I'm sure you can do the math here, right?

So lets assume the guy can spend $100 a day though. That's $3k a month roughly.

The clicks are still $60 a click. It only takes 1.5 clicks to exhaust his daily budget of $100.

Most times, this guy's budget is exhausted before 1pm EST.

Most times, depending on his CPC setting, he is probably bottom of the page or an average position of 4th/5th when he does run.


His Outcome

Most of the day, his ad is not showing. Meaning he is losing potential customers and cases.

Even the customers he is getting good results with, the data behind those customers is skewed to those willing to click a bottom of the page ad ( meaning they probably priced shopped elsewhere or couldn't get a hold of the attorneys listed above him ) AND those looking early in the morning.

You really can't optimize forward on this skewed and dirty data.

I mean, you can optimize on it... if you always want to be bottom of the page and ONLY run in the mornings going forward because that's all this data is really good for other than "generalities".

In the end, most times this account will fail and not get optimized correctly because the data will be flawed and the budget was set on the mindset of "I should only be spending x% on marketing", or "this is all I can afford".


Alternative

I get it if you can not afford more for Adwords and only put in what you can.

But the correct method to START your marketing spend with Adwords so you get off on the right foot is, having enough marketing budget to secure a 1st or 2nd average position for your keywords to cover a full 24 hour period for the entire month.

Expensive? It can be. But would you rather do it differently and never have the "right data" to optimize to get to profitability and lose all that ad spend anyways later in floundering results?

See, the issue really boils down, "what can I work with to optimize your account".

When you have a low monthly budget, you potentially end up like my attorney friend above that either doesn't have enough ad spend daily to show his ad ( $25 daily, but clicks are $60 ), or you have just enough that if 1-2 people click on your ad ( at say 9am ), your ads shut off before noon every day for the most part.

Based on that, maybe your best customers are online needing your services after they come home from dinner at night and are in an accident. They never see your ad and thus never call you. Saul Goodman gets the call instead and settles a multi-million dollar PI case.

Also, as your PPC guy.. I can't come back to you with insights like, "Hey, it looks like you make the most revenue Tuesday nights from 6pm to 11pm". Why? Because you don't have that data for me to find, your ads shut off most days at noon because you can not afford a better budget for Adwords.

If your budget is so low that you set your CPC's low to try to squeeze more out of the budget, you are also hurting this whole process. Any data I get will only reflect the low end of the spectrum for Adwords. Because your average position is now 4th-5th, your ad really is showing at 8th or 9th a lot of times, and maybe sometimes it shows in 2nd and 3rd. Again it's an average, but lets assume because of this low average that your higher ranked competitors get the lion's share of clicks and leads. You get barely any leads yourself, and most days you might get 0.

After a while, you are left with keywords that don't get clicks or at least a very horrible CTR overall. Maybe you get a few leads, but nothing compared to your competitors. When you look at how much it costs to get those leads, the numbers just aren't profitable.

Well, that's because you got the left over leads that either couldn't reach your competitors or couldn't afford them. Maybe you got people who were also "researching" the bottom of the page just to make sure they can validate their top choice they already made up in their mind, your competitor that is sitting above you.

No matter the reason, you are going to look at this data and assume, "well Adwords sucks" or "the guy I hire sucks". In reality, your data and experience is reflective of your low budget. The data you gleam off this tells you to pause several keywords and ads because "they waste money" and in a fit you decide after pausing them you need to pour in your last $3k into outbidding your competitors for a hail Mary pass.

After 14 days, the money is spent and you get even worse performance.

Why?

Maybe because those keywords and ads you paused because you thought they sucked, only sucked because you were at the bottom of the page. At the top of the page, they more than likely did well and would have made you money. You paused ads and keywords based on bad data and left runnign the ones with low spend. At the top of the page, these keywords spent more money but they were actually keywords and ads that just didn't have enough data prior to justify running them anyways.

No, the data wasn't wrong. You just interpreted the data wrong because it was dirty and only reflective of certain parameters.

This is why I advocate spending more the first couple of months so you can "buy good data".

In the prior example, you didn't go into the account with a "BUY data mindset".. and in buying data, you need to buy the right data within the correct parameters.


It's no different than if you bought a list of homes in your area to send direct mail to. Do you just buy any list, or do you niche it down and pre-qualify the list?

Any list could be addresses and names from anyone who lived in the area since 1967 and hasn't been updated since 1989.

A good data list would be a list of addresses and names that was updated in the last 12 months and only of homes that were valued at least $375,000+

Which is the better data to get you results?


Conclusion

I'm not saying you have to spend thousands more and go bankrupt to be successful with Adwords.

I'm also not saying you need to do this every single month to be successful.

However, if I was starting out fresh ( or already had an account and had bad/marginal results ), I would find a way to get the money to run 30-60 days worth being #1 or 2 all hours of the day for a full 30-60 days so I could jump start my account with the right data for optimization. Depending on volume, you might only have to do this for 1-2 weeks.

If not, you potentially will spend months floundering around and wasting that money anyways. Months spent floundering around could lead to you going bankrupt or closing down an advertising channel prematurely that could be sending you in buckets of profitable leads/sales.

Questions?

I agree with all of this, but we know that even if you laid this entire plan out in front of a client, they still wouldn't budge enough to run an unlimited budget campaign for a month, especially in legal. They would need to spend 5-10k a month at least depending on practice areas.

So the real question is, what do you do with clients who have lower set budgets and you know they can't afford a real campaign? Unless you're willing to turn down a new client/sale, you set them up, make them aware of their situation and hope they come to their senses at some point or they cancel because they aren't getting the results they expected even though you told them so.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[AdamMaxum]

Sorry about the delay.

I pretty much always try to run Conversions. A conversion can pretty much be any event you want and since I'm driving traffic to a page for a reason, I want more and more of w/e event I am going after with my page.

I almost never run anything to get likes to a page. Most times those campaigns end up not getting me leads or sales. Leads and sales are all I am looking to get when I do paid ads on FB.

To build a page or group up, I wouldn't use paid ads for it. Not unless I had some viral giveaway attached to it. Only then would I ever do paid ads to a group or FB page.

For campaigns that seem to be getting good traction, I kill ads when they spend 2-3x more than their goal. So if I am trying to get leads or sales at $45 and the campaign started off getting sales at $60, I'd keep running and tweaking. Same is true up to about $130 or so. If the campaign started off badly though with no sales, I might let it get to about 5x with 0 sales before cutting it. The goal is to get conversions so you can tweak down. For some campaigns this will be hard to do though... so say your goal is $5 a lead/sale. That's going to be really tough on Facebook to only let it run for $15 or $20 and give up, so for something like this I might let it run for $100-$200, or even 100 clicks and see the stats on landing page views, etc.

For creating ads quickly.. if you are just wanting to change out images ( one of the most important things about the ad ) you can do that easily within FB itself with the duplicate button. This is where I focus a lot of my time with ad creation. The text around the ad is important too, but I try to nail the image down first, then work on text, then button ( shop now, etc ). Once I have some good images, I work on maybe 5-10 version of the text which isnt hard to get into FB manually.

Awesome info.

* Do you think this applies to any website using Facebook ads? Always run ads to your website or funnel and go for conversions?

From what you're saying, there's no point to waste money building up a Facebook audience in most cases.

* I've been trying out video ads and GIF ads and they seem to have much better engagement and significantly lower costs. Thoughts?

* Do you feel Adwords is still the better bet as far as conversions/cost for most campaigns?

 

[MisterBHZ]

Anyone got any questions out there yet?

I'm wanting to prep for my presentation at the event in Feb. Your questions here could help me prep out there

Could low budgets on FB (ex. $10/day) be the reason holding people back from generating sales?

 

[Azure]

I have a few questions.

What sort of automated rules do you utilize the most? Any scripts?

What are your thoughts on DKI? If you use them, do you have any tips for effective use?

 

[johnp]

I have recently run into a major challenge with paid search and I'm curious to hear how you deal with this.

My account seems to be in good shape right now, but I'm having a terrible time tracking changes and the impacts of each change that I make. And I do keep notes in a separate spreadsheet.

To be more specific, I'm not talking about big changes like an A/B test or creating a new campaign. I'm talking about smaller things like adjusting the bids for keywords and loging them in a way that is meaningful and easy enough for me to reference between I make any changes again to that keyword.

There has been some mention throughout this thread of keeping track of optimizations outside of the Change Log. I know that both you and Andy keep notes about changes.

I'd love it if you or someone else here would explain how you keep track of day to day optimizations in a way that's easy to reference your previous changes for a keyword so you don't undo what you already set in motion... or overwhelm yourself.

Here's what I'm doing:

Awhile back I developed my own little system in an excel sheet. I include things like date of the change, description, and a code.

The code looks like this: Change - Dec 12/17.

Then I turn the code into a label and I apply it to the keyword.

Creating a coded label is handy because it tells me if I made a change to the keywords and when. Before I adjust the bid for a keyword, I always check to see if I have a change label applied to the keyword. If I do, then I go back to the spreadsheet and update the sheet, then I remove the old change label and add a new one for the keyword.

It seems to be working ok, but I feel like I over-complicated everything. And if I start making a number of changes to one keyword then things get pretty messy in excel.

Any advice for how to track little optimizations like this? Are there tools out there that can help with this? I have yet to find one.

 

[johnp]

Thanks for the response. That actually makes complete sense.

I was starting to wonder if I was getting too granular with my tracking. I started reading a lot of different blog posts about this yesterday and I'm pretty sure that you just said it the best.

Thanks again!

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[eliquid]

Wow!!!
This is a really fantastic thread.
The many nuggets shared on page 1 and subsequent pages are simply golden.
@eliquid , thanks for sharing all this.
Found myself invariably clicking "Like" on virtually all your posts on page 1.
Definitely looking forward to connecting with, and learning more from you.
Is your eBook on PPC ads out?

I havent finished it.

So many things have changed for me, that I had to put it on hold

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Genius01]

I havent finished it.

So many things have changed for me, that I had to put it on hold

Oh OK.
Guess that's an entrepreneur's life, things are always changing, always dynamic, always in motion.
Hope you get the time to finish it someday though.

 

[Xeon]

Hi @eliquid, thanks for this informative post, especially the FB part!
I'm running ads on FB next month and have some questions:

1) I've a $100 Adwords voucher from Shopify. Do you think I should wait until my shop has more products first before using this? I currently have only 1 product and the website is very new and tiny currently.


2)

With that information, there are no keywords you are going to be bidding on. You are also going to put a lot more effort into your ad, especially the image, to "interrupt" what the user is currently doing to get their eyeballs on your message.

Does this mean I should use a bright yellow ad image with bold black text on it, even though it doesn't align with my brand? I was thinking, in such cases, eyeballs and clicks are more important, right? It will stick out like a sore thumb and disrupt their attention, and force them to focus on my ad!


3)

When testing ages, do it in groups of 5 years. You shouldn't be making ads where you target men and women both in the same ad. You also shouldn't be selecting ages where it's 21-60. Build in groups of 5 years for age. One ad can be males 18-23 and another can be males 24-29. Same with women too. If you don't do this, you will never be really able to tell who is converting poorly or well for you.

If I do it in groups of 5 years and multiply that by say, 8 ad placements (4 for mobile and 4 for desktop), that's 40 ad sets in total. Wouldn't this cost a bomb? In fact, I doubt I can recoup all my ad fees even if I managed to sell my first batch of products.


4)

If you know you have a solid ad and message, go for CPM bidding. Facebook knows they will make gar. money here and give you all the traffic they can.

CPM bidding is that "Daily Budget" thing? This? https://i.gyazo.com/1c87197fc705271363be871ca50596fb.png
I can't seem to find any words that say "CPM" or "CPC" in the Ad manager.


5) For FB ad placements, do you have a favorite for mobile and desktop?

6) When starting out on FB ads for the 1st time, what amt of budget do you recommend for the FB ads? Would US$2 a day for 6 days be good? Est. reach a day is 470 - 1800. Maybe you can critique my setup below:

Thanks eliquid!

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MisterBHZ]

@eliquid

I sell a digital product ranging from $30-$300 (tiered price options).

If I’m running $100 a day, is it best to go straight for the sale or collect emails?

 

[Andy Black]

Adwords is pushing the new GUI perm. on you July 10th.

If you are like me and still using the old interface, say bye-bye to that soon.

Oh ffs... The new interface sucks.

I suppose I’d better redo my course too.

 

[annagreenang]

1. I wouldn't wait. Start building up the remarketing list now and getting pixels seasoned.

2. You want your ad to promise something, and your LP to deliver on that promise. If you have a yellow ad with a pic of a dog, your LP better be the same message.

3. Just because you have 40 ads, doesn't mean they will all spend money or be unprofitable. Unless you test 40 ads, you won't know what the best ad is to even run.

4. Many things in the FB ad tool/editor have changed since I originally wrote this. It is now best to just set it to optimize for conversions.

5. Mobile seems to work out a tad better, but that's for me and my clients/products.

6. I think that's too little. A lot of people start out with $5 a day, but I still think that's too little. If it were me and I was strapped for cash, I wouldn't do less than $15 a day bare min. $100 a day would be better though.

.

Thank you for sharing helpful info

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Boo]

@eliquid I've been following your posts since early Wickedfire days, as well as Eli, Pasha and a few other OG's. You guys have had a huge influence on my success over the years, which has been primarily through SEO with limited PPC.

My question is regarding ad grouping. At the moment I'm using BMM or Phrase in an ad groups to "farm" or "mine" keywords and then move those best performing keywords quickly into their own ad groups as exact match so that I can customize the landing page or ad for them.

In your podcast (episode 19) you mentioned that you were reluctant to do this because it resets QS and therefore could be detrimental. Am I understanding this correctly and how do you feel about this farming and best performers ad group setup?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[eliquid]

@SamRussell - Wondering how it has been.

Any updates?

 

[StrikingViper69]

@SamRussell - Wondering how it has been.

Any updates?

Thanks for following up eliquid.

Yeah - overall, my cost per opt in has decreased, which is great. This, combined with reading a copywriting book recommended on another thread, has made my campaign come close to breaking even / possibly making a small profit.

The next edit to make to my targeting is to look at geographical data. I didn't want to edit demographics and geography at the same time. It's been a little while since I edited the demographics, so the geographic data has had some time to build up.

Part of my sales funnel is a survey to people to don't buy, so the survey combined with this stuff... I think another month or two of testing and I'll be in a position to start thinking about scaling my campaign up.

I'm adding a guitar lessons membership to my offer... which, in theory, will make breaking even / profiting on my ad spend a LOT easier (and gives me a nice recurring income product I'll be promoting in addition to the music)

 

[GuestUser4aMPs1]

I approached the sites and offered to pay them based on CPM to place my PIXEL on their site.

Yeah, a pixel.

No ads cluttering up their site, no competitor telling me no, and no split testing to find a CTA.

I simply told them I would pay them $2 per 1,000 impressions that my pixel triggered from their site. My pixel was just a piece of Javascript that sat on their page just like any ol Google Analytics pixel would.

Uh?

This wasn't just any pixel, it was a remarketing pixel.

@eliquid curious about adding a tracking pixel to other's sites...
Has GDPR / other privacy laws hindered your ability to use this method?

The plan is to remarket with display ads + build a FB lookalike audience from people who view a page on niche sites -- specifically service directories.

(Pinging @Tom.V this is what I told you about earlier)

 

[Worldisyours]

awesome reads in here

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Andy Black]

You should try @Andy Black course. I don't have the link handy, maybe Andy can post in here?

If for some reason you can not do that, I would try to get certified for what you want to learn as the next best option. If you want to do Facebook, get Facebook Blueprint certified. If Google Ads, get Google Ads certified.

The training is free from both, but not the best.

I would go with Andy's course instead.

Thanks @eliquid. Personally, I wouldn't bother with certifications. Learn enough to get started, then keep a lid on spend and learn by managing live campaigns. Managing live campaigns is the only real way to learn.

@Exhosa ... My free stuff and my course are in my signature, and here:

• Andy's AdWords Posts
• Andy's AdWords Course - Get found by the people already looking for you

 

[Benedict]

Thanks so much for the post! Helped a lot!

I have started my first FB Ad Campaign in order to evaluate / proof my online course idea.

Just used your advice on targeting audiences super-specific. Switched age to 5y span, males and only FB feed placement. Will see how it goes.

Especially the part of the "doers" gave me another hit to just go and learn while I pay with the burnt money. I am always a little bit too frugal with the money I have...

If the proof is working out in my favor, I will definitely go for affiliates, too.

Don't want to ask anything - you have already given a LOT! Thanks!

 

[eliquid]

Just finished reading the thread, amazing job.
Thank you very much!
Are you still taking clients?

I take on select clients at times.
PM me and let me know your needs.

 

[Yussef]

You should try @Andy Black course. I don't have the link handy, maybe Andy can post in here?

If for some reason you can not do that, I would try to get certified for what you want to learn as the next best option. If you want to do Facebook, get Facebook Blueprint certified. If Google Ads, get Google Ads certified.

The training is free from both, but not the best.

I would go with Andy's course instead.

man you are an OG around here now. Good to see you still here.

 

[eliquid]

Hey @eliquid thanks for the thread. I got some questions. I just launched our first FB ads campaign two days ago. I did 1 campaign, 3 ad sets, and 3 ads per ad set. I did the same exact 3 ads, but to a different audience in each ad set. I set a $10 daily budget and did campaign budget optimization.

Is that too low of a budget with 9 ads?
How do you like to go about setting a budget?
Can you recommend some benchmarks for CPC, CPM, CTR, frequency, cost per purchase, etc.? We sell clothes
How long do you let the ads run before making any changes?

Thanks man!

Yeah $10 is way too low I feel.

If this is a legit business ( even if new ), you should easily have $100 to play with for a campaign budget.

Sure, that might end up $700 over 7 days, but you will gain most of the data you need.

FB needs traffic to tweak their pixel for your campaign. You might want to think about having a throwaway budget for the first 60 days in that regard for FB. It's not really throwaway, since it's gathering data and optimizations.

Better yet, what's your target?

Do you have $10 shirts that you can only allow $3 in ad spend before a conversion?

Or do you have $100 shirts that you can allow $60 in ad spend before a conversion?

Based on the above, is how you start to figure out what you can afford to spend and build up a target.

I can run ads to a product I know I get a $61 CPA on. I am profitable on any amount below $61. However, for safety reasons, I want to spend up to $50 so I can make $11 profit per conversion.

Based on that, I'm might be willing to spend 3x the CPA before I make a conversion to consider something a failure somewhere. Either the ad, the targeting, the LP, the checkout funnel, etc.

So I'm gonna let that ad run up to $183 today before I turn it off and investigate. I'll investigate and make changes and do the exact same tomorrow to $183, and again the next day to $183.

If after 3 days of fully running I am still at a 0 conversions, I'd prob give up. - but this is based on me, someone that has been doing this for years and built up a "gut" instinct and picking the best targets and ad copy going into the campaign build. You may have not done this, so maybe you need to allow more.

However, if on day 2 or 3 I start to get conversions... I'll keep tweaking forward into day 4 and 5 and 6 even if I am not profitable yet.

Of note, this is 1 ad we are talking about above.

If you have 9 ads, each of those need their proper time and ad spend and data collection too.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[eliquid]

Thanks for your reply. Yeah I understand CPM is tied to engagement but like I said post the conversion rate of the lead form was 70% better than a comparable ad ran last year yet the CPM 12x higher!

The problem though in this thinking, if it was a year ago.. the price floor was gone up. It's not an apples to apples comparison you are doing to yourself.

So the ad you ran last year, that was cheaper.... if ran today would prob be 12x higher just because of the price floor increase from 12 months ago.

The better performing CTR ad you have now, would be naturally more expensive because 12 months of price increases on the price floor has happened.

Also, account history will impact price. You if you have a history of poor ads, that will reflect in your new ad price.

If you have made any changes to your site as well since that last ad run, you could be causing more experience issues that is also raising the price.

Lots to think about and evaluate.

 

[Aaron W]

Jeezus @eliquid you animal. Thanks for the post I'll be reading through the rest at a later time. I'm getting in to PPC with Google for my current product and there's some great insights--if things go sour may get in contact with you for a bit of 1-on-1.

 

[Dwight Schrute]

Anyone interested in any updates to this?

Just curious if anyone is reading or would like to know more.

Thanks for the writeup, just finished reading this beast
Well, is there anything "new"?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Yussef]

Whew, so what about Facebook?

Glad you asked.

The process for Facebook isn't much different. The largest difference is that people on Facebook are not searching for your "it". They wanna see what their favorite celebrity had for dinner last night or what drama their ex is getting into tonight.

With that information, there are no keywords you are going to be bidding on. You are also going to put a lot more effort into your ad, especially the image, to "interrupt" what the user is currently doing to get their eyeballs on your message.

Facebook is more centered about demographics. You are going to be setting up campaigns based on geography, interests, education level, gender, age, and a whole slew of other options.

The most important thing to remember is that unlike Google and Bing/Yahoo, people are not looking for you or your product. Your ad image needs to grab attention and your ad text needs to bring home the bacon to get them to click.

With that said, Facebook can be some of the most profitable traffic that you can run in the right niches. Even 6 years ago, people were making 7 and 8 figures Net profit off Facebook traffic alone. They still do today...

On to some advanced Facebook stuff....

• Too many people pick 1 or 2 targeting options. Maybe they pick age and gender, maybe an interest. You should be hyper-targeting people using all the options possible. To find out more about hyper-targeting in general, read the next post below in the Retargeting section/post.
  
  
• When testing ages, do it in groups of 5 years. You shouldn't be making ads where you target men and women both in the same ad. You also shouldn't be selecting ages where it's 21-60. Build in groups of 5 years for age. One ad can be males 18-23 and another can be males 24-29. Same with women too. If you don't do this, you will never be really able to tell who is converting poorly or well for you.
  
  
• Don't pick all the ad placement options when making an ad. Make one version of the ad for Desktop Right Side, and one for Mobile Newsfeed, and one for Desktop Newsfeed, etc. Reason is the same as above for conversions. There are reports you can pull, but I like to see my ads split up to ensure I am getting the correct data looking at the dashboard instead of pulling a report each time I want to check in on it.
  
  
• If you know you have a solid ad and message, go for CPM bidding. Facebook knows they will make gar. money here and give you all the traffic they can.
  
  
• I almost always bid CPC to start and I always bid at least 20% more than the highest range price they suggest. This is because the pricing changes during the day as budgets get activated due to day-parting or decline due to spending up all the funds. If you bid more than 20% the highest suggested range, you will cover yourself for when the price floor increases later in the day or week.
  
  
• Power Editor within Facebook can give you more advertising options than what's available within the general user interface for ads. You need to learn to use this.
  
  
• Custom audiences are probably the most underused bidding option in Facebook and prob. the most underused in all of PPC. Learn to use it ( see below for remarketing ).
  
  
• A trick I learned is that if you make 1 ad and it goes live, it might do poorly. You can copy that ad exactly 10 more times, and 9 of them will also do poorly. However, the remaining ad might do exceptionally well and be profitable for you. I can't get into detail why this is, but if you have poor performing ads, it might not be your ad or message or demo targeting, it could just be Facebook being Facebook. I have losing campaigns that I went back and did nothing else but copy the ad exactly 100 times and pulled out big time winners from it by just doing this 1 weird trick.
  
  
• Most ( but not all ) ad reps are worthless at Facebook. Think the front line customer service at Walmart. That's pretty much most of the front line reps at Facebook. If you have a rep that seems to take days to get back to you or just doesn't seem to "get it", ask for another and don't be shy about it. Their managers above them are who you want to deal with. Also, they almost NEVER NEVER give out their phone number to you. If you happen to get one, consider yourself lucky. Mostly, it's email only for communication. I think this policy is changing somewhat though.
  
  
• People love checking Facebook while at work. Target your demo specifically for when they are at work. For most people this means 9am-5pm in their time zone. If your demo is ER nurses though, it very well might be at like 11pm on a Saturday night at the hospital. Know when your specific demo is online at Facebook.
  
  
• If your ad gets disapproved, sometimes you can resubmit it later and have it get approved. Facebook does have an automated bot that checks ads, but there are manual approvals still as well. Depending on where your ad fell and if there is a shift change can mean the difference in a denial and an approval sometimes. There is a slim chance of this, most of the approvals are bot checked, but it's worth a try sometimes.
  
  
• Did you know there are hidden demographic targeting options in Facebook? Even though I said most FB reps are useless, if you do have one you should ask them about these hidden options. I had unlocked some nice education and purchase options in my accounts that are not accessible in regular accounts. Yes, you have education and purchase behavior in yours too, but you don't have the ones I have.

If you guys need any help or direction on something not covered here I can always be reached via PM, but I can't say for sure I can help or will answer everyone as I normally have a flood of PMs and messages from everyone. Plus, I can't do a ton of work for free in your PMs and emails.

Goodness gracious...Good stuff man. I am going to test copying an ad I got to convert but cant get to do anything anymore. I ran it as a WC but your thoughts are interesting.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Yussef]

Try it out.

It might not work on an old ad, but it could.

Let me know how it goes though

Will do. The ad has been off and on over the past month. But I am certainly going to keep my eye on your post. Learned about PPV over a year ago but didn't feel I was informed enough (by the info) to take the plunge. But your read was interesting. Post more please.