A few tips after spending $50 million on Facebook Ads
Hi! I'm a growth marketer who's spent too much time and too much money on advertising (for a large advertiser). I've a few things on Facebook Ad Platform that you MIGHT have not known before.
- Facebook sets a price for everything.
You want users that convert? You want to more sales? Well, do not try to run 'inexpensive' campaigns that utilize optimization such as traffic or clicks. You'd want to set your objective as further down the funnel as possible. BUT, those campaigns have the highest CPM. And they're expensive for a reason. When you select an objective, you're basically choosing out from the cheapest to the most expensive options.
- Ad creatives are everything.
Facebook/Instagram users are very blind to ads; they're way past the annoyed-by-ads phase. Many large advertisers spend millions of dollars and human resources to beat ad-blindness. A few things I found are - 1) pretty/fancy doesn't mean end-results. 2) more info on ads is like laying it all out on the table on your first date. 3) repetition/loops work. 4) you will never be able to fully predict a creative's outcome until you've tested it.
- Good performance on Facebook Ads means only one certain thing.
It means you did well on Facebook Ads. Doesn't necessarily mean 1) there isn't a better alternative to your product, 2) your product is good and finished, 3) It will grow by itself now. Number 3 is important because some people take the doing-well on Facebook Ads as a tell-tale sign that your product will do well outside the reliance of the platform. It is not. You've paid for the most sophisticated, data-centric, expensive, biggest ad platform in the world. If you didn't get above average results, you need help. If you did well, then you're at the starting line. At my previous employer, we used Facebook Ads as a early testing platform where if we did well, we can THEN start spending some serious resources on the product.
- Don't try to do it by yourself if you're not an expert.
Yeah the platform looks nice and simple. Maybe you watched a few tutorials. Spent some time reading articles on tips. But doing a few things right or wrong on Facebook Ads can lead to the world of different results. Kind of contradicts my number 3, where I made it sound like succeeding on Facebook is given, but think of it like this: You've spent serious money on Lamborghini. If you suck at driving it, you'll crash. If you can drive really fast and pass other cars, well it's a Lamborghini.
I apologize for such an arbitrary list of things.
But if you have any specific questions, I'll try to rant less on comments!
Best,
I agree with everything you said, especially point no.2 because that’s where I see the majority of IHers fail.
What’s your take on the iOS14 thing?
In my opinion, small to medium sized advertisers will get the biggest impact. Big advertisers can afford to spend "more broadly" while smaller ones don't have the luxury and therefore rely more heavily on highly optimized campaigns that rely heavily on data.
Also, you see Facebook sort of complaining about the whole iOS14 thing but they already know that they won't be so impacted as smaller ad platforms/companies. If advertisers can't rely on as much data as possible like before, they will most likely shift their budget on more reliable and bigger ad platforms.
You'd think this change would bring about the old simple days when people just blindly spent money on ads, waiting to see a tick in their results. But for me personally, this will require marketers to become more analytical and statistically eloquent in justifying their strategies and media-planning.
+1. Here is a media buyer with +5 years of experience in both Google and Facebook (especially with more expertise in the latter) and he totally agrees with this
We are indie hackers, we are mostly poor with few resources. Tell us, how can we effectively spend $100 or $250 a month on Facebook ads?
It depends on what you're making. But spending $100 or $250 is harder than spending $25,000 per month in terms of seeing results. Question is, what are you trying to get out of spending just $100 or so a month? You will never make serious money even if you did really well with ads. That's like going to the gym once a month hoping to get results, or applying to 1 job per month. In this analogy, if you don't have the time to go to the gym or apply to jobs at least a few times a week, work towards having the time first.
With Facebook ads, there is a calculable range of marketing spend for every product. if either you're below or above this range, you won't see any true results.
I'll try to post how to spend 'the minimum' of that range most effectively later next week.
Interesting...
So what's the minimum spending?
I'm curious, if someone is spending $25k a month, how much revenue should they be expecting? Is there like a ratio of revenue/marketing spend?
Hell'ot of money!!
How do you find the differences in results between Facebook and Instagram?
I’ve ran (pretty unsuccessful) campaigns for a physical coffee related product across both and I’ve found better results with IG and negative comments on FB. Kind of what I expected from FB users though.
But I’m the guy who can’t drive a lambo anyway. Insightful post!
Biggest thing is demographics. Instagram is where younger people are at and Facebook, the older. Also, ad materials for FB and IG should be COMPLETELY different. If you're getting good results on IG, well done, because that's more work than doing well on FB. But if you're concerned about doing bad on FB, try to study some ads that people in 40s/50s have been growing up seeing. These ads (almost too tacky for most) are very backwards in trends these days but they work. Also, ad copies should be more forth coming (almost click-baity).
Ah interesting. Good points. Thanks!
Hey James! Really nice post about the dangers and incentives of FB Ads, I'm curious about how micro saas startups should approach FB ads, at what point in their lifecycle should they start going for FB Ads? Are there any telltale signs that you can start benefitting from FB ads?
Is there some sort of product advertiser fit, meaning do some kind of saas products perform better than others?
To answer your last question first.
Yes! there definitely is a product-advertiser fit. This is something that many management level people and developers cannot get their heads around. There are products that perform poorly from ads but are actually good products with good internal numbers (organic) and vice versa. I've personally worked for both types and for poor ad performance & good product types, the fault usually stems from the disconnect or the lack of thematic uniformity in content from ads -> landing -> conversion -> product journey.
This is why you see alot of products sometime put out ads that are ambiguous or curious, or sometimes outright false. They are trying to just get as many acquisition as possible hoping for the right people to stick around. But this is a strategy adopted by devs with money to burn.
For your first question, if you're a micro SaaS startup, I'd suggest looking for different options. I read a very nice post: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-we-gathered-thousands-of-users-to-our-app-for-free-using-reddit-6c65d19012
Like the post I just linked, there are many other ways where you can grow without having to spend ambiguous amount of money on Facebook. I'd suggest start using Facebook once you have enough budget. Startup product's lifecycle progresses way slower than bigger companies' products, so you shouldn't rush into it. Only start spending serious money when you're certain that you know how to operate campaigns and when your product has been through all growth efforts.
Hey James! This was an amazing answer 😅, thanks for taking the time to write this out, your first point makes a lot of sense to me, forcing some products to fit into the ad lifecycle just doesn't do justice to either the product or the company running the ads. I agree about the saas points here too, since using new saas products (or moving from an existing to a different one), many times, in the early stages, it helps to be part of a community which trusts you, this could be Reddit, IH, FB groups or anything else. To summarise all your points in the reply:
Thanks James, really helpful (would upvote twice if I could 😂)
Did you seriously spend 50 million on facebook ads?
I could make wonders from 5000, yet I am not spending that on promoting www.locospartygame.net ... maybe that's the problem?