What a Serial Entrepreneur Learned From Spending Nearly $1M on Facebook Ads

When it comes to Facebook ads, you may feel like you’ve won the lottery if your ads are performing well.

However, you couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, I’ve spent over $ 900,000 on Facebook Ads in over 4 years.

Facebook ads are a complex and nuanced form of marketing.

I can spend nearly a million on ecommerce, real estate, festivals, mobile apps, and so much more and I can say I’ve learned a thing or two about running successful Facebook ads.

1. Hold a larger audience.

Often times, when people start running Facebook ads, they are trying to reach the most laser-targeted audience and often around 100,000 people end up congregating. This may seem like a large audience, but it really isn’t.

What is more? When targeting “interests” that people have, it is important to remember that they are not set in stone.

For example, Facebook thinks I love to hunt, but I’ve never done it before. Because of this, it’s important to start with a larger audience of at least a million people and find Facebook people who like what you are promoting.

2. Retarget with a large enough audience.

Don’t start segmenting your retargeting at the beginning. For example, you might have segmented the audiences of people who visited your website in the past 7 days, 14 days, and 21 days, but shouldn’t do so yet.

I suggest regrouping all of your custom audiences at the beginning to make sure your audience is big enough. If you don’t, everyone in your retargeted audience will have seen your ads 100 times and you will see no results.

3. Don’t scale unless you get results.

Lots of people are too aggressive about spending more on Facebook ads. Let’s say you spent $ 2, made $ 10, and now want to spend $ 100 a day. But you shouldn’t do that yet.

Make sure you get sales every day for at least two weeks before you start being aggressive with your scaling. You might have got lucky with the first sale, but that doesn’t mean you will find consistency, and that is exactly what you need to scale up.

4. Retargeting is everything.

You will make the most money from retargeting. I know your Facebook retargeting budget is often smaller than your cold audience’s, but it’s the most important audience.

You should spend just as much time creating new Facebook ads for your custom audiences as your cold audiences.

5. Low CPC does not match results.

You should measure your return on investment by your Facebook ads, not your CPC.

A good cost-per-click is fantastic if your goal is only to get traffic, but not all traffic is created equal. I’m sure you’d rather have 4 people converting out of 50 visitors than 1 person converting out of 1,000 visitors.

6. Analyze and optimize your demographics.

It’s important to check which age, gender, or location will give you the most results.

A word of caution – do not draw any conclusions until you have reached at least 2,000 to 10,000 people. If you don’t, you will get really confused because your conclusions are likely to be wrong.

7. Pay attention to cash flow management.

Make sure that your credit card limit is high enough to spend the amount you want. Note that it may take time for your credit card to receive your payment.

This is cash flow management, but it is very important for scaling up. One trick is to have multiple credit cards because if your ads stop you will most likely lose the optimization you had and with it your results.

Also, make sure that you can spend the daily amount you want to spend on Facebook.

One last piece of advice – go slow. You may find that $ 100 a day gives you the most profits, just as you may find that $ 100,000 a day gives you the best results.

Once you have mastered all the technical details of Facebook ads, the only thing left is to know the traffic temperature of your audience.

You essentially want to create ads that will draw people in by finding a way to make them appreciate what your brand is about. The best results with Facebook Ads were not getting from the ads themselves, but rather from the relationship the brand previously had with their customers.

Remember, Facebook ads are just a sales channel and there is only so much you can say to change people’s minds. The art lies in the overall digital marketing strategy. Everything plays a role in your success.