If you're a marketer or a business owner you've probably spent money on Facebook ads or at least thought about.
Facebook ads are a great way to reach out to potential customers, but they can also be very costly if you don't know what you're doing.
I've spent more than five million dollars on Facebook ads, most of it out of my own pocket. And I've learned a lot along the way. Here are some tips on how to run Facebook ads without breaking the bank:
Tip #1 - Always test new and old features
Facebook ads are a black box.
Nobody knows what works and what doesn't work.
a Long time ago, I used to work in an ads agency, we were a team of marketers, each one of us spent a budget of $500,000 monthly.
Every Monday we would meet and share insights and ideas.
Each one of us saw success with different features and strategies.
Heck, even when I was running the same ads from 2 different accounts my results differed.
During my time in this ads agency, I was invited to a workshop in the Facebook offices, and different employees told us different best practices, sometimes even contradicting each other.
This is why I make it a point to test tactics and methods that didn't work in the past every few months.
For example, if static images are not working for you today, this doesn't mean they won't work in 3 months' time.
Marketing is context-dependent and since we don't know what's going on behind the scenes, it makes sense to keep on testing old methods all the time.
Tip #2 - What works for others might not work for you
This is a bit related to the first tip.
Asking friends and other people in Facebook groups what is working for them might be useful to a certain degree but you shouldn't blindly follow what others are doing.
You should always test different strategies and see what works for you.
Tip #3 - Use different bid types
There is a tendency to talk about automated bids only (AKA Lowest cost bidding).
But Bid cap and cost control bidding work very well especially when your budget is limited.
I've seen great results with them, and I would urge you to test all three types before deciding which one is best for you.
When testing the Cost control and bid cap methods make sure to try different bids.
So, for example, if your break-even CPA is $20 I would try the following bids: $15, $17, $19, $21, $23.
If your ads aren't spending money this means you should increase the bids.
Tip #4 - Use Automated rules
Spending money on Facebook ads, especially with high budgets can cause some anxiety.
You can use automated rules to take some of that anxiety away.
Automated rules allow you to set a rule, for example, if CPA is above $20 pause the ad.
There are endless possibilities with automated rules, and I would urge you to explore them.
Set some "stop-loss" rules so you'll know that even if things go south (I've had my checkout break when I was spending $5,000 daily), your account won't keep on spending money.
Tip #5 - Don't use the $5 a day method
I know a lot of gurus are talking about this method, and it makes sense because it's 'beginner friendly' but it doesn't work.
You need to spend enough money to get data otherwise you're just wasting your time and time is money.
I would say a minimum budget of $100 a day is needed to make this work, but the more the better.
Just as a quick calculation, the CPMs(CPM stands for cost per mille, or cost per thousand impressions) in the USA are about $25, so for $5 you're only getting your ads in front of 200 people which is insignificant.
Tip #6 - Never use only one ad account
If you're serious about making money with Facebook ads, you should have at least two ad accounts.
Ideally, you should have even more and share the audiences and pixels between them.
The reason for this is that if your main ad account gets banned, which happens more often than you think, you can still continue running ads with your other accounts.
It is very important to do this before your account gets banned since if it gets banned you won't be able to share anything between the accounts or open new ad accounts.
Tip #7 - Always have a Google ads campaign running to complement your Facebook ads campaign
You want to have at least a Google ads brand campaign running since if someone saw your ad over Facebook and is now Googling your brand, you need to make sure he sees your brand in the search results as well.
So there you have it, these are my top tips on running Facebook ads.
I hope you found them useful and that you'll start implementing some of them in your business.
If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment below or contact me directly.