Important stuff first. Lets get this out of the way so we can move on. The goal of marketing (in this case FB ads) is really really simple. Your ads don’t need to have the lowest CPM prices or the highest CTR% or they have to be pretty, they have to impact the bottom line. They have to make money. It is really that simple.

Now that we cleared the air we can get back to the original topic.

Are your Facebook ads shit? 

I mean, if your ads are converting and you are making money, you probably don’t think they are crappy. But what if they don’t make money in the first day, do you know if they are worth keeping on for a few extra days?

This is where things aren’t so simple anymore. How could they be, who in the right mind would keep ads on if they don’t impact the bottom line in a positive way? A smart marketer would!

Yeah, I said it. Want a piece of me bro? 🙂

I will explain why I said such a thing, so please bear with me for a few more minutes.

Not all successful ads are a huge success in the start, just like people or fire. With most of them, you have to nurture them while they are small so they will take care of you when they grow up. Omg, I’m getting soft and romantic. Too much rum for me. Thank god I can make great articles completely wasted.

How can you tell if a young ad deserves to live or die?

Well, the secret is in the data. If you know how to read the numbers, you have a high chance you will actually sell something.

BTW: Pro tip I got from an old seadog like me. Torture the numbers long enough, they will confess to anything.

The data that indicates that the ads is a diamond in the rough is called an …. INDICATOR. Doh.

Lets name a few:

• Sales
• CTR
• Engagement
• Frequency

Now that we found out what data tells us what, we are ready to act on them.

SALES:

First indicator is sales, like we established higher in the text. You can have great sales, good sales, bad sales, no sales. Like a great pirate Gary Vaynerchuk would say, 1 is better than 0. 1>0. Anytime, anywhere.

Scenario: Your ad spent 15$ and you sold 1 item (15$ profit margin on that item). You are break even, theoretically. What if you dug into the data and saw you got that one sale from a male user older than 45 years? Facebook spent 1$ on that particular demographic and 9$ on all the rest that didn’t sell shit. What if you segmented your ad and continue to run it to the audience that actually bought the damn product?

If you have good sales, continue to do what you are doing with the ad. Test separately, don’t change or edit it.

If you have bad sales, refine your audience and try again.

If you have no sales, read the rest of this damn article. Correction: If you sell shitloads, you can still read this damn article. Its smart and when you stop learning, you suck.

CTR (Click-through rate):

If I have to explain what this is, you are on the wrong site m8. Sayonara.

Good CTR% isn’t crucial to have a great ROI out of your ads, but it helps. It helps a lot.

If you have good CTR% you should segment/refine your audience based on age/sex demographics and test more creatives, until you hit gold.

If your CTR% is bad, you have to rethink your audience. Check the data, and find the group that had the best CTR% and try those, if it helps. Also, it could be your ad creative (graphics) or just a bad fuckin day. Those happen also.

ENGAGEMENT:

Quite a lot of pro marketers, well not the really pro, the ones that think they are pro, forget about this one.

Why is engagement important? Well, in my previous articles I wrote about procrastination. Humans make excuses before everything basically. Engagement is an early indicator that you might have something going on, but it needs some time.

If you have bad engagement, you probably fucked up somewhere, so try again. If you have good engagement and no sales, it could be very profitable to turn your boat (ad) into a new wind and sail. Sorry, I can’t stop myself with this damn pirate inserts.

FREQUENCY:

Frequency isn’t really an indicator or a successful start, its an later indicator of an exhausted audience. Read my other post on murdering your facebook ads and you will find out more.

Hope this helps in your future ad killing! Drop me a comment if you want to argue or to say Im cool.

Enjoy once again,

Karlo