I spent $50 on Facebook Ads - Have I wasted $50?

Tshepo · Dec 6, 2015

My aim was to get leads from Facebook. Completion was sale of reselling web templates, web hosting packages and digital products (ebooks, courses)
I don't think I sold one, and I believe I got poor reaches and poor engagements.
Where did I go wrong? Should I have spent it on Adwords?

ulterios · Dec 6, 2015

Lots of people have success using Facebook, but I guess it depends on what exactly you are trying to sell/market. I never had much success there.

I've used AdWords and several other advertisement platforms and the one that worked the best for me is Bing/Yahoo. I got about double the amount of sales/engagements over AdWords and others.

Lonric · Dec 6, 2015

I've always wondered myself if buying FB ads was worth it.

elcidofaguy · Dec 6, 2015

Tshepo said:
My aim was to get leads from Facebook. Completion was sale of reselling web templates, web hosting packages and digital products (ebooks, courses)
I don't think I sold one, and I believe I got poor reaches and poor engagements.
Where did I go wrong? Should I have spent it on Adwords?

I don't think $50 is sufficient funds to ascertain an outcome... You're aim of getting leads via an optin form is the right strategy from my experience versus direct sales which does not work on FB...

With the $50 it would be useful to know the following:

1) How many people opted in.
2) The total number of clicks.
3) The total number of impressions.
4) Average cost of clicks.
5) With the above you will also need to split that into the number of ads and demographics/targeting... and from that deduce which aspects need to be removed and what areas need to be focused on.

In addition if you only ran one ad or just a handful of ads then that's a big mistake as you have failed to optimize targeting and costs etc from the beginning...

Moving forwards I would figure out the above and see what can be improved... Also keep in mind you have a list... So form a plan to keep emailing those folks and to build on what you have achieved...

Finally if you discover a large number of impressions, low number of clicks and a dismal number of optins - then clearly you have problems with conversion i.e. your ad needs improving and your targeting...

Lonric · Dec 6, 2015

Thanks for that info elcidofaguy. :ertery:

LavaHotDealsCom · Dec 14, 2015

Thanks elcidofaguy. I've run ads on facebook and just got a bunch of followers, way under my expectation. Maybe that's how it work. the followers are the potential avenue in the future

rf-harris · Dec 16, 2015

No, I don't think you have wasted your money by spending it on facebook ads.

MyPayingAds · Dec 17, 2015

Tshepo said:
My aim was to get leads from Facebook. Completion was sale of reselling web templates, web hosting packages and digital products (ebooks, courses)
I don't think I sold one, and I believe I got poor reaches and poor engagements.
Where did I go wrong? Should I have spent it on Adwords?

Facebook Ads can be a waste of time if you don't get your targeting right. You will also need to decide whether you want PPC of PPM

I used Facebook Ads to grow my pages but after a while I noticed low engagements from those pages. This was mostly because I used their ad service to grow my pages instead of growing it organically.

I would recommend staying far away from Facebook Ads and start looking for other ways to drive traffic to your websites.

Julzwriter · Feb 17, 2016

Hmmm! Interesting discusion coz I was also thinking about
buying Facebook Ads to promote my services, which is almost
similar to what the OP is selling. Now I am starting to wonder
whether it is worth it or I should just opt to start with Yahoo
Ads and see how that goes?

MyPayingAds, so how do you get the targeting right for Facebook Ads?

Nytshade · Feb 17, 2016

Tshepo said:
I spent $50 on Facebook Ads - Have I wasted $50?

It depends, did you get any leads that you can market to? If you did get some leads then it's not a waste, all you need to do from here is to improve your funnel (fb ads, optin page and email follow-ups) so that it converts better.

After spending that 50 bucks you did learn a lot you just don't realize it

There's a learning curve in everything, even if you go to Adwords or Bing Ads you might still face the same problem. That is why other people are selling their strategies/techniques, I guess that's proof that you don't just go to facebook, spend 50 bucks then WALLAH. Just to be safe you need to make sure that you're armed with the right knowledge and tools before doing fb ads.

For instance, ever heard of facebook "Lead Ads"? You only pay per lead, yes on facebook. Even if you know lead ads, there are tools (apps and software) that will make the process of collecting leads a lot easier and automatically add the leads to your autoresponder.

Other people are selling strategies on how to get the leads at a lowest price possible, but if you jump into FB Ads without the right knowledge and tools then there's a higher chance you'll end up spending a lot of cash and seeing no positive results.

First invest in your FB Ads knowledge, you can try searching for some free tutorials on youtube as well. But most courses come with FB Ads training these days even if they're just teaching email marketing, blogging affiliate/cpa etc.

Don't blame it on FB Ads, you were not armed with the right knowledge and tools to get the best results. Your question should have been something like:

This is what I did, here are the results I got and some screenshots. What did I do wrong and how can I improve so that I get a good return on investment (ROI)?

Something like that would have got you on a better position, I think

merapata · Feb 17, 2016

I Don't wanna suggest but Here wanna tell my experience

my experience is nearly same, First I Wrote/Make campaign with Prefer Location, Age and Gender Alone with People Interested With particular as my need.

And I ended With Lot of Spammer Kind People Liking My Page Who's really not at all related to my requirements. So I Ended wasting my money....

I Dint figure out what's the error my knowledge (Might be Most Possible) OR Facebook SCAM (which very less chance)....

But I'm Sure I need to Learn Lot about it, It's not easy as we buying leads.. It have particular arithmetic of keyword+Clicks=Result

Hawker · Feb 17, 2016

rf-harris said:
No, I don't think you have wasted your money by spending it on facebook ads.

This has to win most obvious post of the year award!

Tshepo said:
My aim was to get leads from Facebook. Completion was sale of reselling web templates, web hosting packages and digital products (ebooks, courses)
I don't think I sold one, and I believe I got poor reaches and poor engagements.
Where did I go wrong? Should I have spent it on Adwords?

Wait, you don't think you sold one or you know you definitely didn't sell one from the campaign?

I don't think you "wasted" your money. Because you learned something from it.

You might not have made any sales from it, but you learned something new about whether using FB ads is successful for what you're trying to sell.

Without knowing what the actual product/service is you are promoting and without knowing what filters and geo targeting options you set.

Let alone without knowing what image you used, what text etc that you used in the ad, it's really hard to say where you went wrong or if you even did go wrong.

Like someone else has said here though, a $50 spend is not really a sufficient enough spend to know.

Some people spend up to $1000 on just experimenting alone. That's what it's all about, experimenting.

Trying to find the best most optimized ad that works best for you.

Also, what time you have that ad shown can also greatly effect its performance and ROI.

Example; some of your most likely buyers might not even use Facebook until the evening time.

Some of them might only use it in the morning, some people only buy on evenings (most people are like this).

Because generally that's when people have more free time as opposed to the mornings when they're busy and rushing around.

Just something to consider.

Personally, I do think it would have been better invested in some other advertising platform. Adwords or Bing ads for example.

My reason for that is because you can generally reach a wider audience and get more bang for your buck.

Facebook can be a right money suck before you even make any sales from it.

But some people do get a lot of success from it but you can bet your front teeth that they invested a lot before they got that science perfected.

savidge4 · Feb 18, 2016

I am going to be that guy.. this discussion makes me want to cry ( actually i was dry heaving ) IF you have not made a sale after $5.00 there is something wrong. IF you have gotten 1000 impressions with a news feed ad and you have no click thru's there is something wrong. IF you spent $50 and got nothing from it... YES you wasted your money.

Facebook advertising is pretty dang near cut and dry.. the ad works or it doesn't. I generally run 3 test cycles with a $5.00 spend. more or less you get about 3000 impressions for $5.00 sometimes only 2000 (you only run 2 tests then - 1000 impressions per test cycle ) Run a test for 1000 impressions write down the details. how many click thrus how many sales. Load in the next ad, do the same. load in the 3rd ad, do the same. is there one better than another? are they all flops?

When you are testing... you need to test one element at a time. the first element is the bait.. the text or graphic that gets the traffic to click. if you are not getting click thrus there is 2 obvious issues. your targeting is not correct, or the ad itself is lacking. you SHOULD be able to get in 2 to 5% range of click thrus. After some testing I generally will get even higher response rates ( but the targeting is dead on in doing this ) After you have nailed down an ad that is actually producing click thrus ( IE traffic to your offer ) you can then work on that element ( the offer ). so then you end up with a ad that produces traffic, and a offer that sells.

And this whole.. the idea is to get likes, and they will turn into buyers.. UH NO... facebook converts right then and there. if you are getting page likes, and not buyers, ther is no clarity in your callto action.

I spent $50 on Facebook Ads - Have I wasted $50?

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