6 Steps to Stop Wasting Money on Facebook & Instagram Ads
Meta ads can drive significant growth. But they can also suck your time, energy, and bank account if not done correctly.
I’ve audited countless ad accounts and I’ve seen a lot of wasted ad spend, unfortunately. Business owners who trusted meta with their money, only to learn that meta actually doesn’t give a shit. They will take your money regardless of the result you are getting.
Step 1. Understand what ads are and aren’t
When you understand what ads are, and aren’t, you are able to have realistic expectations and use ads for their intended purpose. It’s important to understand:
Ads are an amplifier. They will simply amplify what you already have in your business. If you have a website that isn’t converting, a collection that isn’t selling, or customers that aren’t repeat purchasing - guess what? Meta ads will give you more of that. If you have a website that’s ready for traffic and it’s converting, people love your products, and your customers come back and buy from you again and again - ads will give you more of that.
Meta ads are a discovery tool. Unlike google, which is search, meta ads can put your brand or product in front of people who don’t know that you exist yet and may be delighted to discover you.
Ads are just eyeballs. Nothing more, nothing less. Ads put your image, headline, primary text and call to action in front of an audience. Full stop.
Ads are not a magic wand, or silver bullet. They won’t save a sinking ship business. They won’t magically make your website convert more people (in fact your website conversion rate will probably go down when you turn on ads because the traffic will be cooler).
Step 2. Don’t run ADS until YOU ARE READY
Turning on ads before you are ready is a really good way to waste money. It’s like turning on a tap and not having a bucket in place to capture that water - or a very leaky bucket. Before you run ads:
Make sure you have your brand foundations in place. Can you answer these questions, and does your current marketing strategy reflect your current answers?
Why do you exist? What’s your why?
Who do you serve?
Why should they buy from you, and not the ocean of choices out there?
What is your story?
Do you have a unique, and recognisable, memorable brand identity?
Ensure your website, email flows, customer service, and organic marketing ducks are in a row before running ads.
Get your monthly turnover to $10k before turning to ads - unless you want to invest in brand building.
Step 3. Don’t pretend to be smarter than AI
Meta ads are powered by an extremely intelligent AI-powered algorithm. It is smarter than the targeting options.
When we pretend that we are smarter than the AI we are restricting the results of your ads. We need to let the machine do the machine thing (show your ad to the right people at the right time) and we need to do the human thing (put in really great creative).
Step 4. Setup good ads
Why do you think big brands sell so much? Is it because their products are superior to yours? No, absolutely not! It’s because they have great marketing. They have an entire marketing team dedicated to developing great creative. You might not be able to out-resource or out-budget them, but you can still put your best advertising foot forward.
No matter your campaign structure, ad budget, or bidding strategy, meta can’t do market research, understand customer insights, create messaging, or write copy for you. You have to do that. Meta just takes what you give it, and puts it in front of people it thinks will take the action you have told it you want. Unless you’ve set up a funnel, then you are restricting it’s targeting powers.
Meta scans your ad, your image, and your landing page - so it’s really important that you be intentional about what you put in your ad.
For the sake of the argument, if your ad was put in front of every single person on Facebook and Instagram, your ads should be so good it cuts through and only resonates with your audience.
A good ad should be direct and polarising, use your unique brand voice, and highlight the benefits your customers will get (rather than the features).
STep 5. Optimise fast and hard
You need to put great creative in, you need to hand it over to the AI, and then you need to analyse the results and make adjustments when necessary.
Run small tests with small budgets. 2000 impressions per asset will give you enough data to make decisions.
Kill things that aren’t working quickly. Don’t wait until you’ve wasted hundreds on a dud.
Measure what matters. Download our free guide on exactly what to measure and the benchmarks to aim for here.
Test everything, but test one thing at a time. Run your tests in a way that gives you meaningful insights and will help make your campaigns better and better.
Remember, until you test, it’s just a guess.
Step 6. Don’t scale until you are getting a good result
Spending more won’t magically fix your problem so make sure you are getting a good result before you scale. “You just need to spend more” is the crappiest popular advice out there at the moment.
If you are currently wasting money on ads, pause them. The myth that you will lose momentum or the learnings will be wasted is BS and a way for agencies to keep you going with them.
I hope you found this useful, and if you have any questions email please drop us a note.