10 Lessons Learned After Spending $1,000,000 On Facebook Ads In 2020

Thank goodness we’ve made it to 2021. While 2020 was one of the craziest years in recent history, I have learned a lot by focusing on myself, my business and trying to improve every day. After looking through the peaks and valleys of my year I have had I believe that these 10 things are what made me able to spend the most I ever have and receive the most returns in my career.

1. Keep Things Simple & Organized

  • Simplify your Ad Strategy, Ad Creation Methods, Naming Conventions

  • Create a simple system that is easy to follow

  • Follow a strategy that makes sense and will keep your testing efficient and effective 

  • “Turn off Ad if it has ran for __ days, has __ spent, and hasn’t produced __ roas”

2. Track All Key Metrics

  • Looking at data every week is nice but you have nothing to compare it to.

  • Create a system to track all past data in different time intervals such as daily averages, week over week, month over month, & year over year.

  • Learn what your historical averages are vs industry average

  • Look at funnel metrics  to understand if you are having problems with your ads or problems with your website

  • Review daily and focus on improving lead indicators  which will, in turn, improve your lag indicators 

3. Manage Emotions

  • If you allow your emotions to take control you will jump at any little success and you won’t learn anything

  • Do not rush to scale

  • Have the money prepared before you spend. If you are newer to Ecommerce learn what works and spend little to test 

  • Once you create your strategy, be disciplined and follow it. We always test new concepts for a month before putting our wallet completely behind it. If the strategy doesn't work after the month reevaluate and try something new

4. Do Not Install the Facebook Ads App!

  • This will only stress you out and stress out the people around you!

  • Check the ads manager 1-2 times a day to record data or to adjust your ads.

5. Test with Small Budgets

  • Allow the testing process to last 7 days before deciding what to do next 

  • Test new ads with a proven audience 

  • Test new audiences with proven ads

6. Success comes from the product and not the client

  • This year we decided to work with the most clients we ever had before

  • We had 13 amazing clients but only 4 had amazing products with replicable success

  • We tried everything in our wheelhouse with no sustainable success for the other 9 clients

  • Now we have set criteria that clients must meet before we do business with them

  • We need them to meet our criteria so that we can ensure success in our future relationship

7. Understand Consumer Buying Behaviors

  • Know your industry and know your ideal customer

  • Certain times of the year will have different purchase rates 

  • Example: January is usually really slow because of a lot of spending in December, but if you’re selling gym clothes you may have a high purchase rate because of resolutions.

  • Big news or major events may have a strong effect on your company's position as well

  • Be able to adapt and know what your customers want from you 

8. Ride the Waves

  • When you are having a smooth time with your ads SCALE

  • When things are tough and you’re unsure what is going on PULLBACK

  • Understand that with the craziness of the world today your “normal” can change moment to moment

9. Increase Your Revenue

  • There are multiple ways with multiple difficulties to pull off

  • Increase Average Order Value through bundles, free shipping over a certain price, discount over a certain price, and much more. This is the easiest route to increasing the size of someone’s cart 

  • Increase Order Frequency may not be hard but will involve more work by understanding how to get clients to repeat and then make marketing material to act on these. We found a great way to do this is through a thank you video from the CEO of a client we work with. You can watch our video on it here

  • Acquiring New Customers is a long expensive and strenuous process that will pay dividends once done correctly. Have a strategy to bring in new customers to target and focus new TOF campaigns on this new group. 

  • Understand that these are the ways to increase revenue and you can take action on all of these once you understand how to do them correctly

10. Focus On The Bigger Picture 

  • While Facebook may seem like it needs to be tinkered with 24/7 to be most effective you should be spending 20% of your marketing time and energy inside the ads manager.

  • The best way to have success with Facebook ads is to stick to your overall strategy and test new concepts 

  • We say that 80% of your marketing efforts should be used to develop new ad copy, better creatives, new offers,  targets, ad angles, or new products.

I spent a lot of time analyzing what I did right, what I did wrong and how can I be better in 2021. I will follow this list and keep you all updated with my techniques, advice, and 2021 journey here and on my Youtube page. Click the video below for more insight on these tips and subscribe for more content

Koi Guidry