The guest post I did on June 21st about Facebook Ads went so well that I’m back to give you a few more sneaky tricks for making loads of cash with Facebook…
The case study and examples in this post are for the same product as the last post (The 31 Day Fat Loss Cure). I know a bunch of you left comments last time about promoting CPA offers on Facebook – this is something I have never done before so I can’t really help ya there…
Alright let’s get down to business…
Here’s 3 of my favorite tricks for getting cheaper clicks and better CTR’s on Facebook.
Sneaky Facebook Trick #1 – Narrow Down Your Target Market To A Tiny, Tiny Niche…
In the last post one of the things I was doing for our fitness product was targeting ads at women ages 35-55 in the United States.
Now, that’s a pretty broad market, so I decided to niche it down even further to see if I could get cheaper clicks…
From here I niched down to targeting women in the U.S. at each specific age group…
So for example, Women Age 45 was one group and then Women Age 46 were another group. When I did this my CPC’s went way down, and with some new ads I was able to get a CTR of .2+ and clicks for less than .15.
This is super easy to do with the Facebook Ads Manager – if you’re doing this manually, then you’re flat out wasting your time
Anyways, from here I took it one step further and was able to cut even more of my ad spend (and still keep my profits the same…)
Sneaky Facebook Trick #2 – Track Which Days & Times Convert The Best – Eliminate The Rest…
There’s basically 2 main ways to increase your profits doing Facebook Ads… You can get cheaper clicks, or you can eliminate the wasted clicks you already have..
After looking at my sales for a 2-3 week span I went through Clickbank and figured out what days and times most of our sales were coming in. And much to my surprise there was a few different times that we were not making any sales!
Literally… none.
So I charted everything and went through the sales reports in Clickbank and figured out when we were making the most sales, and when we weren’t. There was pretty much a 6 hour time period every day when I never really made any sales so I made sure to pause all of our ads for those times.
This little change alone cut our ad spending by 25% each day, and the profits remained the same.
If you’re doing CPM this is even more crucial than if you’re doing CPC, since your CPM campaign could be going full throttle to get clicks and you end up losing a lot of money…
Once you have that down you’ll want to test out my last strategy for dialing in your campaigns. This is kind of a combination of both of the tricks I just told you about…
Sneaky Facebook Trick #3 – Separate Campaigns By Timezones
Once you do the previous two strategies and you know what time the sales are coming in, you can narrow it down and then segment those by time zones (I do this for U.S. traffic)
So if you aren’t making many sales between noon-6pm for example you might find out that the first 3 hours of that time slot are mostly people on the east coast, and the last 3 hours are mostly people on the west coast.
Once you narrow it down to time zones you can then have your target be women who are age 45, who live in the Eastern time zone – and then you can day part your ads so that they are only running when profitable for people on the east coast.
And when you do this, you’ll also drop your CPC’s quite a bit…
Let me know if you have any questions, and I’ll drop in the comments to answer them.
- Justin Goff
About the author...
Justin Goff – who has written 20 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Justin sells the highest paying fat loss product on Clickbank called the 31 Day Fat Loss Cure. Get more info on being an affiliate here or check out the best damn podcast about the crazy world of Internet Marketing
Images provided by ShutterStock
Sneaky Facebook Advertising Tricks – Dialing In Your Campaigns Part 2 
How To Profit From Invading Your Users Privacy 
5 Quick and Easy Ways To Stop Blog Spam Before It Hits Your Blog 
{ 110 comments… read them below or add one }
if you want to market several products to several niches you could end up with several hundred targeted ads.
Have you ever noticed how after New Years the fitness ads (health clubs, weight loss…) go into over drive? These ads are targeting too.
January is the biggest month by far for this market – conversions will be up for sure!
Maybe coz most people are setting “poising weight” as target for new year.
wow awesome post. read it and was amazed.thaks
Thanks for the tips Justin!
Wow. This is great. There is power in sharing. Thanks for these sneaky tips. You can’t imagine how much time this saves.
Isn’t it amazing how one article can really expand your overall knowledge and give you new routes to try out?
Your words. explain. all.
Great info! Who would have thought?
Awesome tips, Justin. I still can’t seem to find success with Facebook ads (be it with Clickbank products or CPA offers) and much of that is due to paying a lot per click. I’ll give these tips a try and see if I can turn some campaigns profitable.
Thanks man.
I keep my clicks to .15 or less most of the time…
Your campaigns seem like they could eventually use some hard core analysis. Do you keep the data in FB and make decisions off of that, or do you dump it into something like Excel for further slicing and dicing?
Never tried Excel with it.
I just go off what I see in FB and tweak from there…
Really sneaky Strategy. Im still confused on Facebook ads.
Great followup.
why only target in US? It is physical product that only can ship to US?
I target outside of the U.S. as well, but I only do the timezone part in the U.S.
This is definitely a powerful strategy, but you will have to spend some money on testing your campaigns first
Gotta spend money to make money!
- J
Best advice you can throw out there, haha. It’s true (Men’s Online Magazine) you have to spend it to make it.
Think about it though, I bet you go out to eat and waste money on food with no return but extra pounds. Consider savings and eating at home and utilize the funds on testing.
At least doing something like this may help you justify your earnings if your having a tough time seeing the optimistic outlook.
PS: Awesome article Justin, and I hope we will see more of your articles in the future.
This is a good suggestion! I agree – I like Justin’s posts too!
hi,anyone can help me, i have one issue for paying via paypal.
This is the link i got in my email box:
http://bit.ly/makeafortuneonline
i fill my paypal address and pass,then click continue, but the next page show like this”Return to Merchant
At this time, we are unable to process your request. Please return to ClickBank and try another option.”
what’s wrong? my paypal is verified personal account.
Awesome tips. You really get specific and that is what you need to do isn’t it?
i’m surprised there’s any difference in 1 year age increments, besides ages with big psychological differences ie 29 & 30, 59 & 60, etc. because people don’t really change that much year to year once you hit a certain age.
There definitely is a difference – I dont understand it either. Ive been racking my brain trying to figure some of it out.
I wish I had known you were posting! I would have had some questions prepared! @#$#! Thanks for the follow up though.
Did you actually use the photo / ad you show here? Which pic is working better? The illustration or the photo? Any insights on that?
I use a combo of about 5 different pictures – Yes I actually used this one. It had a decent CTR of about .140 in most age groups…
I wondered that too. FB gives this as a guideline…
“Put an attractive, relevant image in your ad that is appropriate for the product or service being advertised. The maximum image size is 110 pixels wide by 80 pixels tall, so text in images that are shrunk down to that size may be hard to read.”
I think the rest is basically testing for your product or service.
Don’t underestimate the power of images. See his previous post on testing to get an idea of how Justin tests. My company completed some testing on images on our FB ads. The image tests revealed that with 8 image changes, no change in text at all, our unique CTR increased 135%, our conversion rate increased 108%, and our margins improved by 141%. Amazing!
Visual aesthetics draw the line between boring and ones that have “click me” written all over them. Feature a stereotyped image and your ad will take a nosedive in a snap.
You said you keep your clicks .15 or less most of the time… You bid that from the get-go and get traffic?
My suggested bids are about $1/click for SINGLE age groups.
I start out at .30 or so and then drop it once the CTR is good.
And you actually get impressions bidding .30 to start on a $1 recommended?
That’s what I wondered about to! The suggested bid is way higher and I was wondering too if you could bid below the suggested bid and still get clicks.
Question about narrowing in on your target market…. Do you do these steps in the order listed? Age, Best Hours, then Time Zones? Just wondering. Thanks.
Yep – as you get more data and you know whats working, you can niche down to the next category
I’ve never created an ad on Facebook. How do I sign up? Is there a cost?
I am really curious about your campaign name. why did you choose The “31 Day” name? Why not 30? Seems odd to me.
I couldn’t believe how much changing my Call To Action changed my CTR. It shot up by 18%! You don’t seem to mix yours up too much. “Click here to…” Have you tested this part of your message before? Any thoughts on the Call to Action portion of an ad?
Truthfully I havent tested the CTA much. Prolly not smart.
However with a lot of these ads since I started adding the URL at the end, it makes it pretty tough to try and fit a long call to action.
Thats why this one is so short…
Hey what do you think of the tools that generate ads for you for FB? They crank out wording that is typically approved. You just type in your product and it fills it in for you. You then copy it into FB’s ad manager. For example….
From ____ to _____.
Considering_______?
Discover how I learned to ________ in just 5 days.
Enter email and download.
Interesting! What is the tool? I just did a search and couldn’t find it. IMO – Whatever saves time or money is worth testing! I’d love to check out the fill in the blank scenarios, as presented.
There is a service here in CA that will do your campaigns for you starting at $1997 / month! It pays to figure this out on your own. If you can figure it out, you could probably even charge other people and manage their campaigns too!
Holy crap! Who needs USC when you have Shoemoney and Justin teaching you how to make money? LOL! Thanks for coming back!!
WHere exactly in the sales cycle are FB users? They can’t possibly be in purchase mode, can they? Any info on this?
Now that’s a great marketing question! I haven’t seen too much discussion about that. If you compare FB ads to Paid Search, I might think that FB ads are targeted to a broader audience. FB users are at the beginning of the “funnel) (awareness creation), or at the very end of the funnel (purchase, or demand fulfillment.) Would be interested in hearing Justin’s opinion on this.
I’ve learned that social media ads are effective at all stages of the sales funnel because it is about engagement and relationship building. Apparently consumers are 3x more likely to search upper and lower funnel terms when being exposed to social media campaigns than if they were exposed to just paid campaigns alone. So it’s important to really mesh your marketing efforts when using Social Media, including FB.
I would like to try this if I could manage to get one of my ads approved!!!!
It would be interesting to see how tiny of a niche you could make using unusual keywords or points of interest. How small is too small when it comes to niches?
Excellent illustration of the importance of analysis! It always pays to check not only what works, but what is NOT working – like the times of days that had no sales. Do you have any more tips for analyzing campaigns?
Planning ads for specific time zones reminds me of planning meal-times. Ha ha! But, seriously I wonder if meal times increase or decrease the number of people on FB at a given time.
Thanks for sharing.. Great tips
Dumb question. What is the difference between marketing to Keywords and marketing to interests? Aren’t they sort of the same thing? Why doesn’t KW marketing work on Facebook?
Cutting ad spend and keeping profits the same… sounds like it is well worth the time and effort to check these things out!
Great tips for Facebook ad marketing! Thanks!
So, target markets will work to get cheaper clicks and checking time zone info will help in eliminating wasted clicks. Good Tips! It sounds like there is a lot of work in testing the different niche campaigns.
Wow! You make it sound so easy to get started in online marketing!
Always thankful to find out a few tips of “what works” in affiliate marketing. The Fb Ads manager looks like an essential tool to make this all come together.
Once again… sounds too good to be true. Justin’s got a fat loss cure. I wonder what makes it different than all the rest? The only thing true about this is that affiliate marketing takes tons of work. It takes TIME people… to do all the research and make it happen.
Gotta love the Justin Goff guest posts. I am now a follower, Justin. Thanks for the tips!
What’s the best way to choose products to sell for Facebook advertising? It seems like the keywords and calls to action can make a big differences in creating conversions. Any tips about that?
Yes, I find that working with campaign analytics makes all the difference in cutting costs and gaining success. Checking into current trends and making adjustments along the way will make the most of your fb ad campaign.
I think the money is in paying attention to niche markets. Do research ahead of time and then tweak your campaign when you analyze results. Time zone thing is great!
Adjusting campaigns to fit timezone. Is something I’ve always thought about but never heard anyone talk about.
Thanks for sharing these tips!
I’ve had some success with dating on fb. It’s pretty easy… people tell you what relationship status they have and what they’re interested in. Bingo! You can adjust your message accordingly. I love your additional tips. I will test these immediately!
Can you really slice down to an actual age and still get results? I am not sure I buy that! Seems like it would be pricey and seems like the traffic would just be too slow to justify it.
With posts like these, the Shoemoney blog is still the best in the business. Well deserved. Thanks for the post.
You’ve hit the sweet, sweet spot with these excellent tips, Justin. Props to you for showing us newbie web marketers the importance of narrowing down our niche to hit the mark. Simply amazing.
If you hit the ad jackpot, it isn’t an excuse to sit on your laurels. FB is continually evolving. Make your ads evolve as well to stay on top. Right?
It’s not enough to know what your users like to keep them engaged. Another tip to keep them clicking away? Know their FB friends, too. Remember, birds of a feather flock together. Now, isn’t it wonderful if you can hit all of these birds with one stone?
So what are your best days? Your worst days? I know you said January was a killer month. I bet December is your worst month, naturally leading up to the January landslide!
It’s all in the text, if you ask me. A nicely-written headline and body text is a surefire way to attract potential buyers. Basic principals of advertising apply here.
I believe Sun-Tzu’s immortal axiom, “know your enemy,” can be applied here, my friend. Understanding your target market before executing a strategy surely helps raising your product off the ground in no time. Facebook helps you narrow down that target market like no other paid search tool. These examples above are primo. Thanks!
Facebook formula for advertising success: demographics + interests + location = dynamite ad material. Throw in the applications users like, as well as their relationship status, plus all their connections, and you’re definitely good to go. Keep them rolling, Justin!
I like Justin’s posts. I feel like I’m cheating on Shoemoney! LOL!
As long as you are willing to try new things to market your product, your ads will certainly be noticed. Even game platforms these days are advertised like crazy on Facebook! It’s the concept of not having a S.P.O.F – I think that’s what Walker talked about in yesterday’s post. So Facebook should be part of a marketing mix. Viola!
Great article Shoe.
I think there is no single, permanent formula for FB ad success. It is a constantly evolving marketplace and you have to keep a close on it to stay competitive. But these suggestions do help.
As long as you keep the users engaged, informed and brimming with curiosity, your ads surely won’t go unnoticed. Just takes some practice! And testing! And an approval!
I just think I over niched my target market. Costs way up and zippo traffic. Hmm. Back to the drawing board.
Wow.. great post you got here. By this you are not aware for the facebook… Thank you.
Thanks for the tips, I’ll have to try this out whenever I do more facebook ads
Do you use a script to do the dayparting or do you manually enable/disable your campaigns?
Manually right now – I’ll probably outsource it sometime soon
Haven’t tried facebook advertising yet, but after these two articles, I think it’s absolutely imperative. Thanks for the info.
Amazing tips. Thanks for sharing.
I still have a problem with FB’s privacy issues. Is anyone else disturbed by this? How advertisers collect and retarget your information. What if I buy something personal and I don’t want 3rd parties targeting me? A recent purchase came back to haunt me. I simply don’t want ads running for something similar that I had to buy for medical reasons. And after chasing down the corporation, they explained that a 3rd party in India handles the ads for them, that FB owns the information, and that there wasn’t much that they could do about it. I am down on FB ads and with good reason.
What is considered an average CTR, and what is considered a good CTR? If you could provide #s, I’d appreciate it.
I love Facebook for helping me connect with old friends. It’s been a great way to travel around the country and keep in touch at the same time. Maybe the ads are too new, but I am not seeing any ads that are relevant to me. I’m 57 and retired. Does someone really think I’m on Facebook all day without having figured out my life insurance? Give me a break.
I had a few ads on FB and am using the ad manager. I had a CTR of 0.03% with no conversions.
So I changed my ads to try and get better conversions and eliminate the tire kickers. As planned, my CTR fell, but it fell to 0.00%.
Not sure how to proceed. FaceBook reduced my # of impressions. On day 1 number of impressions was 20,000, on day 2 4,000 and today it is 4.
Does FaceBook work on a responsive algorithm that supresses ads with low CTR? How does this work from a behind the scenes perspective?
.03 is low.
I like to look for a CTR of .1 at a minimum. If it is converting, I’ll let it fall to .8, pause the campaign, and reactivate it to see if i can get the CTR back up.
I’m actually surprised you’re getting that many impressions with a <.03 CTR. FB will stop giving you impressions for a low CTR for sure. They do have a formula, but I don't know what it is. I am just telling you what I've seen from my own experience.
Sounds like you should test your images, text, CTA, and headlines, or work on better targeting. It might depend on your product too. Some work better on FB than others.
I never thought seperating by timezone would make a big difference. Thanks for the tips!
Thank you for those helpful tips and I look forward to implementing them into my own campaign.
thanks for sharing FB sneaky tricks
Hi Justin,
these tips look pretty cool, iwill be heading over to your affiliate page,
I am looking for some more products to promote on my site.
This is EXCELLENT! I can’t wait to give it a try on one of my campaigns. I think I know exactly which one it will work the best on – but I will test – of course. . .
Great tipps for Facebook ad marketing! I will try this out for myself …
I will try it out this week
Good tips. I will give it a try…
@Justin :
I observed this weird thing happening with my ad banner campaign for a Financial Planing Company.Whenever i pause my campaign i see fan numbers dipping down immediately. like as soon as i pause it ..i see 2 to 3 fans decreasing with in the next few mins & the next time when i resume it i see numbers going up instantly.
Was wondering what could be the reason? could FB be cheating or something?
Excellent article, Thanks!
Thanks for the great article. Maybe I missed it but what resource do you use to create hundreds of facebook ads?
Some great tips there John.
The timezones changes is something that I never thought would make a difference (aside from night and day) but doing things like targeting after school for college kids is doing me some big changes!
Keep it up.
The Tyrant
This is by far one of the most well written posts I have ever read.I will come back to to read more.Thanks for the info.Keep well.
Thanks Geoff. That was really useful and I have taken notes to use when I start my FB campaign.
I useful article for sure. I am going to implement some of the tips.
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der wahre Date Doktor
For my niche there has been a point where if you narrow down to too small of a target on FB, the CPC actually starts to increase, learning where that line is would be helpful.
Hey may I quote some of the information from this site if I link back to you?
wow great info thanks for showing me how to target my market!
niche is a noun not a verb….don’t think I’ve every had to niche something in my life so far….typical american.