How to Get Low CPC on Facebook Ads?

Tried FB? If you’re amongst the vast majority you lost money and moved on to some other places like MSN CPC or 7search where you can get quality clicks cheaper. However, those that can’t stop thinking about the sheer volume of traffic you can grab from Facebook, keep on cracking it.

One of the biggest problems with Facebook Ads is their cost. Holy shit! Newbs looking at the minimum bids scared to even test a campaign there now. If you select anything like women 35-45 (too broad anyway, but for the sake of example…) your CPC’s might range from $2.50 to $4.80 or something like that. Doesn’t look very sexy right?

And especially if you add another rumor floating around that if you bid too low initially on FB they’ll give you shit traffic, things become even darker for the poor. So I completely understand all those folks that just can’t imagine how you can make this beast work. Well there are few ways to go about it and I’ll cover them in a minute. But if you are a small guy that can’t afford $200 or $500 on a test, I’d suggest looking at international campaigns where bids cost much less and you can turn better ROI’s.

How to Achieve Low CPC’s on Facebook?

The question that kept bothering me for a long time as I’ve failed numerous times, but still was getting back to it. Well good news that the simplest answer was under your nose all this time – CTR. That’s how FB works. You get the CTR, you get low CPC’s. If not you’re paying too much and can’t make a campaign work. Simple and brutal truth.

But how do you get the CTR? There are 2 ways to do it. Actually you’re probably doing it already but not hard enough.

1. TARGETING – Yep, that’s what every blogger was talking about. Targeting is the #1 way to get cheap clicks. Use keywords (interests) or workplaces. You can make magic with workplaces, so use it to your advantage. For example, I started one campaign where my minimum bid suggested by Facebook was $2+. I started to bid $1.07 or smth. like that. (I always use pennies over the common bid just to get some minimal advantage). Most ads that were 0.02-0.03% CTR actually cost me $0.87 a click. Other ads with CTR around 0.07 or 0.1 had a price from $0.6 to $0.8 per click. The longer you run the ad with high CTR, the better your CPC will become. That was for broad targeting BTW. If you do interests and you grab your market by the balls then your CTR’s will be around 0.1% – 0.3% which is amazing for Facebook. CPC will drop quickly and it’ll work. But to achieve that, you need to burn through some money first. You need data. And here we come to another thing that gets you good CTR…
2. GREAT AD – Yep, image is everything. People were talking about it since the beginning, but I see many newbs just can’t handle the truth and keep on searching for another easier way around, because they couldn’t get good CTR with 5 images and 3 ad copies rotated. Lol. Those who play this game know that you start with 50 – 100 ads sometimes. Sometimes with 1000 ads. Out of those you may find 10 – 20 that work really well. And then 4 or 5 that you keep running for weeks. You need to test a ton guys. And you need money for that. It doesn’t mean you’ll lose money on every ad until you find one with a conversion. Look roughly at the whole campaign. You spend $40 – $50 on a campaign that pays $10 or less with 0 conversions, pause and think again. Better yet, make landing pages and rotate offers. Some offers just suck and some work wonders. You need to test. But you have to have some intuition whether campaign will work or not. Sometimes I start campaign losing money, but my negative ROI is small. I spend $50, I make $30 with the first test. It’s a great sign. You get more data, optimize more and get into the green. If you’ve heard Shoemoney talking about importance of ads on Facebook, you’ve noticed that from his tests he weighed images at 70% or 80%, then headline, then 5% or so the description. Well, from my testing headline definitely has more weight. 30% to 50% maybe. One headline increased ad CTR from 0.05 to 0.09. Just headline. So it’s equally important I’d say. Thing is, you gotta have money to test a campaign on FB to get more data.

Is that all there is to Facebook ads? Well, yeah. It’s not rocket science. It’s easy when you look at it. Hardest part is blowing money when you don’t have much in your pocket. Go test PPV, search PPC, 2nd tier PPC like 7search (great conversions) and make some money to move on. Once you have the money, keep on researching the ads, find an ad that is being shown day in day out for your chosen demographic, and if you see it for 7 days straight, it probably makes monies. Go and test. If it’s dating, and offer converts, you should see conversions with 20 clicks or less. Good offers convert anywhere from 10% to 20%. So you don’t need to spend much to see if it will work or not. But to get some data you need to spend some money. Yeah, I’m being vague, because I’d like to say you should blow $100 to $200/day for 7 days to get some data. But if you got $200 for a test, then go with lower budgets and see if it works.

Time and time again I see that it’s not much brain required to make advertising work. Young guys at their 18’ies make $10K – $100K a day and you wonder how the heck it happens. Well, it’s no that they’re geniuses. Obviously, they are smart. But most importantly, they’re dedicated super hard workers who are ready to risk. If you create 50 ads on FB with best converting dating offer targeting demographic you snagged from Quantcast and consider it a loss if you lose $200… These guys will take a bank loan, create 1000 ads and blow money to get data. Then work even harder to figure things out and get where they are now. If you think you can get away with mediocrity here, think again. Competition isn’t snoozing and it’s constantly increasing. That means margins are shrinking each seconds. If you want to make something happen, you gotta act now.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean you should take a loan or credit card with high limit. Just take action now and start working is all I’m trying to encourage you to do. And you’ll get there. Work hard relentlessly, because others are. And Facebook or anything else will not be a problem for you anymore.

Lol, simple FB bidding post turned into a motivational speech.

You notice I haven’t written in a while. I’ve been busy with advertising. And everything I experience, I’ll lay out here. No bullshit, just what works or doesn’t work for me. Stay tuned. Good luck.