The process is super simple!
Over the past decade I built and helped others build several 8-fig Ecomm brands. All brands bootstrapped and some brands launched with as little as $5,000 and generated over $10,000,000 in less then 12 months. Me and my team focused on:
- Cashflow
- CRO
- Ads
- Landing pages and funnels
- LTV
- Logistics
- Payment processing solutions
And other factors that might help you get that unfair advantage against your competitors.
If you're interested in a quick audit for your Meta ad account, hit the green button below ($145 for 30min or $295 for 90min).
What we'll review?
1. Your ads
2. Your structure
3. Your funnel
YOU BUILT AN AMAZING PRODUCT, NOW IT'S ABOUT TIME TO SCALE!
First week: We'll be doing a research about your company, your audience, your competitors, the pain points of your prospects and their objectives. We'll analyze the ads of your competitors and your ads and data (in case you have any data).
Second week: Now it gets interesting! We'll build a landing page that's unique for the target audience we're about to target. Let's say we've been reading thousands of review and found out that the sub-niche is handyman over 50 in the US, so we'll build a landing page to those people, with photos of a handyman in his 50s and a story of a handyman in his 50s and how your product saved his day
Third week: It's $$$ time. At this point we'd launch with several offers (as the offer and the ad are the two most crucial factors when it comes to conversion) and test different ideas. We'll take into consideration what worked for you, as no one knows your business as much as you do, and we'll rely on our decade of experience to try and find the highest LTV offer with highest margins, obviously (while making the entrance point as low as possible so it won't decrease the conversion rate)
Forth week: Ok, now it's time to start sending some traffic. Most of our clients hire us to do just that, not realizing it's a new world and you can't simply run ads on Meta, Taboola, Google, or TikTok and expect to win the insane competition out there. That's why we first build the ultimate funnel. OK, now that the funnel is all set, we'll start using your own ads or together with you, we'll create new ads if you don't have any.
MONTH #1 -
MONTH #2 and beyond...
Now that we start spending and running traffic, we'd like to analyze the results.
If we managed to achieve the desired CPA, that's great! Now we'll start focusing on scaling the business while increasing the margins (so we'll have higher CPA to afford and more scale to reach). As long as you're our customer we'll be doing 3 things on monthly basis (beside running the ads, as that's the obvious):
1. We'll constantly test the landing pages
2. We'll constantly test the offers (maybe there's a better offer around the corner with higher LTV and higher margins and without reducing your conversion rate nor increasing the CPA)
3. We'll constantly test new ads to find a new angle that's more profitable.
What happens in after the first month we're NOT getting the desired CPA? That's a great question! Back to the drawing board. We need to find where in the funnel there's a drop. It might be in the landing page, maybe the traffic doesn't work and we need new audience, maybe it's the offer, or maybe it's a simple checkout issue that something isn't clear enough (remember, the customer sees your website for the first time, it's not like he's shopping on Amazon, what seems straightforward for you might look like rocket science for him or her).
Don't want an agency and don't want us to audit your account? That's fine, you're still in the advertising business so you're one of us, let us help you and explain how the Meta works:
How the algorithm works - Meta is not your enemy, but it's also not your friend!
Most frequent question - How to build an account from scratch - I think lots of you got confused with the ABO>CBO>CC strategy, so let's make some order
Built it? Now it's time to learn how to scale your account
The right way to use cost caps
The wrong way to use cost caps
Priorities when it comes to scaling on Meta
What ads are best to run
Should we start?
How the algorithm works - Meta is not your enemy, but it's also not your friend!
Sure, you shouldn't take gambling tips from the casino and Meta hired ex-casino employees from Las Vegas, and not to redecorate Meta's office. They want us to spend, but they care about making the LOSERS spend. Why? If you spend $1 and make $10 you don't need phone calls to convince you to raise the budget, you don't need complicated dashboards, you don't even need a dashboard, you'll be the one who calls Meta and tell them TAKE MY WIFE AND KIDS, JUST 10X THE F**** CBO'S BUDGET!!
That's why you should learn how to win the game, all those stats such as CTR, CPM, CPC, it's all irrelevant. Those stats were invented back in the manual days, and we were a bunch of nerd sitting in front of those complicated sheets trying to find our way to reduce the CPC based on cheap CPM an clickbaits that can only lead to a squeeze page lead at most. Nowadays things are being held by a machine learning, by Meta's advanced AI. This goldfish will do as your command. You told him to give you the Lowest Cost? Yes sir! Here's the Lowest Cost you can buy a customer for your product, in this daily budget (there are tricks to tweak the system here, and we'll talk about it later).
The way Meta's algorithm works is simply by feedback through the pixel. It gets your ad, analyze it, read the text, watch the person in the video, and gets millions of data points from the creative. Now it'll try to shoot for a certain audience (this is based on what he analyzed in the ad and NOT on what you've told him in the adset targeting. Guys, it's not 2015, we do NOT tell Meta how to target. That's it, those days are over. Today the AI is smarter than us and it knows better than us who it should target in order to give you the results you want). Now it'll spend $200 and get zero sales. Ok, it's time for the algorithm to change direction and look for a different audience (it's not really $200, but you got the point). After a couple of days, it'll find a decent audience, lets say: Men, 50+, UK, top 10% income, divorced, personal trainers (not sure how top 10% & fitness trainers, but so be it). Spends $500 and gives you CPA of $50 (you're breaking even at $50, so you make $0).
At this point some of you might be wondering "holy shit! FB listen to my talks with my vendor and he knows how much I'm paying for those t-shirts? how can it be break even? That's it, I'm going to sue Zuck".
In reality, you're not the first person on Meta to sell T-shirts, and most of your competitors selling it for $X and paying $Y to buy it and willing to pay $Z to acquire a customer (remember Meta wants you to make money as that's the easiest way for them to make more money).
At this point it gets interesting, you start communicating with Meta.
If you'll increase the budget, you're telling FB "I love this CPA, give me more from this audience". It'll do as your command, but might run out of audience and it'll either rerun to the same audience (frequency would get closer to 2+) or look for new audience where it might catch a new pool, a new bucket, that doesn't cost $50, it'll cost you $65 (it won't be under $50 as you've already asked it for the Lowest Cost and it gave you $50 in the past for lower budget).
You can also leave the budget as it is and just enjoy the current audience (we have clients who run for 6-7 months with the same 2-3 ads on $30K/day) - Yes, they keep paying us as we've took them from $500/day to this point and a day would come and they'll need to find new audience, with new creative, with higher margin, with new LP (just like you're paying your accountant), with a sick new irresistible offer - and that's exactly what we do for our clients (we do not just turn campaigns on/off, we get on board and become an Ecommerce marketing partner).
Or, you can tell Meta "What the f&**? It's expensive! Get me cheaper ones". But we don't want to piss the boss, so we'll do it gently by reducing the budget, 10% every 24 hours till we get the desired results. Now Meta might do one of the following:
Replace the audience it's targeting
Reallocate the budget during the 24 hours so it'll offer cheaper acquisitions
A word about tracking - Some of you might launch a campaign without proper tracking and make nice profit so you'd think it's ok to keep the campaign live till you sort it out and that's a huge mistake. Your new campaign is shooting for a certain audience, probably the best one at first, that might be a $10M profit audience. Now your pixel tells Meta "this audience doesn't convert" and Meta would keep looking for new opportunities, while missing out the greatest one just because your tracking issue
And always, always, always remember this - 👉👉THE AD DOES THE TARGETING 👈👈
Most frequent question - How to build an account from scratch - I think lots of you got confused with the ABO>CBO>CC strategy, so let's make some order
Ok, so that's one of the most popular questions. I've explained about the ABO>CBO>CC strategy in several posts here and then I also told some guys (who were in a different position) to go only with CBO and I guess it's my fault you misunderstood me (remember if for your landing pages and ads - if the prospect doesn't get it, it's 100% your fault).
When you just launch a new account, you have no idea what works and what doesn't work, all those fancy "scaling" terms are irrelevant.
All you need to do is get a POC, a proof of concept, for your business.
You'd want to launch a new campaign, a CBO one, with a single broad/adv+ adset, and a couple of ads.
Decide on your KPI, what's the CPA goal.
Triple it and that's your CBOs budget
Do not dare to touch it for at least 24 hours, 48 would be better
After 24-48 hours you check the results
Good? Double the budget to 6x CPA
Bad? Kill it, try new ads (DO NOT FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR ADS)
Wait another 1-3 days if it's good
Still good at 6x CPA? Double it again (forget about those 10% BS methods for now, we'll get to it later - if you want to be the next Apple and you have $1M in your bank you do NOT copy what Apple are doing to day, you copy what Apple did when Jobs had $1M in his bank. Those 10% methods are reserved to those who deserve it, once they've nailed the banger ads with their sick offers)
Now some of you asked me why CBO and not ABO if it's only 1 adset? That's a smart question but it's also a question that doesn't take into consideration the future of your ad account.
Let's say this ABO would work, now you want to keep testing, where you're going to do it? Your ABO already at $10K or $30K a day, would you run test inside the ABO? Probably not (I'm not saying you can't, but we do it in a different way for various reasons). You'd want to scale a CBO, so now you'll find yourself copying those ad IDs from the ABO that already works to the new CBO? That's a complete chaos for you and for the algo.
For those who already run for quite some time -
You open a CBO with a single adset of "winners" and add your top 3 ads. Those are the 3 best ads that you found since you've started running the account
You open another ABO for testing. Here you'll be testing new creatives, it doesn't have to be as often as you think. Give the Meta users some credit, they're exposed to millions of ads. Take the time, think about it, think about who's the audience, don't just use a BS platform like Billo and launch hundreds of UGC in hope of something would stick. Plan it, write the script, rewrite it, consult with ChatGPT about it, look for the best ads that are running these days, look for the best ads that were launched in your industry. Be a pro, and you'll get the results of the pro's.
Each adset in the ABO is an angle. If you're targeting women in their 20s who like dancing, that's an angle. In a different adset you can sell the same product to women in their 50s who're going to the gym.
Each adset daily budget is about 3-4 times your goal CPA, that would give the algo enough data to learn (in case it works, that's about 20-30 sales a week)
Again, after launching something, do not touch it, let the algo learn and stabilize.
*few rules to remember*
First rule - It's all under the same pixel and Meta would connect the dots. Sometimes we try really hard to create an ad for a new audience but at the end of the day, Meta would show it to the same audience. That's why some shitty new ads can outperform your bangers - it's simply doing retargeting.
Second rule - Don't hurry, the next $10M ad is right around the corner. It doesn't matter if you launch it today or next week. I know, you have bills to pay, but take your time, do it wisely. You're not running a restaurant, it's a winner-takes-it-all kind of game. You shouldn't launch so many ads, you should launch one killer.
Third rule - What happens when you're doing a big change? Like double the budget. You shake the snow globe, the system gets out of order, there's a complete chaos with Meta's algo. It's a good thing, just wait and let it "sink", things would get better if you were right with your gut feeling and this ad is really scalable.
The CPA is based on the whole setup (ad, budget, landing page, offer, checkout page, etc) - It's not based ONLY on the ad and it's definitely not based on your LTV (leave the conspiracy for the losers who want to quit)
Built it? Now it's time to learn how to scale your account
Show me the money! We're almost there, one step from scaling...
Ok, so at this point we already have a CBO with a nice budget that we barely touch, only raise like 10% every other day and an ABO for testing.
What's next?
First of all, again, no need to rush. Remember I told you about how the algo works? If you'll double the CBO's budget Meta might say "this good audience isn't good for him, it's not spending enough, let's find a new audience and this new audience won't be as cheap as the old one".
At the same time you're testing new ads and new angles, you'd also want to spend more on your current working angles.
Increase 10% every 24-48 hours (sometimes I advise to increase 5% and sometimes to wait 24 hours instead of 48, what's with all the differences? Just like with the setup where some of you need a single CBO and some might go with CBO & ABO, here some of you are closer to their goal and some still far a way, they acquire for $20 and willing to pay $35, in such case it'll be 10% every 48 hours)
Maximize the margins - we'll talk about it later today
So where's the limit? How much can we spend without increasing the CPA? No one knows, that's why we slowly raise 5-10 percentage twice or three times a week.
But what if you can spend $2M on this ad with the same profit, maybe increase the CPA by $1? By increasing 5% you're not gonna get there. And don't forget you're not working in a perfect world, there are hungry competitors (who read this post just like you do) and they're coming after you with blood in their teeth, they don't want to take a piece of your pie, for them you ARE the pie and it's about time to speed up. Keep in mind you're in the most competitive space in the world, you're now running ads in a local newspaper in Antarctica, you're running ads where every single business in the world is running ads. You're trying to take impressions from Gecko and Alo, that's not easy.
Ok, so how can we find out the potential of your ad (keep in mind, because the ad does the targeting, I'm not saying the potential of your business or product, now we talk about the ad)? You're using cost caps.
The right way to use cost caps
Over the years I've seen lots of shady stuff and methods that people used to implement (not only on Facebook), those were always short wins and sometimes the damage was way more expensive than the short-term profit. The conclusion? You should always win by following the rules. I'm not saying to answer Facebook's call and do as their agent tells you to do (I already told you - they're not your enemies but also not your friends).
Meta's goal is to make you money so you'll spend more (NEVER EVER FORGET IT, NO MATTER HOW BAD YOUR ACCOUNT LOOKS), that's why we should use the products they've built in the right way.
They've gave us cost caps for a reason.
Why would they offer us Cost Cap where we can set a $20 bid when the Lowest Cost gave us $40? Many advertisers would say that with $40 you can spend $50K/day but I don't want $50K/day, for me spending $5K/day is enough as long as I buy for $20. It doesn't work that way, you're killing your campaigns.
Meta is a machine learning, it needs data to learn. When you use Cost Caps you basically telling Meta to STOP LEARNING and start using what you've learned so far. It'll do RETARGETING (as that's the data it already have), not only from your own campaigns, but from other campaigns as well. However, if you have a campaign that already "fueled" the algorithm with enough data and spent like $50K, now Meta might be able to LOCK on the right audience.
Think of it like a machinegun. Meta shoot all over while going on Lowest Cost, even when it found the right audience, the machinegun is still shaking like crazy and shooting all over the desired area. However, when you set the BID, it'll lock the machinegun and it'll start shooting at the same point, exactly the same, if someone pops out just around the corner, 3 ft from your current target, the machinegun won't hit him. It's all locked and can't move an inch.
Is it good? It's perfect in one condition - when you're locked on a HUGE cheap audience.
If you're testing the ABO's with $100/day each adset with 3-4 adsets,
and you have a CBO with $10K/day that scale and gives you $40 CPA,
and your break even CPA is $60,
then it's COST CAP time!
You might be onto something, and now it's the SCALE time.
You'll take the ID of this good ad and duplicate it into a new Cost Cap campaign with a bid that's HIGHER than what you were getting so far (remember, the Meta's goldfish do as your command and you've already told him to give you the lowest cost for $10K/day budget and you paid $40, so there are no $30 around the corner) and open the budget to $50K+, if it works you'll dupe it to $150K/day
A word about the "good ad" - Some might consider a good ad as a high RoAS ad and it's dead wrong. Meta's goal is to spend your budget while giving you the lowest conversions, if Ad #1 is at 2.0 RoAS and spend 90% of traffic while Ad #2 is at 5.0 RoAS and spend 10% of the budget, guess which ad is doing the retargeting and which one is ToF? Also, try to guess what would happen to Ad #2 if you'll shut Ad #1 off (we all tried it years ago, Ad #2 would go to RoAS 1.0)
Always remember - when you dupe an AD that works, you do NOT pause the original one
Keep in mind that it'll burn the creative to the ashes but that's what we want, now it's time to think of the next big ad (trust me, after your first $200K/day in spend with positive ROI, you'd want to take a day off, think about what made this ad work so good)
The wrong way to use cost caps
So we just learned how to use Cost Caps in the right way, but there's another way lots of advertisers are using Cost Caps and it's not my favorite way as it's not the purpose of Meta.
When you just open a new campaign with zero data in Cost Cap, Meta would still spend. But it doesn't have your data, so how does it know?
It'll use the data of other advertisers, we're all under the Meta's huge umbrella.
Basically, it'll do sort of retargeting but the audience would be very limited (for each AD).
For each ad is the key here, why?
When adopting the only Cost Cap strategy you'd need to "test" hundreds of ads, and why I've placed test in quotes? Because it's not really testing like we're doing with Lowest Cost, it's more of serving ads to a certain locked (locked by the data of someone else this time, unlike us locking the machinegun) audience which is very specific.
I'm not saying it's a bad strategy and I've seen it work with medium account (about $100K-$200K/mo). The way it works:
There's an audience of lets say 3M people
You'll launch 10-20 ads
See which ones are spending and quickly scale those (simply 10x or 100x the budget till its dead)
Then you'll launch more ads, better like the one that worked for you just with different hook and CTA
Priorities when it comes to scaling on Meta
I promised to talk about how to improve your margins so now we're in the MOST interesting part of any Ecommerce business. Everything I've talked about is irrelevant if you ignore this part, that's what makes your marketing vehicle to go from 0 to 100.
We've talked today about pouring oil to the fire, now lets talk about how to start a fire.
When we get a new client, we rarely start running his ads.
As I said, you want to use Meta the right way, and the right way is to consider it as oil to the fire, just like every advertiser considered TV or radio back in the days.
I know there are lots of advertisers with shitty offers that try to crack the Meta code in order to sell their low LTV with almost zero conversion rate, but it's not the game I want you to play (they're wasting their time as they can easily make more money by selling it on other platforms and doing a million different things). We're on Meta cause we understand the potential and we know that it can turn our little fire into a huge festival.
We want to build a strong engine first and here's what you should focus on first:
Irresistible offer
High converting landing page that was built for social media paid traffic
Maximize your LTV so it'll be able to sustain today's CPAs
Lots of advertisers would get a CPA that's equal to the entrance cost * 1.5 (if they sell something for $40, the CPA would be $60) and they'll stop running ads.
The difference between them and the scalers, is that the scalers learn how to build a 25% NET business while being able to pay $60 (and keep the product's price at $40, obviously, otherwise it'll take more clicks to convert and you'll pay more than $60).
So let's have a quick review about how we do those stuff:
Offer -
Ok, you're selling sunglasses, but what's the Big Promise, as they say? What's the offer? Is it BUY 2 GET 20 FREE? Is it buy 1 and I'll buy sunglasses to all the kids in Africa? Is it the world's first sunglasses that you can take with you to the sun? Is it a bundle of sunglasses + FREE durable carrying case + FREE cleaning kit + FREE worldwide shipping?
Your offer must be something that they won't be able to resist, give it a LOT of thought as that's what would make or break your business. We sometimes do it for over a month before we find our clients a decent offer that's better than their current one
Landing page -
That's my favorite part. You can't just sell the click on an ad and take them to a "best for all people" landing page. If your product is a headlamp for mechanics, you need to curate a unique landing page for mechanics. Use their slang, give them a discount, maybe partner with the mechanics association and offer them some free gift, use mechanics stories in your landing page, add lots of photos of mechanics using this headlamp, add a video of mechanics talking about the exact reasons they prefer this headlamp over anything else out there. If you'll do it right, you can position your product as the world's best headlamp for mechanics and you can charge double than what they charge on Amazon for generic ones (the customer is not an idiot, he's your wife - please respect them/us and offer real value)
Remember! Don't go TOO niche, you still need to make money and you don't want to do all that work for a $1,000/mo audience
LTV -
God knows how you did it, probably magic, but you managed to outbid the billions of ads trying to catch their attention and you won, you were able to actually sell him/her a product, I salute you (seriously, I know how hard it can get).
it's time to squeeze the sponge.
Now you need to increase the LTV, but how?
You'd want to offer them more products through email/sms. Send it daily, don't be shy. Lets say you like this girl, we'll call her Anna. You got her phone number from a friend and you start sending her daily texts "I like you", "When should we meet?", "I'm waiting for you", "I can see you...".
Knock knock, it's the police, or the SPF in the email world.
But what if Anna gave you her number, she wants you to contact her, she's all alone, sitting at home watching Friends and looking at your feed, waiting for you to leave your stupid friends and Xbox and send her something... And what you do? Nothing, you're shy, you're thinking "no way, I don't want to interrupt her", "what if she'll tell me she's not interested", or in our world "what if she's going to unsubscribe"
That's not gonna happen as often as one might expect. Those people bought from you, they like your product, PLEASE do them a favor and send them MORE OFFERS, MORE PRODUCTS, MORE COUPONS, just help those people to buy more from your store
Sometimes it might get difficult to wait for them to come back and buy more, so you also want to increase the AOV but there's a catch you CAN'T touch the entrance price. If you sell it for $40 with $5.4 shipping, this offer must remain live. Now you need to think of upsells and bumps that can be sold with it.
Always think about the CPA. You're buying for $60 on Meta, right? So bumping your $40 LTV to $45 won't make it. If you're adding a $50 bump offer and 1/10 buys it, it's not enough.
You need to get an LTV that's 3x the entrance price (at least) - we're not $5B companies, we can't afford scaling and losing $40 on a customer and hope that in the future, within 36 months, we'll return it and break even - we're DIRECT RESPONSE marketers and we want to make profit within 30 days at most.
Think of a bundle that cost $140 and 80% would take it, be creative, read forum and blogs and comments on social to learn what people buy with this kind of product, look on Amazon for frequently bought together section. and remember the #1 RULE (there are lots of #1 rules as you can see) - ALWAYS TEST, TEST, AND TEST there's no way to predict what's gonna work
What ads are best to run
That's it, we have started the fire, it's all set, we just need to pour oil (aka ADS traffic).
We already know that the ad does the targeting, right?
So lets think (Bertrand Russell — "Most people would rather die than think").
But lets really think about the ad, about what ad would make them buy, them = the avatar, the ideal customer, the one that's gonna pay our bills.
Can an image sell a new product?
Can a cold audience convert from 50% OFF a new product you've never heard about?
Probably not, so how come my new image banner with 50% OFF all over generated some sales (and then choked to death)? It worked the same way Cost Caps work, it offered the ad as retargeting to audience that abandoned carts of your competitors (again, might work but useless to do it on Meta, go to Bing).
One thing I do want to explain here as MANY of my good friends in the advertising business used to do it and they now learned that it's wrong - What happens when I launch an old ad with new hook?
Remember in 2019-2020 we were all launching our successful ads over and over with new hooks but couldn't get the CPA to go down but at least it won't go up as well?
That's because the hook does NOT sell the click, so what it sell? The impression! The rest of the AD sell the click (while the LP sell the product). Give Meta's algo some credit, it's NOT going to run after new audience only cause you've used this viral hook (even if the hook is related to the product). It'll simply go after the SAME audience just that maybe this time more people in the audience would stop for a second.
When to use it ?
When the CPA was good and audience is dead
When not to use it?
When the CPA wasn't good, there's no reason to target the same audience all over again (Meta just told you - the audience is expensive, try different ad/angle)
GOOD LUCK WIH YOUR CAMPAIGNS! HOPE SOME OF IT SAVED AT LEAST ONE OF YOU FROM GOING OUT OF BUSINESS, IF SO, IT WAS WORTH MY TIME!!!! SCALE THE SHIT OUT OF YOUR ADS, FROM ONE MARKETER TO ANOTHER...
P.S. - To all those who ask me to run their Lead-gen campaigns, I'm sorry guys but I'm only running Ecommerce. That's what I do best, I'm in this space since 2005 (on Google) and from 2014 on Facebook ads, spent millions over the years, built 2 8fig brands and a couple more 7fig ones. Ecommerce is my passion, that's what I love doing and being a nerd about reading and following every little change in the market related to the Ecommerce space. As much as I'd love helping you out, I'm not going to deal with anything other than Ecommerce (I can refer you to some ninjas out there in the leadgen space, but unfortunately, I'm not the address 🙏)
