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Qayyum RajanQayyum (”Q”) is a serial builder with more than 5 startups to his name with 3 exits. He specializes in shipping products fast, and early with an focus on driving traffic across the marketing funnels
Table of Contents
- 1. You don’t need to be a genius
- 2. Context exploitation with the stages of awareness
- 3. Enrich your contextual copy from the minds of customers (user research)
- 4. Make Google Analytics and Facebook ads analytics your best friends
- 5. How much budget do you need to invest to see the results?
- Your customers need to know, like and trust you - campaign structure
- ToFu:
- MoFu:
- BoFu:
- 6. Engineer ads that don't look like ads
- 7. Stellar creatives get the attention, great copy lures the interest
- 8. Landing pages lead to purchase
- 9. Come up with novel ad concept ideas that stick
- 10. What gets measured gets managed
- 11. Don't make these cardinal mistakes to avoid $$$ leakage
- 12. Ads are like dating, email is where they say "yes"
- 13. The ultimate hack to Facebook Ad is experiments.
- 14. How to scale your ads the right way?
- 15. Stop thinking you know what's going to happen
- 16. Let Facebook be free!
- 17. Retargeting is a must
- 18. Venture out
- 19. Optimization is key
- 20. Stay objective
- 21. Test Everything
- 22. Facebook's video templates
- 23. Lookalikes
- 24. The easiest types of campaigns to run are
- 25. For most SaaS products, have these types of retargeting campaigns
- 26. Trying to get too narrow
- 27. UTM tags set up on all of your ads
- 28. "Only When Connected to WiFi"
- 29. Set Ad spend limits
- 30. To check if your ad sets are competing against each other here's what to do
- 31. Make sure you have DPA's set up correctly
- 32. Try a wide variety of ad types
- 33, Lookalike Advanced Options
- 34. Include CPC and CTR when you set up custom columns
- 35. Make Your Money Work Harder
- 36. FB Auction algebra to deliver average cost
- 37. Eliminate the highest cost conversions into the account, the data will set a high volume of conversions at a lower cost.
- 38. Cut average CPA by 25-75% by doing this over and over:
- An ad launched at an avg CPA of 25, is likely to do better than one launched at an avg CPA of 50
- What happens downstream?
- 39. Importance of proper pixel implementation
- 40. Avoid low-quality landing page
- It is caused by:
- If it's not something that FB picks up on its own it can sometimes be brought to their attention by people who are seeing the ad.
- 41. Avoid low-quality Content
- It is caused by:
- 42. Use Emojis in your ads
- 43. You need to understand how attribution window works.
- 44. Maximize Every Touch Point on Your Site
- 45. Use Push notifications for Quick Retargeting
- 46. Use OnSite Retargeting with @optinmonster
- 47. Use Form Abandonment on Your Lead Forms
- 48. Add Chatbots Livebots
- 49. Measure everything!
- 50. Hire experts when you need help!
- 51. Use Emojis
- 52. Make the ads longer
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We have curated the best tips from experts to crush your next Facebook ads campaign for your SaaS.
Note: SaaSwrites is a curated growth marketing hub and resource built to help SaaS founders grow their products. We sincerely thank all our experts for their constant value addition to this world.
Facebook remains the largest social network. Any SaaS selling a B2C product will find its audience on Facebook. We have curated tips on how to with your Facebook ads!
Aazar Shad shares tips to crush Fb Ads
1. You don’t need to be a genius
Facebook ads is about running hundreds of experiments & doubling down on what works. You mostly need to understand the stages of awareness.
2. Context exploitation with the stages of awareness
Buyers are at different stages of their journey :
- Top of the funnel: Unaware
- Middle of the funnel: Just got aware
- Bottom of the funnel: Relatively more aware
Another way to look at it.
3. Enrich your contextual copy from the minds of customers (user research)
You only need to ask 4 questions to do the research right. Insight: Most people fail at it.
4. Make Google Analytics and Facebook ads analytics your best friends
Many folks do get conversion but they are not tracking it right. You can only have 8 events on Facebook. Choose them wisely.
Lead → Initiate → Check out → Add to Cart → Purchase.
5. How much budget do you need to invest to see the results?
$10K but you may need more to achieve statistical significance. You also need to be patient. I made a loss in the first month before becoming profitable.
Lesson: Don't lose hope too early.
Your customers need to know, like and trust you - campaign structure
Three terms that define your customers. Choose your ads specific and relevant to these terms:
ToFu:
Lookalike, broad, and a specific interest (I chose gifted kids).
MoFu:
Interacted with 90 days on socials, video watchers, and web visitors (180 days).
BoFu:
Leads and visitors who didn't purchase.
6. Engineer ads that don't look like ads
ToFu: Show, don't tell - Demonstrate the value of the product. Surprise with great thumbnails & 3-seconds hook.
MoFu: User-generated content or user testimonials work well.
BoFu: Answer objections & retarget with an irresistible offer.
7. Stellar creatives get the attention, great copy lures the interest
Your first line needs to call out the pain that users are going through *at the moment*. Your copy's job is to create the desire to learn more and click.
Example-
8. Landing pages lead to purchase
Be clear with expectations.
Here’s your landing page checklist:
→ What?
→ Why you?
→ How does it work?
→ Why should I trust you?
→ What are the next steps?.
Your hero image needs to show the product in action.
9. Come up with novel ad concept ideas that stick
Find selfish benefits, then exaggerate a little, and tell it in a story format with a surprising start and end.
Make it concise and compelling. Most important is to invoke emotions
10. What gets measured gets managed
Your primary metrics to make decisions are ROAS, CTR, CPC, and Cost Per Conversion/Action.
The key here is to have at least two different attribution sources to track conversions.
Analytics should lead you closer to the truth.
11. Don't make these cardinal mistakes to avoid $$$ leakage
Patience, time, and hope are crucial - don't lose them.
Don't use dynamic ad creatives early on. It does not give you metrics.
Don't use traffic or engagement ad objectives, instead use conversion to drive performance.
12. Ads are like dating, email is where they say "yes"
Not everyone wakes up in the morning to buy from an Ad.
Punchy and value reiterating welcome emails and warm prospects.
Abandon cart emails reminds them to purchase.
13. The ultimate hack to Facebook Ad is experiments.
Experiments you should definitely try:
- Copywriting (first line)
- Headlines
- Images and video creatives
- Different intros of the videos
- Detailed demographic audience: engaged shoppers & more
- Organic vs branding
14. How to scale your ads the right way?
Horizontal scaling: Test different audiences and creatives.
Vertical scaling: Add more budget but fewer audiences.
Insight: Use campaign budget optimization at this point with the best creatives and audiences.
15. Stop thinking you know what's going to happen
If you are struggling to decide between two different creatives to use, STOP.
Test BOTH!
Stop making assumptions and let the data tell you what works and what doesn't.
16. Let Facebook be free!
Please do not narrow down your interest audiences by multiple levels and especially do not do that on your lookalikes.
Facebook is amazing at finding people who want to purchase, so let them do that.
For prospection, start broad and then narrow.
17. Retargeting is a must
Make sure you have some sort of retargeting campaign in place when you are running ads or any traffic to your site.
Also make sure your ads for retargeting are different than your ads for prospection.
This makes a big difference!
18. Venture out
When you are creating lookalikes, stop just creating 1% lookalikes or just purchase lookalikes.
There are so many other events to test and percentages that could have potential customers waiting for you.
19. Optimization is key
When you start to look at the results make sure you are starting at the ad level.
It's important to see the data of the individual ads before turning off an entire ad set.
20. Stay objective
Make sure you are making decisions based off data and not because you "think" it's going to work.
This is the quickest way to waste money on Facebook ads.
21. Test Everything
Something that took Ads Alchemist a while to understand about Facebook Ads, in the beginning, was having an open mind.
So many assumptions, so many things instead of just testing them.
Do not write off an idea just because it's simple or unconventional.
22. Facebook's video templates
If you are ever looking to refresh creatives but don't have the ability to take new pictures or shoot a new video, try using Facebook's video templates.
It allows you to use your images and create a video with them.
I've seen a lot of good results from doing this.
23. Lookalikes
If you are only running 1% Lookalikes, you are definitely losing out on some conversions.
There is more success with larger percentage of lookalikes.
Especially if you are trying to scale make sure you are testing all the way up to 10%.
Lookalikes made from custom audiences are static and will NOT update.
The only type of lookalikes that update are ones that are made directly from a pixel or product catalog.
It is very important to know this and update those lookalikes accordingly.
24. The easiest types of campaigns to run are
- App Downloads
- Lead Gen
- Ecommerce
App install campaigns usually require the least amount of day-to-day work.
Ecommerce campaigns require much more day to day work/testing.
25. For most SaaS products, have these types of retargeting campaigns
- DPA for view content and add to cart.
- Website visitors
- FB/IG engagement
- Video views
If you do this and have proper exclusions you will have a good setup.
26. Trying to get too narrow
When it comes to interest-based prospection, start broad, not narrow. By doing something like this
you are almost guaranteeing that you won't see success with Facebook Ads.
27. UTM tags set up on all of your ads
They enable you to better understand their performance without having to rely on one analytic platform.
Create dynamic UTM tags that way you don't have to change them when you duplicate ads.
28. "Only When Connected to WiFi"
Something that has been working well recently is selecting the box "Only When Connected to WiFi". using no other interest or lookalike targeting.
People who are connected to WiFi are in a place they are used to, and more likely to be in a shopping mindset.
29. Set Ad spend limits
With the recent FB decision making CBO the default a lot of people have expressed concerns about losing control.
One way to increase your control in a CBO is with ad set spend limits.
You are able to set a min or max to help better manage that ad set's spend.
30. To check if your ad sets are competing against each other here's what to do
- Ad set must have completed the "Learning Phase".
- Scroll over the word Active in the Delivery column.
- Click Delivery Insights.
- Click Auction Overlap.
That's it, super easy!
31. Make sure you have DPA's set up correctly
If you rely on DPA's for a portion of your retargeting campaign/have a ton of products, you want to make sure you have it set up correctly.
Make sure you set the product data source to update daily so you don't have products, not on the store in the catalog.
32. Try a wide variety of ad types
Certain ad types will convert better with certain audiences in certain placements.
The upside of testing multiple types of ads far outweighs the downside of losing a few hundred bucks.
33, Lookalike Advanced Options
Create a Lookalike (LLA) and click "Advanced Options" at the bottom.
This allows you to create multiple LLAs from the same source at one time.
You also won't have to worry about excluding smaller LLAs from the bigger ones since they are segmented
- When creating lookalikes from a custom audience, you have the ability to group multiple countries together.
- This comes in handy when you are trying to target smaller countries and are able to combine them into one LLA instead of having a few super small LLAs.
34. Include CPC and CTR when you set up custom columns
Make sure when you are setting up your custom columns, you include all of the following for CPC and CTR.
It's really important to be able to track each one and know the difference between them.
If you don't know the difference, google it.
35. Make Your Money Work Harder
Train the Algo to be more efficient , you don’t need to spend more, to scale results. Based on the Real World economics where 10% more revenue at the same investment is more profitable than 10% more Rev @ 10% more spend.
36. FB Auction algebra to deliver average cost
Bid = Budget x Estimated Action Rate x Advertiser Score
plus Machine Learning paired w/ Cost Trend Averaging
We can see this average cost is based on previous data & expect future conversions to fall in line with the existing average.
37. Eliminate the highest cost conversions into the account, the data will set a high volume of conversions at a lower cost.
This “teaches” FB how to find more users more efficiently.
This gives us a higher volume of better customers for the same investment.
38. Cut average CPA by 25-75% by doing this over and over:
- Establishing a mean
- Removing the worst option
- Pushing down the average
- Testing new ads, or rebuilding old winners
When we launch new Ads in a more desirable environment, they perform better too.
An ad launched at an avg CPA of 25, is likely to do better than one launched at an avg CPA of 50
If we can repeatedly become more efficient, we can repeatedly scale results, without increasing spend. In a sustainable, projectable fashion, which also has a MASSIVE IMPACT on the biz
What happens downstream?
When you have a higher volume of higher quality traffic w/ a greater level of intent.
Email & SMS open rates go up as the quality of lead improves.
SEO improves as TOS & search volume goes up.
All channels get better, when the Intent Creation device does.
39. Importance of proper pixel implementation
If you are sending traffic to a website that does not have some sort of tracking set up like a Facebook Pixel, you are wasting your money.
All the traffic you are driving to your store is data. The more data you have the better chance you have to become profitable.
Make sure each pixel event is firing correctly before buying any type of ads no matter the channel.
To double check, if things are working go through your funnel and afterward go to your Business Manager menu, select Analytics and then select your pixel.
On the left-hand side, you will see Events Debugging.
This shows you all the events that occur through your pixel, the specific time they happened, the device and the URL location.
So you can check to see when you went through the funnel if the events fired correctly.
I prefer this method over using something like Facebook Pixel Helper just because I have had issues with that extension before.
Regardless of how you make sure your pixel is working correctly, the important part is that you do check in the first place.
You can also go to the Ads Manager Menu and click 'Events Manager'. Then click your pixel name.
Then on the left-hand side, you should see something called 'Test Events'.
You are able to check your pixel events as well.
Either way, you need to make sure you have everything set up prior to sending any paid traffic to your site.
40. Avoid low-quality landing page
It is caused by:
- no original content
- tons of pop-up ads
- unexpected website experience
- high bounce rate
These are the main reasons that will cause you to receive that super annoying message.
If it's not something that FB picks up on its own it can sometimes be brought to their attention by people who are seeing the ad.
People are able to report ads and tell FB that they don't want to see this specific ad anymore, which can have a negative effect on the advertiser.
41. Avoid low-quality Content
It is caused by:
- Withholding information in the copy
- Sensationalism
- Engagement Bait
Here is an example of each of those-
It's important to try to avoid using this kind of copy or at least make it less obvious so you won't be penalized.
You should try and avoid doing this because if you don't Facebook will categorize your landing page and ads as low quality. This will negatively affect you in the ad auction.
Facebook ads are hard enough as it is, you don't want to make it harder for yourself to see good performance.
42. Use Emojis in your ads
Ross Simmonds explains why emojis work:
84% of SaaS companies don’t use emojis in their Facebook ads. Yet, Emojis get...
25% more engagement on Twitter. 🐦
57% more likes on Facebook 👍
And 33% more shares. 🚀
Ya’ll so busy being “professional” that you’re leaving money on the table.
Syed Balkhi shares 8 common mistakes to avoid when running Facebook ads:
I see SaaS founders spend a lot of money on Facebook ads / retargeting. Recently I looked at some funnels and helped fix common mistakes that reduced ad spend by up to 70% while increasing the revenue generated from ads.
43. You need to understand how attribution window works.
The default revenue generated from ads looks great on the surface!
That's because it combines View through vs Click through window.
Dig deeper, you're likely overspending :)
44. Maximize Every Touch Point on Your Site
The easiest way to boost your ROAS is to improve your on-site conversions.
Test landing page & messaging often.
Create multiple funnels for repeat abandoners.
Use a landing page builder like @seedprod for rapid testing
45. Use Push notifications for Quick Retargeting
Add single-step web push notification opt-in. These convert really well.
This is why I acquired @pushengage
It allows us to do no-code segmentation based on page URL / geo / etc, so we can create automated drip campaigns.
46. Use OnSite Retargeting with @optinmonster
- Add exit-intent campaigns
- Do on site follow up campaigns based on past behavior
- Use Smart tags for personalization
- Add success tracking pixels for retargeting
This will help you maximize $ generated per page.
47. Use Form Abandonment on Your Lead Forms
@easywpforms comes with a smart form abandonment feature.
Combine that with their User Journey feature + @Zapier and you can really streamline your sales workflow to boost overall revenue.
48. Add Chatbots Livebots
Not only does it help you maximize conversions, but you can connect it with your CRM / marketing automation tool.
49. Measure everything!
Make sure your Google Analytics is setup properly with events tracking/enhanced eCommerce / funnels etc.
@monsterinsights makes this easy. Use @hotjar to see heatmaps/recording and then optimize your pages accordingly
50. Hire experts when you need help!
You might know all the details and that’s okay. Learn when you implement. ANd it’s better to hire an expert when you are scale.
Bottom line is ... don't just look at the ROAS # in your ads platform and say ... I'm crushing it!
Dig deeper and you will unlock significant gains and accelerate your growth.
51. Use Emojis
84% of SaaS companies don’t use emojis in their Facebook ads. Yet, Emojis get...
25% more engagement on Twitter.
57% more likes on Facebook
And 33% more shares.
Ya’ll so busy being “professional” that you’re leaving money on the table.
52. Make the ads longer
Nick Shackelford suggests making your FB ads longer. Like, MUCH longer.
Create FB ad content that’s 45-60 seconds (or even longer) to get more people to spend more time engaging with your brand.
Why is this important in 2022?
Finding the right audience on FaceBook is harder than ever.
Using a great long-form creative allows you to target broad audiences whilst still getting in front of the right people.
Creative is the new targeting!
How to start today:
First, test out various hooks to see what connects best with your audience.
Once a hook starts to land, build out a range of longer-form assets to drive engagement.
Written by
Qayyum Rajan
Qayyum (”Q”) is a serial builder with more than 5 startups to his name with 3 exits. He specializes in shipping products fast, and early with an focus on driving traffic across the marketing funnels
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