When I joined Hootsuite & AdEspresso as a Facebook and LinkedIn ads expert back in 2016, I already had about 6 years of experience running Facebook ads. My journey started before Facebook even had a conversion pixel! Despite that, I learned fresh, invaluable insights from all the ad account audits I ever conducted.
At the time of writing, I’ve conducted over 912 Facebook and LinkedIn ad account audits for Hootsuite & AdEspresso alone — not taking into account my private clients. The insight every single ad account audit gives me isn’t just new and fresh; it’s also unique and invaluable.
Many agencies or marketers specialize in a single niche – B2B, e-commerce, or SaaS. Yet auditing so many accounts over the last eight years has provided me with a diverse knowledge base that cuts across various industries and regions. It’s like having a backstage pass to the world’s biggest marketing concert!
Given the above, it’s impossible for me to summarize what I’ve learned over the past eight years conducting these ad account audits in a single article. However I’ve tried my best to compile a list of lessons that can help businesses into the mindset to achieve the best results from social ads. I’m also including the most common mistakes to avoid. Here goes.
1. Learning the Hard Way: Perception Is Far from Reality in Running Ads
If you ever watched a movie based in London, you might have the impression that, if you moved there for work, it would be easy to live in a luxury condominium overlooking Big Ben and the Thames. Living rooms in films look to be a hundred square meters there! That’s perception.
In reality, I was scouting for a place to stay to attend an event in London last year and found twelve-person bunk beds going for €108 per night described as a “rare find”. That says to me it’ll be three in the morning, you’ve paid 100 per night, and you need to hold your fart because you have eleven other roommates!
Similarly, when I was recruited by Hootsuite in 2016, I was already managing big ad accounts with a spend of $1,000 per day. One ad account was spending $10,000 promoting a real estate conference in Australia.
Back then, I used to think: “Oh my god! Working for Ad Espresso and Hootsuite! They must have millions of spending in ad accounts per client. I’m going to learn all their tactics!” Well, the reality is different.
I previously only ran performance marketing campaigns. With those, if I spent $1000 on ads, my client would judge me based on how many sales and leads those ads generated. I therefore (wrongly) assumed that if a big company invested $100,000 in ads, they would only do so if they could directly attribute sales and leads.
But here’s the thing: many companies are actually running awareness campaigns aimed at boosting brand visibility rather than driving immediate sales. That’s why they sponsor a football club and place ads in magazines, on TV, in train stations, on the radio, and more. While these ads help them achieve their business goals, they can’t always precisely measure the revenue generated from each medium.
This is why what works for a well-known brand might not deliver the same results for someone else. Which brings me to my next point.
2. It’s Bad Advice if Someone Says: “They’re Spending A Lot Of Money. Just Copy Them!”
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard supposed gurus say: “Find ads that others have been running for a while. If they’ve been running that long, they must be profitable. Mimic it, and you’ll make money, too.”
It’s not that I’m against using competitors’ ads for inspiration. It’s that copying is no guarantee of success. Here are a few reasons why mimicking other ads might not lead to a winning campaign:
1) Competitors Can Be Running an Awareness Campaign
As explained earlier, many companies are running awareness campaigns that aren’t aimed at driving immediate sales.
Awareness marketing is more of a long-term strategy. It engages audiences frequently through multiple channels to increase the chances people remember that brand when they need something the company offers.
2) The Competition May Be Running Retargeting Ads.
Another driver behind ad performance may be retargeting. That means, for instance, a company’s website has decent monthly traffic, and they’re retargeting that audience.
Those visitors to the company website were once looking for a product or service that the brand offers. Therefore, these ads are seen by an audience that’s very likely to convert.
Showing the same ad to a cold audience is very likely not to convert.
3) Authority Can Make Other People’s Ads Work Better
I once had a call with a woman whose husband was a dentist. She said she had done marketing for another dentist who was her husband’s competitor. She confessed to me that she’d copied her boss’ ad and landing page with the exact copy and targeting. She said those were all working well for her boss but not for her husband. I had a gut feeling as to why that was the case, so I asked her to Google her husband’s name and then Google her boss after that. Her boss was everywhere! Her husband was nowhere to be found.
If you think about it, imagine needing a dental plan that costs $5K or braces that cost $3K. You don’t regularly book those on an impulse buy. You Google and see who the dentists are.
That’s an example of the exact same ad and targeting landing page that works for one person yet not for the other.
Marketing isn’t only about what you do on Meta, LinkedIn, Twitter, or TikTok. It’s also about the information and credibility people can find about you.
4) The Competition Is Everywhere — and You’re Not.
With a big fast food chain, you get to see and not act on an ad. But you go to a big supermarket or the train station, move around a big city or even in another country, and they’re still there. Their presence is everywhere.
For small companies, if a potential buyer didn’t click and convert, you lost them. You’re nowhere to be found. With big brands, the ads are still in the back of your head everywhere you go. That alone might increase sales.
5) Many Companies Spending Big Aren’t Doing It Right
Just because a company is big and has a huge budget doesn’t mean they are spending their money effectively or are the best at running ads.
Let’s say you’re traveling to a conference out of your own money. You probably need to stay in a 3-star hotel and eat at a fast-food joint for that. If you get $500 for the hotel and $100 for food from a big company’s expense, you’ll probably be more lavish and less efficient in your choices.
I remember talking to a company more than once that ended up giving an intern the task of running ads.
In one case, I had literally shown the company what had worked in their niche based on other clients, and they still said: “I know the ad’s horrible, but everything needs to be approved by PR and Legal.” So, the ad ran for a long time, not based on performance, but because of how long everything took to get approval.
Meanwhile, another company would say: “Here are €50K per month, spend it on an awareness campaign.” When it comes to ads, some big company budgets are approved yearly or quarterly. I have seen companies with budgets of half a million or $200,000 for FB ads that get to spend it all. That use isn’t adapted based on performance.
So, How Much Should I Spend on Ads?
I often meet companies new to Facebook or LinkedIn advertising who yet to see success from their paid social media efforts. They ask, “Someone told me you must spend $10K to get results. Is that true?”
This is bad advice. Here’s why:
Kevin Hart, the famous comedian, fills basketball arenas for an audience today. He performs stand-up comedy in front of 10 to 60K people at a time. Kevin Hart certainly did not scale from zero to 60K overnight.
For a long time, Kevin would hold shows in Philadelphia for which he was not even paid. He worked small venues for years and took in all he could in New York comedy clubs. Having built up years of experience, he finally got to perform in front of 60K fans. Even then, whenever he came up with new material, he would first try it in front of only a few people. “Do people laugh? Are they bored and looking at their phone?” would be the kind of questions he would seek to answer.
If he presented in front of such a small group and people weren’t laughing, he knew he needed to work on his jokes more to come back. Only after perfect strangers would engage, laugh, and think he was delivering the best comedy show out there would he take his act in front of 60K audiences.
Advertising works the same way.
If you have yet to make FB or LinkedIn ads work for you, and you’re spending $10 per day on ads but not getting results, spending $100 or $200 won’t get you the results you want, either.
When it comes to advertising, think of it as dipping your toes in the water. My advice is to also break this into three steps. Just for the sake of going over them, let’s pretend you’re promoting a webinar (but the same principle applies to sales, lead generation, e-commerce, and so on).
Approach advertising like dipping your toes in the water. My advice is to also break this into three steps. Imagine you’ve been tasked with promoting a webinar.
Step 1: Start with a modest budget of $10 to $30 per day. Ask yourself: Can you attract people to join the webinar through ads?
You might be getting clicks at a reasonable cost but find the conversion rate disappointing. In this case, you need to optimize the landing page. Maybe you’re getting opt-ins at a reasonable cost, but attendees tend to drop off after just a few minutes into the webinar, or they aren’t purchasing your product.
Step 2: Now you’re getting conversions, focus on making them profitable.
For example, you can optimize ads to reduce the cost per webinar opt-in or use a post-webinar email sequence to increase sales.
You can move on to the next step only once you have achieved profitability.
Step 3: This step is about testing how much you can scale while staying profitable. In the ad bidding system, costs increase as you spend more.
Which Ads Perform Best on Facebook and LinkedIn?
I also get asked this question all the time. People say: “Oh my God, Hootsuite and Ad Espresso have so much data! Can you tell us what’s definitely working? Is it video, image, carousel, lead ads, interest targeting, broad, lookalike? What is it?
To the above, I say: “Ketchup or caramel sauce?”
We know not to try ketchup on our morning cereal or add caramel to mashed potatoes. Marketing works the same way; we cannot generalize. My advice is to: TEST, TEST, TEST.
I was at a festival in Chiang Mai one day, and I ran into a sweet dumpling with peanut butter inside that had chili and crispy garlic on top. Normally, you’d think that combination just wouldn’t work. It was supposed to be a dessert, not a savory dish, right? But good God! I tried it and ended up enjoying the best dessert I’ve ever had! I’d literally travel there just to have it again.
The same applies to ads. When the prevailing belief was that ads should be short and only images mattered, I used storytelling to craft longer copy. Using persuasive long copy is how I ran campaigns for Strategyzer, earning them $18 for each $1 spent on ads, while their previous ad only made $0.40 for each $1 spent on ads. Questioning conventional wisdom is also how I helped an insurance broker save $1.5 million in ad spend. If you want to read up on how I got those results, I’ve gone over these cases in greater detail on my website’s blog.
By the way, I’ve never tried ice cream with fries, but people say it tastes good.
3. People Say Facebook Knows You Better than Your Mother. That’s not true.
Many press articles have claimed over the years that Facebook knows you better than your mother.
Here’s a question: Has Mark Zuckerberg ever changed your smelly diaper? If Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t changed your smelly diaper, then Facebook doesn’t know you better than your mother.
Now, let me tell a story that proves FB doesn’t know me better than my own mother. Back in 2019, I needed to go to Hong Kong during a very violent protest. My mother said: “Go to the hotel, go to the bank, but don’t leave your hotel afterward to go anywhere!” I said: “Mom, I wouldn’t.” She said: “Sarah, I know you.” I said: “I promised you, Mom, I’m not going out.” She persisted: “I know you.”
The picture below, which I took at night, proves my mother was right after all.
Later during the trip, I sent my mom this next picture of a cat café. She never objected. Did she really think I had a cat café in my hotel? It’s like when I was small. Back then, she used to say: “You never ever drink from the same cup, can, or straw as another kid! You don’t know what nasty disease other kids can have!” But the cat drinking from the same cup as me was fine. She was like: “OMG, the cat is so cute! The chef is doing quality control.”
We live in a world full of double standards. If you’re a cat, you get away with things humans don’t.
Let’s be honest. Could Facebook have predicted my behavior in Hong Kong as accurately as my mom?
Next, we’ll uncover why Facebook’s targeting isn’t nearly as laser-targeted as people believe — and what you can do about it.
An Example of Facebook Being Far from Laser-Targeted
For a while, I used to post weird food combinations on my Facebook wall.
People ended up unfriending me. A friend was like: “Sarah, stop it! I might have to unfollow you if you keep doing that.” On top of that, Facebook assumed that she was engaging with me out of interest and started recommending her pages and groups related to weird food combinations.
Another example of Facebook and targeting is that, apparently, Facebook is the biggest employer in Algeria, with 660K people on board. If you asked Facebook for people living in the United States who happened to work at Facebook and are CEOs, there are 260 of them.
On top of that, the term “interest targeting” is so misleading! A user might see a post about Bill Gates island-hopping in Greece on a superyacht and leave an angry comment saying: “No one needs a $675 million yacht they use for only 7 days a year!” As of then, whenever an ad uses the “luxury yacht” interest, it likely will reach that person, too.
All of this is based on the activity, including the keyword that was tagged on the post, not on actual interest. Some advertisers might run ads with the mindset that the target audience is really interested in luxury super yachts.
How the Heck Do You Create a Profitable FB Campaign Despite Imperfect Data?
The good news is FB ad success isn’t only about targeting. It is also dependent on content, persuasion, funnel, copy, and the art of interruption marketing.
I meet a lot of people who think they only have a targeting problem. There’s resistance to focusing on other areas because targeting is relatively simple and it’s not much work.
Working on elements such as the content, the offer, persuasion, funnel, copy, and correctly executing interruption marketing takes more time. Yet, that’s what separates successful Facebook advertisers from those who struggle.
What should we do about FB sometimes having imperfect data? Facebook is the art of interruption marketing, so it’s less scary than you think. This also brings us to our next point.
Think of Running FB Ads as Interruption Marketing
Many people have told me, “Just use Facebook targeting to find my perfect client!” It’s as if they imagine there’s some magical and perfect targeting that guarantees reaching an audience dying to buy their product.
In reality, Facebook ads don’t work that way. You’re interrupting people who weren’t thinking about you two seconds ago. It’s on you to convince them to care about your offer and create the desire for your product.
Say I go to Google and type the keyword: ear doctor. I’m actively looking for an ear doctor because my ear is aching. That’s called demand fulfilment. In this case, someone is actively looking for a product or service, so you raise your hand and say: “I’m the best ear doctor in town! I have all these diplomas. Book online now.” Right?
FB, in contrast, is about demand generation. It’s about creating desire.
Think of FB marketing as the same thing as interrupting a perfect stranger in a coffee shop who’s not looking for your product or service. Now, imagine you’re in that coffee shop, and you walk up to a woman who is deep into a book and sipping her latte. You start the conversation with: “Excuse me, I happen to see you have a mustache, and it just so happens that I’m a doctor who specializes in hormonal imbalance.” Chances are she will throw her coffee on your face. ☕💦 This scenario mirrors what happens to social media users as they’re often bombarded with ads for which they didn’t ask.
Instead, you need to go into a coffee shop where nobody knows you and hold a conversation to the point where people say, “Yes, please!” to your best offer.
Let me now share two case studies on how I improved ad campaign performance by using more persuasive ad copy.
Case Study One: Reducing Lead Cost by 3.15x Writing Copy Like a Movie Script
This is Julia Haart. She flew for around 16 hours from New York to Hong Kong to meet a tycoon named Mathew Yang so she could sell him shoes. When she arrived, the man said: “You only have 5 minutes; I’m in a rush. Be quick.” She almost panicked and didn’t go through with her presentation.
Panicking, she thought: “OK, I’m getting all my high heels, putting them on the table, and getting all the women in the office to try them.” Everyone was like: “Oh my God! They’re so comfortable!”
She let the product do the talking.
Suddenly, five minutes had become three hours, and this business deal became one that not only saved her company but also turned her into a multimillionaire.
The question now is how to do that for your ad.
You do it by writing ad copy that reads like a movie script.
Now, you might be wondering: What does that even mean?
If you gave a movie director your ad as a movie script, would they immediately understand how to direct that scene?
Saying “he was romantic” doesn’t provide enough detail for a movie director to create a scene. However, if I describe how “he wrote I love you on the floor using rose petals,” any director could better visualize and direct that scene.
For an ad copy to pass the “movie director’s test,” it should be easy for readers to visualize what’s described in the ad and engage their imagination.
I used this strategy for Vesna Hrsto, who is one of the top 10 naturopaths in Australia & New Zealand. For one of her ads, the cost per webinar opt-in was a staggering $15.19, which I cut down to $4.82 by re-writing the ad copy in a cinematic style.
Below is a screenshot of the original ad before my re-write:
Using the phrase “constant worry” didn’t paint a vivid picture. It doesn’t help the audience visualize what the ad is describing. You’d likely get ten different answers if you asked ten people what that means to them.
Here’s the ad after my re-write. This transformation made the ad more engaging and helped the client drastically cut lead costs, demonstrating the power of cinematic-style ad copy.
Let’s now see how that works in real, physical life, as well. Here’s an example of using copy and persuasion to create desire from a client who was on SharkTank.
Case Study Two: Helping a Shark Tank Company Get the Most Sales from FB in a Single Day through Persuasive Ad Copy
Another client with whom I worked had been on the Shark Tank TV show and was very successful. But her ads had stopped being profitable.
Thirty years ago, rent prices in London, Brighton, Manchester, New York, were a lot cheaper than today. The same happens with FB. As the number of advertisers increased, ads became more expensive, and hers stopped being profitable.
When we talked, she said, “The problem with our FB ad might be targeting optimization.” I said: “You think your ads aren’t targeting the correct audience. Maybe you’re reaching the correct audience, but the ad copy isn’t convincing enough.”
37% of people can’t sleep because of back pain. With back pain so widespread, it was clearly not a targeting issue but rather a need to be more persuasive.
Above was the ad she was using, which is basically saying: “You have a problem with back pain? I have a product.”
I call that: “You want tomato? I am selling tomatoes. Do you want potatoes? I sell potato.”
People are just stating what they sell.
Instead, write your ads as if you were reading from one of your Clients’ diaries.
The ad now tells a story as if I were a creepy person who went and broke into one of her client’s homes, stole their diary, and wrote this. I emphatically wrote it as if I was reading from someone’s diary. That ad didn’t just make her campaign profitable again, but she made the most sales in a single day from Facebook because of it.
I also got to write a detailed case study about this, which is fully available on my blog. I’m already coming to a close on this post, but here are a couple of pointers before we wrap this up for today.
Here’s Something We Can All Learn from a Coffee Shop in Venice
If you go into a Venetian coffee shop and do like the Italians do, which means ordering an espresso and drinking it while standing, you pay €2. If you want to sit down and enjoy your coffee, you’re paying €14.
I’ve seen cases when the desktop placement was converting way cheaper than mobile into leads. But FB gave us way more impressions on mobile just because it had more mobile inventory. I’ve even seen extreme cases where 90% of impressions went to the audience network, which is banner ads inside games like Mafia Wars and so on.
It’s become better over the years, but even so, always keep an eye on where FB is showing your ads. Better to be careful than sorry.
Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket.
I was running ads for a Photoshop editing course once, when Facebook sent me an email saying my ad was rejected to protect against election interference.
I want to know in which country politicians talk about Photoshop during a campaign.
I even had clients whose ads on learning Spanish and treating adrenal fatigue were labeled as political propaganda, which prevented us from running ads for weeks!
What was once even crazier was an ad about insomnia getting labeled as adult material — and rated X. I won’t even expand my thoughts on that.
As a last critical item, let’s just say that if all of your sales, leads, and revenue come from FB or only one traffic source, you could get into trouble – eventually. FB might claim you’re running what you shouldn’t at any point while you’re completely innocent. It’s good to know that beforehand.
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