A Simple, Volume-Focused Ad Strategy

Here’s what to do if you’re limited by budget or volume.

So a common challenge I hear from advertisers relates to ads meant to drive a sale.

They can’t generate enough volume of sales, so it’s just not profitable.

While this is especially a problem for low-budget advertisers, it’s not limited to them.

If you’re spending $25 per day, it doesn’t matter how expensive your product is.

It’s going to be challenging to generate much volume at all.

But you can have this same issue whether you’re spending $100 or $1,000 per day.

If it costs $500 or more to get a single sale, that’s going to present some issues.

So let’s talk about some common mistakes and what I recommend you do to give you the best possible chance in a situation where you aren’t generating volume.

The first mistake advertisers make is they think they need to optimize for a different action in the purchase journey.

It makes sense in theory because if the problem is volume, you’ll get a lot more volume by optimizing for initiate checkout, add to cart, or even a view content.

But nearly everyone who attempts this approach quickly realizes why they weren’t doing this from the beginning.

Quality.

We assume that if someone adds to cart or initiates checkout that they’re extremely interested in making a purchase.

They’re just a step or two away from completing it.

But the problem is, as I often warn you, the Meta ads delivery algorithm is literal.

So if you say that you want adds to cart, Meta’s going to get you a whole lot of people who add to cart.

But suddenly, you’ll find that these people do not complete the purchase at the same rate as when you optimized for the purchase.

That’s because Meta doesn’t think you care about purchases anymore because the measure of success is add to cart.

While it may seem counterintuitive, there absolutely are people who make it a habit of abandoning a shopping cart.

It’s a strategy to get emailed promo codes that they may not ever use.

So feel free to experiment with optimizing for one of these events, but don’t be surprised if it doesn’t work out.

Especially if you optimize for view content or a landing page view, where you’re destined to get a whole lot of trash traffic.

The next mistake that these advertisers make is they way overcomplicate their campaign construction.

They may have separate campaigns or ad sets, and they almost always do this for testing purposes.

Because they’re not getting good results, they think that isolating winners will help them get the performance they want.

But this is counterproductive because if you’re getting low-volume results, you’re watering down your budget even more with these tests.

And the results of those tests are almost meaningless anyway because they’re based on such shallow numbers.

Or they’ll restrict targeting or placement to eliminate what they believe are the wasteful demographics or placements.

And doing that is almost never necessary when optimizing for a purchase.

Now I do occasionally see this with low-volume results because Meta’s not able to figure out what works.

Just don’t assume it will happen to you.

And if it does, prove it with breakdowns to determine Meta wastes money on men when you only sell to women.

Or prove that Meta is wasting a large percentage of your budget on Audience Network when you get no sales there.

And if you’re able to prove the existence of that problem, solve it with value rules.

These advertisers will also try using manual bidding with bid caps and cost per result goals, and those almost always end up with disappointing results.

So don’t bother with any of these tactics, they’re just distractions and are unlikely to help you.

Or feel free to try them, but admit when they aren’t helping you.

Here’s what I recommend you do instead.

Start as simple as possible.

Your goal is to limit restrictions and segmentation so you’ll get meaningful results.

Create one campaign and one ad set, and stop all of the unnecessary creative testing that isn’t helping you anyway.

Use the maximize number of conversions performance goal where the purchase is your conversion event.

Stick with the default standard attribution model or use incremental.

But don’t limit to 1-day or 7-day click, for example.

You need volume.

Do not use manual bidding.

Target by location, which usually means countries, but do not bother with age, gender, detailed targeting, or lookalikes.

If you want to provide any of those inputs for audience suggestions, feel free, but don’t obsess over them.

Do not remove any placements.

Start with only one or two of your best ad ideas.

Lean into all of the standard elements of creative diversification.

You want at least one image and one video.

Use all five primary text and headline options.

But most importantly, make sure your text is good!

You’re speaking to a known pain point of a primary customer persona, and you position your product as the solution.

Put a bow on it with a clear offer, and send people to a functional landing page that follows through on your ad’s promise.

That’s it.

Keep it simple.

Don’t touch it for two weeks and see how it goes.

Don’t worry about exiting the learning phase and needing to get 25 to 50 conversions per week.

You want to get as close to that as you can, but you can get good results without exiting learning.

If you don’t get the results you want, which you probably still won’t, publish a couple of more ads that are uniquely different from the first.

Unique visuals and messaging and pain point.

Let those new ads go for another two weeks, rinse and repeat.

Do not start micromanaging everything by turning things off, just let it go.

Now hopefully you’ll start to see some improvement over the results you were getting when you overcomplicated everything.

But if you still aren’t getting the results you need, you do have a couple of options.

The first is a lower priced product with an opportunity for an upsell, and the second is leads.

Of course for either of these, you deal with a unique set of potential problems and challenges.

If a lower-priced product, it needs to be tightly tied to your higher-priced upsell.

You could end up with quality issues where you attract people who don’t want to spend much, and getting the upsell can be challenging.

These same quality issues are common for leads where people will freely complete your form, but they don’t want to buy anything.

But a huge part of your success will be tied to your manual and automated sales processes to get these people to buy.

Whether you start with a lower priced product or go for the lead, just know that this will be a commitment that you can’t evaluate within a few weeks or even a month.

You’ll need to tweak your processes and your offer to help get you the best conversion rate.

Ultimately, you’ll need to figure out the ideal cost per lead that will get you the return to make it worthwhile.

So here’s the bottom of the glass.

If you’re struggling with sales volume, whether it’s at a low budget or you’re selling a higher priced product, you’re not alone.

But resist the urge to overcomplicate your setup or obsess over creative testing or optimize for a different event in the purchase journey.

Keep it simple.

Optimize for the purchase and eliminate all other distractions.

You want all of your budget going to a single campaign and ad set, and unrestricted.

If you still don’t get the results you want after a month or so, consider optimizing for a lower-priced product or for leads.

Just know that you have a huge responsibility when it comes to converting those leads.

It’s not all about whether Meta gets you the results you want, you’re a critical part of this process.