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Jessica: I pitted pro dropshippers against each other on some of the most controversial Facebook ads questions. Should you budget $5 a day for ads or more? How long should you run your ads for and should you only target mobile users? These were just some of the Facebook ads questions that I asked and I was expecting the dropshippers to give pretty similar answers to these Facebook ads questions.
But they did not. Find out how successful dropshippers answer some of the most pressing questions about Facebook advertising.
Answering Your Burning Facebook Ads Questions
Jessica: In just a second, you’ll hear very different opinions on Facebook ads questions about how to run successful campaigns. Now, before I pass it over to the dropshippers let’s just make sure we all know what dropshipping is.
Dropshipping is one of the easiest ways to start selling online because instead of buying tons of inventory, you just buy products when you make sales, your supplier ships products to customers for you so that you can sell to customers all around the world.
However, being a successful dropshipper requires constant learning. You just have to stay updated in this game.
Okay, now, let’s find out how pro dropshippers approach our Facebook ads questions.
Objective: Consideration or Conversion
Harry: So I would always start with an ecommerce website conversion campaign and make sure that I’m targeting purchases.
Tim: I will go with the conversion objective because then I have… I can set a clear goal that I want to achieve.
Jeffrey: Conversions always. Purchase and optimize for purchases always because Facebook will send you buyers and you want buyers at the end of the day.
Mike: Conversion objective over consideration objective, definitely. You’re ready to sell, it’s a dropshipping product, if you’re not selling a high-ticket $200 to $300 item, you wanna get them right away. Go for a conversion. That’s what you wanna do, so no reason to beat around the bush.
Ryan: Yes, on Facebook, I always start with the objective as conversion because we’re telling Facebook right away, we want purchases. I know a lot of people will go out there and try to do engagement ads first but Facebook’s very, very smart and if you’re telling them you want purchases on your site and you’re going after conversions, that’s what they’re gonna optimize for you, so every single time I stick with conversions only.
Chris: Which objective? PEP to start with. Collect your data, figure out which one of your ads is the best performing and the reason you run PEP which is the post engagement campaign objective is because it’s the cheapest one and it’s gonna tell you which of your different ads that you’re testing is gonna be performing the best. Once you know that, once you have that data and you understand which one of your ads gets the most engagement, the most click-throughs etcetera, you can then take that information, create yourself a 95 percent video views custom audience, build a lookalike audience off the back of that and then run that new audience as a conversion purchase campaign.
If you wanna go a little bit more high risk and you wanna go straight for a conversion you can do that. It is an option. I’ve done that in the past and I’ve had success with it and I’ve had failures with it. You can go out there and you could guess which one of your ads is the best one and you might fall lucky with it, you might not. I’ve got some winners and I’ve got some losers. You can try it, it’s a higher risk but it’s quicker results.
Target per Ad Set: One or Multiple Countries
Yuliya: Multiple countries per ad set or one country? We have found one country works well for us.
Mike: Yeah. I think for our general interests it doesn’t matter too much but we definitely segment all lookalikes based on country because it’s whatever dropshipping niche you’re in or whatever you’re selling, people in the United Kingdom versus Germany versus the United States may all like the same product but their different interests are very different because they have different media and culture there.
Yuliya: They’re exposed to different things, different buying behaviors.
Mike: So we’d like to just kind of break them up in the lookalikes.
Tim: I start with multiple countries and then after I see which ads are performing well I cut the countries which are not performing that well.
Harry: So multiple countries per ad set is 100 percent fine. I personally like to go with the top English-speaking countries, so, like Canada, Norway, Sweden, the UK, and the list can go on, those sorts of countries.
Ryan: I would target the US in one ad set but then I would go worldwide in a separate ad set. So I would go towards Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and France and all of those other countries. I would lump those into one ad set but I’d leave the US alone just because within Facebook, the US has a very very big audience size and so I kind of like to segment those separately.
Jeffrey: Multiple countries to start off. One country later on for branding to really improve your logistics and delivery times.
Chris: I’ve done both, I’ve tried to do both, I’ve tested both, I’ve seen success with both. I suppose it comes down to the products and whether there’s a demand for the products in the countries you’re using. You can run ePacket countries as a grouping, you can run tier 1 countries, you can run the top 4 countries. You could do all that or you could just run the country that your store is based in, so for me is in the UK so I like to use the UK as a single country sometimes but I also target ePacket countries because that’s got the fastest shipping and they’re more likely to buy than say worldwide countries. So it works both ways, you just need to test and decide which one is the best for you and that product you’re running.
Target Market: Start With Big Four or Other ePacket Countries
Ryan: So when I start I will target any ePacket country, I mean as long as they’re segmented in each ad set correctly. Any… AliExpress winner if I know that’s offering ePacket for that product I will go after that country, so.
Chris: The big four that are more likely to buy from you but it’s also gonna be more expensive to run your ads to. EPacket countries give you a much broader range of people, it’s gonna be cheaper to reach them but you might not get as many conversions. You just need to try and figure out which one is responding best to your ad and figure out which group of countries are best to promote the product to.
Jeffrey: For general products, you could do ePacket because usually has a global demand so other countries would like the products as well. So I would go for ePacket to start off.
Tim: I actually start with all ePacket countries.
Mike: We’ve actually never targeted the rest, so big four.
Yuliya: Oh, yes. Big four.
Target Device: Target Only Mobile Users or All
Ryan: Yeah, so when I start in a new campaign, all I will do is go after mobile. Mobile is gonna be much cheaper as well, and mobile is really good actually. People can shop on their phones any day. Smartphones are getting better and better. So, I only target mobile but if that campaign is doing really well and the product is selling well, you can actually scale out by going to desktop. So then you’re going after both mobile and desktop.
Mike: Mobile users versus all users? I would say all users.
Yuliya: All users. Let Facebook decide where it sends it to, it knows better.
Mike: Yeah, we’ve seen that like 90 percent of our traffic goes to mobile anyway, targeting all users. But there are people that like to buy on their desktops or use their tablets so, no reason to change that yourself, just let Facebook decide.
Jeffrey: I would say mobile at first, initially because I start off with just mobile and that’s what everyone preaches. But nowadays, I do automatic placements, so I do both.
Tim: I target mobile and desktop users to first cover more people in my ads, and also because desktop still has higher conversion rates than mobile.
Chris: I always run all desktop and mobile at first, even with my retargeting campaigns, I always run to desktop and mobile, because you never know where that sales gonna come from. If after say 50 to 100 sales you figure out that mobile is the only one that’s buying from you, you can start to just use mobile further down when you’re narrowing your campaigns.
But, really when you’re first starting out, just run it out to everybody, Facebook will optimize anyway, and if mobile is the one that’s doing better, it will start to weigh your budget towards mobile anyway. So, just leave it open and it gives you the biggest net to catch those purchases with.
Jeffrey: I used to do mobile only and just newsfeed and Instagram feed, but now I’m letting Facebook decide where to put my ads.
Harry: I personally like to set the placement to all placements and let Facebook do the work themselves.
Audience Size: Fewer or More Than One Million Audience
Harry: Always more than a million, just so that I’ve got room to scale further.
Chris: Either. Doesn’t really matter, I suppose as long as you have more than say 250,000 in your audience, it gives you enough people to try and go at without your CPMs being too high, your cost per thousand impressions. Ideally, I like to keep it over a million, that’s personally what I do, but I have had success with as little as 250,000. So again, it comes down to the product, it comes down to how much demand there is for the product, and if you can reach enough people at a low-cost.
Yuliya: For the first ad, less than a million or more than a million? We kind of disagree on this. I say less than a million because I think you can really niche down for the first ad and really get those viral audience.
Mike: I’ll agree with that.
Yuliya: Oh, okay.
Mike: For the first day definitely more targeted, but for scaling and everything we’ve seen that Facebook really prefers bigger audiences, but if you’re trying to get those first few sales, try to really target it down, and then after that go as broad as possible.
Ryan: So, I used to think it should be less than one million for the people I’m targeting, but now I go between one to five million people. I actually was on a call with Facebook and one of their reps, and that was the audience size that they suggested. I just stick with what Facebook says to be honest, and it’s worked out really well for me.
Budget: $5 a Day on Facebook Ads or More
Tim: This really depends, I would go with the amount of the product price, so if the product cost $10 bucks then I would spend $10 on an ad, per day.
Chris: Really it comes down to your marketing budget and what you want to do. You should be running your budget at the campaign level with the CBO, the campaign budget optimization now. But really, the budget, it’s your personal decision. The difference between a $5 budget and a $50 budget is the speed it’s gonna reach people. It doesn’t mean you’re gonna get more sales, it just means you’re gonna reach people more quickly. So, really it comes down to you and how fast you want to see results. It doesn’t mean you’re going to be getting more sales if you increase the budget.
Jeffrey: Starting in September, CBO is actually going to be mandatory, but you can use $5 as a starting point for each ad set. So, if you have, for example, five ad sets inside the campaign, you can set them at $5, so the campaign will be $25.
Ryan: I like to start all of my ad sets off at $10 a day. So I’ll create multiple ad sets for that one campaign, that one product, just kind of going over any audience I think would actually buy the product. And from there, you’ll spend a good $50 to $100 that day. But you’ll see what works, and the next day you can actually start profiting by killing the ad sets and then scaling from there and spending much more money.
Yuliya: It depends on whether you have time or you have money. I was impatient so I spent a lot in the beginning. But if you are more patient and you want to take a longer time to see results, you could do $5 a day and see some results for sure.
Mike: Definitely go more than $5 a day but make sure it’s segmented and testing properly so that you are getting useful data out of it and understanding what’s working and what’s not so that you can become more profitable and scaled more quickly.
Yuliya: Generally, the more money you spend the more data you’re going to get.
Harry: So, it doesn’t… The minimum is generally $5, but you’re gonna have to wait for at least kind of minimum three days to get that data. However, if you have got a bigger budget then I would advise setting it at like $8 to $10, just so you get that data a little bit quicker.
Duration: Run Facebook Ads for More or Fewer Than Three Days
Mike: Patience is a virtue, run your ads for more than three days, especially in the beginning.
Yuliya: Yeah, especially like honestly I would say for a week because buying behavior is so different day-to-day that if you run your ads on Monday through Wednesday, you’re gonna get totally different results than if you run them like Thursday through Sunday. So I would say a whole week is pretty good.
Mike: Yeah, and be aware of the time of year, and holidays, and things like that. All of that plays into the effect of the buyer’s behavior. So just understand when you’re running them.
Jeffrey: You have to run your ads for at least 24 hours, I would suggest at least two days before you kill any ad sets.
Tim: I would run them for at least four days to get at least some data, and then stopping the ad and figuring out what works and what didn’t, and then double down on what worked.
Harry: So generally you’re allowed to run it for a minimum of 48 hours, three days being the max.
Chris: Running for stats for three days or less. I like to run my ads, my ad sets, until their break-even point. So say if I’m buying a product for $5 and I’m selling it for $20, my break-even is $15. If then an ad set reaches $15, and I haven’t made a sale, I would just kill that ad. It doesn’t matter whether it’s been one day, two days, 10 days, as soon as I hit that break-even point in that ad set, I will kill it and I will look at another ad set.
Ryan: I will run them for less than three days. So the most I will give an ad set is three days to work. If it’s not working in three days, ’cause in the beginning, it’s gonna kind of vary day-to-day, the click-through rates and cost per click, so, I’ll kinda let it ride out at $10 a day for three days. After that, if I’m not seeing any movement with that ad set, I will turn it off.
Marketing Method: Facebook Ads or Instagram Influencers
Mandie & Aubrey: Neither.
Aubrey: We market ourselves, we’re the influencers.
Mandie: Facebook influencers.
Aubrey: It’s just us.
Mandie: It’s us.
Aubrey: Click here and find out what we mean.
Harry: My bread and butter is Facebook adverts, so I’m always gonna go Facebook adverts.
Ryan: I’m gonna say Facebook ads every day over influencers, but Instagram placements inside the Facebook ads. And I’m actually gonna go very specific on this. I really like the Facebook and Instagram story swipe ups, where you have the full screen. I’ve found much better click-through rates, CPMs, and cost per clicks, just with using the swipe ups.
Jeffrey: Facebook ads because of the scalability of it and everything is more trackable in that way too.
Mike: Facebook ads. Come on. That’s it.
Yuliya: I do influencers unless you wanna create content and say, “As seen on X, Y, Z’s Instagram”, it’s great for social proof, it’s not great for profit.
Chris: Facebook ads for growth, Instagram influencers if you don’t have a lot of money to advertise with and you want to try and get a quick sale. But just be wary that Instagram influencers, there are a lot of fakes out there, and it’s kind of a bit of a minefield to decide which one is the best. But if you’re looking at growing your brand and your store, then Facebook just gives you that entire platform and you can just advertise to millions and millions of people.
Tim: I would go with Instagram influencers because it’s easier to get started and to not burn that much money.
Jessica: Okay, so what about you? Whose answers to these Facebook ads questions do you agree with? Which of these strategies has actually worked for your stores or not? Leave a comment below on their answers to these Facebook ads questions. I’d love to start a conversation here and I’ll respond with my own thoughts. Until next time, learn often, market better, and sell more.