Disclaimer — This is not a get rich quick or clickbait scenario. This is just one example of how well advertising on Facebook can go. There is no guarantee of anything in marketing, especially how much return you will get if you implement the following ideas into your own advertising. However, we have used these ideas in multiple eCommerce businesses across the nation with very positive results.
Before I get into our top-performing month, I want to give some context on the bigger picture. Across this client relationship, we spent a total of $102,135.78 in ad spend, which resulted in $1,378,276.57 in sales — a $13.49 return on ad spend. And… we’re pretty dang excited about that.
We are not very “salesy” people. We’d rather the numbers speak for themselves. In this post I wanted to share with you the best eCommerce month we’ve had for one of our clients and break down the variables that made it work so well.
Let’s jump in.
We had been working with this client for about one year and getting solid results the whole time. In fact, we averaged a $15 ROAS (return on ad spend) all year with them. But November was different. They were going to run a big sale on some of their most popular products and put real budget behind it — or at least that was the plan, until they ran out of inventory because things sold out so fast.
We ran the first sale in early November. The results came back huge. The top campaign targeted cold traffic — people unfamiliar with the product. The bottom campaign targeted warm, existing audiences.
We were excited to see what the rest of the month would bring with Black Friday coming up. In between the bigger sales we ran an awareness ad. Instead of a direct discount on one product or a storewide sale, we bundled some of their top products together and offered a discount on the bundle — a high AOV (average order value) play.
Then came Black Friday. We had everything set up, ready to spend serious money and get serious returns… but three hours into the campaign we had to shut it off because stock was getting critically low. We ended up only spending a small amount.
We finished the month with a Cyber Monday sale, which performed OK compared to the others. We also had dynamic retargeting ads running the whole time, and a few in-between campaigns as well.
By the time November was over, we had spent just $2,784.57 and generated $96,760.70 in sales. We would have easily crossed $100K if the client had the inventory to keep up — which is always a good problem to have.
Why This Month Worked So Well
We’ve narrowed it down to five key variables:
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1The Season This client sells a sugar substitute, and demand naturally picks up heading into the holidays.
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2The Offer They hadn’t run a deep sale in months. Going all the way down to 50% off created real urgency.
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3The Content The videos the client created for their ads were upbeat, trendy, and to the point.
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4The Targeting The audience had already been nailed down after months of fine-tuning. We weren’t guessing — we knew exactly who to reach.
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5The Frequency The combination of promotional campaigns and dynamic retargeting made the ads hard to ignore for the right audiences.
Hopefully this gives you some ideas for your own Facebook advertising. None of these five things are secret — they’re the result of doing the work consistently over time. If you’d like help applying any of these to your own business, feel free to reach out.
I’m Perry Sessions, co-founder of Black Bear Advertising. We’ve been doing digital marketing for over seven years, and within the past several years we’ve built a specialty in health and wellness eCommerce — having spent millions in ad spend and tested thousands of ads specifically in that space. If you want to learn more about how we can help your business, schedule a free call below.