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For the last 6 months, my meta ad account recorded a total spend of $611k.

I’ve seen ads flunk…

I’ve seen ads boom…

I’ve seen ads that, despite not touching it for months, are still pulling in leads every single day.

So is there any magic formula?

I wish there was…

Because every business is different.

While there is no magic pill…

I do spot certain patterns across successful ads and businesses.

The best I can do is to put together the insights I’ve gathered so far so you can hopefully benefit from it.

Here are the 6 lessons I discovered after spending $600k in 6 months on Meta ads:

1. Spend most of your time thinking about your offer.
   
2. Getting leads is just the beginning. This one thing is more important.
   
3. There are still a lot of quality buyers on Facebook and Instagram.
4. Trust is declining, so start building trust.
5. Rented audience vs. owned audience
6. Ads can’t save your business.

Let’s dive into it.

1. Spend most of your time thinking about your offer.

Before launching any ads, I spend the most time discussing with the business owner about their offer.

An offer is not necessarily a promotion or discount.

It’s simply what you’re selling on your ad.

It’s your ad angle, it’s your product/service.

It’s your solution to your target audience’s pain.

Business owners who know their market really well, usually know what offer and angle to come up with. 

So it’s got everything to do with the messaging to the intended audience.

Let’s use my own business for example. 

I sell beginner piano lessons through my ads.

I’ve been doing that for years, and it’s doing fine. 

But after several experiments, I learned that my target audience enjoys learning a specific genre of songs instead. 

Recently, I launched a keyboard beginners course – Jay Chou edition.

It got filled up in 7 days. 

8 pax at $450, so that’s $3.6k cash collected in a week.

If I were to be specific, 6 pax signed up via my emails (more on this later, in point 5).

And 2 signed up via ads.

After launching the ad, I had to pause after 2 days because the 2 purchases came in so fast.

(I think my cost per purchase was $6, for a $450 course.)

So knowing that this works…

I plan on launching such courses every 2 weeks.

Of course, some genres will have stronger demand.

But still, it works, and gives me positive ROI for my campaigns. 

So back to you:

What do your target audience want?

If you’ve been in business for long… You should know.

You should know what your market wants.

What have they tried, but failed to get the outcome they want.

What do they dislike doing?

What pain are they facing?

These few questions can help you craft a strong offer. 

And here’s the secret that I’ve never really divulged…

Once you come up with a solid offer and an angle for the ad…

You’re on track to creating an evergreen ad.

One that doesn’t require much adjustments after it’s being launched…

And that same angle can still pull in leads every day. 

I realised this is what I’ve been doing with business owners.

Crafting that one solid offer, so we can create an ad that generates leads every single day with minimal adjustments needed.

2. Getting leads is just the beginning. This one thing is more important. 

Businesses that get a huge ROI from their ads has this one thing put in place really well:

Their follow-up process.

If you’ve been reading my past newsletters or watched my videos…

I talk about this all the time.

And I cannot emphasise this enough.

The follow-up is so important in ensuring the success of an ad campaign. 

The speed of follow up.

The mode of follow up.

The consistency of following up with ghosted leads. 

The 7 figure businesses I work with are so disciplined and focused on their follow ups and appointment setting. 

Some businesses have a huge team that does the follow up.

But some businesses have only 1 guy doing the follow up.

Fun fact: 

I know a multi 7 figure business where the business owner himself handles all the incoming leads. 

With an ad spend of around $1.5k/day.

Honestly I don’t know how he does it.

But from this, you should know how important he prioritises his follow up.

Such that he does it personally.

3. There are still a lot of quality buyers on Facebook and Instagram.

I know businesses are venturing into advertising on Tik Tok, Google, Youtube etc…

But I can tell you for a fact that there are still a lot of quality buyers on Facebook and Instagram.

I just know. 

I have a client spending 5 figures every month on Google ads and Meta ads, but they’re now thinking whether to go all in on Meta (as they are seeing more results from Meta).

So if you think you’re getting lousy quality leads, lousy buyers.

Then I’m sorry to say this – you need to re-tweak your angle and offer. 

There are ready buyers on Meta. 

Period.

You just need to have the right message for the right audience.

4. Trust is declining, so start building trust.

While there are quality buyers on Facebook and Instagram…

The truth is, it’s harder to get people to buy from you right from the start of seeing your ad. 

5 years ago, it was super easy to get people to buy from your ad.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like this anymore.

Why?

Because consumers are more wary now and aren’t as trusting.

I’m sure you’ve seen all those ads.

Ads that are scammy looking.

Ads that overclaim and overpromise.

So what’s the best solution to counter this?

To build trust through your content.

Post more content about your product or service.

Show how it works.

Show how satisfied your customers are. 

Tell your story so people know you and can start to trust you. 

The way forward to get more clients online is to combine the power of both paid ads and organic content.

It’s the reason why I’m also posting more content and getting my clients to do the same.

It’s no longer optional.

It’s a must if you want to build a presence online.

5. Rented audience vs. owned audience

This point – I gotta be honest, it’s hard to get some business owners to see this. 

But those who understand this, and take action, are setting themselves up for success in the long run.

So what’s “rented audience”?

When I’m running ads on Facebook/Instagram…

When I’m building followers on their platforms.

I’m “renting” their platform. 

Simply put, the moment FB/IG cease to be around…

There goes all my audience. 

So what’s “owned audience”?

Think about newsletters, communities, forums…

Building an email list is owning your audience.

You get more control.

You own your customer’s data (their emails, names, etc).

If there are no social media platforms around one day…

You can still reach them and market your stuff.

So my advice to business owners is to start thinking about building their own audience instead of renting an audience.

It’s one reason why my business could survive Covid19 purely by sending emails.

6. Ads can’t save your business.

Some business owners think that ads can save their business. 

They think that with more leads, there will be more sales/revenue and everything will be fine.

But the truth is, most businesses don’t have a marketing problem.

What they might have is a product or operational problem. 

And if the fundamental right, having an influx of customers will just add more stress on that and cause the business to crumble.

It’s the exact reason why the smart home company I engaged, closed down last month.

They didn’t have a problem with sales.

But their product couldn’t work.

Their customer support team couldn’t handle all the unhappy customers.

And soon enough, they closed down. 

So it’s always back to the basics.

Build a product that has a product–market fit.

Make sure it works well.

Make sure you can fulfil what you sell.

That’s it. 

In summary, running a successful ad campaign has a lot to do outside of ads and marketing.

It’s really about:

Solving a real problem, following up diligently, building more trust through social content, and having the foundations in place. 

So again, here are the 6 lessons:

1. Spend most of your time thinking about your offer.
2. Getting leads is just the beginning. Following up is more important.
3. There are still a lot of quality buyers on Facebook and Instagram. (If you fail to attract them, then it’s time to tweak your offer.)
4. Trust is declining, so start building trust through social content.
5. Start to build your “owned audience”
6. Ads can’t save your business – so make sure you’ve got the foundations in place.