5 Surprising Things That Happened When I Spent $10,000 per Day on Facebook Ads
#4: My Instagram following skyrocketed
It all started with a $20 budget.
Having thrown a lot of money into the Facebook black hole in the past, I was hesitant to waste any more without a return. But, this time, I was confident I had a solid product that people wanted to buy, so I cautiously dipped my toe back in, crossed my fingers and waited.
I could never have predicted what happened next.
Since my product was an online course, I knew the campaign was profitable as long as every dollar spent on Facebook Ads returned more than that in sales.
When that initial $20 delivered $70 of sales, I deemed it a fluke. Still, I conservatively increased my daily budget to $25. Then $40. Within two weeks, I was making over $300 in daily sales from a $100 budget.
At this point, I realised that perhaps it was more than a happy accident. So, I kept scaling it. Just two months after I first published the campaign, I spent $10,000 in one day and sold double that.
The first big surprise was realising that my Facebook Ads were, in effect, doubling my money. I was on track to hit my three-year goal in 12 months. I didn’t know it then, but more surprises were waiting for me.
1. I Got Trolled
In my mind, trolls were like crocodiles — I knew they existed, but I’d never come across one in real life, so I wasn’t particularly concerned about them. Up to this point, my biggest worry about putting my business out there was what people I knew would think.
One day, I checked my Facebook comments and discovered someone had left this gem:
A week later, someone emailed me a photo of myself, wearing a poop emoji on my head like a tiny hat, accompanied by a nasty message that doesn’t deserve any airtime.
My heart broke. I was simply building my business and trying to help as many people as I could — I didn’t understand why anyone would say such awful things about me.
I took the comments personally. It felt impossible not to. But, with time, my skin thickened, and I realised: The comments these strangers were leaving had nothing to do with me and everything to do with how they felt about themselves.
2. I Accidentally Scaled My Problems
I wish I’d had the foresight to fix all the minor niggles before I started scaling my Facebook Ads. They weren’t significant problems, but they were issues nonetheless — a tiny timezone conversion glitch, an onboarding email that didn’t reliably send, a Stripe error that left purchases incomplete.
The little stones in my shoe had become painful at scale.
Up to this point, customer service had been simple. I managed it all by myself because there wasn’t much of it. It was easy. But, because I’d also scaled my problems, I now had a massive influx of customer support emails to action.
Scaling forced me to delegate customer support — something I should’ve done far earlier in my business. I was under pressure to implement customer service processes quickly, so it was no surprise that teething issues arose.
3. I Needed To Produce Endless Ad Creative
I still manage my Facebook Ads. I’m good at it, I enjoy it, and it’s something I haven’t felt the need to outsource yet. At $100 per day, it wasn’t an issue.
At $10,000 per day? I started to see how this alone could be someone’s full-time job.
The larger the ad spend, the more frequently people see the ads. A higher frequency means the creative is exhausted quicker, and it simply stops performing as well as it did when it was first published.
I knew this before I started scaling. What I didn’t realise was just how much fresh creative I’d need to produce to keep getting the same results I’d got at the start.
The solution? I outsourced video content, graphic design, and copy. Bringing in experts made the campaign manageable and profitable again.
4. My Instagram Following Skyrocketed
I chose to use the Instagram placement options when I set up my Facebook Ads campaign because I knew my target audience was active there.
I didn’t realise it at the time, but scaling my ad spend would also explode my Instagram follower growth.
I don’t know if these new followers had clicked through to my profile from the ads or if they were following me from my onboarding call-to-action, “Connect with me on Instagram”.
Either way, the growth was noticeable — in April and May 2020 alone (the peak of the campaign), my Instagram following grew by 10,000.
Would I invest this much in Facebook Ads just to grow my Instagram following? No. But it was a nice side effect.
5. My DM Inboxes Exploded
At the peak of the campaign, I received endless direct messages on Facebook and Instagram. Most were silly questions, like “What is a podcast?”.
Others wanted to pick my brain, asking anything from “Which microphone should I use?” to “Do you think my podcast idea is any good?”.
None of these people intended to buy from me, but they assumed that I was willing to dish out free advice. Unfortunately, the clutter in my inboxes meant I often missed serious customer support questions.
To counter this, I set up the following autoresponse for both Facebook and Instagram:
Implementing this autoresponder was one of the quickest yet most impactful tasks I’ve done in my business so far.
Takeaways
If you’re thinking about scaling your Facebook Ad spend, here are some lessons you can learn from my mistakes:
- Prepare yourself for trolls, as you will likely get a few negative comments. Remember that it’s not about you, and try not to take it personally.
- Fix all the minor issues before you scale. Scaling will only amplify your problems, and the slightest niggle can quickly become a big concern.
- Identify who will be responsible for managing your Facebook Ads and producing fresh creative. If you need to outsource any part of the process, try to do this earlier than you think you need to.
- Put systems into place for managing your Facebook and Instagram inboxes. Consider setting up an auto-responder message to answer common questions.
Facebook Ads can be a phenomenal way for a small business to scale up product sales. However, like anything in business, when it comes to running Facebook Ads, it pays to expect the unexpected.
