This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Are meta ads worth the investment? In this episode, we're gonna explore the best practices for running profitable campaigns on Facebook and Instagram in 2025. Got a question from a listener in Texas. He has had mixed results with meta ads. He wants to know how to make his campaigns more consistent and profitable.
We talk about this from time to time. Social media ads can be a great way to waste a lot of money, to spend money in which you never see a return, to spend money that never comes back, to, well, I guess we kind of covered it with waste money, or they can be very effective. And the biggest companies spend millions of dollars on Facebook ads, Instagram ads, sometimes small businesses and side hustlers are also able to be successful spending money and then receiving more money in return in the form of sales, which of course is the goal, to have a positive ROI, return on investment. Let's talk about some best practices to help James and others. Somebody out there, let's hope, get the most for their ad budgets.
Detailed question and my answer coming right up. [Music]
Hi, I'm James from Round Rock, Texas. I've been operating a small online shop selling fitness gear, and I'm trying to figure out how to use meta ads, Facebook and Instagram effectively. I've experimented a little, but the results have been all over the place. Sometimes I get great sales, and other times it feels like I'm just burning through money.
One of the best practices for running meta ads these days, and how can I make sure my campaigns are profitable without wasting my budget? James, let me give you a very practical and specific answer. Meta ads can absolutely work. As I said, big businesses, small businesses, lots of businesses are using them successfully, but they have become more competitive and nuanced over the years. There's also a lot of people losing money on these ads.
So maybe the first thing is set a budget and experiment before you ramp up. If you can afford to lose $5 a day or $50 a day, whatever the number is, do that, but make sure you set that budget so you don't run into major pitfalls. And then for how you set up the ads, know your audience. Like the more specific the targeting, the more effective your ads will be. And Meta's audience tools are really good at this.
They actually help you with this. They do it for you. They can help you narrow it down by demographics, interests, and behaviors. You can test lookalike audiences based on your best existing customers. These groups help you reach people with similar purchasing habits.
So as a pro tip, you want to avoid overly broad audiences. A highly targeted group of 10,000 users, for example, will perform much better than a generic audience of 1 million. So start with these small daily budgets, run A/B tests. We're gonna talk about A/B tests in the next weekend workshop. So that's just coming up in about six days.
Basically you run two different ads with a variable that's changed and you see which one works, then you start serving that ad to new users. And again, Meta will help you with this. Next, use video ads. Video consistently outperforms static images on Meta platforms. Short, engaging videos, 15 to 30 seconds.
The three seconds, the first three seconds, I should say, are the most important. The first three seconds are the most important. Next, optimize for conversions, not clicks. Set your campaign objective to focus on actions that lead to sales, like purchases or ad to cart events, rather than generic metrics like clicks. Doesn't matter how many people are clicking, it matters how many people actually purchase.
So those are a few things to get you started. And a good starting return on ad spend benchmark for Meta ads, which is kind of a metric people use in this industry, is 2x. Meaning that for every $1 spent, you're generating $2 in revenue. You're likely gonna have other costs, so it's not like you're doubling your money in terms of profit, but every $1 spent, $2 in revenue, that's a good metric to aim for. James, good luck.
Effective Meta ads in 2025 can work. Let us know how it goes for you. Listeners, let me know how you're doing as well. sidehustleschool.com, resources there, notes page for every episode, and of course new episodes every single day. My name's Chris Guillebeau.
You're listening to Siduscleschool. [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
