Spent $1k on ads. Zero sales. Lessons Learned.
Hi IH,
This is a cautionary tale of how I didn't listen.
I launched Modern Memories (https://modernmemories.co) and was super excited. We sell kits where you write letters to your children, significant other or even yourself and we deliver them in the future. This was a product I really wanted.
I reached out to my limited groups of friends and family, who gave great feedback and even made a few purchases (3). Fueled by my success, I turned to telling the whole world about it.
I started talking to potential customers online. I joined Facebook groups, reddit communities etc. I made more sales (17)!
But it was taking too much time. I needed MORE. How can I reach hundreds of users?
ADS!
I hastily created a few ads, and quickly put them on Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, Google! I nervously waited as they went live. I could FEEL the surge of users and orders about to come in!
And then I kept waiting... impressions kept going up and so did $ spent. Got some visitors too. I had told myself I will test it with $200, but each time I convinced myself I just needed to show more ads. $200 became $500 which eventually became $1000. Still ZERO orders.
Lesson learned. You have to do things the right way, even if it's hard sometimes. Back to talking to potential users.
My ask: If you are interested in Modern Memories and are willing to talk to me, comment below, or email me at [email protected] or text me at 9174729809. Obviously I'll hook you up with a discount.
Thanks!
Did you set up your FB ads for conversion? And did you use the 17 sales to figure out your initial targeting?
If you didn't get 15 sales within a week from the ads, the FB algo would not know what to do for you to get more sales.
Did you also have some kind of intent capture? Like a freebie email list or a pdf to download? Even if you wind up with 0 sales, it's great to see if a cohort of a few thousand visitors and a few dozen signups can convert later on.
On another note, Facebook Ads are super duper cheap if your intention is to get them into a Facebook Group. Even before you spend on ads, you can start a Facebook group and Facebook will do the promoting for you after a few hundred. The cost can go down to like 1 to 3 cents per Facebook Group member (or less) and then you can see conversion from the group to sales later.
Fun, broad, topics make for easy to join groups: I made one called I Love Google Sheets to promote my course Better Sheets.
You can also create a bunch of new groups (it's free) and name them all sorts of things. Try many to see what works.
You can try names with "I Love..." like "I love Old Timey Photos", "I Heart Nostalgia", "I Love Love Letters"
Or use "memories": "You Can't Replace Memories", "Childhood Memories Rock!",
Or try some fun names tangentially related to your product: "Physical Nostalgia", "I Write Letters To Myself", "This Reminds Me Of My Dad", "This Reminds Me of My Mom"
This is gold! 🔥 Thank you!
Could you please tell me how can I promote a facebook group? I was looking around in the options and it only allows me to promote a page or an external url. I could not find a setting combination that would allow me to run a paid campaign for a facebook group.
Create a fb page for the group. and advertise the page in proxy of the group. Then invite those on the page to the group.
This. Great advice.
I've been guilty of this too. Thanks for sharing
I hate Facebook, Google Ads, spent $5k and no sales, just not relevant traffic. After having such awful experience i tried outdoor advertising and it worked. This is how i built my second startup called Murmur, AdTech product to bridge outdoor advertising with online.
Murmur is the world's first smart advertising system that reaches mobile audiences on the streets of major cities. Using our smart car-top billboard technology, advanced AI and big data, we can collect data in real-time and retarget them dynamically via online ads.
We have startup plans as well, just for $99/month
Seems like you went the CPM route instead of the CPC one which is always a terrible idea.
Thanks for sharing, will try it out.
Awesome! I truly appreciate it. Use code “APPRECIATION” for 20% off!
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Google, bing give out free ad credits. Always look for discount and credits for service you use. Plus do not assume that people will know you are from India. Add the country code +91 in front of your phone number.
I’m not. I’m actually from the US.
In that case I assumed that you are from India as your number looks exactly like one. Add +1 in front of your number so others would know that you are from US.
Thanks for sharing.
Perhaps your ad set isn’t correct?
What indicator did you see that trigger you increase the ad budget?
Spend money in ads isn't equal to more users or leads, it depends if you have not idea about what you doing, you need to talk with and FB ads expert. Influencer ads expert, etc.. or spend hours even days learning about this topic.
There's still lessons to learn from ads though. Did you a/b test anything while you were running ads? You definitely have to use ads to test and learn. Every ad you make ought to be testing some hypothesis. Can I improve my click through rate with this ad variation? If I send someone to a different landing page can I get them further along in the sales funnel? Can I get people to send me their email address as the first part of the funnel? With an email address you can do email marketing later if they never make it through your sales funnel. Every single ad you put out there ought to be testing something and you should learn something from every single one. Its not just throwing money out for clicks. Its spending money for a nice quantifiable way to a/b test things. You can even ab test your product with ads and some site changes. For instance if you sent people to a different landing page that had no lines on the letters versus a landing page that has lines on the letters. You don't even have to produce the product to test whether there's an interest. Anyway, best of luck.
That's why I like to start a project with 0 ad spend, and focus on growing organically first, before scaling to ads.
That's how I rolled with Open Startup List until I sold it. I wrote an ebook about how I did so.
I’ll check it out!
I definitely agree. I just got lazy and greedy.
I like the time capsule idea. However, I find the landing page not exactly hitting the spot. There's definitely room for improvement on the copywriting and the CTA. And maybe use a nostalgic video for the main background instead of the current image. It's a product building on people's emotions, so it's crucial to get that signal right.
I agree. Got any resources or services I can use to improve my landing page?
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I will try it! I think thats a great idea. What about a digital product? Like FutureMe?
This comment was deleted a year ago.