At the workshop, an attendee asked me two questions I get all the time. How many ads do you launch at once? All hundred of them at the same time? And how often do you refresh the creative?
My answer to both starts the same way: it depends on the client's budget. Here's my thinking.
How Many Ads Should You Launch at Once?
It depends on your budget, because every campaign needs enough spend to prove whether it works.
Let me explain what I mean by a campaign. For us, it's one long ten-minute video, a series of 90-second videos that lead to it, and one booking link. That's one campaign.
We try to give each campaign a set amount of spend to prove itself. So if a client wants to run ads locally and only wants to start with a small monthly budget, we're probably only going to launch a couple of campaigns. We might create a ton more, but we'll only launch a couple in the first month.
If a client has a big team to feed, it's different. We had a client with a dozen advisors whose seminars weren't picking up, and he needed more appointments. He wanted to start with a large budget. For him, we created a ton more campaigns, and we launched all of them.
Most Campaigns Won't Work, and That's the Plan
I know up front that not all campaigns are going to be successful. Say I launch ten campaigns. Maybe a few of them will work. I assume most are going to be unsuccessful.
That's why we produce so many ads for every client, which I explain in six reasons your Meta ads didn't work.
When Should You Turn a Campaign Off?
When it has spent a few times what you're willing to pay for one booked appointment, and its cost per booking is still too high compared with your other campaigns.
I stop spending on a campaign based on its cost per booked appointment. If it's too high relative to the other campaigns, I turn the campaign off once it hits that limit.
That limit is not enough to get a client from the campaign. But I have to make the call somewhere, because I'm not going to spend what a whole client is worth on every single campaign.
Here's my thinking behind the limit. I spend a few times my allowable cost per result, and the result I'm trying to get from the ads is a booked appointment.
That cost depends on where you advertise. Locally costs more, but you have a higher close rate. Nationwide costs less, but you have a lower close rate. So a local campaign gets a higher cutoff than a nationwide one, because each booked appointment is allowed to cost more.
What's the Difference Between a Campaign and a Hook?
The campaign is the topic, and the hooks are the different people that topic is for.
Another attendee asked whether each campaign is a different hook, or a different topic, like Roth conversions or Social Security. It's both.
I try to have a different topic for each campaign. One might be a Roth conversion campaign. Others could be income planning or tax planning. I don't do a lot of Social Security, because I find it brings everybody, and that can be good and bad. The topic is the core of the campaign. It's what the ten-minute video is about.
Then the 90-second videos have different hooks, aimed at different people. A Roth conversion might make sense for a lot of different people. There are people with 401(k)s and IRAs, people with 457s, people with 403(b)s. People in different professions, with different savings levels and different concerns. That determines my hooks, which is how I open the message. All of them can benefit from the same video, but I want each hook to be as specific as possible.
So one hook might be: I have $1.2 million, should I convert to Roth? Another: I have $2 million in my IRA, should I convert to Roth? Another: I'm a retiring nurse, should I convert to Roth? Same topic, same ten-minute video, different hooks. To see how we write them, read how to script a Meta video ad for an RIA.
Why Do Specific Hooks Matter So Much Now?
Because Meta's Andromeda update tries to make the feed as relevant as possible to each person, so the more specific ad gets priority.
The reason to use different hooks for specific situations is Andromeda, the update to Facebook that's trying to make the feed as contextually relevant as possible for every person scrolling through it.
Let me give you an example. I own a business in financial services. I might see an ad that says, if you're a business owner, watch this. Or, if you're a business owner in financial services, watch this. Or, if you own a financial planning firm, watch this. The ad that's more specific to me is going to get higher priority in the algorithm, and it's going to be shown to the right people. Facebook reads the ad, looks at the video and the transcript, and serves it to the right person.
No Magic Bullet, Just a Lot of BBs
Is one of those specific ads going to take up your whole budget? Probably not. But I can run ten of them, each spending a smaller amount. I want each hook to be as specific as possible to a different subsegment, knowing I'm not going to spend all of my budget on one magic ad.
You don't want that anyway. No ad works forever, and you want diversity. I want a series of ads that are successful. Someone said it best: there's no magic bullet, there's just a lot of lead BBs. That's how we want to think about it. You want a lot of winners instead of one giant winning campaign that leaves you in trouble when it stops working.
That's also the answer to how often to refresh the creative. There's no set schedule. It depends on the budget, and on which campaigns are still winning. No ad works forever, so you keep launching new campaigns and new hooks. For how the campaigns fit into the whole system, see the complete guide to Meta ads for RIAs.
How Fast Do Appointments Come After Launch?
Very quickly: in most cases, within a couple of days to a week, depending on the budget.
When we launch the ads, it's usually a couple of days, up to a week, before appointments start coming in. Sometimes less.
Of the six reasons Meta ads fail, the first three, zero leads, leads below your minimum and fake leads, we don't have issues with. The last three, no-shows, no intent to hire and nobody becoming a client, are more of an issue. More on that in why your ad can't ask for the booking.
