Why I recently turned off my Facebook ads and doubled down on Adwords

Why I recently turned off my Facebook ads and doubled down on Adwords

In many discussions, I've talked about how you should always run ads to pull in traffic but rarely do I talk about not using a specific ad platform for sales.  I usually love running my Facebook ads nonstop for branding purposes, but I'm at the point where I think I don't have to do that much more, and that's one of the main reasons I've slowed down a bit on it. 

I've recently been crunching some numbers, going over loads of data, watching my sales go up and down each month, and I can usually pinpoint what's working and what isn't.  I'll split test for weeks or months before I decide if something isn't working or if it needs to be double-downed on, and I recently came to the conclusion that I'm pausing my Facebook ads for a while to go all-in on Adwords.

Now, I do have more ads running on different networks, I'm just taking my Facebook ad funds and transferring that money into Adwords, and here's why...


Yes, I'm tracking everything
First off, many of you may think I'm not getting sales from Facebook ads because I don't know what I'm doing or I'm not tracking it properly, but I am.  I've been working only for almost two decades, and I was an early adopter to Facebook ads and adjusted my methods as they grew. 

I track everything I possibly can, so I'm sure what's working and what isn't.  If I didn't, I wouldn't know that Traffic Source A was bringing in XXX unique visitors, and Traffic Source B was bringing in XX,XXX visitors per month.  I would have to assume something was working and not know what exactly it was, but I do know because I'm tracking lol.

I was super targeted on Facebook, but not profitable.
When I was running my ads, I was super-targeted, getting the right clicks, editing my ads when needed, and I wasn't profiting.  I would double, triple, and quadruple check my ads and everything related to them to figure out what was going on, and I didn't see anything that was blatantly obvious.  I had a Facebook ads "expert" check it out, and they said everything looked extremely well set up, and they weren't sure why it wasn't profitable.  I even talked to an account manager on Facebook, someone who has to say the ads and accounts look good, and they said, "Honestly, this is one of the best ad campaigns I've seen set up in a long time.  You're targeting is perfect, your ads are perfect, and everything else looks great".

But I wasn't profitable...

I had an "Aha!" moment
This may seem pretty basic to you, but for me, it's one of the things that slipped past my hundreds of hours of combing through data.

Adwords puts me in front of people who are searching for me
When you go on Google and type in "Best SEO Service California," it will show you the top-rated services as well as the people who naturally rank because they know what they're doing when it comes to SEO.  Adwords puts you in front of the people who are searching for you, not people who might be interested, and that's the main reason I switched gears and went full Adwords for now.

Facebook puts me in front of people who might be interested
When you start going through how to target people on Facebook you usually think "These people are interested, so they'll likely purchase from me!" but what you should be thinking is "These people have shown interest in the past to something I sell, and there's a chance they could buy from me, but not likely because no one updates their profiles after they make them!" lol

Think about it, how many times have you targeted people who like specific bands, movies, shows, etc. and think, "I'm going to strike it rich!"?  I can tell you that I haven't edited my "Likes" since 2004 and I know for sure my tastes have changed.

No one talks about this, but it's one of the main reasons Facebook ads tend to flop.  You could have a product that does extremely well on Facebook, and that's great for you, but it wasn't working for me, and I had to switch gears before wasting too much money.

3-month long test...
I tested everything for three months, spent over $1,800 on Facebook ads, and I wasn't happy with the results because I know if I were to put that amount of time and effort into my Adwords campaign I could have quadrupled my investment


Final Thoughts,
Facebook may work for you and your business, but it wasn't working for me, and I hope the above discussion can shed some light on one flaw in Facebook's targeting.  Maybe I missed something, the account manager missed something, or the "expert" missed something, and I need to go back and do another overview of the ads and account, but for now, I'll be pushing more money into Adwords because I know that will bring home the bacon lol


Thanks for reading

- Tommy
https://www.seoclerks.com/user/TommyCarey