How LONG Should You Run A Facebook Ad For?

0:00hi guys is Ben Heath from lead guru and in this video I'm going to talk about how long you should run a Facebook ad for it's a very important question I get asked it all the time something I'm going to cover in this video now before I get into that just wanna quickly mention that at the end of this video I've got a free facebook advertising resource I think you can find very very valuable so make sure you stick around to the end of the video for that now with that said let's let's get into it so I've got an example Facebook ad account in front of me and I'm just

0:29gonna quickly show you exactly sort of you know how we might structure the ads how long we run them for how we'll make adjustments acceptor et cetera so I've created an example campaign I'm gonna click into that and I've just got one example ad set now if you've seen my videos on Facebook ad campaign structure you'll know that I usually like to have three to five ads that's live at any one time in fact I'll include a link in the video description below to another video that detail is my ideal Facebook ad campaign structure so if you're wondering about structure go ahead and check that out

0:58but then when I click into this ad set you'll see that I've got four ads in here now these are just blank ads I'm just demonstrating this for demonstration purposes and we've got example app one example a two example a three an example ad four and that's usually the number of ads I'm going to start with in each ad set three or four ads something like that so let's say we launched a new Facebook ad campaign we're gonna have three or four different ads running at any one time and we're gonna do that because we want to test multiple variables what we want to test which ad format works best okay we then

1:29want to test you know if image ads performs better than video and carousel and are we testing what type of image works maybe we've got a few different options perhaps we're testing different headline variations different compilations there's lots of elements of a Facebook ad that you want to test and that testing becomes really important and is an integral part of how long you run a Facebook ad for so the first thing I'll say about length of time when it comes to running a Facebook ad is there's no sort of predetermined length of time that we use it that we sort of religiously stick to okay so there's no

2:02like we're going to run an ad for a week or two weeks or a month it's very much dependent on the results that we see and how the testing process goes so said will usually start with three or four ads in an answer okay we will launch in your campaign and then we're going to assess things usually in seven day increments so let's say we launch campaign on Wednesday we're going to take a look at it again next Wednesday and what we're going to do is we're going to pause the underperforming ads and leave the best-performing ones running so let's say for example that you know example

2:35and one and example ad to have not performed very well but three and four have three and four we will keep running and then we may create two new ads example at five an example at six to test against three and four so let's say for example when we first launched campaign that was an image that was an image that was a video and that was a video ok video performed much better clearly therefore let's test some other video ads then what we're going to do is that's how we create example at five example at six we will then wait another week and see which ads perform and best

3:07over that time period okay let's assume that at that stage example ad four didn't perform very well but example ad three did example at five an example ad six didn't perform very well either well let's go ahead and pause those then we're going to keep going through that process each time we're testing different elements so as I said we might be testing the ad format we might be testing the ad copy perhaps the the headline lots will work on way through the various elements of ad testing in fact I'll link below in the video description to another video all about how we test and how we go about testing

3:40new ad creative but what I'm basically saying here is that the length of time that you run an ad for is dependent on the results that you see if example and three is our best performing ad in you know through all these layers our testing and it does happen sometimes we will keep that ad running and we have kept ads running for months I'm pretty sure I'd have to go back through and take a look at a client account but I'm pretty sure there will be at least one example of where we've had one ad running for more than a year now that's where usually I always save it hi

4:14you know most ads are going to be only running for let's say a week maybe two weeks because then when their performance drops off we're going to pause them some ads that perform very well then lifespan is probably going to be in that say two three four month range the ones that do perform very very well but as I said we're very much open to the data of what we see now there are things that are going to affect how long you can run an ad for the example I've given here is based on evergreen ads so ads that can be run indefinitely they're not tied to

4:43a you know a national holiday or a special promotion that's got a limited time offer obviously those ads are going to need to be paused when they you know when the time expires and they're no longer relevant this is assuming that this is an evergreen process and it's also assuming the certain criteria met so you have a large enough target audience you are not going to be able to run an ad for three months if you've got a really small target audience let's say you're a local business you're going to need to create new ads more regularly to prevent an fatigue and that means that you're not going to be able to run each

5:17individual Facebook or Instagram ad for as long as if you're advertising nationally or internationally because you have a larger target area and the other thing to get take into account is budget so the more you spend on a Facebook ad campaign the quicker people within your audience are going to see your ad the quicker and fatigue is going to start to set in and the quicker again you're going to have to refresh and creative so smaller audiences larger budgets are two things that mean you're not going to be able to run your Facebook ads for as long and you're going to have to refresh things but we

5:50see lots of businesses and I take a look particularly in my in my group and things like that people who are running Facebook ad campaign spending let's say 20 dollars a day and they're advertising to hundreds of thousands if not audiences in the low millions you know hundred thousands people audiences in the low millions with that sort of budget and that sort of audience size if you find a winning and one that performs very very well you can run that for months maybe even longer than a year okay it really can be run for a very very long time and when it comes to the testing and

6:22replacing new ads if you're in that sort of scenario twenty dollars a day let's say less than fifty dollars a day and you've got an audience in the hundreds of thousand or larger and you don't need to be refreshing and creative and going through that testing new ad process as quickly as I just described so we're doing so once every week usually we're usually working with companies at spending probably an average about $10,000 a month so minimums about 3,000 all the way up to you know if some spending over a hundred thousand a month but on average I would say we refreshing add creative once a week between once a

6:54week and every two weeks but if you're operating with a much smaller budget than that and your audience sizes are too small where you could really extend that so perhaps you're pausing underperforming ads and creating new ads to test against the best performer once a month instead of once a week something along those lines so very much it's dependent as I said on on the results that you see you should be open to running ads for longer given the results in that ad is your best performer why pause it you know results if you're worried about an fatigue the way you realize that a fatigue is becoming a

7:30problem and started to kick in is that your results start to drop off it's not something that you know you can just say oh I must have ad fatigue by now therefore I should turn my ad off well actually if your results are strong no and fatigue isn't an issue yet so you don't need to pause it as I said you can't run an ad for longer than a month because ad fatigue will kill your campaign there are many cases where that's not the scenario so be results-oriented when the results start to drop off is a good chance as a fatigue and that's the point at which

7:57you need to test new ads and as I said this is question I get last about a lot when people want to test new ads they often ask me do I pause all of the previous ads I just run and the answer is no leave the best-performing ads running because if an ad performs really well why didn't you want to run it for three months or longer okay and also when you're creating new ads be aware that the structure of your best performers so far should help inform the structure of your new ads so let's say for example that slideshows are working really well for you we'll create a new

8:33slide show ads to test against the previous performers and if a certain headline very you know the focus on honor on a benefit of your product or service is working really well or then focus on that in or something similar in the future ads that you create to test against nuclear and created one thing I'll also mention on the length of time around you how long do you want to run your your Facebook asks for is plan with a longer timeframe in mind as opposed to a shorter timeframe so a lot of Facebook advertisers I see will run a campaign for you know 2 or 3 days and then they

9:07will create a new campaign and this particular case when people are using lifetime budgets I'm not a fan of using lifetime budgets I'd much prefer daily budgets but they will be creating campaigns very very often that's not something you want to do it's much better to run your ads for longer than it is for just two or three days because remember the learning things when an ad is first launched it will go through the learning phase Facebook's basically working out who responds to this ad when should we deliver this ad should we deliver this out at 9:00 a.m. or 7:00 p.m. or in the mid of the workday and

9:38they're working all those elements out where does this ad perform best as it perform best on Instagram feeds or Facebook stories or all the replacement options that takes Facebook sometime usually around about 48 hours so the first two days of results that you see when you launch a new Facebook ad are pretty unrepresentative of the results that you're likely to see on an ongoing basis so if you see bad results and pause an ad straight away and you've only let it run for two days that's too early you need to extend things out longer that's why I said a minimum of seven days and then assess results and

10:11then go about making decisions on that so in terms of how long should you run run an ad on the shorter end and I wouldn't plan to run an ad for anything less than seven days okay and then I said how long you run that ad for just depends on the results whilst it keeps armor whining keep running it there's no reason why not so be that's a very comprehensive answer that's really answered that how long should you run Facebook ads for it's not a simple and question I can just say two weeks and if people do you should be wary of people who give simple

10:39answers like that the truth and the best results nearly always come from a more nuanced approach now at the beginning of this video I talked about a free facebook advertising resource that I think you'll be interested in I want to quickly tell you about now and that's a free webinar that I've created called three killer Facebook advertising strategy to double or more your revenue now in this webinar I basically break down the three sales funnel as the three strategies that we use as a Facebook Ads agency for our clients all the time these sales funnels deliver fantastic results we generated more than a million dollars with all of them they're very

11:12much tried and tested and I also explained out of those three options which one you want to use depending on the type of business that you have so if your service based business you want to use this one if you're an e-commerce business this one.if cetera et cetera okay which is really really important because as I just said there's no one-size-fits-all when it comes to Facebook advertising you need the right strategy the right sales funnel for your products or services so it's strongly recommend you check out this webinar 6070 minutes long and it's so so valuable if you're looking to get better results Facebook advertising if you use

11:42the wrong strategy nothing else matters not how long you run a face began for not your targeting you're dead in the water so you need to get the right strategy and that's the first stage and this webinar will help you with that there's a link in the video description it's completely free to watch go ahead and check it out now and yeah let me know how you how you get on with it if you enjoy it that'd be appreciated if you enjoyed this video please comment below to let me know please and liked it give it a thumbs up and of course share it if possible and

12:08subscribe to my channel so I released Facebook advertising and SEO related content multiple times per week if that's the sort of thing you're interested in if you want better results in this space I'm very happy to help you out so subscribe click the little Bell notification when you do that way you'll be notified when I publish a new video make sure you don't miss it and yeah best of luck with your Facebook and Instagram out campaigns guys and I will keep producing these videos and I'll talk to you guys soon thanks a lot