# Beginners Guide to running Facebook Ads for sample Libraries/Plugins



## pulsedownloader (Jun 30, 2021)

If you're about to launch a new product or already selling sample libraries/plugins, this guide will help you through the process of running Facebook ads. 

By now, you’ve probably already had the joy of a retargeted ad stalking you all over Facebook and Instagram for weeks after browsing an online shop. There’s a reason why they’re so popular – they work. 

If you don’t already, you should be running Facebook ads for your sample library or plugin. They’re simple, effective and if setup correctly can generate a steady income stream for your products. This guide will tell you everything you need to know to get started. 









Beginner's Guide to Running Facebook Ads For Sample Libraries & Plugins - Pulse Downloader


By now, you’ve probably already had the joy of a retargeted ad stalking you all over Facebook and Instagram for weeks after browsing an online shop. There’s a reason why they’re so popular – they work. If you don’t already, you should be running Facebook ads for your sample library or plugin...




pulsedownloader.com


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## whinecellar (Jun 30, 2021)

Thanks for the tips! I’ve run a few and it can seem like a black art - despite being very specific about targeting, many of mine seem to go to demographics I didn’t intend, and Facebook has no way to really talk to a human to guide you through the process. Much appreciated!


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## pulsedownloader (Jun 30, 2021)

whinecellar said:


> Thanks for the tips! I’ve run a few and it can seem like a black art - despite being very specific about targeting, many of mine seem to go to demographics I didn’t intend, and Facebook has no way to really talk to a human to guide you through the process. Much appreciated!


Yes you'll rarely be able to talk to someone at Facebook, unless they contact you directly (which happens if you spend enough money on ads, then you get an "account manager")

Its absolutely a black art which is why its usually best to hire someone else who specialises in it. The other issue is that the processes change every few months too so once you've become familiar with it, it will most likely change again.

My biggest tip would be to not allow Facebook to use "automatic" for any settings (eg. placement, targeting etc.). Just choose manual for every setting, then you know what results you're getting based on the setting you've chosen. Additionally, split testing *everything* is really important too - for example, the same ad placed in Feed vs the side bar. Never stop split testing


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## whinecellar (Jun 30, 2021)

Thanks again. When you mention split testing - do you mean running an ad as an experiment just to gather feedback, or?


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## pulsedownloader (Jun 30, 2021)

whinecellar said:


> Thanks again. When you mention split testing - do you mean running an ad as an experiment just to gather feedback, or?


If you have $100 to spend on an advert, choose how to split that up - eg. 50% on a video ad, then 50% a text ad. 

For your video ad, you could split your budget like this:

$12.50 (50% of video budget) targeting interests 1+ 2 + 3
$12.50 (50% of video budget) targeting interestes 3 + 4 + 5 (excluding 1 + 2 + 3)

For your text ad you could split your budget like this:

$12.50 50% budget targeting interests 1 + 2 + 3 in Facebook feed
$6.25 (25% of your text ad budget) targeting interests 1 + 2 + 3 in sidebar
$6.25 (25% of your text ad budget) targeting Instagram audience

Or, you could just focus on a video ad only and split test $50 on on audience and $50 on a different audience. There are lots of variations to try and you won't know which is best until you test.

One other thing to note - this type of split testing only work if you have sufficient budget. $10 won't get you massive results so your tests won't be successful unless you're willing to spend enough money. If you're going to spend say $100, you should split test between 2 variations of an ad, then after say 40% of your overall budget has been used up, see if there is a clear winner between the two and focus your budget on just that variation.

Does that make sense?


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## whinecellar (Jun 30, 2021)

pulsedownloader said:


> If you have $100 to spend on an advert, choose how to split that up - eg. 50% on a video ad, then 50% a text ad.
> 
> For your video ad, you could split your budget like this:
> 
> ...


Ah yes, totally. Thanks again for great tips!


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## babylonwaves (Jun 30, 2021)

@pulsedownloader
in certain regions of the word (the EU for instance) you must not simply use your user's email address (or other forms of private data) to create a custom audience. It's illegal. You need their explicit prior consent because you pass on their data to a third party. Maybe you should mention this in your writeup. Things are changing to the better of the consumer in this regard, the California CPRA is another example.


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## pulsedownloader (Jun 30, 2021)

babylonwaves said:


> @pulsedownloader
> in certain regions of the word (the EU for instance) you must not simply use your user's email address (or other forms of private data) to create a custom audience. It's illegal. You need their explicit prior consent because you pass on their data to a third party. Maybe you should mention this in your writeup.


Yes - Facebook actually asks you to confirm that you have the user's permission before uploading their emails


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## gsilbers (Jun 30, 2021)

Basically half of the products budget goes into these FB ads. if a product costs $100 and you see an Ad for it, then around half of what you pay goes to Facebook.cuz zukerberg needs some dough.
And then having to cut a % with aggregators/distributors who are NOT providing any ads.
Just the little things you learn along the way not mentioned anywhere else.
Oh, and the mass crowd of influencers trying to sell you "how its done" is amazing. like $500 a month for these guys to handle social media, which is not part of the Ads budget.
And of course, that's the last thing you wanna be thinking about when processing samples and trying to come up with a cool concept.
And of courser seeing your product in the "oldies pile" a year or two later at a steep discount when people say "hey that's a reasonable price" when you spent half a year working on it. :/
oh well.


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## pulsedownloader (Jun 30, 2021)

gsilbers said:


> Basically half of the products budget goes into these FB ads. if a product costs $100 and you see an Ad for it, then around half of what you pay goes to Facebook.cuz zukerberg needs some dough.
> And then having to cut a % with aggregators/distributors who are NOT providing any ads.
> Just the little things you learn along the way not mentioned anywhere else.
> Oh, and the mass crowd of influencers trying to sell you "how its done" is amazing. like $500 a month for these guys to handle social media, which is not part of the Ads budget.
> ...


Yes unfortunately creating the product is only the start of the process. 

Its hard to find good freelancers who specialise in Facebook ads as there are a lot of "social media advisors" out there. We've found platforms like Upwork.com very good though and in the long run, a good Facebook ad manager can actually save you money on your ads as well as cover their own costs too in the savings you might get.


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## thesteelydane (Jun 30, 2021)

gsilbers said:


> Basically half of the products budget goes into these FB ads. if a product costs $100 and you see an Ad for it, then around half of what you pay goes to Facebook.cuz zukerberg needs some dough.
> And then having to cut a % with aggregators/distributors who are NOT providing any ads.
> Just the little things you learn along the way not mentioned anywhere else.
> Oh, and the mass crowd of influencers trying to sell you "how its done" is amazing. like $500 a month for these guys to handle social media, which is not part of the Ads budget.
> ...


I feel your pain!


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## thesteelydane (Jun 30, 2021)

For what it's worth I've never seen much return on my Facebook advertising, but that could be because I suck at it, despite following all best practices and split testing everything, or my stuff is so left field and quirky that my primary customers are never on Facebook to begin with. There's also my own internal resistance to targeted adds, because I think they are the bloody devil in disguise. But then again, if I could make more money doing this, maybe I could afford to hire the helping hand I so desperately need, and that would mean I could make more quirky left-field stuff for my loyal non-facebook customers.


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## gsilbers (Jun 30, 2021)

thesteelydane said:


> For what it's worth I've never seen much return on my Facebook advertising, but that could be because I suck at it, despite following all best practices and split testing everything, or my stuff is so left field and quirky that my primary customers are never on Facebook to begin with. There's also my own internal resistance to targeted adds, because I think they are the bloody devil in disguise. But then again, if I could make more money doing this, maybe I could afford to hire the helping hand I so desperately need, and that would mean I could make more quirky left-field stuff for my loyal non-facebook customers.



I think this is a big untapped market for poeple that know some photoshop and knows social media advertising. Every launch is such a pita for non biz guys. dealing with marketing, ads in FB, google, twitter and every outlet out there for info. images resizing. website issues.

maybe pulse can do that? 

PulseMarketer lol. send them the library, images and walkthrough and they do the rest 

the large distributors are also not the best at this. kontakthub and others take such a huge chunk for basically doing nothing but have it on their catalog and a large newsletter list.

Social media specialist always want to get a monthly gig but if you can find someone who can just setup a few ads just one time, it might be worth it.


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## pulsedownloader (Jul 1, 2021)

thesteelydane said:


> For what it's worth I've never seen much return on my Facebook advertising, but that could be because I suck at it, despite following all best practices and split testing everything, or my stuff is so left field and quirky that my primary customers are never on Facebook to begin with. There's also my own internal resistance to targeted adds, because I think they are the bloody devil in disguise. But then again, if I could make more money doing this, maybe I could afford to hire the helping hand I so desperately need, and that would mean I could make more quirky left-field stuff for my loyal non-facebook customers.


Yep, its not for everyone. The more unique and obscure your product, the more difficult it will be to find your niche customer base on Facebook. You can try things like creating "Lookalike audiences" which allows you to create a similar audience to your existing customers, but for the best results you need a large audience size already so it can be accurate. 

If your products are very unique and you can't get traction on Facebook ads, you could focus just on:

1. Retargeting existing customers on Facebook with new products
2. Retargeting people who visit your website (using Facebook pixel) with ads for existing products 

I do agree though - Facebook ads can be really hit and miss so sometimes it makes more sense to spend that budget on something else instead.


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## thesteelydane (Jul 1, 2021)

pulsedownloader said:


> Yep, its not for everyone. The more unique and obscure your product, the more difficult it will be to find your niche customer base on Facebook. You can try things like creating "Lookalike audiences" which allows you to create a similar audience to your existing customers, but for the best results you need a large audience size already so it can be accurate.
> 
> If your products are very unique and you can't get traction on Facebook ads, you could focus just on:
> 
> ...


I’ve been thinking about Google ads, because they seem very good at finding me - and I think my interests are very similar to my customers.


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## pulsedownloader (Jul 1, 2021)

thesteelydane said:


> I’ve been thinking about Google ads, because they seem very good at finding me - and I think my interests are very similar to my customers.


Google ads can be a *lot *more expensive per click but could result in more accurate customer targeting. You can usually get $100 free credit to try it out with (latest offer seems to be up to $150 in matched spending: https://ads.google.com/intl/en_us/lp/coupons/)


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## rdd27 (Jul 1, 2021)

My day-job is marketing, but even so I've found that creating successful ads was challenging when I launched Nocturne Sounds. There's no "right" way to do it and it takes a lot of experimenting to find the optimal keywords and ad copy. However, once you've established some practices that work well then you're pretty much set (until Facebook/Google changes their algorithm again). 

I've found Facebook ads to be much, much cheaper than Google and a bit more successful - but saying that, Nocturne Sounds is very new and I'm still experimenting with what works best for the audience.


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## gsilbers (Jul 1, 2021)

rdd27 said:


> My day-job is marketing, but even so I've found that creating successful ads was challenging when I launched Nocturne Sounds. There's no "right" way to do it and it takes a lot of experimenting to find the optimal keywords and ad copy. However, once you've established some practices that work well then you're pretty much set (until Facebook/Google changes their algorithm again).
> 
> I've found Facebook ads to be much, much cheaper than Google and a bit more successful - but saying that, Nocturne Sounds is very new and I'm still experimenting with what works best for the audience.



Me too. Google seems a lot more spammy and wasteful.

i try to see it from a consumer point of view. 
in Facebook I’ve been hiding add not relevant and now all I get is sample library and vst ads which I’m very happy.
I get to see new stuff I might buy. Discover new brands etc.

in google no matter what i do I still get random kitty litter ads for that one time I searched out of curiosity if those robot kitty litter work and don’t scare cats.
I have no cats. The search was years ago.
I keep saying it’s not relevant .
Still get get damn kitty litter cats.

For google ads I just try to place them on the stuff I’m interested.
Like Christian Henson, junkie xl and the rest of the small group of influencers that do those types of videos.
No groups, no age, no demographics.
Plain old skool over the air type of placement. I know whoever is going to see those videos, they’ll understand my products.
Instead of letting google start placing my ads about sample libraries in videos that peope who have cats and looking for kitty litter willl see


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