meta has released a new bidding strategy and I've had tons of messages comments Etc about this and that's because bidding strategies are really really important and in this video I'm going to explain what this new Facebook ads bidding strategy is and whether or not you should use it so to show you what I'm talking about here I'm in an example at Facebook ad account and I've just created a quick example leads campaign one about to show you applies to other campaign types as well I'll explain more about that um later on but I've gone to the ad set level cuz that's where this uh where you set the bidding strategy and where this comes into effect now let's scroll down the conversion location that's not important for the purposes of this video and then we get to this section here and we've got performance goal for those you aren't familiar that's where you tell mattera what it is that you really want so because we've selected the leads objective it has defaulted to maximize number of leads that's what we're going to want if you're using different campaign objectives you have different options like you could tell meta I want as many landing pages as possible I want as much reach as possible again it's going to vary depending on uh the campaign objective that you choose this video is not about performance goal but it's relevant so you select that to start with and then beneath that we've got this cost per result goal option uh which is the new bidding strategy I've been talking about now this is a really interesting feature I've had so much interest about it I can absolutely see why I think there are some misconceptions about it so I'm going to show you how it works and then talk through the pros and cons whether or not you actually want to use this so let's say I'm willing to pay a maximum of £15 per lead I could come in here and enter in you know £15 as my cost per result got the first thing that I need to clarify with this bidding strategy is that that word goal cost per result goal this is a target not a cap by no means are you guaranteeing when you enter in for example £15 or whatever number it is that you want to enter that you are going to get leads for that price it's a goal it's giving meta information of this is my target this is what I'm willing to pay please work towards getting me that as opposed to it being a hard cap uh that's really important now this replaces some of the other cap options that we used to have cost caps bid caps and things like that really simplifies it down I think this is much better and much more user friendly uh despite the fact that there are of course some uh some misconceptions around things they always have been around the cost caps to do with bidding strategies now the first misconception is you might be thinking well why don't I just set this as cheap as possible right I could set my cost per result goal to a pound it'd be amazing if I get leads for a pound it' be incredibly profitable campaign my leads usually cost $30 why don't I try and get them for $2 that won't happen that's not how it's going to work if you set your cost per result goal too low and meta feels that it's just impossible to achieve that unrealistic your ads simply won't run you'll either not spend your full Daily budget or your ads simply won't run at all uh because meta is going well we're not going to run your ads because we can't get you your cost per result goal so trying to set this artificially low is not some sort of Facebook ads hack that's going to get you amazingly cheap leads or amazingly cheap sales that's not how it works but the upside of adding in a realistic cost per result goal so if I change this back to £15 and let's say we know that that's realistic for this example business the the upsides of setting a realistic cost per result goal is that your ads should not run your budget will be reduced when your ads are not profitable now that could be seasonal perhaps there are certain times of the year where your ads not as profitable as others therefore you're quite happy for meta to reduce your budget in those times it could be uh more short term so it could be something along the lines of certain days of the week don't perform as well for you typically and again met is like we're not going to reach the goal over the weekend this is much more of a business that generates better results Monday to Friday we'll reduce the budget back down on those days um it could be for particular spikes around holidays where we know Black Friday for example costs are going to spike because there's lots more Advertiser activity if that's not a good time for your business and you're not going to get lots of conversions for a good price meta is going to see that and again reduce your budget back down maybe not even run your ads for those time periods so that is the main positive the main use case is supposed to just trying to get as really really cheap leads or really really cheap sales so there are some other things I need to explain about the cost per result goal and whether or not you actually want to use it before I do just want to quickly let you know about our done for you Facebook and Instagram advertising services so my company can create manage and optimize your ad campaigns for you we can take that workload off your hand hopefully help you get much better results we certainly have for a lot of clients that we work with currently if you're interested in finding out more there is a link in the video description you can click on that come through to our website and book in a free call directly into our calendar just to find out more at this stage hopefully we get a chance to work together so should you use the cost per result goal bidding strategy well firstly it's not available for all Campa campaign objectiv so depending on your strategy and which campaign objective you're using you might simply not be able to use this then within the campaign objectives that it is available for you need to be careful when you do and don't use it so for example if you're running a leads campaign optimizing for leads and you know what you can afford to pay cost per leadwise it could make a lot of sense if you're running a sales campaign that's optimizing for purchases and you know what you can afford to pay to acquire a new customer what you can afford in terms of your cost per result your cost per purchase again that makes a lot of sense we can't pay more than $25 cost per purchase beyond that we're not profitable let's set that at our goal and allow meta to adjust things according to that objective however if you're running a traffic campaign optimizing for landing page views that's where it starts to get tricky because if you just have a blanket rule or a goal around how much you're willing to pay cost per learning page view or cost per link click well some link clicks are going to be more valuable than others some landing page USS are going to be more valuable than others because they may well convert a lot better if we go back to the Black Friday example you may well see that your cost per link click is significantly higher during that time period but that's okay for your campaigns because buyer activity is significantly increased people want to take advantage of the the sale the promotion you're running they're far more likely to convert when they're there so basically if you're optimizing for something further down the sales funnel like sales purchases leads um then I think there's a good use case for this cost per result goal bidding strategy if you're optimizing for something higher up the sales funnel either because that's what you've chosen to do not normally what i' recommend um or because maybe that's the only option if your conversions take place on a third party website you can't track those for example I I would be more nervous about uh implementing the cost per result goal because I think it could throttle your ad spend uh decrease in that case the amount of say link clicks or landing page us are getting and that might not be the right thing if they're converting better or it's a right time of year or or anything along those lines if you do decide to give the cost per result goal bidding strategy a go there are a couple other things that you need to be aware of first it may well result in lower ad spend and fewer conversions that sounds quite obvious you might think well obviously going through this but I've spoken to a lot of people that are using it that aren't actually aware of that that even if you set your daily budget at $100 a day or whatever if you got your cost per result goal too low for what's realistic what meta can realistically achieve then you might end spending $30 a day $40 a day whilst it might mean that your Facebook ad campaigns are more profitable more successful that you have a lower cost per result on that spend maybe that isn't beneficial for your business because you're going well yeah we're generating a lower cost per lead but now we've got sales team that kind of sitting there not doing anything because we haven't got the lead volume it's actually better for the business if we pay a little bit more per lead and we get more leads in so that we can occupy their time and they can get more conversions and the whole business functions that way secondly if you have got lower spend and fewer conversions you're less likely to exit the learning phase it's going to take you longer to get out of the learning phase so when it comes to the campaigns optimizing themselves through Mets AI or you as an ad Advertiser learning and being able to optimize the campaigns through looking at okay this ad got this cost per result versus this ad got this cost per result we know that data is required in both those scenarios and if you spend less you get less conversions it takes longer for that data to come through again maybe you decide that's worth it but it's just something to be aware of that you might have to take a longer time Horizon to your ad campaigns it might take longer for them to exit learning phase might take longer for you to optimize it to get to the point where they're performing really well now adding everything up all those pros and cons that we've discussed most of the time as an agency we aren't using the cost per result go we are sometimes but not always now in part that's because we're really on top of our client campaigns we're in the out account all the time we're making adjustments we're very much aware of how things are going um in a relatively short time period And if we need to change things and things like that right so if we were to see for example that the cost per result was spiking over a certain time of the year or days of the week we would make adjustments and we would spot that if you're wanting to approach your Facebook ads with a little bit more of a a set it and forget it something I'd recommend especially at the beginning but you do want to set up your campaigns let them run focus on other areas of business I totally get that in that scenario it would be more attractive we'd be more likely to use it and I'd be more likely to recommend it than if you're in there all the time I think that often the cons which are lower ad spend less data less optimization both from you as an Advertiser and met as AI is detrimental in the long run I'd rather get the data in even if we pay a little bit more cost per result early on so that we can learn and improve things um but maybe your business is in that situation maybe you know you've got a small budget to work with margins are thin and you really need to maintain a cost per result goal in which case give it a go I'm all for testing all new Facebook ads features we test and I'd encourage a lot of Facebook advertisers to do so unless of course I come and tell you that this is rubbish don't worry about it this is not the case here there are some use cases that are good sometimes where I don't think it should be used if you feel like you might be one of those where it can be used well by all means give it a go and if you do let me know in the comments now as I said the cost per result goal is not a Facebook ad hack but there are Facebook ad hacks that you can use that could literally double or more your return on ad spend overnight I share five of my favorites in this video here if you want to quickly and easily boost your Facebook ad results this is the video to watch next