Did you know that Facebook has a tool to spy on other Facebook advertisers?
(If you didn’t, you should.)
Every Facebook Advertising account is linked to a Page.
And on the right side of every page (at least on Desktop) is a Page Transparency box.
If you click “See more” there, it opens up a window that includes a section called “Ads From This Page.” And in that box is a link to “Go to Ad Library.”
Click that link, and you’ll be taken to a page with all active ads from that Facebook Page.
So, for example, here are all the ads from the world’s most popular Facebook page, the page for @facebookapp.
This is a goldmine for finding other ads in your niche…
Now, I won’t tell you exactly who I spied on, in order to deliver this lesson.
The specific company isn’t relevant.
But I will share a handful of details.
They’re incredibly fast-growing. (They’ve gone from ZERO to 8-figures — that’s tens of millions — in less than 5 years.)
They’re masters at Facebook advertising.
They’re in roughly the same niche as I am.
And I know many of my most astute readers follow their work as well.
What’s most important though is that they have laser-focused a huge chunk of their business on running Facebook ads.
But I didn’t realize just how relentless they were on that front until I recently clicked through to their Ad Library.
Here was the shocker: They had 970 active ads created in the previous 30 days…
That’s an average of almost 33 ads launched every day — including weekends.
Not all the ads were original creative. There were even duplicates, that were clearly “different” ads because of ad groups, targeting, or some other differentiator.
And yet, as I scrolled that page, I realized that there were, at a minimum, dozens of different ads being tested. Maybe 100 or more unique creatives.
Within a 30-day span.
There’s an old saying. If you were to look at what an extremely successful person actually does with their time and their life, in most cases your reaction will be, “Look at everything they’re doing. It’s no wonder they’re so successful!”
Sure, you can look at one little aspect of their life. Like the fancy car they drive. Or their Instagram pictures from their recent vacation. Or all the time they spend at masterminds. Or their flexibility of schedule and how they seem to be able to only work when they feel like it.
Or a thousand other things that make their life look “easy.”
But when you look and you realize that they’ve launched 970 different Facebook ads in 30 days? It’s no wonder they’re so successful.
Here’s the practical implications of this…
Ad testing often follows the Pareto Principle. A disproportionately small percentage of the input is responsible for a disproportionately large percentage of the output. So it can be 80/20, or 90/10, or whatever similar distribution.
(Perry Marshall’s 80/20 Sales and Marketing is a good book for understanding this in a powerful way.)
Imagine you test 10 ads.
Out of those 10 ads, 6 will be about average. They’ll perform similar to “baseline” ads you’ve run in the past.
2 will not do very well — and 1 of those will do terrible.
But also, 2 will do really well, and 1 will be much, much better than the rest.
Test 100 ads, and you’ll end up with 10 really strong winners, and maybe 1 of those will create beaucoup bucks in profit for every dollar of spend you’re willing to throw at it.
Test 970 ads, and you’ll find somewhere near 10 really successful ads.
Not only that, you’ll get a ton of data on what’s working well, what isn’t, and what never to do again.
And the more you do this, the more data you’ll gather, and the more you’ll increase your odds.
So you first 100 ads may create a couple big winners. Your next 100 maybe twice as many. And more and more, for every massive volume of tests you run.
Until you’re in extreme resonance with your market.
And it seems like nearly everything you write is a winner.
The big lesson I take away from this…
And I’ll note: I’m reminding myself of this as much as you…
Test more.
Think you test enough? Test more.
The more tests you put into the market, the more data you gather, plus the more winners you’ll find.
And the better you’ll get.
You can learn theory and best practices and study under others as much as you’d like. And all of that is good and critical to improving your odds of success.
But ultimately, there is one teacher that rules them all.
The teacher is the market. It doesn’t matter what I say works or doesn’t work. Nor anybody else. What matters most is the market. And the market is always right.
And the only way that you can get the market to weigh in is with tests.
And the more tests you run, the more you’ll learn from the market.
And the more success you’ll have, and the more you’ll improve.
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
PS: Looking for more interesting (and profitable!) things to test with Facebook advertising? Check out this article that Larry Kim from Mobile Monkey sent my way — How to Run a Facebook Birthday Discount Ad: Step-by-Step Guide.
