Why Do Facebook Ad Results DROP OFF After a Few Days?

Many Facebook advertisers have had the experience where they launch a new Facebook ad campaign and it does really well… for 2 to 10 days. Sometimes they get 14 days out of it.

Then all of the sudden, the entire campaign just DROPS off. The cost per conversion goes through the roof and leads and/or sales just become far more expensive.

This Facebook drop off phenomenon leaves A LOT of advertisers really scratching their heads as to what is going on.

This is something that can be incredibly frustrating for Facebook advertisers – especially since it can happen over and over again.

Facebook Advertising Dropoffs Are Common

To show you why you will often get gangbuster results and then… crash and burn. I’ve got an example campaign to talk you through.

This was a campaign that’s a perfect example of the do well, then drop off effect. I ran this one in May of 2019. Don’t focus on the top line, that was some experiements. Instead, focus on the bottom line.

This was a messenger campaign. We were testing things out and experimenting with them in order to find out what works best – so it wasn’t a high budget campaign.

What we were looking for was to get people to send our Facebook page a message and in exchange they were going to get our 5-part Facebook Template.

Heads up! You can get the free 5 part Facebook Ad Template here.

If you look at the graph above, you can see that this ad was launched on May 18th and that we turned it off exactly 10 days later on May 28th. This was a cold audience campaign.

Here’s what happened:

• May 19th – cost per message of 84 pence
• May 20th – cost per message of 46 pence
• May 21th – cost per message 29 pence
• May 22nd – cost per message 29 pence again (Woo Hoo)
• May 23rd – cost per message 14 pence
• May 24th – cost per message 40 pence
• May 25th – cost per message 27 pence
• May 26th – cost per message jumps up to 1 pound 67 pence
• May 27th – cost per message jumps WAY up to 4 pound and 41 pence

You can see the progression here. The first bit is the learning phase, then it settles in to a good price per message before it jumps up at day 9 and 10.

That’s the point at which we turn off the campaign.

This is a VERY common occurrence with Facebook ads. Sometimes they’ll last for 4 or 5 days, and sometimes it’s a week or 10 days.

Here’s Our Theory for Why Facebook Dropoffs Happen

Remember, Facebook doesn’t publish a guide or anything like that to say why these things happen, and we’re pretty confident in. A lot of this stuff because we’re sort of filling in the gaps based on the data.

Basically what happens is that when you first launch a Facebook ad campaign Facebook has a huge amount of information on people who have and haven’t interacted with your business before.

When you put a Facebook a campaign out to cold audiences there’s a good chance that a proportion of those audience are actually people that have interacted with your business before – so they are REALLY a warm audience.

For example, let’s say that we’re advertising to people that are interested in Facebook advertising because we’re adverting a Facebook ad template.

Now there is a good chance that when you take an audience of people that are interested in Facebook advertising that some of them have had an interaction with my and my business online in some capacity.

We have a Facebook group with over 30,000 members and a YouTube channel that does over 100,000 views a month, and our Facebook page is about 135,000 Facebook page likes.

So there is a very good chance that some people have had SOME interaction with us on before across these various channels.

So Facebook will put our ad in front of people that they think know us or are familiar with us first. Because they know that will get the best result.

For us, in this example it took 10 days to run through those people. You’ll see in those 10 days that we reached 135,000 people so it doesn’t take long to run through an audience that is familiar with you.

That’s when Facebook puts your ad in front of truly cold audiences. When that happens, if your ad doesn’t resonate enough then you will see a spike in cost.

Now I can’t say this with 100% certainty, but based on running lots of money through Facebook campaigns for many different clients I’m pretty sure this is how it works.

Tip: You can also get this effect from targeting audiences that are too small, where you run through them fast.

How to Fix The Facebook Ad Dropoff Problem

The first thing you should do is build larger warm audiences. I have a video on how to do that here:

When you prebuild your warm audience, you will have a larger group of people that will purchase and become leads at a lower cost per conversion.

The second thing you should do is improve your offer.

If you get a drop off, it might very well be because your offer isn’t good enough.

Here is a post on what I consider to be the best offers to make on Facebook. It can help if you aren’t sure how to structure your offer.

You might need to test 5 offers to find the right one for your audience. Some ideas include:

• A big discount
• Something free
  • A free consult
  • A finance package
• A new or different product
• A video ad

The key here is to test until you find an offer that works VERY well for your audience – both cold and warm. Then your campaigns will likely have a lot more longevity.

Additional FREE Facebook Ads Training

There is nothing I like better than to see business owners increase their ROI with Facebook Ads. In order to help business owners succeed with Facebook ads I’ve created a FREE webinar training that you can register for here.

When you attend this webinar you’ll learn:

• 3 different Facebook ad strategies that we use every day. These strategies have generated millions of dollars in revenue and are tried and proven to work.
• How to customize the Facebook ads strategy to your particular business. There is no such thing as a one size fits all approach to Facebook ads.
• How Facebook and Instagram have changed and how to adjust your ad strategy to what works in 2021.

Why Do Facebook Ad Results Drop Off After a Few Days – Video Tutorial

In this video I explain the theory of why Facebook ads drop off and what you can do about it.

The Bottom Line on Ad Dropoff

The reason that we think Facebook ads will drop off suddenly is because you have run through the people who are familiar with your business – even if you are advertising to a cold audience.

To fix this, you need to build bigger warm audiences and improve and test your offers.