How To Make Sales With Facebook Ads: 15+ Profitable Case Studies

In this article, you’ll learn how to create profitable Facebook ads that can bring in more sales and revenue to your business. By studying various Facebook case studies, we’ve gathered insights into what works and what doesn’t. From picking the right images and ad copy to creating effective landing pages, we’ll cover everything you need to know to make your Facebook ads profitable. So if you want to get the most out of your Facebook ad campaigns, keep reading!

If you’re not using Facebook ads…

Then you may as well be giving a piece of your business to your competition.

There’s no better, faster way to increase sales than with Facebook ads.

Whether you’re on a tight budget or you’d like to test a thousand times before deciding which ad set to go with, it’s super flexible.

The only question is, where do you start?

How do you pick the images, the ad copy, and everything else to ensure you’re getting the most effective ads?

What about landing pages? Are you supposed to send your visitors to your product reviews?

Well, you won’t need to be doing any guesswork as Mohammed El Khiyati did all the research for you.

He is super active in our

mastermind group and doesn’t show any signs of slowing down when it comes to Facebook ads.

Below is a compilation of those case studies, and they’ve been organized into niches.

Jitendra did something similar here with his Facebook case studies.

Here’s how it’s been organized…

Sections:

• The Concept of Facebook Pixels
• Facebook Ads and SEO
• Adsense Common Mistakes
• Toys and Hobbies
• Pets
• Fitness and Outdoors
• Bakery
• Fashion and Accessories

The Concept of Facebook Pixels

I’ll explain the concept behind Facebook Pixel and why everyone needs to install the Facebook Custom Audience Pixel on their website before running any ads…

Facebook first introduced its new pixel last year 2015 to replace the old ones.

With the old ones, you had to create only one custom pixel for each account and create many conversion pixels for your business according to your needs.

The result: websites load slowly since those pixel codes have to be fired first before the header tags.

What Is a Pixel?

A pixel is a snippet of code which place on your website.
It sends information back to Facebook when someone takes a specific action like…

• Visits a page
• Views a particular product
• Adds a product to their cart
• Purchase a product

If you are running a WordPress site (90% of the people here I guess), you can add the pixel via this plugin
Tracking code Manager Plugin
I will try to keep it simple and pretend that I have an eCommerce site (since I have full control of the page) about “catsdogs.com“.
And I have only 2 products:
Product A for cats and Product B for dogs.
The process is simple:

1. 
   
   The user comes to my website (home page)

1. Select the product of his choice

1. (S)he goes to that product page for details

1. Adds the product to his shopping cart

1. Then checkout page after he paid

That is the perfect scenario for every business owner…
But in reality, it does not work like that most of the time.
People get distracted via phones, TV, jobs, second-thinking, reviews, searching for coupons…
But with a Facebook pixel, we can retarget them again and exclude those who made the sale.
That way, we can give the customers who did not purchase but made it to the shopping cart, a second chance with a discount or a coupon code.
With a Facebook pixel, you can create audiences like in our case, look at the photo below.

1. Audience A: General audience (All the traffic)

1. Audience B: Cats lovers

1. Audience C : Dogs lovers

1. Audience B-1: Cats lovers product- viewers

1. Audience B-1: Cats lovers Basket- added audience

1. Audience B-1: Cats lovers Buyers

1. Audience C-1: Dogs lovers product- viewers

1. Audience C-1: Dogs lovers Basket- added audience

1. Audience C-1: Dogs lovers Buyers

Now, for each audience, I can talk to them via a specific message and Facebook ad to increase my sales and conversion.
Simple right?

SEO and Facebook Ads

In this post, I will try to show you how I target a niche via SEO and via Facebook ads.

I always choose a niche that has lots of women since it is very fun and easy to persuasive them and they tend to buy online when they see deals and discounts.

I will choose the “prom dresses” niche.

It is a very big and profitable niche and people always buy the latest clothes in that niche.

SEO Path:

But first, I will assume you have your WordPress site ready with 3-7 articles ready and with a shop connected to Amazon (ask me about my clone template as I may have ready for you to use).

I like to have a site that looks like an e-commerce site with a shop with a blog for (Amazon + Google)…

For the domain name, I will not bother with the EMD (Exact Match Domain).

If I am in this niche, I’d choose something like PromoDressDeals.com or AllDressesDeals.com (which is available for $8.67).

For the articles, I will focus about long tail keywords with buying intent under 1000 searches per month for 2 reasons:

1. Easy to rank them in a short amount of time.

1. They are buying keywords.

For keywords, I like to go with these types:

• “niche + under $00 (2 digits)”
• “niche + under $000 (3 digits)”

For example; prom dresses under $100, prom dresses under $50, prom dresses under $200, etc.

My favorite free tools are:

• Google keyword planner
• Uber Suggest

Here is how I’d do it:

• Go to ubersuggest.org
• Type “promo dresses under”
• Choose your country (US by default) and hit the suggest button.

You will find thousands of keywords.

But for the sake of this example, I will copy only the first 10 keywords but you can spend hours with that tool.

You can export the keywords and then plug them in Google keyword planner and hit search.

Here’s what I came up with:

• short prom dresses under 100 (880 searches)
• long prom dresses under 200 (260 searches)
• prom dress under 100 (720 searches)
• prom dresses under 150 (480 searches)
• prom dresses under 100 dollars (320 searches)
• prom dresses under 300 (390 searches)
• red prom dresses under 100 (880 searches)
• cheap prom dresses under 200 (210 searches)
• blue prom dresses under 100 (170 searches)
• prom dresses under $200 (260 searches)

That is a total of 4570 searches for only 10 keywords

Without the Ubersuggest tool, I would not be able to find those keywords in Google tool.

Now, let’s see the competition for the top keyword:

• “short prom dresses under 100 “.
• I used this search string; “Allintitle: keyword”
• Allintitle: short prom dresses under 100 and then hit search.
• There are 3140 results for that string.

Anything less than 5000-6000, it’s a green light for me and I can rank in the top 10 of Google with minimum work.

As you can see, if you map out everything correctly and you choose your angle of attack, you can make some money with those long-tails keywords.

But it will take you time and energy (between 1-2 months to rank if you are building the right

backlinks and all that SEO stuff).

Before You Do Anything

Install your Facebook pixel on your website even if you are not doing any campaign.

It is like installing Google analytics.

You have to collect those people (also known as leads) who visited your website for future campaigns.

Not all your visitors will buy in their first visit.

Facebook Path

In this part, I will try to show you how I will achieve the same thing with Facebook ads but with less money and less time (1-5 days and with $20-$50 budget).

What You Need

1. Website up and ready and good looking site: Shop with a blog

1. Install Facebook pixel for retargeting as well as Google Analytics

1. Have a landing page separated to send your traffic from Facebook to that page to increase conversions

1. A fan page (it could be empty, doesn’t matter)

1. A small budget

Step 1:

Our goal would be that we need to send women to our site to buy our dresses…

There are a lot angles that can be done here:

• Option A) Target single females who like to go to date but they don’t have a prom dresses because of Money or something else
• Option B) Target married women
• Option C) Target fans of big brands and display deals and coupons for them (my favorite way). In this example, I will choose SheIn which has 1.8M fans and I will spy on them to see the top states where their fans live.

I always choose to target state by state for 2 reason:

1. It works for me because you can test the images and ad copy without spending a lot of money

1. For some reason, Facebook gives you fast reach and impressions and there is not a lot of competition.

1. It works well with a CPM model for audiences less than 50K

So according to the Facebook insight tool:

• 50% of their fans are between 18-24
• 34% are between 25-34
• 10% between 35-44

So without this tool, I would not be able to know that.

Why this data is important?

Because I can create 3 ads set for each group with a different image for each age and different as a copy to increase my CTR:

• 18-24 dating message for example.
• 35-44 married women to impress their husbands with a nice dress.

You get the idea hopefully.

With that tool, I know that the top 4 states are New York, California, and Texas…

Here is my audience for California:

• Location: California, US
• Age: 18 – 50
• Gender: Female
• People who match these interests: She Insider
• Potential Reach: 39,000 people

So now for $2.63 USD ($0.87 – $4.21), I can reach up to 1000 people.

And with suggested bid: $0.10 USD ($0.03 – $0.22) for CPC but I prefer CPM with highly targeted images.

With a 1% – 3% from 39,000, you can probably get 390 – 1170 visitors to your landing page and then 5% – 10% conversion to Amazon and they can buy what they want.

That is probably going to amount to 39 to 117 sales.

Below is a Facebook ad from them to get an idea.

Learn The Common Mistake That I Made With Adsense (And Many People Are Making The Same Mistake)

They think that by choosing high paid niches like divorce lawyers, insurance… they’ll be able to get clicks worth up to $5-$10 or more.

And they base their ideas on Google keywords planner tool.

Google K.P tool is only for advertisers who are willing to pay Google that amount when somebody clicks on their Ads but he has to be typing that keyword in Google search bar and not in another website.
I will choose 2 keywords from highly paid niches and we will see how much I will pay Google as an advertiser and how much Google will pay as a publisher and it’ll be estimated.
Google pays 60% of the CPC to their publishers)

Keyword 1: affordable divorce lawyers (CPC: $25.01)

This means I have to bid up to $25.01 to have my ad (3 lines) to be at the top of Google listing page 1 or in the right sidebar.
And hopefully, somebody will click on it and converts (It can be phone calls or emails. But in this case, it will be phone calls since the niche is very important).
If somebody clicks on my ad and he did not contact me, I will lose that $25.
That is why it’s good to retarget them again.

Keyword 2: Cessna flight training (CPC: $9.39)

This means I have to bid up to $9.39 to have my ad (3 lines) to be in the top of Google listing page 1 or in the right sidebar.
And hopefully, somebody will click on it and converts.
If somebody clicks on my ad and he did not sign up or fill up my form, I will lose that $10.
Which is why it’s good to retarget them again.
But as a website owner who wants to use the Adsense program for monetization, how do I know how much I will get for those clicks if I choose to talk about divorce or flight training niche?
For that, Google created a tool 3 years ago called Google Display Planner.
Here is how to get access to it:

1. Sign in to your Adwords account

1. Keyword planner tool

1. In the top Tools

1. Click on Display Planner tool (See the image below)

The result is surprising from $25.
It’d be less than $1 and from $9.39, again less than $1. Why?

If I am a divorce lawyer or a owner of a flight school, I will focus my budget to target people who are searching for my keywords directly in Google and not who are reading magazines about my niche but it does not mean that all the clicks are low.
It depends of the niche of course.
You can see my earnings in the image below for 1 click and clicks back to 2011: $2.49 per click.

Hobbies and Toys

How to Do Research For a Travel Hobby Niche Before Starting Your Facebook Ads

I’ll outline the steps that I usually take when I want to start a Facebook ad campaign, but not only for the travel niche but for Amazon product niches as well.

I chose this niche while surfing randomly and it took me about 90 minutes to come up with my research from Google while I was in Starbucks today.

Here are the steps:

1. Destinations of that hobby

1. My targeting audience(s)

1. Ad copy / imagery

1. Winner ad

1. Scaling up the campaign

Before we begin, I’d like to mention that the purpose of my first ad(s) is to find my winner ad using a small audience from my research.

I can use any budget from $5-$40…

When I find my winner ad, I can easily duplicate that ad with similar audiences using:

1. Magazines / Celebrities (Athletes)

1. Similar locations

1. LookaLike audiences

Step 1: Destinations Of The Hobby (Surfers)

For the surfing niche, after doing some research, I found this authority site: Surfer Today.

It has almost everything that we need about our niche (locations, equipment, guides…)

I found it with this search in Google: “best surf spots in”

It has many destinations for surfing around the world and since my first campaign is only for testing, I don’t want to burn my money and effort with a huge audience size without testing…

After some thinking, I decided to focus only about the west coast (California) as a starting point but I will decide later when I see my audience size in step 3.

If the audience size is small, I can focus the entire country (U.S. in this case) or only specific regions.

Again, I am not talking here about my audience locations (where they live) and I am talking about where they will go to book their hotels to enjoy their hobbies.

For the California surf spots, I found these locations:

• Santa Cruz
• Malibu
• Huntington
• Newport
• Ventura
• San Diego

I chose only 6 locations to put them nicely in my landing page boxes.

But you can add many destinations as you like.

Now, after I completed step 1, I’ll go and spy on my audiences.

I need to answer questions about them like:

• What they like
• What they read
• What they discuss
• What problems are they facing when they are surfing
• How old are they?
• And whatever else I can ask to get to know my audience better

Step 2: My Targeting Audience(s)

For this step, I like to use Google to find 1-2 authority sites to find their problems and what they talk about.

For ages and interests, I like to use Facebook insight tool to see the ages and what fan pages they like.

After doing some research again,

I found these to be the common problems that they face when choosing the right spot:

• Warm/cold water
• Waves (lighter, mellow)
• Budget hotels…
• Many more but I will build my ad copy based on the 3 points above.

To begin my test, I will always choose magazines to see the effectiveness of my ad copy and imagery since I already have a targeted audience who loves their hobby and pays a subscription fee for it (not all but a portion of them).

After some digging, I found this magazine: Surfermag.com.

You can find anything about your niche there like:

• Problems
• Solutions
• Gears
• Destinations
• Tips

With this information about the niche, you’ll appear as an expert (and an authority) to the audience you are appealing to.

Facebook spying tool:

• I decided to target men only as a starting point (again I am only testing my ads here, I can target later women who are pro-athletes)
• Ages: 25 – 34, 35 – 44

To scale my campaign up with different audiences after finding the winner ad, I can target with these interests:

• CARVE Surfing Magazine, Surfing World Magazine, Wavelength Magazine
• Athletes: Kelly Slater, Rob Machado, John John Florence, Jordy Smith, Taj burrow

Step 3: Ad Copy/Imagery

For the ad copy, I use this formula to make it easier:

• Problem
• Solution
• Benefits

I use the same formula that our friend Jitendra Jain mentioned in his epic post, but I tweaked it to fit my niche and market.

I sometimes Google to see what other big companies like Expedia / Booking.com (since we are talking about travel niche) to see what they are using in their ad copy in Adwords.

Here’s What I’d Use:

Headline: Get Your Dream Surf Spots Vacation for Cheap.

Text above image: Love Surfing? Start planning your trip today! Discover those Great Destinations for Surfing that Give Surfers of all levels a good ride.

Text below image: Enjoy Mellow Waves and Warm Water. Don’t spend hours looking for the best hotel deal near Your Surf spot…

Call to action: Book Now (You can use 1-2 sets to test your ad copy, to see what works better).

Imagery: In this niche, images are everything. You need to search and find images that have high pins/likes/comments… You can use Pinterest or visit the fan pages of the popular authority sites and see what they post and what kind of images they use.

Step 4: Split Testing Ads

When creating my ad, I always target 1 interest unless my audience size is small then I add 2-3 interests similar to my starting point audience.

For the ad sets, I can choose 1-3 groups based on the age

For the ads, I can choose 1-3 images.

I like to start with CPM for a small audience below 50K to see if my Ad is alright to use or not.

If I have a big budget, I can test CPM/CPC both of them.

Step 5: Scaling up the Campaign

When I have a winning ad (in terms of clicks and CTR and leads), I can choose the same images and the ad copy and duplicate the process with the other audiences in step 2 (magazines, athletes, other group ages…).

With my Facebook ad, I can create an audience of similar people who landed on my landing page using an option called “LookaLike Audience”.

Again, the first ad is always for testing.

You can hit home run from the first try but it is always about testing.

[Case Study] Silver & Gold Collectible Coins: $241 with $67.50 Budget in 5 Days

Another case study which proves you can transform a hobby to a profitable business..

A friend of mine is a big fan of silver / gold / bullion collectible coins.

He has a blog about that with few articles and he wanted to monetize it with Amazon after getting fed up with Adsense.

So we tried Facebook ads since it is not as saturated as other niches.
Here’s how our Facebook audience targeting looked like…

• Men: 34-54
• Location: USA. Feel free to target other countries like UK, Canada or NZ, Australia if you have an Amazon account there.
• Interests: I will give you only 1 to get you inspired: Golden Eagle Coins
• Ads sets: 4 interests with only 2 ads in each ad sets with 2 images.
• Results: 29 sales with $241 with 4 sales that have nothing to do with coins niche.

He collected over 500 people in his custom audience for future promotion.
Tip: His next project is to create a free eBook (7-10 pages) which’ll help readers find rare coins for example and then sell then his paid eBook or upsell and recommend some high ticket items.
This is a huge niche with wealthy and passionate people.
Go and take action..

[Case Study] For Polar Express and Thomas & Friends Trains

In this case study,

I will show you how to target people who love some hobbies and how to cash on that.

A client of mine has a niche website targeting trains models, flight models, cars models and some mini-figures and other things related to that.
He created many campaigns and one of them was about Polar Express Trains, set about 20 days before Christmas.

I will not go in details but here is what he targeted for an ad set:
Gender: Female
Age: 25-45 (we combined 25-34 & 35-45 because the audience size was low)
Interests: Polar Express fans, Thomas & friends fans and Bachmann fans
Ad copy: It was a mix of a question + gain + urgency..
For $40 for this Campaign, he got 15 sales for a gross of $1875 and $121 commission.
For the other campaigns, he targeted other brands with less and much success.
Biggest takeaway from this is that if you have a niche site with a lot products, don’t target the niche but target those products and their brands, whether through SEO or PPC ads.

Pets

How To Turn $67 to $276 With Facebook Ads From a Highly Targeted Audience Within 5 Days

First of all, this case study was done in November 2015 and I got inspired from a TV show from a similar product.

The market was certainly there and this product is solving a big problem for people who own cats / dogs and leave them home while being away for long periods of time.

After doing a little research, I tried a campaign with 4 ad sets (2 for cats and 2 for dogs).

I targeted these specific 4 magazines (they were not picked randomly):

• Cat Fancy Magazine
• Modern Cat Magazine
• Modern Dog Magazine
• Your Dog Magazine

I sent them to a landing page related to pets and just for that item so they can go to Amazon after that…

Here are the details the ad copy and the targeted audience.

Here’s the ad I used for this gadget:
Headline: Get Petzi and Never Leave Your Pet Alone!
Text above image: Leaving Your Pet alone at Home? Join Others and With a simple Tap, You can See, Speak, Snap or Treat your Pet When you are away from Home.
Text under headline: Even When You’re Not Home. Petzi lets you watch, speak to, play with, and record your Pet when you’re away. You can even dispense…
Audience:

• Women: 25-34 35-44 45-54
• Likes: Cat Fancy Magazine
• Modern Cat Magazine
• Modern Dog Magazine
• Your Dog Magazine

In my upcoming eBook, I will show you how to find those niches before they get saturated .

How to Make Money With The Hamster Niche

In this case study, I will show you how target and pinpoint audiences on Facebook related to the pets niche.

There are a lot sub-niches ready to be taken with low to medium competition.

But in this case, one of my clients wanted to jump to the dropshipping business related to the hamsters / Gilber niche but she wanted first to see if there is a market first by using Facebook.
She spent $35 with Facebook ads and she sold 35 items related to the hamsters niche (the majority of them were:

• Cages (her main product)
• And some food boxes

The result:
Sold $1662.50 worth of items, with a commission of $108.06
With dropshipping, she could potentially get 10 times commissions of that.

We targeted 3 groups and I will show you only 1.

• Females 26-65
• Interest: Hamster & Gerbil & Kaytee.

Kaytee is a popular food brand for wild birds (the reason why we chose that was to filter people who like Hamsters in general from the real owners…(for example, everybody likes dogs but not all of them like Punira. You’d have to be a dog owner to know that)

A Giveaway Niche

So here, I’ll give away a profitable niche and show you how to create a Facebook ad related to that.

• The niche is: handicapped dogs
• The item to promote: dog wheelchairs

But there are many products to promote.
See below…

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