Should You Use Manual Bidding on Facebook Ads? | Ep. #374

In Episode #374, Eric and Neil discuss whether you should be using manual bidding for your Facebook ads. People have been running ads on Facebook for years now and still rely on the automatic bidding and optimization features for their ads. Tune in to learn what Eric and Neil prefer between the two and how you can know what option is best for you.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

  • 00:27 – Today’s topic: Should You Use Manual Bidding on Facebook Ads?
  • 00:35 – People have been running ads on Facebook for a couple of years now
    • 00:42 – People just rely on Facebook’s automatic bidding and automatic optimization
  • 00:50 – As per any kind of marketing, you want to be testing all the time
  • 00:53 – Eric has seen marketers who have switched to manual bidding
    • 01:11 – You can set the manual bid on how much you’re willing to pay
  • 01:36 – Every time Neil uses automatic bidding on Facebook, it is way higher than manual bidding
  • 01:49 – Neil thinks manual bidding works better
    • 02:00 – Neil saw a 20% increase on his automatic bidding price
  • 02:10 – With Google, you can set the bidding to manual at first, then to automatic
  • 02:30 – Figure out what your numbers are and just test the water
  • 03:00 – Marketing School is giving away a free 1 year subscription to Crazy Egg which is a visual analytics tool that helps you increase your conversion rate
  • 03:53 – That’s it for today’s episode!

3 Key Points:

  1. People tend to rely on Facebook’s automatic bidding because it’s easier and less time consuming.
  2. Know your numbers and test the manual bidding option; it’s cheaper and you stay in control of your options.
  3. For ANY type of marketing you choose, you need to be testing it all the time.

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Full Transcript of The Episode

Intro Voice: Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with the guile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. You're listening to Marketing School, with your instructors, Neil Patel, and Eric Siu.

Eric Siu: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Siu.

Neil Patel: And I'm Neil Patel.

Eric Siu: And today we're going to learn about if you should use manual bidding on Facebook ads. Facebook ads a couple years ago, or I should say the last couple years. A lot of people have just been running ads, being okay with the automatic bidding and the automatic optimizations coming in from Facebook. That still works well today, but as with any marketing or advertising, you want to be testing all the time, right?
So, for me, I started seeing some other marketers switching to manual bidding. I actually watched a video from Noah Kagan, who's a well known marketer and how he switched to manual bidding as well.
Let's say you're looking to drive cheap clicks, or you're looking to drive cheaper email signups. The idea is, basically, instead of letting Facebook do automatic bidding, you just set a manual bid for how much you're willing to pay for an email, for example, right?
We started testing that, and from our own data, it's actually working out better in some cases, but in some cases it's actually worse too. From my perspective, it's worth testing. We're seeing some good results from it.

Neil Patel: Yeah, I've seen this for a long time now in which any time that I use automatic bidding or automated bidding within Facebook and I have it optimized for the cheapest cost per click, or CPM, or whatever it may be, My costs are drastically higher than when I do manual bidding. Eric is right, sometimes it won't work out well for you, but in most cases I've found that manual bidding works better. You should definitely test it out. Automated bidding is easier, but it's just going to cost you quite a bit more money. On mine, I'm seeing cost savings of 20, 30 percent, sometimes even more.

Eric Siu: Huge, especially if you're spending six to seven figures a month. If you look at Google, for example, just to use these two giant platforms. Google, usually what happens is you set your own bidding initially and then you switch it to automated so that's more of a CPA basis. With Facebook, its reversed. I've always enjoyed the Google way more, in the past. It just makes sense to figure out what your numbers are, what's going to work for you and then bid. If you're not getting the right impressions, or if your ads aren't showing enough, then you might need to just crank it up a little bit, right, it's all about testing at the end of the day.

Neil Patel: I have nothing else from mine, it's quite simple. Test it out. It usually works.

Eric Siu: Very simple. I think not enough people talk about it. Pretty basic podcast. Just go test out manual. My gut tells me most of you are probably using automatic right now. Take it to your ad manager and go from there.
But before we go, we have a one year annual subscription of crazy egg. A giveaway that we're doing every single week that I want to talk about, but first, Neil, you can describe what crazy egg is and then I'll give people the details.

Neil Patel: Sure! Crazy egg is an visual analytics tool that'll show you where people click on your website, where they won't. Show you how far people scroll down on your website, so if your call-to-actions or your important messaging is in the wrong place and people aren't seeing them, you need to make a change! You can also watch video recordings of how people navigate through your site, from the people who convert to the people who don't, so you can figure out what areas you need to adjust in your design, and the mess you need to change. Through crazy egg's wizziwig editor, you can make those changes, you don't need any design or development skills. You can even run A/B tests by just doing a few button clicks.

Eric Siu: Great! So, if you want to get in on this giveaway, we're doing a one year annual subscription giveaway every single week, and you can actually get multiple entries to this. Go to singlegrain.com/giveaway to learn more, and we'll see you tomorrow.

Intro Voice: This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of. And don't forget to rate and review, so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow, right here on Marketing School.

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