You’ve got a Facebook  ad campaign up and running, congratulations! You have climbed your way up the mountain! Now, the fun part begins. Yes, I’m talking about results! I’m here to settle the debate on 

How Many Days You Need to Run a Facebook Ad Campaign to See "Good Results"

Well first, let’s determine what are  “good results”. What I consider to be successful, others may not agree with but the truth is what I say doesn't really matter because results should be defined by your strategy BEFORE you even turn on that campaign, and they might be different for everyone!  It's important to pick a measurable result based on your campaign planning. Keep your goals realistic, if not you may end up disappointed. Check out the 2023 noted Facebook Ad benchmarks,  by industry, as reported by Lebesque here

Let's assume you are running a purchase campaign and based on your business's past results, your industry averages and the time of year (4th quarter is usually more expensive for every industry, but depending on your industry other times of the year may also fluctuate in price) you decide on obtaining 4 times  Return On Ad Spend, or ROAS  will be your measure of success for your new Facebook Ad camapginRemember in order to make money, you must spend some first! 

Once you have your goal set, it’s time for the campaign to begin! It’s important to keep an eye on your results as your campaign runs. The truth is sometimes, the stars align and that 4x ROAS we strategized for will be realized Day 1 when we turn on the campaign.. but often, that is not the case because Facebook is "learning" your audience and their response to your message and it could take quite a while for your new campaign with metrics you can rely on as stable. 

Soooo... you must be patient! And give Meta a little time to do their thang! How much time? You ask.... 

Let’s talk about my suggested time frames for measuring the success of your Facebook Ad campaign. 

Three Days

Three days is still in the early stages of reaching the intended audience. We may see some initial trends that either make us feel one way or another, positive or nervous, but it’s still the beginning of the process and the ad is still stabilizing. So don’t fret if you aren’t seeing the results you want to see yet.  Do not make changes to your campaign after 3 days.

Seven Days

Continue following the results on your ad up to this point. Unless something looks drastically wrong, don’t change anything. Keep letting your audience interact with your ads. 

14 Days 

Around two weeks, trends start developing. At this point, you can get a good understanding of the direction in which the ad is going.  At this point, I would turn off the ads that aren’t performing as well as you would like, and leave on at least 2 of your ads that are heading in a positive direction. If I have identified "winning ads" in the campaign I almost always opt to leave at least one video and one image on in the campaign because often they compliment each other.   I

30 Days

Woohoo! Your ad has been active for one month, this is a big deal! Your campaign is stabilized. This is where you can make business decisions on whether you wish to continue advertising, or if it’s time to go in a different direction, based on your results. You will now want to look back at your goal that you set, and see if you have to make any changes. You may even consider re-evaluating the goal itself. Facebook averages change fairly quickly, so we might decide that we were aiming our goal too low, or too high.

30 days is typically a pretty good indicator on whether or not your advertising is working or not. If you aren’t seeing the results that you were expecting after 30 days, it is time to head back to the drawing board. On the flipside, if your ad has performed well up until this point, and you are pleased with the results it is at this time I would start SCALING my spending to increase my return.  

How do we scale at Meredith Kallaher Marketing? We begin increasing the campaign daily budget by 20% every 72 hours, monitoring that our ROAS is holding, and stopping the increase when we've reached our desired max daily spend.

Stay tuned for more recommendations regarding Facebook advertisements here!