When Should You Turn Off Your Facebook Ads (Should You kill Your Campaign?)

When you should turn off your Facebook ads depends on many different factors, including generally when reaching x2 your cost per acquisition or average order value without any results.

However, at first, don't touch anything for at least 3-4 days!

Most amateur marketers will consistently sit at their desks refreshing the page and impatiently wait for sales or leads to come in.

If they see money going down with no sales they usually prematurely turn it off.

But here’s the thing…
You have to let the Facebook algorithm run its course before you start tinkering with it.

If you touch the campaign in any way you can literally be cutting yourself short from a winning ad.

Now even when I say leave your ads for at least 3-4 days, I usually let my ads run for as long as 7- 9 days to really let the algorithm run it’s course.

Because you don’t know what could be happening with the buyers spending habits, and the sale could be around the corner that gets Facebook to know your customer.

So make sure to leave it alone until Facebook has done what it takes to find your customer.

Are you reaching your cost per acquisition

Let’s say your product costs 37 dollars you should wait at least up to this ad spend before you make a decision.

Even though getting a customer at 37 dollars would be your break-even spend.

Having multiple sale points such as order bumps, upsells or an email follow-up sequence with a backend will increase your average order value(AOV).

This will allow you to increase your ad spend so you want to work out what your AOV is across all of these sales points in your funnel.

And then that will be the amount you want to spend up to.

I recommend waiting until you spend up to 2 times the cost per acquisition (CPA) or AOV.

Following this example
If your AOV is 37 dollars you would wait for at least 74 dollars before you make a decision…

But anything beyond that, then you can stop the campaign.

Bonus tip

You may be wondering what to do if you get a couple of sales or even one sale, to suddenly go past your breakeven spend without getting any more sales.

Most marketers will turn it off at this point, but I suggest you still leave it alone before you pause delete or stop.

Because again with the scenario of your customers buying habits and seasons, anything could cause the sales to stop.

Your customer could be on holiday, could be a seasonal holiday, or could be that your customer doesn’t buy until they get paid at the end of the month.

But these all affect your customers buying habits.

And I’ve had many campaigns where I go past the CPA 3 times and in a single day, I would get a ton of sales that puts me back at break-even.

However, if you don’t get anything past two or three times CPA, then it’s probably best to turn it off.

If you find regularly that you aren't getting results then I recommend looking into why your ads aren't converting.