Low CPC, Small Budget: How We Achieved $0.02 Per Click on $100

We just wrapped up a two week ad campaign with the goal of achieving low CPC on a small budget. Limited ad budgets are a typical challenge in small business, but this case study shows, great results can be achieved.

You’re just starting with ads and have limited cash flow. What do you do? That’s the question a client recently asked for their online retail store focused on luxury fidget toys and stress relief devices.

The Answer: Run a High Impact Traffic Ad and Measure Cost Per Click. Then rinse and repeat.

Why Choose Meta Ads (Facebook) for an ad budget of $200?

Meta Ads is a smart choice for ecommerce, especially with a tight budget. Meta’s precision targeting ensures you reach the right audience. Plus, their analytics give valuable insights. You can stretch that $200 further by focusing on specific demographics or interests, making sure each dollar works harder for you.

See Also: Creative Ways to Advertise With Under $500 >>

In this case study, we already had the Facebook page setup and our Meta Business Portfolios were already connected from previous work together. Running the ads was the logical next step.

Essential Elements of a High Impact Ecommerce Ad

With a limited budget, there’s no room for trial and error. The ads must hit the ground running, target the right audience, and captivate attention.

In our campaign, we followed these principles:

1. Simple visuals: Use captivating images with stylized text and brand identity.
2. Engaging headline: Craft a headline that’s both clear and enticing to spark interest immediately.
3. Compelling call to action: Use a curiosity call to action instead of a shopping-oriented call to action. This can generate more clicks, because it gathers two intent types: informational and commercial.
4. Unique value proposition: Showcase what sets the product apart and clearly communicate the benefits to the customer – “Mental Focus and Relaxation”.
5. Brand consistency: Ensure your ad’s look and feel align with your overall brand identity.

Important Note About Brand

It’s less important to be polished and perfect. It’s more important to be consistent.

Truth is, even ugly or strange brands can be hugely successful.

For example, What’s stranger than calling a search engine “Google” or “Yahoo!”? Do you think the brand “Apple” was considered fancy? No. When Steve Jobs chose the brand name, he did it because it was at the beginning of the Yellow Pages. And the logo is just an apple.

In fact, the more unique the branding, the better. Rather than mimicking a great looking brand, go your own route and create something unique.

Two Week Campaign Results and Low CPC

With a limited ad budget of less than $200, we can get results, but we can’t get them long-term. Time = money. Less money, shorter campaign.

This campaign summary shows the ads are rated “High Performing”. This means they’re reaching the right audience and getting results faster than other ads from the competition.

We ran three different ads within a single ad set. The ad budget was not enough to run a true AB test, but we were able to decipher which ads were best.

Overall, we garnered 680 link clicks at an average CPC of $0.15.

Had we used Google Ads for this campaign, it’s likely we would have had less clicks. And the cost per click would have been between $0.20-$0.80.

That’s because as I type (October 2024) more ecommerce ad spend is happening on Google Ads than Meta (at least in this niche).

Determining The Best Ad Headlines for Low CPC

Our first run of the ads allowed us to determine the best ad headlines.

Our first ads had two different headlines.

Headline A focused on product features.

Headline B focused on benefits of using the products.

After 5 days of running the ads Headline B “Mental Focus and Relaxation” had more reach at lower cost. This early indicator signaled that Headline B was the headline to use.

Determining the Best Ad Creative

Images are important. After use data to get the headlines in order, we knew ad creative (aka Images) were the next piece to the puzzle.

For ecommerce stores, there are many products to promote. In our case, we chose to focus on a single product and test different images of that product.

In the image above, we discovered the ad with the three rings outperformed the image with the two rings. This was a by a factor of 2 to 1.

This could be the difference in being profitable vs not even getting a return on ad spend (ROAS)!

When you consider such drastic differences in performance and extrapolate that to a larger ad campaign over a longer time, this could be the difference in being profitable vs not getting a solid ROA.

That’s how important these early tests are in a Facebook Ad campaign.

Advertising Metrics that Matter for Ecommerce

We looked at reach, link clicks to the website, and cost per link click.

Let’s look at the early metric that told us which headline was the better of the two.

Reach.

Why Does Reach Matter?

Reach is not the end goal. We know that.

But consider the T-shirt shop near the beach.

No one is going to browse their shirt racks, if they don’t know they exist. Therefore, reach is the first step.

Reach in initial ads is crucial because it exposes your brand to a wide audience, builds awareness, and attracts potential customers. It helps gather data on which demographics respond best, refining future ad targeting for better results.

Essentially, it lays the groundwork for growing your customer base.

How Ad Creative Impacted Cost Per Click

We kept our create sets simple: Images with minimal text.

The layout of all our creative was identical:

• Large product image in the bottom two-thirds of the ad.
• Large headline in cursive script at the top one-third of the ad.
• Headline background color to match the website’s landing page.
• Gentle background colors to convey the emotion of the headline.

After running our campaign for two weeks, we quickly discovered the ads were “high performing” as rated by Meta. The following costs per click came in after narrowing the headline down to “Mental Focus & Relaxation”:

• Ad 1 CPC = $0.16
• Ad 2 CPC = $0.19

This was an total average of $0.17 per link click.

After making a few adjustments to the ad text, we were able to get the average cost per click down to $0.15. That’s an 11% improvement!

Two cents may not sound like much, but when you build a campaign with a weekly budget of $1000 or $10,000, we’re talking about trimming thousands of dollars of ad costs.

Here’s the big one…

After getting CPC down to $0.15, we knew there was more testing to do. The following variables were optimized:

• Targeting
• Headllines
• Images

But what about other products?

So we created a 3rd ad for a different product in the same product category.

The results were nothing short of astounding.

The new product line was the right match for our audience.

How did we know? Cost per click dropped by over 80%!

The new CPC for the 3rd ad was $0.02. That’s a mind blowing CPC, and we finally cracked the puzzle on the exact messaging and product our audience wants to buy.

If you’re reading this case study and want to learn more, I recommend digging into our blog resources or contact me on Fiverr through my marketing mananagement package.

Blog Resources:

• DIY Disaster: Small Business Advertising, Why Outsourcing to a Pro is Best
• Ecommerce Digital Marketing and Growth Ideas
• How to Write Effective Product Descriptions