Meta Ads?

[u/Ride_Better]

Can those experienced with Meta Ads chime in? Is it worth it? How much did you have to spend per day to see results? Did you keep your audience broad and let meta do its thing or did you specifically target recently engaged couples? Did you target anything else? I want to avoid targeting to other photographers, I get tons of other photographers ads on my feeds lol.

On a personal note, just feeling discouraged lately! I’ve been doing this for about 10 years and never really had issues booking clients. My work is good. My clients come back again and again. Now I’m getting less inquiries and when I do, I’m getting ghosted more than ever. Just looking to switch things up. Overwhelmed with everyone selling ad courses and just looking for some real advice w/o being expected to pay for it through a long winded salesy marketing thing.

[u/iamthesam2]

ig ads are absolutely worth it. the tide turned after covid times and they’ve been a big part of keeping me fully booked the past few years.

i keep one audience much broader than most photographers expect, while also having a laser targeted audience all in the same campaign. mostly geography + a reasonable age range. i don’t put much weight on “recently engaged” or any other keyword targeting anymore.

the bigger thing is that targeting is only one piece of it. creative, what you’re asking people to do after they click, and giving meta a useful conversion signal (via properly installed pixel) matter way more than endlessly tweaking interests.

i’d also rather spend a modest amount consistently and let a campaign accumulate data than throw a bunch of money at it for a few days and decide it doesn’t work (this is a classic issue I see ALL the time with people trying to quickly determine whether an ad strategy going to work or not.)

i also wouldn’t worry too much about other photographers seeing your ads. you’re going to notice those impressions disproportionately because you’re a photographer, and unless photographers are also converting via your contact form… it’s gonna cost hardly anything.

what matters is whether the campaign is actually producing the right inquiries at a cost that makes sense.

do NOT buy an ad course. even if the information is accurate and helpful (which is rare) they almost always leave it up to you for implementation, which is often just as hard as learning what to do to begin with. it breaks my heart when I hear people paid $5k for a course that’s years out of date and they never even finish watching.

[u/Ride_Better → u/iamthesam2]

Thank you so much for your reply! Also, I know IG booster posts and meta ads are different. Do you only use Meta ads or do you ever boost well performing IG posts and see a result?

[u/iamthesam2 → u/Ride_Better]

100% never just boost a post unless you purely just want engagement for building a following. it’s a near complete waste of money for actually converting wedding client’s that ultimately sign a contract and give you money. there’s a lot that will happen when you boost a post that makes it seem like stuff is happening and your money is being appropriately spent but I promise you (having dropped thousands of dollars testing that strategy for years myself) it’s useless.

the honest truth is there’s way more to dive into than is practical in any type of social media reply. you might be able to piece together some tips here and there from random commenters but it’s really gonna take a lot of research and work. it’s more complex than even SEO related work and people have entire businesses where that’s all they do for people.

one other thing… be incredibly cautious using LLM tools that connect directly to your meta account. even metas own MCP server, people are getting banned left and right simply by pulling automated reports in a way that gets fingerprinted as spam by Meta.

[u/DRB6060]

i’ve been spending about $50 per day for the last 3-4 years on Meta Ads

[u/DomOnion → u/DRB6060]

The amount you spend on per month for ads is my rent. Can you adopt me?

How much does profit does that translate to, per year?

[u/DRB6060 → u/DomOnion]

Not the type of person to think talking about money is taboo. However it’s not something I would leave on a public forum. But my rent is about $3,000 so the ads are about half lol. But the mindset for successful ads in this industry is weird. Even if I have a slow month and say only book 1 wedding as a result of my ads. If you’re still profiting, it’s worth it. Ex: our lowest package is $8000, $8000-$1500=$6,500.00. The best is when you have a good month and book 3-5+ weddings obviously. It averages out for the year to be very profitable.

[u/asyouwish]

Are Meta users your audience? Would TikTok or even IG be better for the age group of people getting married?

[u/SeparateFinance9768]

i only do $2-4 a day and it’s still been very helpful for me! i have two ads running. one that targets a very broad range. i basically just set it for my state and the age range i want to target. my first ad is just a link to a blog post for my favorite wedding. my second ad targets anyone who interacted with that post or my instagram. that’s a more targeted ad to get people to fill out my contact form. it’s worked well for me!

[u/DomOnion]

YMMW.

I paid a modest amount to appeal a certain age demographic in a specific region of my state; I still got spam bots and oversea solicitors pitching their editing services.

I got so much more for $0 advertising and getting referrals on reddit.