#37 Fares Benouhiba – How to Spend $300k/Month Profitably on Snapchat Ads

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In this podcast, Deividas talks with Fares Benouhiba – former artists manager, marketing strategist, and entrepreneur for 7 & 8 figure DTC brands about Snapchat ads and growing new marketing channels

Fares is one of the best marketers Deividas has met in the last 3 years.

And he’s got an interesting story to tell on the podcast to say the least.

10 years ago, Fares was working 9-5 jobs, making around 200€ a month in Africa.

Obviously, this wasn’t what he wanted to do.

After a while, he got into music and decided that he wanted to start a record label. He didn’t think twice: he Googled how to open a label and started contacting artists straightaway.

Things grew and got serious pretty quickly.

So, Farnes quit his day job and decided to pursue that full-time.

He left Africa, moved to Europe, and opened an agency where he managed artists for about 6-7 years.

From there, he only dreamt bigger and turned to marketing.

He chose a niche, started on Upwork, created a blog – and started applying his skills learned from YouTube.

Eventually, he discovered eCommerce and focused heavily on marketing there.

He first started with dropshipping. During the day, he would execute and during the night – learn.

16 months later, he learned a lot and has helped countless brands in the French and European markets.

When asked about what he’s learning these days, Fares says he’s leading and teaching the team around him.

Before, he was a one-man show. Running ads, doing the marketing as the CMO, and more – all on his own. Now, he’s teaching his team all this, while he’s focusing on partnerships and learning new channels.

Deividas agrees that eventually, you need to build new skill sets, teams, and focus on new channels if you want to grow. And you can’t do all of this on your own.

The next thing Deividas wants to know is just how Fares approaches all the new channels he’s learning about, exactly?

For Fares, he found that when learning Snapchat ads, the best approach was learning from executing and doing.

And that’s the next topic they discuss – Snapchat ads.

The difference between Facebook and Snapchat ads is that Snapchat is still young and doesn’t have enough data to get purchase optimization.

Fares says that when you’re just starting out with Snapchat ads, you can do “swipe-up” ads. You might not be profitable and get the ROAS you’re looking for – but that’s fine.

You should first spend enough money to check if your product works and unlock the next purchase optimization.

It goes from:

Swipe-ups.
Pixel purchase.
Pixel add-to-carts.

Sometimes, Fares has to spend $1,000-$2,000 just to get the optimization for purchases and hit his ad goals.

Deividas says it’s like a game. You unlock one level, advance to the next one, and grow.

Fares agrees, especially since Snapchat is still young and is just now starting to be really powerful.

It’s completely different from Facebook too. For example, the look-alike audiences and similarity percents are different. And when you unlock the ‘advanced’, the audiences are built automatically.

On Facebook, you have to build them yourself.

Right now, Fares uses the balanced lookalike audience type for his Snapchat ads. His set-up is simple, he uses story ads and Snap ads. His campaign consists of 3-4 ad sets, broad audiences, lookalikes, 1-2 interests and uses 4-5 creatives per ad set.

Though, Fares explains that the most important thing is the bidding process.

When you start with “swipe-up”, you will be using auto-bid. But when you’re doing purchases, you’ll have 3 options:

Auto-bid.
Target cost.
Max bid.

For Fares, the target cost works best now.

This bidding strategy tells Snapchat to make the best effort to keep your average CPA at or below a set amount by the ad set end date.

For example, if your target CPA is $20, Fares recommends setting the target cost at $25-$28. In that way, it’s like Facebook.

Finally, for the placement, it’s always automatic placement. You can now target multiple countries in Snapchat but Fares recommends targeting 1 country per ad set.

Fares says that most eCommerce businesses that are converting on other channels should definitely try Snapchat ads too.

Fitness, skincare, beauty products, and similar industries work great with little to no competition.

Snapchat users are also open to discovering new brands.

Unlike other platforms, there are no comments or likes. When people are scrolling through their feed, they’re more likely to discover your brand if you have the type of content that resonates with them.

The next topic they discuss is Snapchat ad creatives.

To produce better creative ads, Fares recommends being a user of the platform first.

First thing you need to do is become a user of the platform and follow the niches you’re in.

See what the influencers and publishers are posting, and consume the ads from the users’ perspective.

You need content that is more native to the platform. Content that is short-form, 5-6 seconds, and has one clear value proposition.

User-generated content, customer testimonials, and easy-to-consume content work best, in Fares’ experience.

You need to structure your ad content to be simple. Provide one clear value proposition and a call-to-action in under 10 seconds.

One of his most successful ads that averaged 5x ROAS was footage of a product shot through an iPhone.

It’s not that difficult and it’s completely different from what works on Facebook.

There is no ad library for Snapchat though. So, the best learning method is to look at what other people are doing, reverse engineer their success, and learn how you can do better than that.

Deividas agrees on reverse engineering. You can also learn a lot about your customers this way. You ask questions, follow them on social media, and watch what they watch. In this case, Deividas says he’s watching Grey’s Anatomy to better understand his customers.

The most valuable thing Fares says is to track and understand the people who didn’t buy from your ads.

You can use UTM on your ads or Hotjar on your site to track these people and get soft data. Then, you can contact them, give them a discount, and try to gain as much information as possible.

What made them click on the ad? Did they buy the product? Why/Why not? What made them commit today now – and not the next day or next week?

Fares says they do this every 3-6 months and it helps tremendously in understanding their target audience.

If you have their names from the UTM, you can even call them directly if you want to understand them even better.

Finally, Deividas asks Fares the best way people can get into Snapchat ads.

To this, Fares says that you can use influencer marketing and just to start with “swipe-up” ads.

To finish up the podcast, Deividas asks Fares what obsessions he explores during the evenings or the weekends.

Right now, for Fares, it’s learning more and trying to disconnect his brain for at least 30 minutes.

He says that, at the end of the day, we’re all human beings, and need to be healthy in the mind and body to perform well.

Here’s what we cover during episode 37:

Meet Fares and find out why he is the very best marketer Deividas has met in the last 3 years
How Fares went from making 200€/month in Africa (where he’s from) to owning an agency and managing artists in Europe
How Fares makes sure he’s always learning (no matter what industry he’s in or what he’s working on)
What Fares is focusing on nowadays to make sure his team is performing at their best
Deividas & Fares on the learning experience of leading a team
How Fares approaches learning new marketing channels from scratch
How Fares launched a new successful account on Snapchat from ground zero, with cold traffic, and zero influence
What most people get wrong when running Snapchat ads (and how to approach the channel the right way)
The step-by-step process for optimizing Snapchat purchases and growing account purchases
How much Fares spends usually to optimize accounts for purchases and hit his ad goals
Fares breaks down his exact Snapchat ad campaign structure and explains what kind of ads he’s focusing on right now
His approach to bidding, the 3 different types to use, and which one works best for him
How Fares sets target cost, when to increase the budget for your Snapchat ads and when to use automatic placement
Why Fares recommends these eCommerce industries should get on Snapchat ads ASAP, if they want little to no competition
How to produce Snapchat advertorial ads that get people to stay and watch when scrolling through their feed
Next topic – Snapchat creatives
What type of content works best on Snapchat and why you need to be a user of the platform if you want to create better creatives
Fares breaks down the anatomy of a successful Snapchat ad
Why his most successful Snapchat ad was deliberately shot with an iPhone and how it averaged 5x ROAS
What Fares recommends doing if you want to get better at Snapchat ads – even though there is no ads library for the platform
Why Deividas is watching Grey’s Anatomy to better understand his target audience
The most vital thing Fares does every 3-6 months to better understand his customers
The exact questions Fares recommends asking your customers if you want to understand them better
Fares’ evening and weekend obsessions he focuses on when not working
How Deividas looks at his competition like Michael Jordan in The Last Dance