Mano2516
Registered Member
- Dec 28, 2024
- 91
- 81
Hello BHW community! Today I want to share with you the story of how one comma cost my company $250,000.
I'll start by saying that I have been working as a marketer for over 8 years. During this time, I’ve changed several companies, gained vast experience working with cryptocurrency exchanges, CPA networks, worked for companies with casino brands, and independently promoted businesses online. Now, I’m doing digital marketing for businesses and companies on my own.
I’ve had many victories and many failures, but there was one that I will remember for the rest of my life! And today I want to tell you about it.
At the beginning of my career, I earned money by creating Facebook ads for businesses. After I got tired of working with small budgets, I decided to level up and started working for a large corporation. The company was engaged in e-commerce in Europe.
The company had two of its own brands, and both were present in 18 countries in Europe. I worked on the biggest and most popular brand. I had 6 geo-markets under my responsibility. I was in charge of performance campaigns, those that generated revenue. I was responsible for ads with brands, when Nike, Adidas, or others allocated budgets for us, and we had to show ads for their new collections, as well as our own campaigns aimed at raising brand awareness.
Every month, a certain sum was allocated for brand awareness campaigns. It’s worth mentioning that, in total, I spent more than $300,000 to $400,000 a month on performance. I didn’t count the ads for the brands, but there the budgets would reach tens of thousands of dollars per month.
As for the brand awareness campaigns, we worked with a smaller budget, and everything depended on the market. This particular case happened in one of the SMALLEST geo-markets for my campaign.
At the beginning of the month, I always set a new budget. I would simply add the required amount of money to the one we had already spent, since all our campaigns were set with a "lifetime" budget, and Facebook would spend the remaining sum.
For example, Campaign A has spent $1000 throughout its existence. I set a new deadline until January 31st and add $300 to the campaign’s budget. This way, we know that the campaign will spend $300 over the 31 days of January.
But this time, I wasn’t paying attention, and Facebook added two zeros to my new amount. So, for example, if the budget was $11,250, it turned into $1,125,000. And this is a real case — from $11,250, the budget turned into $1,125,000.
And of course, I noticed this when I set the budget for the next month. I spent $250,000 on a campaign in the most unpromising market, a campaign that we didn’t even need…
I panicked, my first thoughts were — damn, I’m getting fired… Since the company I worked for spent tens of millions of dollars on Facebook ads, we had our own manager. I wrote to him, and he assured me he could solve the situation.
After some time, I received a message that META would provide us with a coupon for the amount we overspent on ads.
The wait was the longest in my life, but everything worked out, thank God! I worked there for a long time after that, and we spent millions more on advertising, but since then, I always double-check the campaign budget amounts!
Have you had any of these kinds of screw-ups? Share them in the comments!
I'll start by saying that I have been working as a marketer for over 8 years. During this time, I’ve changed several companies, gained vast experience working with cryptocurrency exchanges, CPA networks, worked for companies with casino brands, and independently promoted businesses online. Now, I’m doing digital marketing for businesses and companies on my own.
I’ve had many victories and many failures, but there was one that I will remember for the rest of my life! And today I want to tell you about it.
At the beginning of my career, I earned money by creating Facebook ads for businesses. After I got tired of working with small budgets, I decided to level up and started working for a large corporation. The company was engaged in e-commerce in Europe.
The company had two of its own brands, and both were present in 18 countries in Europe. I worked on the biggest and most popular brand. I had 6 geo-markets under my responsibility. I was in charge of performance campaigns, those that generated revenue. I was responsible for ads with brands, when Nike, Adidas, or others allocated budgets for us, and we had to show ads for their new collections, as well as our own campaigns aimed at raising brand awareness.
Every month, a certain sum was allocated for brand awareness campaigns. It’s worth mentioning that, in total, I spent more than $300,000 to $400,000 a month on performance. I didn’t count the ads for the brands, but there the budgets would reach tens of thousands of dollars per month.
As for the brand awareness campaigns, we worked with a smaller budget, and everything depended on the market. This particular case happened in one of the SMALLEST geo-markets for my campaign.
At the beginning of the month, I always set a new budget. I would simply add the required amount of money to the one we had already spent, since all our campaigns were set with a "lifetime" budget, and Facebook would spend the remaining sum.
For example, Campaign A has spent $1000 throughout its existence. I set a new deadline until January 31st and add $300 to the campaign’s budget. This way, we know that the campaign will spend $300 over the 31 days of January.
But this time, I wasn’t paying attention, and Facebook added two zeros to my new amount. So, for example, if the budget was $11,250, it turned into $1,125,000. And this is a real case — from $11,250, the budget turned into $1,125,000.
And of course, I noticed this when I set the budget for the next month. I spent $250,000 on a campaign in the most unpromising market, a campaign that we didn’t even need…
I panicked, my first thoughts were — damn, I’m getting fired… Since the company I worked for spent tens of millions of dollars on Facebook ads, we had our own manager. I wrote to him, and he assured me he could solve the situation.
After some time, I received a message that META would provide us with a coupon for the amount we overspent on ads.
The wait was the longest in my life, but everything worked out, thank God! I worked there for a long time after that, and we spent millions more on advertising, but since then, I always double-check the campaign budget amounts!
Have you had any of these kinds of screw-ups? Share them in the comments!
