Aaaaaand in today’s edition of “I’m an idiot”…

We have:

Let’s duplicate an ad and forget to update the link.

I was lying in bed at 3 a.m. when I realized it.

I restarted three ads yesterday, and one of them immediately started doing spectacularly well. An 11% result/conversion rate. CPC down to 15 cents.

No sales.

Which was a little strange, considering… wow.

But it was day one, so I wasn’t thinking too much of it.

Then, sometime around 3 a.m., something apparently clicked in the back of my brain.

The duplicated ad was still using the old link.

Which meant I was happily paying to send people to a book that no longer exists.

Excellent.

I’m not even sure what made me suddenly realize it, but at least I figured it out on day one instead of spending a week staring at the numbers and thinking:

Well, apparently my ads just suck.

So there’s today’s marketing lesson:

Before you overanalyze your CTR, CPC, targeting, creative, copy, audience, or the mysteries of the Meta algorithm…

Maybe check the damn link first. 😉