Dispatch № 2 - What's Working
A dispatch on what's working in FB Ads Land
Welcome to another dispatch with me,
Jake the Ad Nerd 🤓 (< not me)
First things first. Let me clear the air on a few things and perform a little housekeeping. Plus, set some standards for this newsletter going forward.
1. There is no one unicorn source (including this one) that will teach you everything you need. If that’s why you’ve decided to be in this community, you’ll soon be disappointed.
2. What works for one advertiser, might not work for you. These are merely observations on what myself and others see is working across accounts and verticals. You need to test responsibly and at your own discretion.
3. This dispatch will most likely get clipped in your inbox. So be sure to expand it.
📝 A Quick Note
I know, I know…
You came here for the good stuff. If that’s all you’re after, feel free to skip this section.
I literally titled the section with the tactics/ideas ‘The Good Stuff’
My feelings won’t be hurt if you scroll down 👇.
For those sticking around, I did want to take a second and notate that, I’m not entirely sure what this newsletter and community will become but, I believe we have something here, thanks to you.
The standard operating procedure will 100% be weekly dispatches on Tuesdays with posts, threads, and podcast sprinkled in throughout the week as ideas come to me.
Also, I hope you’re not offended when I curse or write cheeky stuff. I write like I talk. If it’s not for you, it’s not for you and I’m okay with that.
Lastly, thank you to everyone that shared the first FB Ad Nerds dispatch, sent sincere tweets, and let me know that we might be on to something. I legit almost crapped my pants seeing the community go from 0 to 158 subscribers overnight.
When I sit down to write, I’ll be honest… It’s for purely selfish reasons. So, when I get messages from folks who dig my writing style and find value, that means a lot.
With that, I’ll continue to do my best at providing value in return for your time and attention (which I do not take for granted).
Now, if you’ve read all the above, kudos to you.
But wait… there’s more!
🤔 Why this specific dispatch?
Are you kidding me, Jake? Where’s the good stuff?
I told you, it’s down below ;)
Why this specific dispatch? Well… I was stoked to get several messages after the last dispatch, from folks looking for ideas on what they could do to try and help turn their accounts around after such a shit week last week.
If you haven’t read my thoughts on why we had such a crazy week, you can read it here.
In that dispatch, I put out a few ideas on how to overcome the nonsense but, I didn’t really provide any tactical information or go into more detail on how to set it all up.
Therefore, I wanted this to be the place where I do just that. Unfortunately, I don’t have the capacity to do this full-time but I’ll try to help as much as possible.
Hell, I even invited a few friends, so that they can share what’s working as well.
So, right… the good stuff…
🍯 The Good Stuff
Let’s jump right into this damn thing.
*These are in no specific order and not ranked by importance.
✅ 1) Min. ROAS or Minimum ROAS
As proud early adopters, myself and my team went pretty heavy on Facebook’s Min. ROAS feature when they launched it in 2018 (damn… that was forever ago).
Min. ROAS was hot of the heels of value optimization targeting, which helped advertisers locate users who were likely to throw more dollars at things. Then Facebook released Min. ROAS to help us further boost return on ad spend and get the highest value per budget.
Once establishing the desired ROAS, Facebook algorithms then optimize ad delivery to reach those who will complete conversions to help achieve the desired Min. ROAS.
Pretty straight forward, right?
And it was. Until… we ran into some issues…
Which I’ll hopefully help you avoid by providing some guidance below.
With those issues, we became pretty upset with Min. ROAS. So, we tossed it aside for a very, very long time.
Now, with accounts going completely bananas 🍌, Min. ROAS is rearing it’s magical little head again and shocking the hell out of a lot of us.
In the right hands, Min. ROAS has the power to deliver and with the right best practices in place, it MAY provide significantly higher ROAS compared to other value optimization campaigns.
What’s my guidance as to best practices?
1.) Don’t set your Min. ROAS too high!
Success is uniquely dependent on finding the right Min. ROAS value.
As you read that, it seems easy enough. But, easy there tiger, not so fast…
Not setting the right value can put results in a proverbial shit storm.
For us, we have seen the strongest results when starting with a low Min. ROAS value. It’s a strategy that helps us accumulate more conversions.
To reach results sooner, I’d advise that you jack up (increase) this value over time to maximize profits and scale up to an optimal value, which can be determined by this friendly little calculation:
30% x Avg. (1-day Attribution Window) ROAS
50% x Avg. (7-day Attribution Window) ROAS
Before we move on, I’ll let you know that there’s a common mistake, that I’ve seen time and time again, and it is setting the Min. ROAS threshold too high.
What will this result in?
Your campaigns may not be able to meet this threshold or spend the campaigns full budget. As you can imagine, that’s no bueno so, please be aware of that.
Start with a lower ROAS threshold to accumulate more conversions sooner, while retaining the ability to increase bids and scale.
2.) Targeting
To give campaigns the best fighting chance for success using Min. ROAS, the right audience targeting needs to be put into place. Facebook themselves advise that value optimization works best when reaching audiences of at least 2 million people.
So, you need to establish a wide reach using Min. ROAS.
The best way to achieve this is to:
Ie. run automatic placements or make sure any lookalike audiences or LLAs (yes, I’m a LLA guy) are constructed based on purchase-related custom audiences.
*Pro-tip: If your Min. ROAS target is not reached, spend will be reduced.
✅ 2) The Kneuper Knowledge
If you’ve followed me for any amount of time, you know that there’s a small group of people in the Twittersphere that I continually support because in real simple terms… they just get Facebook Ads.
Nicholas Kneuper is no exception. We connected a while ago and have slowly evolved our relationship on Twitter to be that of New Girl roommates, Nick (me) and Schmidt (Kneuper).
I reached out to Kneuper to offer a little piece in this dispatch and he offered up some goodies that I hope you’ll enjoy.
So, the big picture, here’s what’s working for him (you may notice a theme):
“Constantly try new creative templates to pattern break your customers and get a higher CTR. You cannot keep showing them the same style.
This is especially true with less availability from the ad inventory right now.
Customer fatigue is happening much faster.”
Believe me, that’s so true. Then Nicholas offered up an idea that I think many of you should start working on asap…
“Encourage clients and brands to run discounts or interesting promotions/bundles to generate a higher than normal interest in the brand/product. Higher than normal meaning, anything that can drive a higher CTR & Relevancy Score with a lower CPA.”
We’ve done something similar for a few eComm brands with the bundles. With that, we’ve created separate landing pages for the new products, and rather than a flat product page, we’ll break down in detail everything that’s in the bundle, as well as, more info about the brand. So, in essence, it acts as a standard full-sized lander that you would typically use for say, email signups, or lead capture, but instead, you have your bundle ready to buy.
Now, this takes some effort and if you cannot edit a store’s theme, this may be of no value to you. But, it is worth ideating with your team or with your clients.
Schmidt also pointed out some discoveries that I’d like you all to be aware of…
“Accounts with lower relevancy scores seem to be more negatively impacted than accounts with 8-10 relevancy scores on their ads.
This makes sense in the backdrop of lower available ad impressions. If there is less ad inventory, the people with 5-7 relevancy scores will get squeezed out first as their auction bid modifiers are too high, causing their costs to become unprofitable.
Focus on creative, creative, creative to drive up relevancy score and get better bids.
Also, be careful of the expanded detail targeting checkbox. It seems to have worked well in the past but it may be backfiring now with FB trying to offload less than ideal ad inventory on whoever can take it.”
The last piece there is of real value because it’s an incredibly easy test. Testing audiences with and without expanded detailed targeting.
A very simple test that could have immediate benefits.
That’s it for Nicholas, and I’m very thankful for his time. If you want to connect with him, you can find him @nkneuper on Twitter or on his site at Ecom.ly
✅ 3) Large LLAs (4, 8, 10%) and Broad Interests
For new advertisers, LLAs are most likely going to be more useful.
I’m not going to spend much time here as I have another dispatch coming up that breaks down LLAs in a very thorough, almost exhaustive manner. But, the winners right now are LLAs at 4%, 8%, and 10% pixel (% only, not ranges).
Previously, the stack was where it was at, and we were stacking like maniacs. Now, as I’m sure you’ll see with the rest of this dispatch, things are a bit more simplified.
With that, I will add a note… that only if I was increasing ad spend, would I consider changing a strategy to broader audiences.
Meaning, you typically need a larger budget to run broader audiences. That budget helps you push out of the learning phase at the same rate that you would if using LLAs or narrow targeting.
Again, I’ll be covering this more later 😉 It definitely deserves its own dispatch.
✅ 4) The Gil David Gold
Now, if you don’t know who Gil David is, do yourself a favor and follow the man on Twitter @Gil_RunDMG
Gil hails from Belfast, Northern Ireland, and while I recently returned from Ireland (before COVID), and fell deeply in love with the country (yes I snapped that photo)…
…it’s not the only reason I drool over the golden nuggets of wisdom that Gil puts out.
We connected earlier and he dropped something that I think you’ll all enjoy.
It’s something that has been working for several months now for Gil and his business, Run DMG, and is “still holding on TOF even despite the recent downturn”.
A CBO campaign with 5 broad adsets, duped with different ‘clustered’ bid caps, in $5 ranges around CPA.
Now, if you’re like me… you’re drooling too 🤤
I immediately wanted to know more and luckily for you as the reader, Gil coated that golden nugget… with more gold.
If Gil has a CPA of $25, he would set the bids in the duped (duplicated) adsets at $20/25/30/35/40 to start and go from there. If some aren’t delivering or underperform, he’ll kill them and add a higher bid, such as $45.
This is one idea that you won’t see floating around groups or Twitter and one that I personally love.
✅ 5) Dynamic Creative for TOF (or TOFU ya nerds)
If you have no idea what Dynamic Creative is, this might be a real treat for your Top Of Funnel campaigns. Now, with most anything on Facebook, the shit is hit or miss.
Right now, it’s a hit and therefore we’ll talk about it.
A classic hit if you will, like Salt-N-Pepa’s, ‘Push It’ (push it real good).
Especially since a lot of people that I’ve spoken with recently, have no idea what it is or have never tested it 🤯. No shame though, that’s why we’re here.
Where can you find this little gem?
The toggle is right above the ‘Offer’ feature and your Audience selection panel.
When you toggle this baby, you also get a fun little pop-up… yay…
As Facebook alludes to, it’s a ridiculously easy way to generate variations on creative for your audience. Ie. You can have up to 10 images or videos with a combination of 5 texts, headlines, link descriptions, and CTAs.
Once you’ve compiled your ad components, Facebook then optimizes them to deliver efficient results for each impression served.
Dynamic creative is a great optimization tool when you’re unsure what creative resonates with different audiences…
Like right fucking now, when we’re all trying everything we can.
We’ve run dozens of experiments with Dynamic Creative and in the past, we typically saw 30% more conversions with a 25% lower Cost Per Conversion. This week, as we do dedicated tests with it, we’re seeing a 13% lift in conversions and a 4% lower CPA.
You’ll most likely see a decreased CPM (which will be a gauge of effectiveness, not success) but, Freq. will be higher than a standard ad set. Keep that in mind.
What’s the best practice for Dynamic Creative?
Myself, and others, pretty much all agree on the same thing…
DO NOT stuff this thing with every asset that you have, especially if testing budgets.
Choose:
5-6 Images or Videos
(A couple that historically performed well and/or a few new that you want to test)3-4 Texts
3 Headlines
1-2 Link Descriptions
1-2 CTAs
*Pro-tip: create these ads with your computer speakers or headphones on mute. If using videos, it will start cycling audio over audio. It’s a real treat…
For now, I’d recommend Dynamic Creative ads in CBO’s. We’re seeing lower performance when in campaigns with Ad Set Budgets.
✅ 6) Simplifying Account Structures. Less is More.
We’ve been doing something disgustingly simple for accounts that we’re looking to scale. These are accounts that are spending $3500-5000k a week.
It could be some Power 5 bullshit, it could also just be that we find it easier to maintain, and therefore you aren’t poking around as much when we simplify these accounts.
No offense to those that love Power 5…
For our larger accounts over $10-20k a week, the accounts are more diverse and we’re incredibly hands-on (you have to be - your clients pay you to be). But one key thing that most people screw up, is that they test WAY too much on accounts that don’t have the budget.
So, here’s your chance to stop and evaluate some of the items above.
If you have a low spend, PLEASE do not go into it and start blasting away at all of these ideas. You’ll undoubtedly destroy things and burn through all of your spend. I don’t want to hear about that.
Choose one or two, and give it a full amount of time and attention to tell you whether or not it will work. Then move onto the next 1-2 ideas.
What’s a simplified account structure?
An easy one is:
1-2 Campaigns for Top, Mid, and Bottom Funnel with 2 ad-sets each and 2 ads each.
It’s a very simple strategy that I personally love. Again, it’s ridiculously simple and for smaller accounts, it’s a treat to manage. Plus, it allows you to clearly test audiences at various stages of the funnel with a clear look at performance.
Woah, Woah, Woah…
But, I’ve been told that I need 8 campaigns, 4-5 ad-sets and X number of ads…
I get that and if that’s working for you, then keep it up. There’s definitely a place for instructions and structures like that.
For myself and our team, there’s no point in that shit.
Why do you need 4 ad-sets if you can accomplish the same thing with 2?
I practice this exercise with my team a lot and encourage you to do the same.
Constantly ask yourself why you're doing something in FB Ads Land and if you can simplify things, do it. Remember, for new and low spend accounts, less is more.
My buddy on Twitter, Matt Lady, shares a similar opinion. What’s worked for him recently on accounts that have been struggling big time?
Going back to basics 🧠
Ad Set Budget Optimization, 1% purchase LLA, Top 5 Performing Creatives.
SIMPLE! Don’t overthink it.
Another structure is one that we use VERY often:
I know, I know…
Most, if not all of you, did not come here to restructure entire accounts.
Therefore, I’m just sticking the above image here and letting you know what I’ll be covering this in a future dispatch after LLAs.
I wanted you to at least see it though and to start thinking about it.
Why?
Sometimes... simply being creative in your account structure is enough. Less is more.
Remember?
Whether it’s Louisiana Hot Sauce or FB Ads…
Where am I going with this? Why the eff did I just bring up hot sauce?
Stick with me here…
As an avid Louisiana Hot Sauce user, I’ve made the overzealous mistake of dabbing the bottle too much, coloring whatever is on my plate a fiery red, only to find myself in hell moments later as my tongue fends off the flames of Satan.
If there is anything true of FB Ads, it’s that like Louisiana Hot Sauce, less is more.
✅ 7) Always Be Testing
Through mentorship, testing/failing, and spending millions in FB Ads, I’ve realized that using statistical analysis to drive rapid incremental improvements in FB processes adds up to huge savings and returns.
If you’re about to dip because I mentioned statistical analysis… stick with me.
I’m super straight forward when talking about nerdy things and I know you’ll get it.
After all, it’s a very useful analog when it comes to advertising.
Meaning, it’s easy to focus on large, splashy initiatives when taking over an account. Especially for a large brand with a gigantic fucking budget and especially now when things may or may not be going well.
But, there is significant room to create an upside by testing and improving every KPI or ad success metric by fractions of a percentage point at a time instead.
So, how do you test?
I referenced this a little in my last dispatch and it’s really easy!
👉 Be very clear about what you test
👉 Isolate as many variables as possible
👉 Get your sample right
👉 Keep it simple
This formula, if you will, allows you to measure, analyze, test, and improve.
All of which are quintessential to a continuous improvement cycle that will drive advertising excellence and… you guessed it… I’ll be detailing this in the future as well! (you’ve got a lot to look forward to 😉)
✅ 8) Have Patience & Remove Your Ego
I also referenced this in the last dispatch and I’ll probably continue to, as it’s an attribute that all advertisers should have. That is, to consistently execute and operate with patience, and remove your ego when operating in accounts.
If you can remove your ego from the day-to-day of FB Ads, you’ll be much better off.
What do I mean by that?
Removing your ego allows you to stop caring about being right and start focusing on getting it right. You’re less romantic about your idea being the one that “saved” an account and more likely to continuously test ideas.
The practice of patience and placing your ego to the side is what will also allow you to consume and retain content and knowledge that others are putting out.
If you’re working with clients as a freelancer/consultant, or you hope to one day own an agency… testing, patience, and ego-less advertising are key.
Clients/partners, don’t stop thinking of you as an asset when you make mistakes (or there’s an outage on FB). They stop thinking of you as an asset when you move too fast and run out of solutions. > Tweet this
With gratitude.
Hopefully, there was some tangible and actionable value with this dispatch. If you’re unenthused about the “tactical-ness” of this dispatch, I’ve got news for you reader…
FB Ads don’t have to be that intense! With that, building strategy through consensus isn’t always the best case, so please review, test, and consider the above responsibly.
As always, keep me updated on what’s working and what’s not.
Until next time.
Cheers,
Jake the Ad Nerd
🤙
PS. If you enjoyed this dispatch, please consider sharing.
📖 Things I've Enjoyed Reading
Your Average CAC is Lying to You by Brian Balfour [Link]
How Facebook Uses ML to Deliver Ads. [Link]
🧐 Interesting & Random Things
Ericsson’s Mobility Report [Link]
The Worst Sales Promotion in History [Link]
Google Ad Revenues Drop for First Time [Link]
🤓 Nerd Link(s)
Discover Trends Before They’re Trending - Glimpse [Link]
Calculate Min Detectable Effect, Power, & Statistical Significance for A/B Tests [Link]
Create Your Own Ad Spend Calculator with Google Data Studio [Link]
Remember when I referenced my Twitter friend Matt Lady? Well, I wanted to be a pal and share some love for an apparel brand that he’s been working on. He’s launching Civitas, comfortable & funny shirts inspired by the DTC community, in late July! If you sign up now, you’ll get a 25% VIP discount code and early access.
Check it out: https://shopcivitas.typeform.com/to/CIaihB
Final disclaimer: It is not my intention to crap all over Facebook and their team with my words. These are just my opinions and when you’ve spent an ass load of time on a platform, you begin to develop a love/hate relationship regardless of how effective it is. To that effect, Facebook continues to be the go-to platform for me and I do not see that changing anytime soon. Especially as they roll out new products and maintain their status as the most used social media platform worldwide with almost 3.5 billion monthly active users (FB/IG).