Most of the Facebook ad accounts that I audit and look into are doing a ton of
things wrong that's losing them clicks and conversions and sales which is why
in this episode I want to break down exactly what's working right now, so you
can avoid these mistakes and be one of the few to truly get outstanding results
from your Facebook Ads. Also, make sure to stick around right till the end because
I'm going to be sharing with you an advanced tip that pretty much nobody is
using right now but could dramatically improve the effectiveness of all of your
campaigns. Alright, let's get to it!
Hey there my name is Adam Erhart, marketing strategist and welcome to the
marketing show. Over the past seven years I've run countless thousands of
campaigns for my clients and help them generate millions and millions and
millions of dollars. Also, over that time I've seen pretty much everything, the
good, the bad, the ugly, the fugly, the super fugly, the SuperDuper fugly, you get
the picture, and I've seen a lot of things change with the platform and with
how consumers and customers essentially, engage and interact with the platform
which is one of the biggest changes of all. See, back in the day, which makes me
sound super old but really, back in the day, we used to be able to just throw up
any old ad, we could have ugly images and terrible copy and bad creatives and it
would still work because the platform just wasn't that competitive and wasn't
yet saturated. Things have changed. You see, over the years people have really
realized that Facebook is an amazing opportunity to reach exactly who they're
trying to get to and because it is an auction platform, meaning, that people are
bidding for different spots and different spaces on the platform, well, as
people realize that it's actually a really effective advertising platform,
more people came onto it and it drove the costs up, making things really, really
hard to compete, especially when we compare to how they used to be. But,
really, really hard to compete isn't impossible to compete and in fact, it's
still really doable to run an incredibly profitable campaign on Facebook, it's
just different and that's what this episode is all about and I'm going to be
sharing with you some of my top tips on exactly what's working now to help you
get way better results and it all starts with tip #1: Longer copy. Now, the
reason that I want to start with longer copy is that I've really changed my tune
on this quite a bit over the last little... essentially months,
maybe even the last year, where we've started to experiment with longer and
longer copy because we're getting just so much better results, in most cases by
having kind of a a more detailed and more thorough and more story based ad,
rather than just a short and punchy and really catchy thing and then sort of
leaving them from there. You see, I used to preach that your ad should really
only do one thing, have one main priority and maybe one sub priority, essentially,
what that's got to do is it's got to stop somebody from scrolling by
lightning speed, all you have to do is think about how you engage with Facebook
and on your phone or on your computer, just kind of whipping through things at
lightning speed. So, your ads first job is to stop them from scrolling and the
second job of the ad is to just get the click. That's it. At least that's what I
used to say. Essentially, all you want your ad to do is get somebody to make
the click and you can do all of the heavy lifting on the landing page or the
opt-in page or wherever you're sending them to. Now, that's all true. We still
want your ad to stop the scroll and get the click and all of that still relevant
but we also want your ad to do a little bit more work today and that's okey
because we are paying a premium for this ad so it only makes sense that we wanted
to do a little more heavy lifting. Essentially now, what I'm seeing and what
we're seeing inside the agency and with all the clients that I'm consulting with
is that we're using a longer form ad to essentially tell more of the story, build
a little more rapport, cover some of the features and some of the benefits and
essentially, do a little bit of the selling right there inside the ad itself.
What this is resulting in is slightly more clicks on the ad to get people to
obviously read all of the content but also we may be paying a little bit of a
higher premium to get somebody to click the link and head over to the landing
page but these tend to be a much more qualified prospect, because they've taken
the time to make sure to read the copy, they've identified that "yes they're
interested" and they resonate with it, rather than just clicking to kind of see
what's behind the door. This is why it's really important when you're looking at
a Facebook ad campaign to kind of take a look at all of the metrics. We're not
just interested in cost per click or cost per link click or even cost per
opt-in necessarily, but rather the end metric of return on investment or return
on adspend and then kind of working our way all the way back to the beginning.
For example, if we've a short copy ad that's getting us super
cheap clicks but making no sales, well, obviously we'd rather have say a
longer ad that's really expensive clicks but is actually delivering us sales on
the back end and this is why it's really important to make sure all of your
metrics are set up and tracking, yadda, yadda... but really what we're focusing on
here is really making that transition to more of a longer form ad copy. A little
bit more work on the front end but we're finding a lot of really good results
with it. Alright, the next thing that I want to cover with what's working right
now phenomenally, well, within Facebook Ads is: Using the split test feature. Now,
if you've been watching my stuff for any length of time then you know I'm a
massive advocate of split testing, pretty much always and pretty much everything.
Whether we're talking about the copy that you're using in the body, whether
it's the headlines, whether it's the image or the video, whether it's the
placements of the targeting, whatever. I believe you should always be testing and
trying to find that better or more perfect combination of ideal ad
characteristics to get the best results. Well, Facebook has made this a little bit
easier right now using their split testing feature and it's actually
turning out to be a pretty valuable feature. Essentially, what it allows you
to do is to select split testing as one of your sort of top-level campaign
objectives and then from there you can start to decide what elements you want
to split test first, whether it's say audience or whether it's say ad
creative and even which part of the ad great if you want to test. The beauty
here is that by kind of sort of setting things up right within Facebook is
they're doing a lot of the heavy lifting for you and they're going to run the ad
until you get a statistically significant sort of winner or loser,
allowing you to make the best decision for which ads to scale and which ones to
cut loose. The other beauty of this is that rather than just taking all of your
ads and dumping them inside Facebook and saying: "Have at it, try to find me a
winner" well, when we do it that way, essentially sometimes Facebook will miss
prioritize or miss over prioritized one ad over another and if you've run ads
for any length of time you know exactly what I'm talking about. You'll see, one ad
that's getting great lead costs but it's decided to stop showing it and you'll
see another ad that has terrible lead costs and they'll decide that for some
reason this is the winner and they're gonna put all of your budget towards
that one. You don't want that to happen and that's what the split test helps to
avoid. Essentially, it takes your budget carves it up
between however many different ads or ad sets you want to use and then it allows
you to essentially, run it as a proper split test campaign, run it from start to
finish and give you a winner. Now, a couple real quick points that I need to
make sure you're aware of when using the split test feature: number one is that
you want to make sure that you're only split testing one variable at a time.
Whether that's a headline, whether it's body copy, whether it's an image or
whether it's even the audience's that you're running the ad to. You've got to
make sure that you're only split testing that one single variable. Otherwise,
you'll have no idea what's responsible for an ad performing better or worse. The
second thing is that once your split test is done, well, your work isn't
necessarily over but what you want to do is you want to take that winning ad, put
it into a new campaign and then continue split testing a different variable, so
there's always room to improve and find a better combination of those ad assets.
Alright, the next feature and the next tip that I want to talk about here with
what's working right now inside Facebook is: Leveraging CBO or Campaign Budget
Optimization. Now, I´ve made another video on CBO, so I'll make sure to link it up
in the cards and the descriptions below if you're not familiar but essentially,
all that's really happened here is Facebook has taken the budget sort of
section of the ads and they've moved it from the ad set level to the campaign
level which is kind of pretty much how all the other ads and all the other ad
networks run their ads, so it's kind of a nice changes to see. Regardless, this
simple change has thrown a lot of people for a loop and they've gotten really
confused and are still not exactly sure how to structure a proper CBO campaign
or what the implications are or how to set them up to get the best results, so
let me clarify some of that for you right now. First of all, it's important to
understand that CBO is really pretty much exactly what I just said, they've
just taken the budgeting from the ad set level and they moved it to the campaign,
so campaign budget optimization. Now, what this means is that you're going to set
your new budget at that campaign level and you're gonna structure things from
there with different ad sets under the campaign and different ads under the ad
sets. What this also means is that by moving things right to the campaign
level, you've made kind of your ad sets in your adds a little more resilient to
change. Here's what I mean, in the past we've seen a lot of massive algorithm
fluctuations, if anything was done at the outset level or if the
ad level or whatever, kind of mini changes were made, especially when it
came to increasing budget. This is the reason that when we're talking about
scaling up winning campaigns, I'm a strong advocate firm believer that we
should always do micro increases in that budget over the sort of the campaign per
day at around like say 10 to 15%, maybe 20% at most and always be watching to
see where things come to start to go off the rails. Well, in the past if you had
the budget at the ad set level and you decided to sort of start ramping up your
budget, well, obviously this is going to be concentrated on just one ad set so
things started to get a little wonky. The beauty here is that by moving that
budget to the campaign level you've got a little bit more kind of cushion, so
essentially, when you increase the budget of the campaign level it spreads it out
over the different ad sets and your results tend to be a little more stable.
It's always a good thing. But all that aside, probably the biggest
and most important thing you need to know about CBO is the fact that it's
really improved the way that facebook is going to select the winners and the
losers and start to allocate more of your budget in the right direction. So,
enough about the budget. How you actually set up a campaign to get great results
today? Here's what we're seeing, essentially what you want to do is first
set up your campaign and obviously set your budget at the campaign level, from
there you want to pick 2 to 3 to 4 of your absolute best ad sets which you
would have determined by doing a proper split test whether you decide to test
different audiences or ad copy, doesn't really matter, just make sure that you've
got four of your absolute best, maybe five maybe three and then from there
move down to the ad level and choose maybe two to three different ads per ad
set, then you just want to leave it alone and let Facebook run it to get some data
back. Once you get data back, well, then you're going to be able to determine
even better which ad sets are gonna be your top performers and which ads under
there, then simply take the winners duplicate them into a new CBO campaign,
start another split test campaign and it really pretty much never ends. Alright,
that's enough talk about CBO, let's move on to the next one which is: Dynamic
creative. Now, this is a relatively new feature but it's one that I'm really
finding some great results with and essentially, it's a bit of a variation or
modification of the split testing feature but rather than setting things
up as a proper split test, really testing only one variable at a time, here
what you're doing is you're taking all of your best copy and your best creative
and your best images and you're just dumping it all on Facebook and letting
them have at it. What happens here is Facebook then takes all sorts of
different combinations, of say: a headline from over there and a body copy from
over there and an image from down there and it starts to mix and match all sorts
of different ad combinations and show it to your audience. Then what you're able
to do, is you're able to go into your ads manager and take a look at exactly what
combination got you the best results which then you can take and move into
either a split test campaign or a CBO campaign and you know that you're gonna
have a really strong performing ad. Now, I do have mixed feelings on dynamic
creative, whether you're a beginner or whether you're advanced because there's
gonna be pros and cons to running it at pretty much both stages and everywhere
in between. For example, if you're a brand new beginner that almost rather you
focus on just creating one really good ad, really spending some time and really
think through exactly what you want to say and how you want to say it and if
you're advanced, well, the same thing kind of applies rather you kind of know
exactly what you're trying to do and really crafting out what do you believe
is the greatest ad copy you could ever possibly write. On the other hand, if
you're a beginner and have absolutely no idea what to do or where to start, well,
this is a great idea to just kind of chuck a whole bunch of stuff in and see
what sticks and the same thing applies if you're advanced and you've got a ton
of winners that you want to draw from and really figure out the best
combination. So, there really is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to
dynamic creative. My point here is just to be aware that it exists and see how
you can factor it into your campaigns. Alright, the next thing that we're
seeing working phenomenally well right now when it comes to Facebook Ads
is: Choosing slightly larger and slightly broader audiences. See, back in the day, I
know I've said that before but back years and years ago, we had to be pretty
dialed in with exactly who we're trying to reach, really dialing in all of the
exact targeting and then putting layers on top of that to make the audience
smaller and smaller to make sure that Facebook knew exactly who we're trying
to reach and who we are not trying to reach, so they didn't show our ads to
people that had no chance of converting. Well, over the years Facebook's gotten a
lot smarter and by Facebook I mean the algorithm behind the ads. What this means
is that by giving Facebook a little bit of a wider net
and really making sure that you've got an accurate but not too narrow target,
well, you're going to give Facebook more opportunities to find your ideal people
and then once it starts to find a few of them it's going to start to build into
the algorithm kind of the points and the data points and all of the similarities
between them so it can go out and find you even more of those people. The result
is more leads and often for way less cost.
You see, anytime that you make your audience way too narrow you're going to
be paying a premium because essentially, you're dialing in on exactly who you're
trying to reach which means that your CPM or Cost Per Mille which means Cost
Per Thousand impressions, essentially, kind of the benchmark that all
advertisers use to decide how much it's gonna cost to reach certain people,
anyway, that number is gonna rise significantly. Rather, if you can choose a
broader and wider more diverse audience and then make sure that you're really
dialing in and really targeting exactly who want to reach through the ad copy
and through the creative and how your ad looks and sounds and feels, well, your
costs are gonna be significantly less and you're gonna likely get way better
results. This is why my advice here is to make your audience pretty much what it
needs to be, whether that's fifty thousand people or fifty million people.
If you know that you've got dialed in targeting, that's pretty much as far as
you need to go and then make sure that your ad, possibly with longer copy, is
doing a lot of the heavy lifting for you. Alright, my next tip on what's working
right now is: Using square images or square video. Now, this should probably
come as no surprise but one of the greatest things you can do when it comes
to advertising, is to take advantage of all the tools and all the resources and
all the real estate that you get when you pay them money. For example, if you're
paying for an ad, it doesn't really make any sense to take up the smallest,
tiniest amount of space possible where you can stretch out and take up maximum
screen real estate and that's what you should be after. That's why we're seeing
square videos working phenomenally, well, more square images or if you have the
option kind of that massive full screen size. Again, different ad formats and
different ad types are gonna have different screen sizes but the takeaway
point is really pretty simple: just make sure to chew up as much screen real
estate as you possibly can. Yep, that's pretty much all I have to say
with that tip. So, just make sure to chew up that screen real estate and we'll put
that one to rest for now. Alright, moving on to the next tip which is more of an
advance tip but it's one that way too few people are using or even aware of and
that is: Day parting. Day parting is just fancy marketer talk for essentially
saying: choosing the right time or the right days to run your ads and choosing
the wrong time or the wrong days to not run your ads. Sounds pretty simple, yet
not many people are aware this feature exists or how to use it properly, so let
me explain. In a lot of businesses, possibly even yours, they tend to fall
into one of two camps, they could be either weekday businesses or weekend
businesses and I'm not just talking about the times where customers are
active in your business or when your business is even open but rather the
mindset or the psychology or the behavior of your customers and when
they're most likely to engage and interact and really sort of take in your
content. Could be weekdays or it could be weekends and if you know this for a fact
or you can figure it out through the use of strategic testing, well, then it only
makes sense to run your ads during the times that they're most likely to engage
with the content and make those purchase decisions. Fortunately, Facebook gives you
this opportunity using a day parting feature. Now, the way to get access to
this is actually pretty simple but it involves a few minor tweaks inside the
ads manager. The first of which is you need to use a lifetime budget. Not really
a big deal here just take whatever you're using for day and then multiply
it out over however many days you want to go and that's your new lifetime
budget. After that, you just have to go into your scheduling options and then
choose what days and what times you want your ads to be working. For example, with
one of my clients we found that by looking at the ad breakdown and seeing
when people were engaging with the ad content, we were getting our best results
by far between the hours of about 6 a.m. and 1:00 a.m.
Basically, all the way through the day but from 1 a.m. to 6 a.m. there was
nobody clicking on those ads at all. Also, nobody was clicking on them on the
weekend, so what we ended up doing is just taking those best times and those
best days running the ads only in that period and our results got dramatically
better and saved us a ton of cash. Now, here's the kicker, day parting is a bit
of an advanced strategy and if you're not really sure whether you have a
weekday business or a weekend business, you're not really sure how to set it up
or you have no desire to really even do it, that's ok. You see, essentially
figuring this out is going to take some kind of a testing budget and if your
not at that phase right now, that's alright, let's just put this one to rest
we can always look at it later. Alright, the next thing you're gonna
want to do is check out the video I have linked up right here on Facebook ads
tips and tricks which is going to give you even more strategies that I didn't
have a chance to talk about today. So make sure to check that out now. Thanks
for watching and I'll catch you next time on The Marketing Show. You want to
make sure that it captures attention but it also tells a story because irrelevant
images may get clicks but they won't get conversions later down the road...