This is why you are paying too much for your ads…

Let me quickly explain..

The last year or so has had so many ups and downs, the markets have been almost unpredictable with Facebook. Or so we thought anyway.. When the world shut down I think everyone thought that the markets would take a hit for some reason.

What happened next was complete guess-work to everyone.

BUT THEN, things actually turned out pretty good for us folk, who sell online.

Online activity naturally took a huge spike with everyone being at home, and with a lot of people working from home etc. and nowhere to go, they would naturally spend money online..

Sales and profits of course spiked as well for online business owners. I’m sure you all know Jeff Bezos of Amazon pretty much doubled his net worth to $200 billion.

Everything was going along pretty smoothly.. (apart from the elections)

And then BOOM!

iOS14.

And on top of that, Facebook restricting and disabling accounts left, right and centre.

I’ve seen a lot of posts in this group of people having issues with their accounts and even seeing massive drop offs in ROAS and profitability compared to previous months in 2020.

We have been fortunate enough to remain profitable and achieve ROAS that you can see in the image on this post. So, I literally just want to give you the exact strategy we have been using with our ads manager so you can take it and take yourself back to profitability.

Here’s what I’ll be covering:

1. Facebook ad campaign structure. (TOF + MOF + BOF)
2. How to scale the ads in the current climate. (TOF + BOF)
3. How to make sure your creatives last. (Stop them dying every week)

---

Section 1 - Facebook Ad Campaign Structure:

To understand why we use the campaign structure we use, you first need to understand the way in which we view Facebook itself and the campaigns:

Audiences usually last quite a while. This includes Interest and LLA’s.

Creatives only last a few weeks

Audiences can be extremely volatile

Facebook do disable accounts for no reason (stupid I know)

You must have 3x ROAS on your retargeting campaign or something is wrong.

If we are profitable, ROAS is the only metric to pay attention to.

Make sure daily results are stable before scaling.

The TOF and how it is structured:

To start with, we need to find 10 to 12 audiences that will produce PREDICTABLE sales for us on a DAILY BASIS. This is our number 1 priority when we are launching our TOF campaign.

The reason for this is because Facebook in the past has proven to be relatively volatile. We must combat this volatility in order to be able to scale effectively.

This is how our test campaigns usually look:

CBO with 10 to 15 ad sets and five creatives within each ad set:

1. 1% stacked LLA’s from website (PUR+ VC + AWV + ATC - 180 day window)
2. 1-5% stacked LLA’s from website (PUR+ VC + AWV + ATC - 180 day window)
3. 1% stacked LLA’s from page (all page engagement + any post or ad engagement + 75% video watched - 180 day window)
4. 1-5% stacked LLA’s from page (all page engagement + any post or ad engagement + 75% video watched - 180 day window)
5. 1% value based LLA (180 day window)
6. 2-3% value based LLA (180 day window)
7. 95% video views LLA (180 day window)
8. 1% email list LLA (180 day window)
9. 5-10% email list LLA (180 day window)
10. Previous performing audience #1 (an audience that has been profitable for the past 3 months)
11. Previous performing audience #2 (an audience that has been profitable for the past 3 months)
12. Previous performing audience #3 (an audience that has been profitable for the past 3 months)
13. Previous performing audience #4 (an audience that has been profitable for the past 3 months)
14. Previous performing audience #5 (an audience that has been profitable for the past 3 months)
15. Previous performing audience #6 (an audience that has been profitable for the past 3 months)

This is what has typically worked for us recently, which should work well for you too. Feel free to test audiences to find whatever you think might work best for you!

I would recommend that you leave these running for around 7 days so you can really identify the most effective audiences. If by day 3, the campaign isn’t profitable, turn it off. If you are profitable however, after the 7 days, look for audiences that have produced 7 or more purchases. If it is 7 or more, this means that the audience is consistent which is exactly what we want.

Now that’s covered, her is how we set up BOF:

AD SET 1:

• 3 day AWV
• 3 day ATC

Exclude all purchases in last 180 days

AD SET 2:

• 14 day AWV
• 14 day ATC

Exclude all purchases in last 180 days

Exclude all 3 day AWV

Exclude all 3 day ATC

AD SET 3:

• 30 day AWV
• 30 day ATC

Exclude all purchases in last 180 days

Exclude all 14 day AWV

Exclude all 14 day ATC

AD SET 4: MOF AUDIENCE

• All page engagement in last 60 days
• All post engagement in last 60 days
• 75% video views in last 60 days

Exclude all 60day AWV

Exclude all 60 day ATC

I would recommend your budget for the BOF should be 30% of what you spend on TOF. To calculate the type of budget you should be using for your BOF, use this quick calculation:

Your TOF budget x 0.3 = 30% of your TOF budget

So:

$100 x 0.3 = $30

I would say that your retargeting campaign must have at least 4x ROAS. This is because the ROAS will take a hit as you scale, so you want to give yourself a little buffer. If it’s lower than this, it will only get smaller.

---

Section 2 - How To Scale Effectively:

Once we have established those initial audiences from the testing, and we have 8 to 12 audiences that consistently and predictably perform we can start allocating more spend.

Essentially, what we’re going to do is take performing audiences, and put them into a dedicated campaign for scaling which you will then up the daily budgets with.

We’ve recently been using CBO when increasing budgets and it’s worked well. Ideally, you don’t want to be working with less than $1,000.

These are the rules we use in order to grow the campaign effectively:

Rule #1: Trim off the fat - Ad set level

• If amount spent > break even CPA + purchase on pixel is < 2 + ROAS is < breakeven ROAS
• Time scale - Today
• Apply to each individual ad set within the scaling campaign
• Schedule the rule to run every 30 minutes

Rule #2: Turn on at midnight - Ad set level

• Turn on if spent is > $5
• Time scale - Yesterday
• Apply to each individual ad set within the scaling campaign
• Schedule the rule to run every night at midnight

Rule #3: CBO budget at midnight - Campaign level

• Increase the budget 25% if ROAS > your target ROAS KPI
• Time scale - Yesterday
• Schedule the rule to run every night at midnight

These rules are really helpful because it means we’re not killing off campaigns too quickly, for example if it had an off day. We also usually use a similar set of rules in order to scale the BOF but slightly different.

As you continue to scale your TOF campaign, you will need to compensate in your BOF budget. We usually increase the BOF budget as we do TOF at the same time.

However, we do it slightly differently on the BOF. In the BOF, we increase the budget $50 each to allow the campaign to remain stable but it will allow it to produce awesome results too.

If you’re stopping your scaling at the TOF, you will also want to do the same with the BOF.

---

Section 3 - Keeping Creatives Fresh and Performing:

With everything that I’ve talked about so far, it’s pretty much rendered useless, unless you’re able to manage your content effectively.

We do this by maintaining the effectiveness of our creatives, analysing numbers, keeping what works and refreshing what gets washed out.

Here are the steps to take to do so:

STEP 1:

If you have a campaign that has now been performing well for a few weeks or even months, and it begins to dip, this is what you should do…

1. Go into the ad set and select an ad
2. Duplicate the ad twice, keeping all copy the same but insert two new creatives.
3. Duplicate the ID of the ad across all ads to make sure you maintain the social proof. While you do all of this, keep all of the old ads ON.
4. This should hopefully get your ROAS back up, but if it doesn’t go on to the next phase..

STEP 2:

1. Turn off all of the ads.
2. Create 5 new ads with different angles to what you originally had.
3. This basically refreshes your whole campaign, showing your audience something they haven’t seen before. Again, this revival should boost ROAS, but if it doesn’t go on to the next phase..

STEP 3:

1. Turn off all ads.
2. Take your best performing ads from your previous TOF campaign and turn them into dynamic creatives.

---

I hope this post was insightful for at least one person and I really hope it helps you create extremely effective campaigns and make some good profits like we have.

As the world slowly returns back to normal, things will probably change, and I’ll keep you updated on what we’re doing in the future.

Hope this was helpful for someone.

Javier