Glossary

CAC - customer acquisition cost (how much it costs to acquire a new customer)

CTR - click-through rate (clicks received divided by number of impressions)

LAL - lookalike audience (audience consisting of people similar to those in your Custom Audience)

LTV - lifetime value (customer value x average customer lifespan)

ROAS - return on ad spend (revenue attributed to your ad campaign divided by cost of the campaign)

UGC - user generated content

Account structure

As with most things, you need to get the foundations in place first before you can build. In this case, that means getting your account structure right. The good thing here is, a much more simplified account structure is now the way to go. Here is what you need:

Campaign 1: Creative Testing

This campaign is where you’ll spend most of your time. This is for testing new ads only, figuring out which ones work and are therefore worth scaling and iterating on. Within this campaign you should have an Ad set for each new ad test and set budget at the Ad set level. This is important: if you set a budget at campaign level, your ads won’t get equal spend and you won’t have statistically significant data to determine which ads are successful.

Each of your ad sets should be set to broad targeting, meaning you only tweak country, age range, and gender. Your ad should do the targeting for you, by having clear messaging throughout. Facebook’s algorithm is smart enough (much smarter than you) to figure out who to target based on the creative and copy in your ad.

For those nervous to use broad targeting only for testing new creative, you can experiment also with some interest targeting. However this will mean you’ll be spreading your budget thinner as you test multiple audiences.

The copy used in this Scooch advert along with the subtitles used in the actual creative make it very clear to Facebook’s algorithm this is a product for dogs who suffer with itching. This is enough for it to target the right types of users on Broad Targeting settings.

Campaign 3: Retargeting

Finally, you may want to add a Retargeting campaign to the mix. If your traffic is low, this might not be necessary, you need at least 1,000 people hitting your website in the last 45 days just to be able to create an audience big enough.

Create two ad sets, one targeting website visitors, the other targeting those that have engaged with your social profiles. Drop in your best performing ads from your creative testing campaign and set the budget at campaign level.

Monitor frequency, it should be between 3-5: if it’s higher, reduce budget, if it is lower, increase budget (only if it's resulting in profitable sales!).

In terms of creative, customer testimonials often work well here but make sure to test as what works well for your prospecting campaign might not work as well in your retargeting campaigns.

1. Ideation

The ideation phase is where you’ll come up with concepts and ideas for your creative direction. The best place to start is customer reviews. Trawl through your customer reviews and pick out themes as to why people love your product. Use those themes as your areas to develop into creative concepts. It may also help to start with the pain points your product or service is meant to be solving, and the product benefits that address these.

3. Testing

Having a good testing framework is important for ensuring you have a logical cadence to what you are testing. You should be looking to test a variety of concepts (informed by your ideation tactics) and then a variety of different executions of that concept.

e.g. Vegan Beauty Brand

Concept 1: Reducing your impact on the environment

• Execution 1: Testimonial from a customer explaining how much less their carbon footprint is as a result of using your product

• Execution 2: Three ways [Brand name] is better for you and the planet

Concept 2: Only using natural ingredients on your skin

• Execution 1: Explaining what each of the natural ingredients do

• Execution 2: Show the benefit of product with natural ingredients vs other brands

Just because an advert doesn’t work, that doesn’t mean the concept is wrong. It could just mean the execution is not conveying the message effectively.

4. Evaluation

Knowing how to evaluate your ad performance is critical if you want to be able to iterate successfully and scale your performance. If an advert has spent 3x your target CAC and still hasn’t got a conversion, you can assume it will likely never meet it. This is one way to determine when to turn ads off.

Looking at CAC or ROAS, however, is only the beginning. It will tell you if an ad is or isn’t working, but it won’t tell you why. Metrics to consider for determining why an ad is performing include pre-click and post-click, each of which tell you different information:

Evaluating pre-click data will be the best starting point on understanding where to improve your creative. For example, if an advert has a poor CAC it might be as simple as your hook isn’t strong enough so not enough people are seeing it. Fixing a poor hook can quickly turn a terrible performing ad into a winner. 

These two Scooch ads are nearly identical other than the two hooks, one will likely perform better than the other and then be used on other variations.

If your pre-click metrics are all strong but you are still struggling to reach CAC and ROAS targets it might be less to do with your ads and more to do with the post-click experience (e.g. your landing page needs work).

So, Facebook isn’t dead, it is very much alive and I hope now you now feel more informed on how you can make it work for your business. Success doesn’t come overnight, it requires a well thought out testing structure. But through adopting a process of creative testing and evaluation, you should learn what does and doesn’t work.

Then it is a matter of doing more of what does work and less of what doesn’t.