Quick Hit: 4 Takeaways after scaling an ad account from $200/day to $2k/day in spend in 7 Days

Read my 4 biggest takeaways after my recent scaling experience

Preface

• I had just started with this client within the 30 days prior to the beginning of the scaling period.
• This client hadn’t hit their ROAS metric for the last 10 months at least.
• I hadn’t done this before so this was my first time spending this much this fast.

Let’s get into it.

Context

#1 – Campaign(s) by SKU/subcategory. 

This was the first time the client really was doing a campaign (CBO) by SKU or subcategory. Before it was just all lumped together with different products and creative. If you put these all together, it’s hard to know and control cost caps and ROAS/CPA goals.

• Ex: A $6 lipstick and a $20 eyeshadow palette vary in hard costs and average order value so my caps need to be set accordingly.

#2 – Consolidate your account. 

With a limited budget (would not budge past $200/day to start) I stopped having many ‘buckets’ and fewer ‘drops.’ I turned off several campaigns and adsets was able to focus the spend into just a couple adsets so both I and Facebook could learn quicker and have more data back to make decisions on ads we were testing. And doing this can help you get out of learning phase (~50 conversions in a 7 day window; which some will argue is irrelevant, I’m on the fence on this myself)

• I put a remarketing adset and prospecting adsets in the same CBO in this set up; for this account its working great, and for two others (not all of mine, so test!). This allows FB to decide and find those lowest hanging fruit each day. Because quite frankly, I don’t really care if my budget split is 70/30 or 40/60 day to day for prospecting vs remarketing. I ultimately want a specific return on my ad spend.
• You can get real specific with your remarketing ads if you’re only remarketing off product specific video views and specific website pages for that specific product, too.

Need more help figuring out your baseline profitability numbers? Free quick cheatsheet below to download ?

#3 – Creative, creative, creative.

Creative is THE variable for success as we continue to give FB more control of budgets and audiences. 90% of ad spend this month has gone to two videos, very similar style.

You don’t need a ton of creatives that work but you need to test a ton. I’d reckon 7-8/10 times your creative will miss, actually and not be at your ROAS benchmark.

Keep testing.

• Don’t throw out creative if it doesn’t work. Creative (especially video) is a lot like a car being broken. The entire car is not broken, a certain part is. The engine, the tire is flat, etc. A video is not working because its not doing one of first three in “AIDA” properly and there are actual metrics to look at as leading indicators for performance.
  • ATTENTION – impressions/3 second video views ratio = “thumbstop” — general minimum benchmark = 25% or higher
  • INTEREST – average video watch time = engagement/entertainment — general minimum benchmark = :05 or longer (depending on length of video)
  • DESIRE – clickthrough rate — general minimum benchmark = 1% or higher
  • ACTION – ROAS goal – varies by client
  • You can iterate off a single video asset several times. You don’t have to throw out your entire car, just fix the part that needs work.

If one of the above metrics is way off or below the benchmarks (for your account) then you can know how to change the different pieces of the video or the headline/ad copy.

#4 – Cost cap/manual bidding. 

This was alluded to in the first point, but if you know your CPA for this product/subcategory, using cost caps helps prevent or decrease ‘bad spend.’ You may not spend that $100/day budget everyday like you do on lowest cost but over time, you’ll more likely receive a more consistent result. You need to weigh if you want volume, consistency, etc when looking at different bid types.

• If your cost (or bid) caps aren’t spending or stop spending, FB is basically telling you “we don’t think we can find purchasers with your current set up.” That could mean your creative, your audience, or often is your landing page experience. It does not mean necessarily to immediately increase your cost cap to allow for more spend.
• Try cost caps @ your CPA. Try bid caps at 1.2-1.3x your CPA. Walk the bid up and down accordingly. If you’re purely going for volume and mass scaling, lowest cost/auto definitely still works in a lot of cases.

All real important and reasonable questions to ask. This depends on your brand, if it’s demand capture vs demand generation, how much you’re spending and so on but let’s dive into it.

Enjoyed this article? Interested in learning more about Facebook Ads or eCommerce or working with me? There’s a few ways I list out below:

1. Hire me for an hour here – I can go in-depth on a screenshare and audit your account.
   
   You’ll get a second set of seasoned eyes and be able to locate low hanging fruit to get a quick boost to your ROAS and campaigns or dive into some bigger opportunities.
   
   Account structure, campaign objectives, targeting, audience exclusions, creatives, copy , bidding, creative, all sorts of things to go over or can dive in one a couple of specifics.
   
   Or we can chat about fully managed services.
   
   
2. Buy a course or two (or more!) from Foxwell Digital and receive guidance, in-depth and expert analysis and lessons from people who oversee and spend MILLIONS of dollars on FB ads every year so their advice to beginners and intermediate advertisers is really helpful and has helped me improve my campaigns for my clients.
   
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