META ADS RED FLAGS
ICYMI: We recently posted a video to socials about our Meta Advertising Red Flags. To recap, this is what we had:
Interest Targeting & Narrow Audiences
Using TOF, MOF & BOF Structure
Basic & boring Creatives (goes without saying)
Not Tracking Cost Per Acquisition (CAC/CPA/CPP)
Want to know why these are some of our top red flags? Let’s dive in.
🚩 INTEREST TARGETING & NARROW AUDIENCES
I’ve had multiple conversations with current employees and past employees of Meta (Engineers and Ad Experts) who have all told me the same thing (and confirmed what we have been doing for over 18 months): there is no use trying to outsmart the algorithm. It just won’t work.
Meta has evolved over the years and made it easier for us to achieve results through AI and machine learning.
It’s no longer necessary for us to try to outsmart the algorithm by building robust & outdated funnels (TOF, MOF and BOF campaigns I’m looking at you) and narrowly targeting our audiences by demographics, interests or even placements.
Meta will find the best way to deliver your ads and the best people who are most likely to respond to your ads and make a purchase.
So what do we do? We use broad audiences and some Advantage + Campaigns.
🚩 USING TOF, MOF & BOF STRUCTURE
TOF, MOF and BOF are a thing of the past - when it comes to structuring an ad account.
We want to be able to analyse the effect that each piece of creative has on our bottom line and the impact it is having overall. So it makes far more sense to have a simple account structure where we can see the result of each change, rather than an extensive structure where we can’t tell which move is causing which outcome.
Another reason we want to keep our audience broad and not structure our campaigns like this is longevity.
We want to ensure that each ad that we create and spend money on has the opportunity to run and be successful for a longer period of time. A broad audience allows us to have a large audience that does not fatigue but will go on forever.
🚩 BASIC AND BORING CREATIVES
The only way to ‘target’ your desired customer on Meta is through data & brand driven pieces of creative that actually resonate with your target customers.
Now let’s look at that sentence more closely. There are 2 things you need to be able to do to achieve this:
Understand your audience inside and out
Have the resources to create quality content
So, I encourage you to break down who you audience avatar is on all levels. Behavioural, psychographic, demographic etc and really find what makes them tick.
What are their aspirations and what are their pain points and how can you show them that you are the brand to fulfil the aspirations and provide solutions to the pain points?
Once you truly understand this audience, you can create content that they will love.
🚩 NOT TRACKING COST PER ACQUISITION (CAC/CPA/CPP)
This is the biggest red flag of them all and I truly hope nobody is in this situation. But, I say it because I’ve seen it.
If you don’t have a goal CPA then you don’t understand what your key KPI’s are to ensure profitability - and you’re ultimately going into Meta Advertising blind.
We don’t only want to see the number of sales or the purchases we have achieved through Meta, as that doesn’t tell us how profitable we are.
We need to know how much each of those purchases are costing and take our margins into account to know if we are actually making money or losing it.
🚩 BONUS: USING TRAFFIC AND ENGAGEMENT CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES
I’ll keep this short - is your goal to get more website traffic, social media views or to get more conversions?
Of course it’s conversions!
So why would we tell Meta to target window shoppers and people who aren’t likely to actually buy from our ads?
Always set your objective to Sales>Purchases (unless you’re running a Lead Generation Campaign).
I hope these tips help you on your Meta Advertising journey! It is such an incredible, sophisticated platform with a LOT of data on a LOT of people - so use it to your advantage to find the people who will love your brand!
And finally, don’t hesitate to reach out if you need more information on Meta Advertising and how to make it work for you!
