How to Optimize Advertising Campaigns

Stop overthinking when your FB ROAS is below 1.2x. I've found that I only need to focus on 4 things (step-by-step). It's stressful when performance is poor. I've been there. I've made many mistakes and learned from them. Here's how I do it now. PROCESS: 1. 𝗧𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗹𝘆. Prompt = am I testing at least 10 ads a week? → I check customer surveys. → Make sure we're targeting the right benefits and pain points (from surveys). → How good are the hooks? In 40% of the case, the hook is the issue. → Re-launch ads that worked 2-3 months ago, making variations for them. → Test static image ads (highlights, testimonials, us vs them, vector). When the performance dips, test new ads and re-launch what worked in the past. 2. 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗮𝗴𝗲. Prompt = is the page's CVR% above 2%? → Review Hotjar heatmap for LPs. → Check if the page loading speed is <2 seconds. → LP copywriting: Ask myself:    ↳ "If I visit for the first time, can I understand in 5 seconds what this product is about?"    ↳ "What's my biggest objection to buying it?"    ↳ Now, craft the message around the two questions above. If you are still driving traffic to a product page, prioritize building a custom landing page. 3. 𝗖𝗵𝗲𝗰𝗸 𝘂𝗽𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗹𝗲𝘀. Prompt = do I have bundles? Do my upsells bring in 10% of revenue? → Create fitting bundles if we don't have them yet. → Add the "Shipping guarantee app" for $2.99 per order. → Add checkout cross-sells. If your upsell revenue is lower than 5%, edit the upsell sequences. 4. 𝗨𝘀𝗲 𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗹 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗟𝗧𝗩 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱. Prompt = do we send 3 email campaigns per week? → It doesn't directly impact FB ROAS, but it does impact store-level MER. → We need to ensure we have profitable MER during low times on FB ads. → 25-30% of total revenue should come from emails. → If our open rate is around 40%, we can afford 1-2 extra emails per week. Paid ads and email marketing work hand in hand. - FOCUS on these 4 things first, as you should already have them in place. 5. (BONUS) 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗮𝗱𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝘅. These are the "Power 3" tests that can 2x your brand overnight: → Run whitelisting ads. → Launch an advertorial funnel. → Build an irresistible offer. Think about Domino's and their entire "*30 minutes or it's free*" angle. Or Lumin's Skincare - "*FREE product+subscription*" offer. Today, in 2024, the offer, whitelisting, and advertorials can turn your performance around 180 degrees. When performance is down, most people blame the algorithm. Try to look deeper and become one of the 1% who find solutions and reverse the performance trend. - TL;DR 1. Test new creatives quickly. 2. Review the landing page. 3. Check upsells and bundles. 4. Use email marketing to drive LTV forward. 5. Start adding new tests to the mix. P.S. What is your go-to performance solution tip?

Creative testing is your secret weapon on Meta. Here's my approach. (1) Crank Out Quality Ads - Produce as many ads as possible while maintaining high quality. Avoid creating low-quality ads just to increase volume. Have a hypothesis you want to test - whether it's a visual hook, trending audio, or a new creator - to gather learnings. (2) Track Every Ad - Use a standard naming convention to keep track of all your ads. This helps in analyzing performance over time. You don't want to look back in the last 90 days to try to see which hooks, scripts, creators, concepts, etc are your best building blocks. (3) Creative Diversity - Test various types of ads – static, video, UGC, 3D motion, AI-generated, and even "ugly" ads. The goal is to have a diverse set of creatives. They look different but also speak to different levels of awareness. Different offers, angles, headlines, scripts, etc. (4) Allocate Budget for Testing - Dedicate 10-25% of your marketing budget to creative testing. Increase this percentage if you're just starting out. Know that this will inflate your CPA but the winning creatives that come out will take your ad account to new levels. (5) Isolate Variables - Conduct 'ad set tests' to isolate variables. Ensure each test gets enough data, around 30 conversions in a week, to be more confident. If possible, you can test in lower cost GEOs, on Android, or Tiktok. (6) Monitor Spend - The ad that gets the most spend is a strong signal of its effectiveness. Keep an eye on where your budget is going. It's a good sign that this ad can scale if you port it over into your evergreen/BAU campaigns. (7) Always-On Testing - Testing should be a continuous process. Don’t stop after finding one winning ad. Keep the momentum going to discover new top performers. You need to build the muscle with constant reps. Creativity can be learned, I promise. It's fun too. (8) Volume Negates Luck - The more you test, the higher your chances of finding successful ads. This is just the reality now advertising on Meta and Tiktok. There is an exponential rise of video content on our screens. Trust me, it's going to get more difficult with AI-generated video. You need a reliable system to stand out and gain mind share. Solving this is the #1 opportunity for brands to grow efficiently heading into 2025. ___________________ P.S. - You can have both quality and quantity with Sovran

The 3 most overlooked PMAX campaign optimization strategies (...that WILL improve performance) Struggling to get consistent performance from your PMAX campaigns? You're not alone. As Google slowly reveals PMAX data, it's easy to get lost in possible ways to optimize. I've been there too. But hidden in your PMAX campaigns are 3 powerful yet overlooked places that offer BIG optimization opportunities: ✔️ Review Asset Group Performance - Use the Mike Rhodes PMAX script (I linked it in the comments) to analyze Google ads channel metrics. See which channel drives the most conversions and revenue. Then make tweaks to see ads in top-performing ad placements e.i. Search, Shopping, Display, & YouTube. ✔️ Utilize the Insights Tab for Search Terms Insights - Check the Insights tab for search terms and keywords people are using to find your products/service. Look for top converters and add these keywords into new custom intent audiences & search themes. This allows you to target more quality users. ✔️ Use the Insights Tab for Audience Insights - The Insights tab also shows you NEW audiences interacting with your ads. Spot potential custom affinity and in-market audiences here by paying attention to the categories people fall into. Expand your reach by including these new discovered audiences. Optimizing these 3 overlooked areas takes some manual effort but pays off tremendously. You can uncover optimization gems that remain untouched by most advertisers. Implement these 3 optimizations monthly, and you will notice positive trends in your campaigns. Give it a shot and let me know your results! Here's a visual of exactly how I leverage the Insights Tab in my client accounts:

The Top 5 Lessons from Managing a $10M Budget in Amazon's Demand-Side Platform (DSP) Over the last 18 months, I've had the opportunity to manage a $10M advertising budget on Amazon's DSP. Here's a rundown of my top five lessons for those looking to optimize their digital advertising strategies: 🔢 1. Conduct Brand Lift Studies for Measuring Awareness Sales metrics and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) are great for understanding conversion performance, but fall short when evaluating brand awareness tactics. To get a true reading on this, utilize Amazon's shopper survey panel. It polls thousands of users within your target audiences, gauging any shift in awareness post-ad exposure. 🎯 2. Prioritize Ad Viewability If your ad's viewability rate is below 50%, you're essentially throwing half your ad spend in the dumpster and setting it on fire. You can tweak your viewability settings under 'Targeting' in 'Line Item Settings.' Yes, you might get fewer impressions and higher Cost Per Mille (CPM), but it's better to pay for higher quality impressions rather than to pay for impressions that are never seen. 📊 3. Refine Negative Audience Targeting with "Untargeted Audience" Reports Think of Audience reports as DSP's version of Search Term Reports. These reports break down audience performance by age, demographic, and lifestyle, among other metrics. For instance, we found Android users less likely to buy our premium products compared to iPhone users. Refining our strategy through audience negation led to improved Click-Through Rates and ROAS. 🛒 4. Leverage Amazon's Native Ecosystem I don't allocate funds to less effective tactics unless top-performing strategies are maxed out. Amazon display ads engage audiences already in a shopping mindset, leading to higher CTR, Conversion Rates (CVR), and ROAS. For directing traffic to Direct-To-Consumer (DTC) sites, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Google Ads tend to be more effective. 🔄 5. Adopt a Full-Funnel Strategy One of DSP's unique features is its access to Amazon's first-party data, enabling us to craft strategies that guide customers through the awareness, consideration, and conversion stages. This has proven to be an unmatched method for acquiring new customers, particularly for larger brands with wide recognition. I'm now realizing I should have made this my "Top 10 Lessons Learned," but I'll save additional insights for future posts to keep this one concise. Don't forget to follow so you don't miss it! 🙂 #amazonads #amazonadvertising #amazondsp #dsp #digitalmarketing #advertisingstrategies #CTR #ROAS #ppc #CVR #displayadvertising

Running Google Ads is hard enough - don’t let these sneaky optimizations be the reason you won’t hit your goal this quarter: 1) FIRST thing you should do when starting to audit an account is Segment by Conversion Action to make sure the data you’re basing your conclusions on is reliable: Can’t tell you how many times I’ve audited an account that has duplicate conversions firing for the same event (double counting) or has 5-10 different conversion actions all firing in the conversion column (muddying the data and leading the account manager to make uninformed decisions about the direction of the account). Cleaning up your reported or “Primary” conversion actions is a cornerstone piece to having a healthy Ads account and even the most seasoned account managers will be ineffective if this isn’t cleaned up. 2) Segment by Search Partners & Display Network: In your Search campaign settings, there’s an option to run your ads on the Google Display Network (never do this) and on Google Search Partners (almost never do this). These additional placements beyond the Google Search Results Page (SRP) are greedy and often of less quality than the clicks you’ll be getting on Google Search. To see how much you’re spending here go to the Campaign view >> Segment by >> Network (with Search Partners). The rule of thumb here is - if you can spend all of your available budget on Google Search alone, then do it. If you’re tapping out your Google Search impr share and you still want to scale up your spend, then turn Search Partners on but expect less qualified traffic to come from that additional spend. 3) Segment by Device: Desktop, Mobile and Tablet. What are you spending on each and what are you getting one each? These three different device types can perform very differently. Some questions to answer are:  a) I’ve identified that one device is clearly outperforming the others over the last 90 days. What’s the search impr share for that device? Can I spend my full available budget there? Yes? Let’s do it! b) I’ve identified that the majority of my budget is going to mobile devices but my offline conversions for MQLs and SQLs is showing much cheaper results for desktop clicks for my enterprise cyber security services. You should add negative bid adjustments for mobile and tablet or remove them altogether if you can spend your full budget on Desktop.  c) I’ve identified that mobile and desktop are performing pretty similarly but tablet traffic is spending 10% of by budget and the CPA is 5x higher than the other two device types. Get rid of it. What are some easy wins you mine for when auditing active accounts?

🔍 My Google Ads audit process (pt 1): Whether part of the discovery process or in onboarding, audits are one of the first things I complete for new PPC clients or prospects. But there’s a whole lotta data in a Google Ads account. You can get lost in rabbit holes if you don’t have a plan. Here is a brief overview of the workflow I use for assessing performance during my Google Ads audits & questions I ask myself along the way:  👉 I start from the very top of the account (settings and conversions) and then drill down to the keyword level. 👉 Conversion tracking: Are any conversions being tracked in the interface? What are the actions? What is the quality of the conversion? Is auto-tagging on? Any inactive or unverified conversion actions? Volume of conversions? Is the number of conversions ridiculously high? Are there none? This sets the tone for all the performance drill-downs to follow. 👉 Account Performance: I use a 3-month date range or longer if possible. I look at total spend, conversion volume, and CPL over the selected date range. How far off the mark is the account performance? What is the split of spend and conversions between search, display, and video (if applicable)? 👉 Campaign Performance: I use a few filters here. 🟢 Campaigns with growth potential: Conversions > 0, CPL <= CPL target, search impression share < 100% (most are). These are campaigns you can put more budget into after digging in deeper. 🟡 Campaigns that can use some cleanup but have potential: Conversions > 0, CPL > target. Sort CPL from highest to lowest. For these campaigns, you want to see what’s driving up spend and what optimizations can be made to reduce the CPL. 🔴 Non-converting campaigns that are burning $$$: Conversions = 0, spend > CPL. Sort spend from highest to lowest. Either pause these or significantly reduce investment. 👉 Keyword Performance: I use similar filters as above but in the keyword report. I also take note of the % of ad spend for each segment. If 90% of ad spend is going to non-converting keywords, that’s a yikes and something that needs to be addressed ASAP. 👉 Search Query Review: I look at cost, click, conversion, and CPL data at this view. I also assess the relevancy of the search term vs the matched keyword. If there is a ton of spend going to nonsense searches, that tells me we need to exclude some terms. This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of my Google Ads audit process. 📺 Stay tuned for part 2: campaign structure and settings review. What filters do you find helpful when assessing a new Google Ads account? Are you an interface-only auditor or do you have to export everything into Excel or Google Sheets? I’m definitely an export data kind of gal! 👋 I'm Emily - a PPC and marketing analytics expert specializing in helping businesses get more leads from paid ads. 🔔 Follow to stay up to date with my insights and findings.

If there’s one piece of advice I could give to anyone about to start spending on paid advertising, it’s this: No amount of ad spend can make up for a garbage landing page. I’ve seen massive campaigns fail before they even start because of a poorly optimized landing page. Imagine crafting the perfect set of ads, with beautiful imagery, compelling value props, and an offer your target audience is clamoring for. Then, when you finally get that click... The landing page takes too long to load. Or it looks nothing like the ads you’ve shown. Or it’s a mishmash of half-baked value propositions, hard to read copy, and ugly product images. Or, worse, the landing page doesn’t even open. If you want to drive growth, your landing page needs to be optimized to convert those clicks into customers. Focus on these key elements: 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗝𝗨𝗦𝗧 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗲𝗱: You’re taking the user on a journey, make sure everything on your landing page is consistent with what they’ve just seen in the ad. 𝗖𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀: Make sure your headline clearly communicates the offer or solution. It should set the stage for the rest of the content. 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘂𝗮𝘀𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗽𝘆: Write straightforward, persuasive copy that addresses pain points and highlights the benefits of your offer. Use bullet points and subheadings to make the text easy to read. 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗹-𝘁𝗼-𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 (𝗖𝗧𝗔): Your CTA should be prominent and direct visitors to what you want them to do, whether it’s a purchase, sign-up, or download. 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Use testimonials, reviews, and security badges to build trust with your visitors. 𝗠𝗼𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗢𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Ensure your landing page is mobile-friendly with a responsive design and fast load times. 𝗔𝗹𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗕𝗲 𝗧𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗢𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗶𝗻𝗴: Regularly test different elements of your landing page to find out what works best. Use the data to make informed changes and improve conversion rates. A high-converting landing page is the backbone of any successful digital marketing campaign. It doesn’t matter how amazing your product is or how many problems it can solve, if your landing page isn’t optimized to convert, you’ll never get those sales. Instead, you’ll be losing out on massive amounts of potential revenue. 💡 What has been your biggest challenge with landing page optimization? Comment below and let's discuss how to overcome it! 💡