Solved: Strategy for Running Multiple Creatives in Facebook Ad Campaigns?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on your Facebook Ads strategy, especially with testing multiple creatives and scaling your campaigns. It's a pretty common challenge, and there are definitely some things you can do to optimise your approach.

I'll break down the key areas you mentioned, offer some actionable solutions based on my experience, and highlight some of the pitfalls to avoid. I've worked with various clients, and what works for one might need tweaking for another, but these are some good general rules and should help you get started.

Overview of Recommendations

Here's a quick overview of the actionable steps I would recommend.

We'll need to look at traffic quality and your website...

First off, let's talk about the basics. A/B testing within the same ad set is the way to go when you are testing multiple creatives. This allows Facebook's algorithm to directly compare the performance of each creative and allocate budget to the best performers in real time. You will get the benefit of the algorithm figuring it out for you automatically.

I'd recommend testing around 3-5 creatives at once to get a good spread of data, while also not making it unmanageable to keep track of what's happening. Remember that creatives need to be meaningfully different to get useful insights. For example, testing slight variations of the same image may not yield significantly different results than testing completely different style images and text.

I'd say you need to give it more time...

It's crucial not to jump the gun and cut ads too early. Give each creative at least 1-2 weeks, or until you've gathered statistically significant data. This will ensure that you're making informed decisions based on real performance metrics and not just random fluctuations. Especially in ecommerce, it's important to consider that customer buying behaviour has changed a lot in the past few years.

Also, make sure you are tracking conversions properly. Is it all set up in Facebook? Is it also set up in Google Analytics? Do the numbers more or less align? It's important to have that in place so you can actually see the data coming through. Remember that in the past few years, the IOS updates have made Facebook conversion tracking way more difficult so don't just trust the Facebook numbers. There may be some conversions being missed, so make sure you're looking at all the different data sources you have.

Scaling up, think of duplicating...

For scaling, once you've identified your top-performing creatives, you can duplicate the ad set and gradually increase the budget. This allows you to scale your winners without disrupting the performance of your existing campaigns. You can then also look at campaign budget optimisation (CBO) as an option to scale even further, which will allocate your campaign budget across multiple ad sets in real time, based on performance.

We've seen some of our eCommerce clients achieve great results with this scaling strategy (e.g. 633% return, 190 % increase in revenue - Cleaning Products). It's important to scale gradually - you don't want to go from spending $10 a day to $1000 a day overnight. Make sure you're also closely monitoring the results as you scale up. This is when little problems in your tracking can turn into huge budget burn issues really quickly, so you want to make sure it is all working as you expect.

Attribution settings is key...

With the recent tracking changes, it's important to check your attribution settings in Facebook ads and Google Analytics. The default 7-day click attribution window can often overestimate the impact of your Facebook ads, especially with longer purchase cycles. This can lead to inaccurate reporting and suboptimal budget allocation and result in a lot of wasted spend.

Consider using a shorter attribution window, such as 1-day click or even view-through attribution, to get a more accurate picture of your campaign performance.

Also, have a think about your website. Is it optimised for conversions? Are you able to easily take payments? If your website isn't up to scratch, your Facebook ads might be sending a lot of traffic to your site but not actually get you any sales.

The cost per lead varies...

I've run quite a few software campaigns in my time. For software, especially B2B software, you're usually looking at a higher cost per lead than you would for B2C. We've seen costs of around $22 CPL for a B2B software using LinkedIn ads, and around $2.38 per registration on Meta Ads.

We’ve worked with other software businesses and managed to achieve a cost per lead of £7 for medical job matching SaaS using Meta Ads and Google Ads, and even as low as £0.96 per user for another software client using Google Ads. So the costs can vary widely, depending on your target audience, ad platform, and the quality of your ads and landing pages.

In short, testing multiple creatives is all about A/B testing, giving it enough time, duplicating for scaling, and not making any knee jerk reactions.

Finally, consider expert help to get you there

Scaling Facebook ad campaigns can be complex, and it's easy to make mistakes along the way. If you're looking to take your campaigns to the next level, it might be worth considering expert help.

We've helped numerous businesses scale their Facebook ad campaigns and achieve significant results, like getting 4,622 registrations at $2.38 for a B2B software on Meta Ads. We can provide a fresh perspective, in-depth analysis, and the expertise to optimise your campaigns for maximum ROI.

I'm happy to offer you a free consultation to discuss your specific needs and challenges. Just let me know if you're interested.

Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh