Executive Summary
Below we’ve listed the main take-aways from your Facebook Ad Account Audit. They are listed from most important to least important.
- Remarketing campaigns should be clear and visible in your ad account. The e-commerce audiences that you created should be used in the advanced and constant (evergreen) remarketing campaigns to provide a full remarketing funnel. Remarketing campaigns are usually the ones that boost sales, as many users make buying decisions after they know the brand and have seen the product they are interested in at least a few times.
- You have more than 10 products, so start running Dynamic product ads. Expand your campaign structure with Dynamic prospecting, Dynamic remarketing, upsell and cross-sell campaigns.
- A long-term strategy and structure of reach and remarketing (upsell and cross-sell) campaigns should be employed. For remarketing campaigns to work, there must be a flow of constant traffic coming to the store, therefore Facebook ad structure should always have reach campaigns running and complementing remarketing campaigns.
- We recommend excluding purchases from ad sets to stop budget waste.
- The attribution window should be the same for all campaigns in order to evaluate results correctly.
- Consider other ad formats. A variety of ad formats allow to cover a wider audience within Facebook and Audience Network.
- Your ads should have headlines that sell harder, especially in remarketing campaigns.
- There is no tracking set up for third-party analytics. It is highly recommended to set up UTM tracking to track Facebook ads performance. This way, you can compare Facebook ads results with data on Google Analytics or other analytics platforms. This extra step provides more reliable data and helps to make informed decisions about your campaign performance.
- It is recommended to have clear naming conventions on the campaign, ad set, and ad levels. This creates a clear account structure, helps to see ad performance at a glance, identify best performing audiences and make faster and more informed decisions.
Conclusion
In essence, your Facebook ads account could benefit from a clearer structure and strategy. This is vital for growth and scaling in the future. The lack of evergreen campaigns, no clear reach and remarketing campaigns split within the ad account structure and budget means that Facebook advertising is underutilized. We recommend implementing DSA campaigns via catalog sales. This will expand reach, remarketing, upsell, and cross-sell campaigns. These campaigns also provide clear structure and division between cold and hot audiences. These initial steps result in the ads being shown to interested cold audiences and remarketed to “hot” customers, which in turn leads to larger sales volumes with a cheaper cost per sale. In the end, the ad account will spend money more efficiently and generate more sales.
Facebook Ads Account Overview
The historical lifetime date range shows that there were many purchase events triggered by Facebook ads. Some of those purchases came from campaigns with catalog sales, traffic, and conversions as their objectives.
However, there is no Facebook pixel firing on the web page.
So, the conversions API shows those events. Regardless, there should be a further investigation into why the pixel is not firing, as both Facebook pixel and conversions API should be working together to provide accurate data.
The shop has 380 products in the Facebook catalog.
There are many Lookalike audiences created which is good for successful remarketing campaigns.
Audiences
Your lookalike audiences are based on custom or e-commerce audiences and different types of e-commerce events. This is considered good practice. Some lookalikes extend to 2-4%, which is also good practice, especially when the 1% lookalike audience size is limited.
Additionally, there are remarketing audiences created (based on pixel events). These audiences include purchasers, add-to carts, engagements, etc. This is also good practice.
Audiences with people who engage with your Facebook page are created too. The same audience was created for your Instagram page as well. To have various different types of audiences created is a good strategy, especially if you want to test the performance of your ads.
Customer lists are not added — this could be an area of improvement. Good and large customer files (including customers not only from Facebook but also from organic traffic, Google, and direct purchasers) help to create more accurate lookalike audiences, therefore this should be tested in the future.
Overview
All in all, the audience section looks solid. Almost all types of possible audiences are created. There seems to have been a lot of testing of different lookalike audiences, and manual e-commerce audiences are present as well.
Recommendations
It is recommended to test the customer match with lifetime value audiences. These audiences could be added to the ad account and lookalikes created for reach campaigns. The quality of the lookalike audience depends on the input quality (the number of customers in the customer list).
Campaigns overview
There are 86 campaigns created, many of them use traffic, conversions, or post engagement as their objective. Only one campaign is set up with a catalog sales objective. This is a good strategy for an e-commerce business.
The ad account focuses on traffic, conversions, and post engagements. Based on the campaign titles, campaigns can be identified as part of the funnel to some extent, however, this is not the rule, and many campaigns have unclear naming conventions.
Having a catalog sales campaign is a good effort for an e-commerce ad account, however, it is not fully employed and could be developed further. The ad account structure can be built on catalog sales campaigns when there is a large catalog of products. Catalog sales can be employed as reach as well as remarketing, upsell and cross-sell campaigns.
It is recommended to improve the naming conventions on campaigns, ad sets, and ads levels. Naming conventions should include campaign purpose (reach or remarketing), objective (e.g. conversions), and targeting (e.g. country). Ad set level can include more detailed naming (audience name, more detailed targeting). This allows for a clear account structure and helps to see the performance of your campaigns, ad sets, and ads at a glance, identify best-performing audiences and make faster and more informed decisions about needed improvements.
There are many campaigns in the ad account. Many of them are built either for post engagement or for traffic. However, a more structural approach is missing. The ad account should have an evergreen (always on) structure. There should be a constant balance between reach and remarketing campaigns, a clear budget structure for these campaigns, and then funnels employed to keep the structure working.
Overview
The campaigns have some structure and strategy in terms of marketing and remarketing funnels. There are campaigns built on conversion objectives, which is good practice. Optimization towards the purchase or add to cart is also a great goal. The lack of long-term strategy-structure of remarketing (upsell, cross-sell) campaigns is concerning and it shows that the Facebook ads potential might be missed out on. The campaign performance is also affected by time, learning phases, and data within the campaign, thus it is better to have campaigns that are always on and always learning instead of many finite campaigns
Recommendations
It is recommended to use Dynamic product ads when an e-commerce store has a larger assortment of products. Expand the structure with Dynamic prospecting, Dynamic remarketing, upsell, and cross-sell campaigns.
The long term strategy-structure of reach and remarketing (upsell, cross-sell) campaigns should be employed.
Ad Set Overview
Ad sets on the account are optimized towards the purchase or add to cart events, which is a good practice since add to cart events train Facebook pixel to find users who are likely to add products to the cart even when there is not enough purchase data.
The ad sets do attribute the results slightly differently, therefore it is recommended to use the same attribution window for all campaigns/ad sets.
Though there are many retargeting audiences created, I was not able to find a remarketing campaign that uses these audiences. This is a huge miss as retargeting audiences tend to prove to be the ones that result in sales. There are some audiences used for the current campaigns (over 300 days cookie span), however, the e-commerce retargeting campaigns are missing.
The audience made with purchaser data should be excluded from the reach and remarketing campaigns. Otherwise, the ads are potentially displayed to users who already made a purchase. Therefore, it is a good practice to exclude purchasers at the ad set level. This allows you to save money and show more relevant ads to purchasers for upsell purposes in upsell campaigns.
Overview
Ad sets are using e-commerce pixel events for optimization towards conversions. This is a good practice and should be followed in the future.
Recommendations
It is recommended to exclude purchases from ad sets in order to stop budget waste.
The attribution window should be the same for all campaigns in order to evaluate results accurately.
The interest targeting is well employed as it has several levels of narrowing. However, it is difficult to find remarketing ad sets. The ones that can be considered remarketing campaigns are over 300 days old. A time gap this big should be avoided in performance marketing.
Ad Creative Overview
The ad account uses image and video ads. This is a good approach. Video ads generate views too, thus audiences based on video views can also be created for remarketing campaigns. In some cases, multiple images are used in the same ad set, which allows A/B testing. It is also recommended to expand the usage of ad creatives. For example, try using Carousel ad format to highlight the features of the product. The collection ad, especially with catalog sales campaigns, will enrich the visual section as well.
Good thing is that review ads and post engagement ads are also used. This generates more social proof for the brand’s sponsored content.
The Primary texts could be enriched with the use of emojis which is a good fit for your business type. Headlines could be more catchy and push for purchase more. For example “50% OFF TODAY!!!” This is especially true for remarketing campaigns.
Ad sets have additional headlines. This is a good effort and should be continued.
There is no tracking set up for third-party analytics. It is highly recommended to use UTMs to track Facebook performance on Google Analytics or other analytics platforms to have an additional data source to compare Facebook advertising results.
Overview
All ads are using image and video ads. This is a good strategy since image ads are cheaper. Some ad sets have multiple image ads which allow A/B testing.
Recommendations
A larger variety of ad formats should be considered. This would allow testing other ad formats to gain more coverage within the Facebook placements network.
More hard sell headlines should be used for ads, especially in remarketing campaigns.
Third-party tracking should be implemented to analyze Facebook performance better and compare data with other digital activities.
