If you’re a Meta advertiser, you’ve experienced poor performance at some point. If you claim you haven’t, you’re lying. When you ultimately run into performance problems, what should you do about it?
I contend that there is more confusion now than ever before when it comes to correcting performance problems with Meta ads. This is due to conflicting philosophies from old school and modern advertising.
You should not have an advertising strategy that reflects the 2018 environment. Just as important, you shouldn’t address performance problems in the same ways you did back then.
I admittedly cringe at so much of the advice floating around right now that will do little, if anything, about your results. You’re likely to make your results worse. So much of the popular advice is based on assumptions about how things work and what makes an impact that are no longer relevant.
So it’s time to clear this up. Consider this blog post a checklist of sorts. When you’re running into performance problems and need some direction, start here…
1. Simplify Before You Optimize
Before we get to the items that you should focus the most time on, let’s start with the various ways you may be making your results worse by overcomplicating things.
A long-term solution to your performance problems is not found in these things. Unless, of course, you need to simplify.
It’s impossible to solve performance problems with an overly complicated campaign construction. You’re likely adding strategy on top of strategy, layering in various hacks and recommendations along the way, and you have no idea what’s truly working and what isn’t.
Before we get to true solutions, let’s make sure that you’re not complicating any of the following…
Number of Campaigns.
If you’re not getting the overall results that you want, strip down your campaigns to only those that you need. That should almost always be campaigns for some type of conversion.
If you’re already running Sales campaigns, keep those. If you’re also running campaigns for leads, consider them as well. But make sure that you have enough budget and can get enough volume to make them both effective. If necessary, prioritize and pick one goal.
And if you’re running multiple campaigns for the same goal, consider opportunities for consolidation. This isn’t a strict directive telling you that your 10 Sales campaigns need to be trimmed down to one. But if you’re not getting the results you want now, we want to be sure that you’re not getting in your own way.
Combine those campaigns where possible. One added benefit is that you’ll be consolidating your budget.
Number of Ad Sets.
If you have multiple ad sets in one campaign, make sure that this is absolutely necessary. Sometimes it is. But often all it does is water down your budget, prevent you from getting enough volume from any single ad set, and create possibilities for auction overlap and audience fragmentation.
We want to limit these things. The fewer the ad sets, the better. Determine what is absolutely necessary and turn off those that aren’t.
Targeting.
This is directly tied to the number of ad sets since the reason advertisers create multiple ad sets is often related to targeting. But the way targeting works is far different now, and this is often a huge waste of time, resources, and money.
If you’re optimizing for any type of conversion, any detailed targeting and lookalike audience inputs will be seen only as audience suggestions. So if you have multiple ad sets going to different cold targeting groups, you’re likely able to reach all of the same people in any of those ad sets. This is grossly inefficient.
Remarketing is mostly unnecessary now, particularly general remarketing. It happens naturally when going broad, and you can prove this with Audience Segments. There are few reasons to run remarketing ad sets now, but make sure that your situation actually qualifies as one of the true exceptions.
You shouldn’t need to create separate ad sets by gender, age group, or placement. If budget distribution for any of these things needs to be controlled, use Value Rules instead.
Placements.
If you’re optimizing for conversions, you should not need to remove any placements. The only reason you should ever remove a placement is because Meta can get cheap actions that you’re optimizing for due to a weakness in a placement. But that’s not going to happen when optimizing for conversions.
If you ever run into a scenario where a placement leads to low-value customers or leads at a cheap cost, consider addressing this with Value Rules before removing the placement altogether.
General Hacks.
If the foundation of your Meta advertising strategy is hacks based in campaign construction and lever-pulling, you are likely only making things unnecessarily complex for the sake of complexity.
The long-term solution to your performance issues is not a hack. It is not creating separate campaigns or ad sets. It’s not a specific number of ads. If you’ve found yourself stuck in a “system,” you’re on the wrong path.
Instead, focus on these things…
2. Ad Copy and Creative
Assuming you aren’t making anything more complex than it needs to be, the solutions to your performance problems start here. I cannot stress enough how important it is to look at solutions this way.
The reason for your performance isn’t that you’ve failed to implement some new hack. It’s not because you haven’t created enough campaigns and ad sets. It’s not because you aren’t doing a good enough job of targeting.
The solution should always start with your ad copy and creative.
- Are your ads appealing to your target audience?
- Do you address specific pain points faced by your ideal customer?
- Do you prove how your product solves these problems?
- Are your images scroll-stopping?
- Do your videos get attention in the first few seconds?
Know this: You have not created the perfect ads. You will never create the perfect ads. There will always be room for improvement.
Even if you created amazing ads at one time, those ads will run their course. They will become less effective. You will need to come up with new ads that inspire the action that you want.
And if you’re not getting those results? It’s the ads. Fix them.
3. Creative Diversity and Customization
Of course, that doesn’t mean that you should only have one ad with a single image, primary text, headline, and description. If you’re not getting results, make sure you’re following (modern) best practices and are optimizing ad copy and creative to make the most of the way things work now.
Andromeda is Meta’s retrieval system, and it thrives on creative diversification. It wants lots of variations in copy and creative to find the right ad for the right person. That doesn’t mean minor tweaks. It means completely different angles and approaches.
We’re no longer in the days where Meta was recommending no more than six ads in an ad set. Do not limit yourself to six ads. But don’t set a specific number you need to reach either. Your goal is to take an expansive approach to reaching the various types of customers you have.
Utilize Text Options.
You’re able to provide up to five primary text and headlines per ad (and up to 10 if you use the AI-generated recommendations). Make use of these.
Your goal is no longer to find the best combination of ad copy and creative, so throw out the urge to limit options so that this magical combination can be found. For your ads to be effective, you need multiple effective combinations that work for different people.
Making use of these text options will also help avoid creative fatigue.
Leverage All Formats.
Utilize single image, video, and carousel. Do not rely on one format only since not all people respond to each format equally.
This gives you multiple opportunities to tell your story and sell your product. One person may see multiple versions of your ad. Take the time to make each format great.
Optimize by Placement.
If you only use static image ads, you will not be able to utilize every placement. The same is the case if you only create videos, since some placements require a static image.
Customize your creative to optimize by placement. Provide the optimal aspect ratio where possible to take advantage of available real estate. Provide videos for the placements that are video-first and make sure they are the right length. Preview your ads to make sure that they look good in every placement and make adjustments where necessary.
Allow for AI-Generated Enhancements.
I’m not saying that you should blindly accept every Advantage+ Creative enhancement or all AI-generated images and backgrounds. But blindly turning them all off may be worse.
Many of these enhancements will generate versions that can, at the least, help prevent creative fatigue. And it’s possible they’ll even make your ads better and help get you more conversions.
4. Your Offer
Your ad copy and creative could be amazing. You do everything that Meta wants to be sure that you’re feeding the system diverse creative options. Everything looks good everywhere.
And yet, your results aren’t cutting it.
My goal is to help you reach this point of understanding. Instead of blaming Meta and assuming there’s some new hack that will solve your problems, you ask, “Why aren’t people acting on my ads?”
The offer may be the most important element of all. Pain points, solutions, testimonials, and product demos can all work. But sometimes people just need that extra push.
It could be a discount or some other exclusive. But consider the offer when you feel like you’ve tried everything else.
5. Your Product
Look, I get it that some people think they can sell anything. But if you’re not getting results, it’s always possible that the problem is grounded in your product.
Maybe you have a flawed product that people simply do not want. Maybe there’s nothing special about it that would inspire someone to buy it over the competition. Maybe you lack a positive brand reputation that is so important to the foundation of a strong company.
Price point and model matter here, particularly for advertising profitability. Consider a higher or lower price, depending on the audience you’re trying to attract or the margins you need to meet. Experiment with package deals and monthly recurring revenue.
Sometimes performance problems are product-related, and that’s a deep issue that isn’t easily solved.
6. Product Landing Page
You could have checked off every item so far, but you’re still not getting the results you want. The issue could be the last thing you’d consider: Your website.
What is the experience like once a user falls on your website? Does the website load quickly or slowly? Is it simple or confusing? Are the creative and messaging consistent with what was promoted in the ad?
How many steps are required to complete a conversion? Is the process more complex than it needs to be? Where are people dropping off?
This is an area that can be extremely frustrating for skilled advertisers who manage ads for clients who have poorly-run websites. The bad performance may have little to do with your ads.
7. Pixel, Events, and Reporting
And finally, maybe your performance issues are related to data problems.
Is the Meta pixel properly installed? Are events set up thoroughly and correctly, and have they been tested? Are you first-party data via the API, via web and offline events? Have those events been deduplicated?
Even if you’ve done all of these things, the problems may be based in interpretation of data. Are you viewing 1-day click only? Do you expand to see 28-day click data to add context? Do you compare attribution settings to view first vs. all conversions and standard vs. incremental attribution results?
I Can’t Stress This Enough
When you run into performance-related issues with your ads, what is the first thing you do?
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of solving performance-related problems from an ad, product, and offer perspective.
Just scan the posts on Reddit. Nearly every complaint is a version of having tried every hack and not getting results. They go through a long list of targeting, testing, and construction hacks without ever sharing anything about the product or ads. And then they turn to blaming Meta for bad performance.
I’m not saying to completely ignore things like campaign construction and strategies. But they should be way down your list. If you’re bouncing around from hack to hack, you will never feel in control because no hack works forever.
Focus on the ads. Your customer. The creative. Your product. Your landing page. All of it. These are the things you control. They’re the things that will always make an impact.
Hacks are temporary.
Your Turn
Anything you’d add to this list?
Let me know in the comments below!
