What he learned from managing $10 million in Facebook ad spend

Introduction

Introduction - $10 Million in Facebook Ad Spend

A former employee of a well-known SaaS company shared his work experience on a blog. He has managed more than $10 million in Facebook ad spend and has extensive practical experience in paid search and social advertising.

After obtaining 90 million impressions and 4 million clicks with more than 10 million dollars, he's learned the following 5 points:

1. Intention

Intentional marketing refers to any type of marketing that meets the intentions of target users or potential customers (that is, the intentions they really want or need at the time). In most cases, when performing "intent marketing," they refer to the use of known audience parameters, such as search query data, remarketing lists, or potential audiences. Marketing based on customer intent is essential.

However, with the passage of time and changes in the industry, the above parameters alone to determine the intention of potential customers may not be enough to support your marketing strategy.

For example, the demand intention in the left picture is obviously clearer than the right picture.

In August 2019, Google introduced changes to the broad match modifier. Advertisers need to match new similar variables with their BMM (broad match modifier) keywords. This has resulted in Google having more freedom to determine which queries match your keywords, so your target keywords may not necessarily attract the target customers you want.

What does this mean? It means you need to trust and collaborate with algorithms to get your potential customers. Here are some suggestions:

For paid search:

•Using long-tail keywords, you can clearly determine the intention behind the query.

• Maintain an intent-based account structure.

• Use automatic bidding for broad keywords that don’t see the intent of the query.

• Judging from the acquired audience, how well your target audience matches your keywords, and use remarketing lists in search ads.

For paid social:

• Use custom audiences, especially website visitors and audiences attracted through Facebook.

• Create similar audiences from a list of users with high intentions. Adjust the size of similar audiences according to the level of intent (1% for the highest intent and 10% for the broadest intent match).

•Choose suitable advertising goals and campaign settings so that the algorithm can optimize your intended goals.

2. Master the algorithm

Both Google and Facebook ad auctions are conducted through algorithms. Because many people don’t know how algorithm delivery works, they don’t know how to optimize ads and accounts.

After experiencing 10 million US dollars, his advice on managing accounts is:

For paid search:

• Don't be afraid of automatic bidding.

• Try to avoid major overhauls (the modification ratio is controlled below 20%) and enter the learning phase (this will not only affect your normal delivery but also take some time to restore the algorithm to normal work efficiency). In addition, control one-time batch operations for automatic bidding campaigns, and update conversion actions in an orderly manner.

For paid social:

• By enabling automatic delivery and campaign budget optimization (CBO), it provides the algorithm with the freedom and flexibility required to achieve peak delivery.

• Consider your optimization events carefully.

• Provide a large number of optimization events so that the algorithm has enough data to learn. Facebook needs to perform 50 optimization activities within 7 days to exit the learning phase.

• Don’t “define” your audience in too much detail or “narrowly”.

Again, let the algorithm learn and "reconcile" with the algorithm to make advertising successful.

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3. Optimize quality

For most advertisers whose purpose is to attract traffic, their goal may not only increase reach or conversion but also hope to increase business volume and lead quality.

During his tenure, he tried to track the custom parameters in the advertising platform to CRM (Customer Relationship Management). But they soon realized that when they obtained these insights and used them to make decisions, they exposed two flaws:

• The manual workload is too large and time-consuming.

• Algorithms cannot see the reports and learning process they are collecting.

Then, they turned to create an integration that linked their CRM data with their Google Analytics account. They not only brought new signals to the algorithm but also collected more data to build an audience and optimize their account management.

Although the tracking in this process is more complicated, there are still many steps you can take in your account to optimize quality:

For paid search:

• Pay close attention to the search term report and mark poor quality queries as negative keywords.

• Set up conversion tracking below the funnel as much as possible.

For paid social:

• Create block lists to limit ad slots and websites you don’t want to be shown.

• Similar to in Google Ads, set conversion tracking as far away from the channel as possible.

• Check the comments and reactions you get to understand the feelings of users who saw the ad.

In short, further improving the ability to attract high-quality potential customers from paid advertising will bring you a higher ROI and support you to further increase your advertising budget.

4. Tracking and retargeting campaigns are essential

Since advertising expenditure exceeds 10 million US dollars, he needs to track a lot of information, and sometimes may not be able to grasp all the information manually. He admitted that they did have quite a few errors and interrupted tracking. However, they have already taken the next step in response to these.

E.g:

• Create custom alerts for new trends or patterns in Google Analytics.

• Establish automatic rules in Google Ads to trigger email reminders when certain situations occur.

• Generate automatic reports and billboards so that you can always pay attention to your key indicator

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5. Combine all channels together

Google Ads and Facebook Ads are the core of its former company’s payment channels. They found that these channels not only help to balance their spending on quantity and quality, but they continue to use insights from one channel to introduce another.

So why is a cross-channel strategy so important?

• Attract potential customers through the Internet, thereby pushing them to the lower level of the marketing funnel.

•Each time you reach you can make your potential customers more loyal.

• Improve your ROI as much as possible.

Therefore, you can also make Facebook Ads and Google Ads work better together in a variety of ways.

For paid search:

• Use audiences in RLSA (remarketing lists for search ads) to target new keywords or control your bids.

• Customize advertisements based on previous advertising interaction data. Personalize your search advertising information based on the data on the interaction between RLSA audiences and Facebook ads among users.