How to Win on Facebook in 2021 - THE CMO LETTER December 2020 - Markacy

Page created by Leo King
 
CONTINUE READING
How to Win on Facebook in 2021 - THE CMO LETTER December 2020 - Markacy
THE CMO LETTER

How to Win on
Facebook in 2021
December 2020
How to Win on Facebook in 2021 - THE CMO LETTER December 2020 - Markacy
2        The CMO Letter - How to Win on Facebook in 2021

Scale Your Advertising Budgets on Facebook: What CMOs Need to Know to Win
If you’re running a direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand, there’s no getting around it. Love it      3 Things You Need to Succeed
or hate it, Facebook needs to be part of your marketing-tactic arsenal. When done right,
however, Facebook is one of the most cost-efficient ways to acquire new customers and tell
your story to potential customers.

It’s also not going anywhere. It’s only getting stronger and will continue to get more
expensive as more advertisers join on.
                                                                                                 Account Structure                       Testing                        Creative
The biggest mistake you can make? Jumping in without a real strategy in place. Keep
reading and we’ll share some of the keys we’ve learned, through our own internal efforts as
well as what we’ve done for clients.                                                           Like we mentioned earlier, your strategy is the key to success. If you want to see campaign
                                                                                               results, you’ll need to learn the ins and outs of the platform. The days of uploading a static
                                                                                               ad and pressing “go” are over. To beat your competitors, there are three things you’ll need to
                                                                                               focus on.
How Facebook Fits In
There are a few reasons why Facebook is a must-do for DTC brands, and it all comes down to
the platform’s capabilities:                                                                   Correct Account Structure
                                                                                               Account structure refers to the overall way you set up ads, ad sets, and campaigns within the
•   In-Feed Ad Unit: Unlike other digital ad units (like banners) the in-feed Facebook and     Facebook ad manager UI.
    Instagram ad unit allows you to reach users without being intrusive, in a way that feels
    native and in a place where their attention is concentrated.                               Good account structure should be rooted in an understanding of Facebook’s algorithm and
•   Reach & Targeting: Almost everyone in the US can be reached on Facebook or                 is important because it allows you to quickly identify what ad placements, audiences, and
    Instagram. The extremely large user base also means that Facebook has extensive data       interests are working and which are not.
    on user behavior, specifically when it comes to how users respond to ads.
•   Real-Time Bidding & Precision Tracking: Buying ads in a real-time auction, with            Without the right structure, a few things can happen. First, you may end up wasting some
    immediate feedback and precision tracking, allows you to effectively optimize your         of your budget, as underperforming ads might receive more investment than they should.
    investment. Facebook truly delivers on the promise of programmatic advertising, an         Second, it makes it really difficult to follow the test-and-learn process that should go into all
    appealing model because it allows more control (adjust budgets at any time) and            of your campaigns; it’s hard to untangle bad ad performance from poor campaign structure
    more immediate feedback (track who purchases after seeing an ad) than traditional          so you can’t confidently identify your top performers.
    advertising.
How to Win on Facebook in 2021 - THE CMO LETTER December 2020 - Markacy
3        The CMO Letter - How to Win on Facebook in 2021

Here are a few do’s and don’ts to keep in mind:

DO…                                                                                                  DON’T…
•   Set up your campaign to prioritize the combinations of targeting and creative that are           •   Use multiple campaigns all with the same objective. Since budgets can’t be shared
    working the best. A good way to do this is to identify unique objectives for each of your            across campaigns, this means you’ll have to manually determine which combinations of
    campaigns (e.g. one for prospecting and another for remarketing), using campaign                     creative and targeting should get more spend. The reality is that in 95% + of cases, you
    budget optimization (CBO).                                                                           won’t be able to guess this correctly.

    With this “bottom-up” approach, you set a budget at the campaign level instead of at
    the ad level. Facebook will automatically allocate budget to the best-performing ad sets,
    leading to more efficient spend overall.                                                                                                                      Quick tips: Understanding
                                                                                                                                                                  the Differences Between
•   Evaluate the data you get and use it to inform your future campaigns. For example, we                                                                         Prospecting and Remarketing
    helped one of our clients Diggs - a premium pet products company - identify the impact
    of video carousels on their media buying (see more details in the Creative section below).                                                                    Prospecting:
    The right structure provides for statistical confidence in creative insights - allowing brands                                                                Ads that target users who
    to double down on success areas instead of getting caught up in the minutiae of FB’s ad-                                                                      haven’t visited your site.
    buying platform.
                                                                                                                                                                  Remarketing:
                                                                                                                                                                  Ads that target users who
                                                                                                                                                                  have been to your site.
                                                                                                                                                                  You can also target users
                                                                                                                                                                  who have completed
                                                                                                                                                                  certain actions, like adding
                                                                                                                                                                  something to their cart,
                                                                                                                                                                  landing on a specific product
                                                                                                                                                                  page, etc.
How to Win on Facebook in 2021 - THE CMO LETTER December 2020 - Markacy
4        The CMO Letter - How to Win on Facebook in 2021

A Solid Testing Plan                                                                                                                         •   Performance is usually measured relative to the campaign
Once your account and campaign objectives are set, it’s time                                                                                     average along with the general target expectations for
to move into the testing phase. The idea here is simple: you                                                                                     core KPIs.
need to get an understanding of which ads and audiences are
truly working.
                                                                                                                                                 Facebook’s Law of Small Numbers
The respective buzzwords here, if you’re not familiar, are
creatives and targeting. Your creative refers to what the ad                                                                                     How do you evaluate an ad that performed well, but
looks like - images, video, motion graphics along with the                                                                                       didn’t get a ton of spend allocated? Remember that
respective copy. Your targeting is exactly as it sounds: what                                                                                    when an ad or ad set doesn’t receive spend, that’s often
audiences are you trying to reach? Facebook allows you to                                                                                        for a reason. So don’t take it as a sign to force spend
get super specific, including location, age, and, if you’ve         Note: This isn’t always set in stone. In some cases, it may make sense
                                                                                                                                                 to the ad right away, because the limited sample size
placed a pixel on your site, if they’ve visited a certain page or   to customize ads for specific audi
                                                                    ences. As an example, if you’re promoting dog food and one ad set
                                                                                                                                                 can skew your results. Instead, try pausing your low
completed a certain action.                                                                                                                      performers so you can have a better comparison point.
                                                                    targets people interested in French Bulldogs, you may want to show
                                                                    them an ad with a French Bulldog image, instead of the Golden
With the right testing in place, you’ll be able to confidently
                                                                    Retriever ad.
understand things like:
                                                                    •   Set up the right testing cadence. We recommend
•   Which ads are performing the best
                                                                        introducing new ads every week (where possible) and
•   Which small details in each ad led to different results
                                                                        quickly pausing out under-performers in order to ratchet
•   How many ads to run at once
                                                                        performance up to a higher level over time. The graphic
•   Which ads to pause (and when to pause them)
                                                                        below shows how ads that exceed performance thresholds
•   When to introduce new ads to your campaigns
                                                                        will remain live in the campaign while others will be
                                                                        paused out as new ads are rotated in.
If your testing is too hasty or disjointed, top performers may
be discarded before you can identify them. If testing is too
slow, underperformers will receive more investment than
necessary.

Here are the do’s and don’ts when it comes to testing:

DO…
•   Use all of your ads in every ad set. That way, you can
    easily see which creatives are outperforming the others.
How to Win on Facebook in 2021 - THE CMO LETTER December 2020 - Markacy
5        The CMO Letter - How to Win on Facebook in 2021

DON’T…
•   Use inconsistent ad sets. Again, if you re-use an ad in more than one ad set, it will be
    hard to know if the performance is a result of the audience being good prospects, or the
    creative being better than the other ads.

•   Get tripped by the sheer scale of ad combinations and ad sets. If you have 2 campaigns, 6
    audiences per campaign, and 5 ads per audience (our best practice) that means you have
    60 ad-audience combinations active -- it’s hard to effectively evaluate performance at that
    level of detail.
     • The secret is to aggregate creative performance at the account level. This makes it 		     •   Some folks may ask… “But what if viewing ad performance at the account level ignores
       more than clear which ads are your best performers: you can rank them from best to 		          nuanced differences in ad performance by audience?”
       worst by any KPI. See reference guide below.
                                                                                                       • In the overwhelming majority of cases, differences in creative performance by
                                                                                                         audience reflect short-term variance, not long-term underlying differences. Your
                                                                                                         audiences are not that different from each other: if users in your 1% lookalike engage
                                                                                                         with an ad, users in your 3% lookalike will too. The only exception here is if ads were
                                                                                                         tailored to specific audiences—like with the French Bulldog example earlier.
How to Win on Facebook in 2021 - THE CMO LETTER December 2020 - Markacy
6        The CMO Letter - How to Win on Facebook in 2021

The Right Creative
You want to see great results from your campaigns, of course. But you also need to build a
                                                                                              Video carousels are ad units that pair a video as the first card with several additional
brand that consumers connect with. Creative that is purely transactional won’t do that.
                                                                                              product-focused images. Similar to instant experiences, they allow users to browse
                                                                                              products and product features in-platform.
Fortunately, with the right creative approach, you can build a brand and drive revenue all
with one ad.

DO...
•   Focus on a hybrid solution that fulfills both functions: develop your brand and convert
    users.

•   Experiment with motion graphics and video-led carousels. Videos can help introduce
    the brand and your unique selling propositions (USPs), which is especially helpful for
    newer companies (or if you just don’t have a ton of brand equity yet).

                                                                                              Client Case Study: Video Carousels in Action

                                                                                              We worked with dog crate innovator Diggs to create videos that touched on key
                                                                                              brand pillars (e.g. travel and interior design). We then used those videos as the first
                                                                                              card in video carousels (to introduce users to the brand) and product-focused images
                                                                                              later in the carousel (to demonstrate specific product features and selling points).

                                                                                              The result? The video carousels outperformed campaign-average ROAS while
                                                                                              holding a 30% better conversion rate than average.
How to Win on Facebook in 2021 - THE CMO LETTER December 2020 - Markacy
7         The CMO Letter - How to Win on Facebook in 2021

DO...                                                             •    Explore seamless carousels to showcase multiple               •   Use bold and full-screen mosaic stories to catch the
                                                                       products, social proof, and a storyline that highlights           scroller’s eye. In a case study from Instagram, beauty
•    Try “Instant Experiences” to facilitate education, product
                                                                       your core USPs. Note: On Instagram, ads are perfectly             retailer Ulta saw a 63% higher ROAS with two-card
     exploration, and brand awareness.
                                                                       seamless, while on Facebook there will be a thin line to          carousel video ads (compared to single video ads) and
                                                                       separate the images.                                              a 2.6X higher click-through rate with two-card carousel
                                                                                                                                         video ads (compared to single photo ads).
    Instant experiences open a landing page within
    Facebook or Instagram, allowing the user to browse and
    learn about the product before going to the site. This can
    improve conversion rates significantly, especially for more
    premium products.

    Client Case Study: Instant Experiences in Action
                                                                      “Swipeability” triggers natural curiosity. The format pushes
    For Diggs, we saw that instant experiences drove a 52%            the user to “find out more” and helps send signals to
    better ROAS than other ad units, driven by a conversion           Facebook about the user’s interest.
    rate that was more than 300% better than the
    campaign average.
                                                                  •    Try sequential Instagram stories to encourage
                                                                       engagement. For example, you could create a multi-card
                                                                       story that’s a quiz, guiding your prospective customers to
•    Use dynamic product catalogs to highlight specific
                                                                       the right products in your catalog.
     products. You can even target users more specifically
     by using product attributes based on user interests and
     behaviors.
How to Win on Facebook in 2021 - THE CMO LETTER December 2020 - Markacy
8       The CMO Letter - How to Win on Facebook in 2021

Making Facebook Work for Your Brand
With the right strategies in place, Facebook can be a cost-effective platform that helps you
attract new users, optimize your ROAS, and improve your overall brand equity. But it’s not
always easy—and that’s why we’re here to help.

At Markacy, we act as your strategic partner to identify and execute the right marketing tactics
that help deliver financial results. Get in touch today at info@markacy.com to learn more
about how we’re helping leading brands make their mark.
How to Win on Facebook in 2021 - THE CMO LETTER December 2020 - Markacy
9   The CMO Letter - How to Win on Facebook in 2021

                                                                                www.markacy.com

              Tucker Matheson                         Chris Jones
              Partner                                 Partner
              781-974-9936                            908-304-5732

              tucker.matheson@markacy.com             chris.jones@markacy.com

              Boston, MA                              New York, NY
How to Win on Facebook in 2021 - THE CMO LETTER December 2020 - Markacy
You can also read