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