Thread by @andrewjfaris

1/ 5 Steps To Solving Every FB Ad Account Problem

(NB: this actually applies to any paid media, but in this case, we're dealing with FB):

STEP 1: Isolate the timeline where the problem is. Recent ROAS decline, for example, like you'll see for one of my brands in #8 here.

2/ STEP 2: Pull your CPC, CR, and AOV. These are the only 3 variables in your revenue!

Inexplicably, @FBBusiness Ads Manager still does not have CR or AOV as columns on the dashboard. So you have to export cost, purchases, and revenue to a spreadsheet and calculate those.

3/

Pro tip: if the problem is recent, use 1-day click-only purchase attribution only, that way you don't compare older ads (with longer delayed attribution timelines) to newer ones with less time for realized attributed revenue. Otherwise your CR numbers will be skewed.

4/ STEP 3: Figure out which of those 3 variables is the problem. Did CR go down? Why? Are you spending more on broader, less core audiences? Did you change something on your website? Are you overspending on low-CPC, low-converting ads (b/c you didn't listen to @social_savannah)?

5/

Steps 2 & 3 go hand in hand: once you figure out which variable is causing the problem, go deeper into why. CPC, for example, is just a calculated combination of CTR and CPM. So if it's up, why is it up? Is it CTR, CPM, or both?

6/ STEP 4: Hypothesize. If CR and AOV are flat, but CPC is up because CTR is down, why did people stop clicking your ads? There are a million possibilities here. Take your best shot at which it is by continuing to think and dig.

7/ STEP 5: Test your hypothesis. If you think it's an ad fatigue problem, build new (and fundamentally different) creative. Or maybe test some new audiences. And so on.

Repeat all of these steps (particularly 4 & 5 at this point) until you solve it.

8/ Here's that example from one of my accounts: a recent decline in performance made me, @taylorholiday, and another member of our team ask ourselves what happened. So team member 3 used @Supermetrics to pull the data in this image in less than 5 minutes.

9/ The easy, non-data-driven answer was that a recent price increase destroyed our CR. But our sitewide data shows only a small change there over that same time period. And the FB data in the image shows a relatively slight CR decrease, esp. relative to the huge AOV increase.

10/ The AOV increase so outweighs the CR decrease that it's an easy trade-off for us.

But look at the CPC: it's way up, correlating with a big CTR drop. And that was in the same time period that we increased spend. So the current hypothesis: audience/creative fatigue.

11/ That team member is now working on two things: generating new creative, and trading out some audiences we've spent a lot on for some new/different audiences. It's pretty easy to test them both relatively quickly.

If that doesn't work, we'll repeat the process.