Facebook Ads: The Advantage of Advantage Plus Shopping Campaigns with Aggie Meroni (episode 155)
by April Buencamino-dyToday we are joined by Aggie Meroni, the founder and CEO of White Bee Digital, a paid social agency supporting eCommerce businesses as they scale. She’s been super busy getting to grips with Advantage+ campaigns ever since they first started rolling out in October, and she shares some of her biggest lessons learnt along the way.
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Getting Into Facebook Ads
Aggie spent more than 10 years working in investment sales, and as her role evolved, she began doing more digital and social media marketing.
When she went on maternity leave, she was made redundant. She took this as an opportunity to learn more about digital marketing, so she studied at the Digital Marketing Institute for her post-graduate studies.
After this, she wanted to work in-house for an agency but eventually found herself setting up her own company. She hasn’t looked back since and now specializes in Facebook ads.
The Basics of Advantage+
Advantage+ was a reaction from Facebook after the privacy update in March 2021. This combines your whole funnel into one shopping campaign.
With Advantage+, you’re handing over control of targeting to Facebook. However, you can upload lists to your campaign, and you can put a cap on the spend for people who are on your lists. If you’re in marketing and you want people to know your brand, you don’t want your budget to go to people who are already familiar with you. That’s why this is important.
The Benefits of Advantage+
One reason Advantage+ shopping campaigns perform better than others is because they collect live data from people’s activities. Another one is that because you need to have about 10 ads running in your campaign, you can really test your messaging and creatives more and find out which ones are working.
One of Aggie’s clients saw a 40% increase in conversions when the brand switched to Advantage+. She believes this is because the campaign makes your brand more accessible to more people for the same budget you were spending before, and it picks up on behavior on the platform. Advantage+ campaigns are potentially more successful than other types of shopping campaigns, which makes them worth getting into.
Things to Consider with Advantage+
You have to have the right mindset when you get into Advantage+ campaigns.
It’s not unusual to see results right away because you have to let the algorithm learn and understand first. You also have to consider the timing of when your customers are online because this can also affect your results.
You really have to look at things holistically and go into this type of campaign with a long-term view instead of expecting instant results.
An Exciting Innovation
For Aggie, Advantage+ is the biggest innovation to Facebook ads in quite a while, and it’s interesting that people are trusting AI now in the ads world.
Her advice is to not worry about targeting and think more about your creatives because the latter is harder to get right.
Insider Tips
If we’ve inspired someone to take their first step with Facebook ads – what do they need to know to give themselves the best chance of success?
Running Facebook ads is an investment. Invest in yourself or someone on your team to learn how to run ads.
Also, make sure you understand that it’s not a money tap. You need to give it time to work and give you results.
Once you’ve started of course you’ve got to ‘keep optimising’! So what’s your favourite way to improve Facebook ads performance?
It’s important to be in contact with your customers. This may be easier for smaller brands than larger ones. For the latter, do post-purchase surveys and other similar activities to understand what’s going on with your customers.
Keep your content fresh as well. Changing things up every so often will improve your campaigns.
If someone listening wants to learn more about Facebook ads is there one cheap/free resource you’d recommend?
Aggie recommends her own training, Advantage+ Shopping campaign, which aims to help those who are already running ads and want to know more about setting up the Advantage+ shopping campaign.
Crystal ball time – what’s coming up in the next 6-12 months that we should be getting ready for in Facebook ads?
Consolidation is happening in the eCommerce space, and it’s driving people back to Facebook ads. Expect brands to invest more in their creative strategies.
Interview Links
- Check out White Bee Digital
- Hear Chloe and Aggie’s first chat on the Start Your Own Business Podcast
Aggie on Social media:
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