Facebook Ads: Lookalikes and Creative Optimisation with Jessie Healy (episode 158)
by April Buencamino-dyJessie Healy runs her own agency Webtopia and her coaching program. She has helped hundreds of DTC eCommerce businesses across the world to profitably scale their online sales to seven figures and beyond. From having spent $20 million on digital advertising throughout her career, she shares some powerful strategies.
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The Importance of the Right Account Strategies
Due to the intense competition on Facebook, it requires diligent effort to ensure the effectiveness of your strategy. It is crucial to avoid applying a universal approach to all accounts since each account is unique, as this may result in overlooking superior performance achievable through alternative strategies.
Always test different strategies and various creatives to see what works best for the account. When you see good performance, that’s when you put more budget into that strategy.
Budget Optimisation Tips
There are various approaches to instructing Facebook in order to achieve your objectives. One option is to set the budget at the campaign level, known as CBO (Campaign Budget Optimization). Alternatively, you can allocate the budget at the ad set level, referred to as ABO (Ad Set Budget Optimization).
It’s important to note that there isn’t a definitive choice between the two that guarantees success. Different strategies may be used across different accounts, depending on the specific goals being pursued. For instance, if the emphasis is on creative testing, ad set budget optimisation may be employed to target a particular audience and concentrate on testing different creatives.
Cap Tips
An alternative strategy that has gained significant popularity and generated extensive discussions involves the use of cost caps instead of allowing Facebook to solely focus on maximizing the number of conversions for your budget.
The distinction lies in the default approach commonly employed on Facebook, where you specify your daily budget and instruct the platform to spend that budget while aiming to deliver as many conversions as possible. This approach is known as lowest-cost conversions.
On the other hand, cost caps allow you to inform Facebook that you do not want to pay more than a certain amount for a conversion. Consequently, Facebook will only utilize your budget if it believes it can achieve the desired cost per conversion.
Lookalikes are back!
When it comes to lookalikes, Jessie says it’s still worth exploring different approaches for different accounts and occasionally revisiting them. As a general rule, broad targeting is effective.
However, the effectiveness of lookalikes has diminished since the iOS 14 privacy changes, as the algorithm powering those lookalikes had its access restricted.
Jessie’s tip is to combine multiple lookalikes in the account, such as pixel data lookalikes, social handle lookalikes, social interaction lookalikes, and CRM list lookalikes. By providing Facebook with diverse data points, you create a robust and broad audience that still offers sufficient data for the algorithm to work with.
What’s Working in Creative Right Now
Reels and TikTok-style videos continue to perform well across most accounts. However, an important insight is that overly staged user-generated content lacks genuineness.
Static images have also made a resurgence in effectiveness. Simple hooks and overlaid text on static images are performing well. Additionally, constantly generating new creative every week is not always necessary. Sometimes, refining and iterating on successful ads yield better results than constantly coming up with entirely new ideas.
One other important consideration for global brands is seasonal relevance. Make sure not to overlook this particular area.
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?
Simplify your approach to the Facebook ads audience and focus intensively on testing different creative elements.
Once you’ve started of course you’ve got to ‘keep optimising’! So what’s your favourite way to improve Facebook ads performance?
Keep testing more creative. If you’ve recently begun and are striving to optimise your performance without achieving satisfactory results, your primary focus should be on generating fresh creative perspectives or iterating on existing creative elements. This approach will enable you to enhance the outcomes derived from your advertisements.
If someone listening wants to learn more about Facebook ads is there one cheap/free resource you’d recommend?
Jessie has an eCommerce growth checklist which you can get your hands on by sending her an email at hello@webtopia.co. It covers not just Facebook ads but also Google ads, email marketing, and all of the key elements of a growth plan for eCommerce.
Crystal ball time – what’s coming up in the next 6-12 months that we should be getting ready for in Facebook ads?
For Jessie, it would be AI. Look at all the ways you can use AI to make your jobs as marketers more efficient and more effective so you can focus on the fun stuff.
Interview Links
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