Help me get unstuck!

Has social media advertising spend slowed since the iOS14 updates last year?

The iOS update changed the way people perceived digital advertising. Its efficacy as a whole hasn't gone away but it has become more difficult to know how effective those ads are. 

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Social media ad spend has increased 11.5% from 2021 to 2022. Where advertising has shifted depends on the business type - but when you look at the largest growing platform in terms of ad spend - the winner is TikTok with a 60% increase.

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What does this mean? Spend is going up

Why is our ROAS dropping and CPAs increasing?

It's hard to say without an audit or eyes into the account but it usually comes back to your creative, your audiences, your campaigns, and optimizations, or a combination of some of these.

When looking are your creative, if you're not testing variations, or you aren't using real video and only slideshows or running any UGC content - ask yourself if you really feel your creative is engaging enough for the specific audience that's seeing your ads - is it not just good enough, but is it great? If you hesitate, you can do better.

What is a good return on ad spend today?

ROAS specifically is not clear as it once was - while you still can put a dollar in the machine and it'll spit out ten, reporting within ad platforms and attribution makes viewing a true ROAS a bit hazy. Facebook and martech platforms are using modeled data nowadays to spit out a ROAS because we all want pretty reports and easy-to-read data from our ad campaigns and marketing efforts. The way of old is behind us. The good old days have shifted. 

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Now, we have to look at your entire marketing efforts, th costs of that, over your results from all those efforts. Plainly, in an eCommerce sense, your overall sales over your overall spend across all platforms and channels - this gives you a Marketing Efficiency Ratio - that ratio combined with analyses and trends coming from different platforms and channels' gives you a true cost to value of your marketing and advertising efforts.

How much do you recommend we spend for our digital ads?

The uneasy answer is, it depends - do you have historical data we can look at to help make the best determination? Do you know your margins? Current cost to acquire a new customer, AOV, and current LTV's? We can back into what your spend should be based on those numbers, your goals, and if you're ready to scale. Are you ready to scale?

Are Facebook Ads dying?

No, absolutely not! If you're asking this, you're probably not seeing the same results you were used to or are scared off by all the drama. Putting any spite or personal feelings about the platform aside, it's always been just one piece of the overall strategy. Facebook is still the largest social platform, has the highest spend, and MAU - TikTok is growing faster, as it's newer and super popular, whereas Snapchat and Pinterest are platforms with a specific demographic that you'll want to use more strategically. Instagram is part of the Facebook ads ecosystem and still ever important piece of your paid social media strategy.

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Post iOS update, you will not see the direct reporting attribution inside your ads manager as you did prior to the update. You need to be looking at the full picture of your marketing efforts, to tell a clear story, use 1st party data, and different reporting software to observe and optimize your data and make changes.

We've been boosting posts with success, what more do we need to be doing?

Boosted posts, while techinically still ads, do not have the same power as ads created inside ads manager. Think of it as "baby's first ad" or the first step in Facebook's internal marketing funnel to get you to spend money on their platform, to then see some traction, and then teach you about ads manager and the power within so that you spend more money and get better results.

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When you run ads inside of ads manager, you will have far more options and power to control optimizations that simply don't exist from clicking that "Boost" button. If you're only boosting posts, you need to stop - remember that vanity metrics are just that - likes don't pay the bills. Conversions pay the bills.

Are TikTok Ads worth the hassle?

What hassle? Have you set up your business center, been to their ads manager, and added your TikTok pixel to your website yet? If not, you'll be pleasently surprised that they essetnailly stole Facebooks self serve ads platform UX and basically mirrored it. 

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Once you start spending on TikTok you're going to see huge returns, if you've got the creative and tactics to support the ads - the strategy is the same as other platforms but costs are dramatically cheaper there as brands still feel uncomfortable with the platform. Did you know that the fastest growing user base on TikTok is 35+ right now? It's not just a teenage playground anymore...

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Create that business center account here, install your pixel, and start running ads. Minimum daily budget is $50. Go get it!

How can I be sure my current ads team/agency is performing up to par?

You should know, always, how your campaigns are performing - the most importnat metrics are total spend, conversions (sales/leads), CPMs, CTR, and any other metrics that matter to your business. If you don't have a way to get live reporting whenever you want it, you should ask right away. You shouldn't have to login to an ads platform to comb through and see your results - you'll want an easy to digest report to change the date range and clearly see those metrics that make a difference to your brand.

Biggest tells are excellent communication - you and your agency should be communicating both often (think weekly) and, more importnatly, clearly. You should meet with them or reach out as much as you feel you need to, especially if you're thinking you don't know what's going on or if you have unanswered questions, then they're not communicating clearly or often enough. As with all successful relationships, good communication is paramount.