“I don’t really know what I should be looking for?”
Pre-Christmas, at a networking event, a fellow attendee asked me what ‘good’ looked like in the realm of a Facebook ads strategy.

The brand had outsourced their ads to a large-ish agency and she wasn’t sure if they were really getting results. She’d looked in Ads Manager but didn’t really know how to interpret the data.

Now.. there is no ‘one sized fits all’ answer to this. And without being able to see under the hood of the account, or indeed have an in-depth understanding of the e-comm brand, it’s almost an impossible question to answer off the bat. Every brand has different products, budgets, margins etc

But.. as an e-comm brand spending upwards of £2,000/month, there are some basic pointers. If you outsource your Facebook ads management, these will be relevant to you too.

Here’s what I shared with her:

1. You (the client) should be able to identify the various stages of the sales funnel – the top and bottom of funnel at the very least (TOF, BOF) and see that new audiences are consistently getting eyes on your brand. Bottom of funnel may be retargeting, it may be existing customers – this is product and budget specific.

2. You should also be able to see the budget split accordingly – more at the top of funnel, less at the bottom. Normally this is around 70:30.

3. You should be able to see that the objectives being used make sense to your end business goals. FYI this is very rarely Link Clicks for e-commerce brands, more likely to be Conversion for purchase or add to cart, maybe engagement, possibly video views, depending on the strategy.

4. You should be able to see evidence of testing campaigns (this can be dependent on your budget). Audiences, creative and copy angles all should be tested.

And this is what they should be able to tell you:

1. Your ads manager (the agency or freelancer) should have initially spent time getting under the skin of your business – understanding your target market, identifying what other marketing channels you’re using, and getting to know your numbers (CPA, LTV, margins, website conversion rate etc).

2. They should be able to identify if, and where, there are any bottlenecks in the data and advise accordingly. For example, got a low number of landing page views compared to your outbound clicks? This is likely a website speed or cookie policy issue; your ads provider should be able to identify this and highlight the issue to you.

3. Each month they should be reporting on the metrics that matter to your e-commerce brand and talk you through current strategy/performance. As a guide, this could be: click-through rate, landing page views, add to cart, purchase and ROAS. (If they only report on Link Clicks (yes, I have seen this) it’s a huge red flag).

4. They should be able to guide you on what copy & creative angles they’d like to test next – this should be a two-way street between the brand and the ads provider.

5. They should be able to talk you through the soft stats: click-through rate for TOF and BOF, average CPC, CPM and any fluctuations they are seeing in the account.

But the one piece of advice I gave my fellow networker (which is relevant to any e-comm brand owner) was to have a basic understanding of how Facebook ads work before you outsource their management. Understand how a funnel works; understand the importance of testing; understand that it takes time!

The indepth knowledge, strategy, and keeping abreast of current functionality, is what you pay us for!

Find out more about my full management service for Facebook ads here.

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