I’m going to tell you how to launch a brand on Meta with 70-80% confidence, starting with media buying strategies.
This content was originally published in the No Best Practices newsletter on 08.11.2024.
A few weeks ago we answered the question “how much money do I need to spend on Meta ads to validate my business idea?” The answer: infinity money. You could test millions of permutations of products, offers, pricing, account setup, creative, landing pages, etc.
Most of you reading this don’t have infinity money. So I’m going to tell you how to validate your business idea on Meta with 70-80% confidence. If the steps I outline here don’t work for you, you should move on to something easier.
This is going to be a three part series:
- Part 1 (this newsletter): ad account structure
- Part 2: ad creative
- Part 3: product, pricing, offer, merchandising (everything outside the ad account)
Frankly, I can’t believe I’m giving this advice away for free. YOLO tho. To save yourself time and money, go read this and don’t bother with this series if your brand meets a lot of those criteria.
If you find value in the content I share here, please recommend No Best Practices to your network. It’s the only thing that keeps me going–hearing that this newsletter has helped people (and seeing the subscriber count go up, lol). Literally click this link, copy the URL, and then post it on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. or just email it to people.
Caveat: this advice won’t be 100% applicable to fashion brands. If you want fashion GTM advice you should sign up for my fashion newsletter.
Ad Account Structure: Easy/Medium/Hard Mode
I’ve seen brands win with a diverse set of ad account structures. I’m not going to tell you that cost caps or one CBO campaign or anything else is the “one true way” to run Meta ads.
Like Barry said, I’d encourage you to find a way to review as many different account setups as possible. That said, our goal is to narrow down our possibilities in the most efficient way possible.
What if I told you “I’m thinking of a random city in the USA–what is it?” How would you answer that riddle by asking the smallest number of questions possible?
First, you’d ask me “Is the city to the right or left of 39°50′N. Then you’d ask “is the city north or south of 98°35′W?”. And on and on, dividing the remaining area in half each time until you narrowed in on the mystery location.
That’s what we’re trying to do with this series–answer the question “can my business use Meta to scale” with the smallest number of questions possible. If your ad creative, product and offer don’t work in one of these account setups, it probably won’t work at all.
Easy Mode: CBO Testing/Scaling
How It Works: Put 5-8 ad creatives in a CBO campaign. Create two ad sets–one targeting a broad audience (w/gender and age targeting if relevant), and one targeting 15-20 relevant interests. Duplicate the ads across both ad sets using Post IDs.
Set a daily budget that is 2-3x your expected AOV and let it rip for at least 4-5 days. If one of your ads is hitting your KPIs by day 5, scale your budget up 20% every 2-3 days and see how long performance holds.
If none of your ads are hitting your KPIs by day 5, turn them off and upload 5-8 new creatives to your ad sets. If you upload 4-5 batches of creative and nothing works sustainably, stop using this approach and move on to Medium Mode.
Note–you should probably read the next two emails in this series and dial in creative and “outside ads manager” elements as much as possible before starting this process.
Why It Works/Context: A few months ago I wrote about the scaling dynamics in different product categories. When Broad/CBO is almost immediately scalable for your brand, it means your product has a broad audience with a low level of suspicion.
That’s great! This is going to make your life much easier. Products that can run ads on Easy Mode typically solve a broad problem, are differentiated from the competition or take a novel approach, and have an AOV between $50-150.
Medium Mode: Cost Controls
How It Works: Take the 4-6 ads from “Easy Mode” that came closest to achieving your KPIs. Create three different campaigns: a target ROAS, a target CPA, and a bid cap campaign. Use Post IDs.
Set the bid targets for each campaign to be about 2x your true target. For example, if your AOV is $100 and you’re targeting a 3x ROAS, set your CPA target at $66. Use broad targeting. Then publish the campaigns and let ‘er rip for 4-5 days.
Are any of your ads getting spend and driving conversions? If so, gradually reduce the cost targets in each campaign until they’re closer to your true target. Do spend and conversion levels maintain? Then congrats, you’ve got yourself a scalable ad.
No luck here? Now it’s time to start testing a lot more creative OR move on to step 3. More on what creative to test in the next issue.
If you decide to test creative, keep the campaign that performed closest to your target running and turn off the other two. Keep the cost target in this campaign about 1.5x your true goal. If something takes off, you can gradually reduce it towards your goal.
Some brands will consistently hit their desired ROAS or CPA target with a cost control set to 120-140% of that target.
Why It Works/Context: When “easy mode” doesn’t work for you, it means one of two things: it’s harder to “crack” your market in terms of creative messaging, or your product is relatively niche.
You might have to scale with 25 creatives spending $200/day vs 3-4 creatives spending $5k cumulatively in a CBO.
Typically, this means that you’re going to have to generate a lot more creative to achieve the same level of scale as an Easy Mode business. Without the right approach to strategy and staffing, this can be costly–really consider if this is the business you want to be in.
Hard Mode: Up-Funnel Audience Dev + Cost Caps
How It Works: In this approach, you’re doing a true “top of funnel”/ “bottom of funnel” strategy. Your top of funnel campaign is going to be one of the following (pick what makes most sense given your skills, product and available creative assets):
- Whitelisted account running “clickbaity” creative with a conversion objective
- ThruPlay campaign with your best video creative + some additional “MOF” creative
- Landing page view campaign with “clickbaity” creative, leading to landing page formats like advertorials, listicles, etc.
Your bottom of funnel campaign will be one of the following (or test both):
- A cost cap campaign targeting TOF engagers, site visitors, social media engagers and (maybe) their lookalikes. Use whatever bid type worked best in part 2.
- An ASC campaign with limited retargeting of existing customers (of course, if you’re truly starting from scratch, you won’t have a ton of existing customers).
Use your best creative from Easy and Medium mode in the BOF campaign (use Post IDs!).
Why It Works/Context: Your brand is in hard mode for one of three reasons:
- You’re in a category that’s hard to break into, like supplements or skincare
- You’re targeting a market that’s hard for Meta to identify with its algorithm
- Your brand is not gonna work on Facebook, and this is the end of the line
This is what makes Meta go to market so challenging. Let’s say you reach this stage, you test a few campaign configurations, and nothing works. You can go back to the drawing board on ad creative and “outside the ad account” factors. And then you can run these steps again.
Maybe something will stick during this second round of testing, and your brand will scale. Or maybe it won’t, and you’ll be sent back to the drawing board again.
This is why I recommend potential brand owners set a ceiling on what they’re willing to spend validating a single idea. This newsletter, and the next two issues, will help you make the most of that money. But you need the mental fortitude to decide when to walk away.