Digital Breakthroughs Podcast #16 | Biggest Facebook Ad Mistakes of 2022 | Part 2

Okay, everyone, welcome back to part two of our podcast on social media with our rockstar Phoenix. Huh? Again, my name is Matt Erickson. I'm the director of marketing with national positions and award-winning agency out here in Westlake village, California.

And in the first part of this discussion, we talked about Apple iOS and a lot of those headaches a lot of we and our clients and brands all over the world had to endure in last year, and they're still kind of feeling the effects of it. So if you want to hear more about that, you can check out part one. But we're going to dive into something that Phoenix is going to know way more about, so I won't have to talk and feel like I have to interject as much, because when we have a new client that comes into our agency, and you should encourage this with anyone, if you're thinking of having someone manage your Facebook account or any social media account, don't take them at their word.

You always want to have them do an actual analysis, an actual audit of what you're doing, what you have done, where you're going, what you could do, all of that stuff, because it really gives you an idea of what kind of impact you can have if Facebook is even for you. So we're going to go into, and the point of that is Phoenix runs almost all of these audits. Her and her team, her rockstar team, runs all these audits and sends videos out to new potential clients or even current clients on what they could be doing so they know where they stand.

So Phoenix, I'm going to let you jump into what are some of the most common things you see? It could be a current client or new client when you're auditing an account. I know there's all things. There's structure and testing and creatives, but I'll let you start wherever you want to start.

It sounds like you've heard enough of my audits to know exactly how I go through the process. But yeah, exactly what Matt was speaking to is I have a rock star team. I think we start there, right? Is I have a team and this I think is every business owner, every leader's dream is if I tell them to do something once they do it once because that's the expectation they have of me.

If they ask me to do something once, I will always do it. So it's this camaraderie and it's this collaboration and it's a deep respect. And that respect resounds in our work. It resounds in our audits.

It resounds in everything that we do. And I'll be completely honest. And I think a lot of salespeople, even anybody, like whether it be internal or national positions or out, cringe when I say I'm very selective with what type of clients we bring in. and it is not an elitist or it's not like I only want this type of client type scenario.

What it really comes down to is our core values of doing what's right and being results driven. So for me, if I look at your account and I go, this is probably not going to be a profitable endeavor, I don't want to have you exhaust your resources to hope that you fight against the grain. I have the experience that I have. I have the experience of the team to know, oh, hey, maybe this isn't going to work out for you.

And this could be anything from, I'm sorry, I don't want to cut you off, but just to clarify, this could be anything from, and it's not a knock in any way, shape or form. It could be your business model. You know, it could be your budget. There's nothing wrong if you don't have two, five, 10 grand to spend on a certain kind of campaign.

It's what Phoenix, and I respect her so much for this, is if there's someone who comes in, they may be a three-month-old business and they really just want to hit the ground running. And just realistically, if the dominoes aren't lined up or she can see that there's going to be, yeah, there's an impact and there's an opportunity, the last thing she wants to do is go, okay, great. She doesn't want to set you up to fail. And she doesn't want you to expend your financial resources into a place that may not work for you right now.

Right. Right. And yeah, it's exactly what you said, Matt. A hundred percent.

I'll stop now. No, no, no, no. You're fine. I think the idea is that an agency always wants to get your money and, you know, to an external extent, a lot of agencies might think of it that way.

For me, it's like, I want to keep you as a client. I don't want to just have you as a client for the first three months. That's just, it doesn't make sense profitability wise on our end or your end. So if that's the case, I have to look at retention from different angles.

And that all starts with an audit. You know, back in the day when I first started here, we used to do audits where we'd type them out. And like, you know, Matt alluded to or spoke to directly is we like to conduct audits where our face is in the bottom left-hand corner. So now number one, you're getting used to who the potential account manager would be.

Number two, you see our thought process and the value behind what we bring. And number three, you get to see what we see in real time. You get to see why I find this to be a concern or why I find this to be an opportunity. I like to condense it down in about five minutes, but let me kind of walk you through the main things that I see in these accounts that are the biggest mistakes.

Number one is attribution. So I go into accounts that have so many campaigns running, right? but the attribution settings are all different. So what that means is back in the day, there used to be a time window of anyone who viewed your ad or sorry, clicked your ad in 28 days, but viewed your ad in seven days, this is how it's going to report to you.

That was back in the day during the glory days. Now the default is seven day click one day view So who clicked on your ad within seven days and viewed it one day Can I ask one question Absolutely Just because I do like to do this I like to kind of be the layperson on this And we will use a lot of acronyms, and we say attribution. We know exactly what we mean. Can you just kind of very short, just when we say attribution, especially in Facebook, what are we talking about?

Credit. So what attributed to a sale within what timeframe? Okay. Okay.

So the attribution, excuse me, setting between 28 day click and seven day view means who clicked your ad within 28 days and viewed your ad within seven days and actually transitioned into a sale. Got it. Within that timeframe, this is what is going to be reported to you. So you know, you know, of what group clicked, what group of that group, you know, purchased from there, how to attribute success down the line.

Right. So if I'm, if I have campaigns and an account that have multiple attribution settings, then that tells me number one, uh, we're not looking at things, apples to apples. And this is a mess. Why?

If I tell you that I want seven day click one day view. So people who've clicked your ad in seven days and viewed within one day, why would I look at that as the same of just seven day click no view or 20 it's all over the place got another problem consistent attribution settings otherwise you don't know what you're comparing or what you're looking at what are you looking at yeah now that now you're looking at basically if every campaign is different you're looking at different it just doesn't make any sense to be honest with you and a lot of people are like well this was running back in the day why would i turn it off it's like okay but it's again you're not reporting the same time frame like okay i'm reporting yesterday versus you know 15 days ago it just doesn't make sense.

So the second thing that poses a problem for it is when I go into an account, I want to be able to see everything in one breath. I want to be able to go in there and go, what is happening? Okay. So if, if the attribution settings are different, there's no way to calculate totals.

So for example, if I want to see how much revenue you brought in, I can't because they will not populate at the bottom. You have to manually calculate all these things. Now, if your attribution setting is the same, it all calculates. I can see, okay, You have this return on your ad spend.

This is how the account's doing, which is the second mistake. The third mistake are naming structures. So I have a naming structure. Great.

You asked Matt. This is why you need a team or this is why you need at least somebody who is very educated within the space. so uh for example if i'm going to scribble notes down on my notepad i'm going to understand what i meant by the things that i wrote down on a notepad but not look at it and go what in the world is this chicken scratch right maybe the same maybe and a lot of agencies and independent people if not business owners will go in and name things things that they think are something they'll remember but I guarantee you won't remember.

If you looked at it four months from now, you're like, what did I just do here? So naming structures are super important in terms of testing to be able to scale and know what was working and not working. It also is a great auditing tool for you. So for example, if I'm saying, you know, it is an auto, which means auto placement, it can go to either Facebook and Instagram.

Now I know it's going to both platforms. What are we trying to go after? We're trying to go to a purchase or a lead. Okay.

Then I know what type of campaign this is. If I'm asking, is it a moving asset or a still asset? Then I know right away that is there a still image or it's a video. If it's a video, how many seconds?

I just want to see. Also in terms of your targeting, if I'm going with a male, female ages 18 to 65 that are in Texas, 25 mile range, and I have an audit come through or somebody else that's going through myself and I'm looking and it says, you're not targeting Texas at all. You're targeting California. and you're targeting people between the ages of 25 and 65.

And that just means somebody got lazy, which is human error. Something's not right here. And naming structures are so important for checks and balances, also readability and scalability. So that is something super important in terms of account structure as well as account naming structure.

Got it. So with every, I know you're going to break this down, but so whenever, you know, if you're doing individual creatives or a certain set of targeting creatives, or whatever it's going to be that each, you know, each one of those that's going to go in, because this needs to have like, okay, you know, targeting Texas 10 second video version A or something. It needs to be very clear. So assuming because, and this is normal, there could be, let's say a set of creatives, let's say in California and it was, you know, labeled, you know, Southern California ad whatever.

And they just want it rather than having to someone going in and wanting to recreate all of those, they can just duplicate that whole set and then say, okay, we're going to use that for Texas, but they don't actually name it as such. So therefore it can get confusing as to what we're looking at and what's working with, and then even knowing what's working, because if we look at the data and I'll stop, but if we look at the data that we go, this is working great on the agency end, you as a client may go and go, no, it's horrible, but you're looking at the wrong set because the naming structure isn't there.

It's just clean it up. Like my biggest thing is clean it up. It's like so satisfying when things are clean because you can see where everything is in your home right It the same thing with an ad account So when you have someone who junior or you just doing it for the first time for yourself or whatever it may be I had clients and I done audits where I had to open up multiple tabs just to see what going on. You know, that doesn't mean that their strategy is terrible.

It just means it's inefficient. So how do we make it as efficient as possible so we can scale to the degree that we need to? Scaling being how can we take it to another level of getting more profits in and spending more money, hopefully with a better return or at least parallel to what we had already built up traction wise. So that's another mistake.

And I would say the third mistake is actual account structure. So I like to walk people through a funnel. And many times when people do their own ads, they just go, oh, well, duh, I'm just going to target people that are within this range that are interested in these things for my product. Okay.

Great. But is that a well-oiled machine for long-term value or lifetime value or long-term growth? Probably not. And the reason why you want to hire somebody who, whether it be us or somebody who is very experienced in this, is because you look at advertising as a funnel to continuously bring more people in and filter them out and make sure that they're not being beat into with the same messaging, that there is a flow here.

So a funnel, because I know you're going to ask me that. Well, I don't, you're not in my head at all. I don't know what you're talking about. What's a funnel?

A funnel is something you siphon liquids or any type of anything, right? So I've been wrong for so long. I thought it was linear. here.

I thought I was just in marketing. Well, it is a visual aid in terms of understanding how we bring in new customers and or clients, right? So the idea is that at the top of the funnel, which is going to be the widest part of the physical funnel is going to be the biggest portion, which are people who've never heard of you before. I hate to break it to you.

There are millions of people who've never heard of you. So that's why advertising is so great. So the top of the funnel, which you'll hear a lot of people say tofu, top of funnel, or I say prospecting, which are prospecting new people, is going to be top of funnel. Usually that is the priciest portion, right?

Your cost per acquisition for a sale or a lead is probably going to be higher top of funnel because it takes some time for people to decide, yeah, I want to buy. Yeah. For those people who ever took a business course, we would just call this the attention part. We don't really call it that as much marketing anymore, but that's like, Yeah.

That widest, you're trying to get your name and product. Just someone listen to me. That's that top part. Exactly.

Then in this middle of the section, which some people call MoFu, I call it retargeting. We do love our acronyms in marketing, don't we? We do. MoFu is middle of funnel.

In my world, it's retargeting. But basically, it's the middle portion of the funnel, right? So it's gotten a little bit narrower. So these people are the warmer audience.

People who have been touched by one of your ads will kind of know about you. So I heard about Matt Erickson. I remember seeing an ad about it, but I didn't convert into a sale early, right? I'm not convinced yet.

So this is your opportunity to, you know, one, two punch them and go, hey, I noticed that you added to cart, but, you know, it's still waiting for you. Or by the way, here's the deal. You're still thinking about it? Take 25% off with code, Matt 25, or whatever it may be, okay?

And that is your middle of funnel. And then you have your bottom of funnel, which is the teeniest, tiniest bit of the siphoned column or whatever you want to call it. And that is going to be your bow food, your bottom of funnel. And I call it my past purchasers.

So people who have purchased from you, but how do you re-engage with them to have them come back? Is this a referral? Is this an upsell opportunity? What are we doing here?

some clients I have it as the clearance section come and buy again or whatever it may be. So this is a funnel, right? So this continuously recycles and within timeframes, this is strategy. This is the strategy you need and structure you need.

So when I go into clients' accounts or potential clients' accounts, I don't see a funnel there. I also see a huge mistake where they put too much money in the wrong portions of the funnel. So if you think of it like a funnel, if you have too much of something in the middle part of the funnel, it gets stuck, right? There's only so many people in the middle portion of the funnel, the bottom of the funnel.

You have to keep filling the top or else you're going to exhaust the middle or clog the middle. So what does that mean? Lifetime value. So if you put all of your budget into middle of funnel or bottom of funnel efforts, you're going to lose these customers because they're going to be so sick of you because they see the ad so many times.

They're like, I don't want anything to do with Matt Erickson ever again or the brand. No offense. And I think this is a, I know you're going to go into it, but this is just something that is such it's in, and I'll just say this because both Phoenix and I, um, I got my MBA a while ago. Phoenix has been getting hers now.

And this is something I think even to this day, that's where business school talk stock business school talk stops. they go like here's awareness and then in the business side we call it nurturing and then there's sales or conversion and that's it it's done when really there's going to be and i know finney's is going to go into because we both love talking about this is sometimes it's like well what allocation of your budget should go where because when i for example my quick thing so when I was looking at cuts shirts because I just have a I have a weird body So I was trying to find the right kind of shirt and I kept seeing these ads So I looked that was my awareness branding Cause I was looking at it Then I actually went to YouTube and was looking at reviews That was my nurturing and consideration part Now that could be on Facebook also.

Right. And then I, right after I purchased, I mean, right after I purchased, I got an email from them. This is Omnichannel, but it said, forgot something question mark. And I went, wait, what's that?

And they had immediately sent me, Oh, if you forgot something, here's a 20% off this. So they immediately were like thinking of the lifetime value. How can I get them coming back? Which is such a huge part of what people just overlooks.

They, yes, there's a continuous funnel, but you know, Phoenix, I know you're going to go into it. Then I'll stop talking is that it's how do you maximize all of those and not just churn and burn all the time. Right. Right.

And I have a lot of, you know that that's kind of made me the black sheep in this industry in terms of what part of the funnel should be the lowest or the highest return. So when we do reporting, we tell you, okay, so naturally, right, as a business owner, I tell you, Matt Erickson, you're retargeting or your middle of funnel is giving you a six return on ad spend. So your knee jerk reaction is pump more money into that because I'm getting the best return there. But I'm not, but you're not making decisions for your long-term growth.

You're just making decisions because you think it's the best return now. But are you really thinking about that client returning, coming back. So my argument has always been since the beginning of time, and everyone looks at me like I'm crazy, is your top of funnel should be your best return. And if it's not, then we have to continuously strategize your top of funnel to be better messaging and more broad.

And what can we do, especially in the iOS 14.5 space, which is the solution I was speaking to is these mistakes. There are solutions, there's adaptability, but my argument is always get better, be better. And you're only competing against yourself.

So if I can, so with that, because I think you bring up a good point, because even I completely overlooked it, is that you're talking about the top of funnel, specifically on Facebook, and maybe it should be everywhere. But you know, Facebook, maybe it's probably not gonna be the place you're looking for a lawyer, you know, it's gonna be a different, you know, kind of thing. But But if you're, so what you're saying is that if you're jumping onto Facebook and you're, you know, testing, you know, creatives and you're testing ads, that if your message isn't strong enough, interesting enough to make someone, I don't want to say make an impulse purchase because that puts people in a box, but to affect people that quickly, then you probably shouldn't be, you know, going, okay, well, that's okay.

We're going to focus further down the, you can't have blinders onto that. that needs to be your main, what are your main focuses? Well, what, yes. So what has happened during the iOS 14.

5 space, right? Is you're limiting on your targeting. If you actually referenced our first section of this podcast, or I think it was like, you know, the series first part of the series, we talked about the impacts of iOS and the targeting and et cetera. So if we know that, then let's just say Matt Erickson is getting served a plumber ad.

And Matt just told me, I don't need a plumber. I live in an apartment. Okay. Well, what if I made an ad in prospecting, knowing that I had limitations in who I could target anyway?

What if I made an ad that was applicable to everyone, that they needed this because the quality assurance, because the customer satisfaction, or because of the customer service or preventative measures just to have the best. What if I made an ad that went to Matt and he went, maybe I do need a plumber or maybe this is good to know. Or maybe my mom needs a plumber. If there's any mom that needs a plumber, I'm going to give her this person.

So, you know, not all hope is lost. You just have to be better in your messaging and you have to be broader in your messaging. And yeah, I'll end it at that. But there are those are the three main mistakes I see in these accounts.

Right. we talked about it and one of them was what it was attribution setting and how you set it up. The number two was naming structures. And then number three that I always see is definitely account structure.

I'm making it down to the granular level of ads. Are you using headlines that are optimized? Are you going onto websites that actually will make you convert? And that again, might be a third portion of this, but there is so much.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I think you're right. And that's because we, you know, Phoenix and I can geek out on this stuff and I can anyone.

And I only like to bring people on the podcast who have schooled me in the past and will keep schooling me because I get to I get to learn a lot doing this. So I think, you know, we'll probably do we'll make it its own thing. Won't be like a part three. But I think doing one where we definitely go into, you know, maybe trends we're seeing with, you know, interesting kinds of ad creatives, user generated content.

and also that getting further into that, that last part of the funnel, like, okay, maybe once we have converted people, what other resources can we use to keep them coming back, to keep that LTV as high as we can? So, but with that, I think we're going to close this part too. Phoenix, thank you again so much. Just to keep this, if you want to find how to contact Phoenix, you can watch the first podcast.

But if you want to get ahold of me, you can email me at matt.erickson at nationalpositions.com. or marketing at nationalpositions.

com. That will go to me. If you want to learn more about national positions, you can go to www.nationalpositions.

com. Otherwise, we'll see you on the next podcast. Have a fantastic day. Thanks, Phoenix.

Thank you.