Here’s the #1 mistake that I see media buyers make with their ads:
They don’t use good naming conventions for the different campaigns, ad sets, ads, etc. So it’s hard to track what’s working and what’s not working.
A good comparison to this is Spaghetti Code. In coding, that’s a term where if you hire programmers to write code, and they create what’s called spaghetti code, and basically, they just throw stuff together, it’s unstructured, it’s difficult to maintain.
And whenever you use spaghetti code, to create programs, it’s very hard for the next person to come into the program, figure out how it works and figure out how to fix it. Because everything is unstructured, it’s just a big tangled mess of garbage.
And a lot of media buyers do the same thing. They just throw stuff into the accounts and just jumble it all together. And when you’re coming back to look at the ads to see what’s working to see what’s not working, it’s all a big jumbled mess.
It’s very hard to figure out what’s converting what’s not converting etc. Because the first thing you do when you come into an ad account, and you start to take over the ads as a new media buyer, is you have to go in and dig into what has worked in the past.
Because if you’ve got an ad, maybe that worked three months ago, six months ago, a year ago, it was a high converting ad, you want to re-use that ad today, especially if it’s had a break with the Facebook audience, and they haven’t seen it in a while, and they no longer have banner blindness to it.
Now you can run the ad again and potentially get some great results. Obviously, you’ve got to put it thru a testing process first before scaling it up. But, it has a much better chance of success than a brand new ad that you write from scratch.
So if you’re hiring media buyers, to run your ads, make sure they’re using good naming conventions.
Here’s how I name most of my ad sets:
12/27/21 | Audience | Ad Name | Page Name
Here’s why this matters:
By using the same name for all audiences, I can easily pull up all ads run to the same audience and see how well they converted. I’m able to look at a large data pool, see which audiences are converting the best, and scale up ads to those audiences.
For example, with one client, I was able to see that one audience was bringing in customers about 20% cheaper than another audience. As a result, we were able to scale ads to that audience and reduce costs. But, I never would have seen that data if my ads were all muddled together.
By using the same name for all ads with the same ad copy, I can easily pull up all the ads with that copy and see how well they converted.
By using the same name for all ads with the same Page Name, I can easily pull up all the ads with that copy and see how well they converted.
One client got way better results with a specific page name. I was going thru their ads one day and noticed that 80% of the winning ads all used a specific page name. That’s when I realized that one page was converting way better than their other pages.
This enabled me to scale up their ads faster, and test new ads with that page name to give them a fair shot at success.
If I’m doing an Image Scale, I will add “IMG2” to Ad Keyword Name and launch the ad with 10 different images, gifs, or videos.
So, you must have Good Account Structure with good naming conventions that work for you. That way when you run ads, you know what’s working.
And you can get an idea of how to continue to use your resources properly, you can get an idea of which audiences, ad copy, ad images, and pages are converting. This will enable you to properly manage your ads and continue using the winners in the future.
And, if you ever hire another media buyer or manage your ads yourself, you’re no longer held hostage by a specific media buyer. That’s why I recommend using good naming conventions for your campaigns, for your ad sets. To make sure that everything is really well set up and easy to understand.
If you need help scaling up your ads, then contact me. I may have time available in my schedule to create custom ads for you.
Sincerely,
Ben Curry
The Million Dollar Ad Guy
About the Author
Ben Curry specializes in helping marketers get more sales from their Facebook™ and Instagram™ Ads WITHOUT increasing costs.
He has created many high-converting Facebook™ Ads that brought in six figures in revenue. A few have brought in over a million dollars in sales each. Many are still running today.
In addition, he has personally managed over $2 Million in ad spend on Facebook. His ad management strategies have generated more sales – while lowering Customer Acquisition Costs – at the same time.
“Spaghetti carbonara – Trishhhh.jpg” by Trishhhh is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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