Facebook Ads Automation: How To Scale And Optimize Your Campaigns In 2018
Managing Ad Campaigns isn’t easy especially when you are managing many campaigns with different Ad sets. Facebook Ads needs constant attention and quick measures as performance can show you dips anytime.
If the changes in the budget or the bids aren’t made at the right time for the low-performance Ads, you might end up losing big money.
But are we left with no possible option to make this smooth & easy?
No, It’s 2018. The advertising techniques have changed drastically so is the Ads Automation. You don’t have to watch your Ads Campaigns every other second.
Basically, this feature allows you to set up Automated Rules before the start of the campaign. What it does is; it checks the performance of your Ads Campaigns. After analyzing the performance, It automatically shifts the budget to the best-performing Ad.
It not only save your money for being wasted on low-performance Ads but also it allows you to analyze your results and develop a proactive strategy to make it better & productive.
If you are looking to manipulate your Ads performance while giving less time on manual work, this comprehensive guide to Facebook Ads Automation tool is for you.
Is Facebook Ads Automation Important?
Before we go into it, let’s list down the most important things about the Facebook Ads.
- Constant Launch
- Adjusting Budgets
- Bids
- Duplicating Ad Sets
It can be stated without a doubt that the above points can make or break any campaign. Campaigns on any set require everyday checks & optimizations.
Most of these tasks can be automated by Facebook Ads Automation including the adjusting of Budget, maintaining Bids, and duplicating the Ad Sets. It means you don’t have to do it manually anymore. It Saves Time & Money!
If you still are going to do it manually, you will certainly end up losing money.
So What’s an Automated Rule:
Facebook Ads Automation is responsible to check your Ads Campaigns of different Ad sets while taking immediate measures for you. If a particular Ad isn’t performing well, the automation feature automatically shifts the budget to the one which is performing better.
In order to use the Automated Rules, create an Ad campaign first. You can simply make it from the Facebook Ads Manager. Once you are done, set up the automated rules using Facebook’s Automated Rules.
If you want to use the additional features like duplication & metrics comparison, you can use the revealbot tool of automation.
“After you set the rules, do check them after a couple of days just for the satisfaction.”
How Automation Builds Into Your Strategy
I expect that you are pretty much clear about the Facebook Automation Rules and its importance in managing different Ad sets.
I am moving forward to the use of Facebook Automated Rules in optimizing your campaigns.
- Define Your Funnel
We all know Funnel is the path taken by a particular campaign between the impression to the conversion.
For B2C companies, the funnel will look like as
- Cost Per lead
- Cost Per Website Purchase
- Cost Per Website Checkout
- Website Purchase ROAS
Find Your Maximum CPR (Cost Per Result)
The very next step should be to distinguish the cost per result for each step of the Funnel. You are required to define the maximum cost for every step of the funnel.
This is very easy. For example: if the cost per paying customer is $30, and you know that 15% of those customers, who installed the app, are actually the paying customers. This way, the maximum cost per app install is $3.
Similarly, figure out the Cost Per Result of each step of the funnel.
Grow Your Business With Automation:
Human Beings are the most intelligent creatures in this universe until now. But as far as efficiency is concerned, the machines are far more efficient than the human brain. Therefore, go for the Automated Rules that can outperform any marketer in term of the day-to-day routine.
Whether you are controlling 1 or 1000 Ads with different Ad sets, Facebook Ads Automation will always trigger efficiently.
It can immediately pause the low-performance Ads
It can double the budget for the better-performance Ads
Manage Campaigns:
Whether it’s about the budget allocation, increasing or decreasing bid, or duplicating Ads; set the same conditions so that the rule can perform the action for you.
Scale Campaigns:
This is how you set rules for Facebook Ads Automation.
Automate Creative Testing:
You can use any Facebook Ads Automation tool to set up multiple ad sets and test them against each other to see what works the best. Creative Testing is an old technique but is a good way to determine the best-result combination.
Ways To Use Automated Rules
Dealing With Low-Performance Ads:
Pausing the Ad that isn’t performing well is one way to reduce the lost. However, this isn’t a professional way to sort out these Ads.
Sometimes, low-performance Ads do perform as well. Pausing ads too early will not earn you anything.
A common Pause scenario can be seen below:
A very similar rule will apply for those ads that have a high CPA and an expensive Add to Cart. They are the major indicators of any bad performance ads.
Let’s take another example:
Suppose your ad was performing well in the start but it begins to decline over time. In this case, following Automated Rule will apply:
Pause ad set if
Spend > $200 and Purchases > 0 and Cost per Purchase > $50
Use ROAS (Return On Ad Spend)
Where should you use ROAS? This is the most common question asked by the marketers when it comes to advertising on Facebook.
If you run an eCommerce store where prices & quantities fluctuate with monthly & yearly subscription plans, ROAS is the right metrics to track.
Return On Ad Spend = Purchase Revenue / Spend
A business model works when you earn 3x times the ad spend. In that case, the rule would be:
Pause ad set if
Spend > $80 and ROAS < 3
It means on $80 ad spend, you expect to get $210.
Similarly, for mobile apps, the rule would look like as
Pause ad set if
Spend > $100 and App Purchase Revenue < 3 * Spend
Relaunch Ads that gave late Conversions
It happens sometimes when you pause a certain Ad due to bad performance and then a few people covert. Relaunching those ads isn’t a bad idea at all.
The rule is:
Start ad set if
Cost per Purchase < $50 (last 12 hrs) and Purchases > 0 (last 12 hrs)
Remember, don’t exceed the time frame more than 12 hours.
If the ad sets were on a pause for a much longer time, it will certainly lose the optimization data. Therefore, it might not work well.
If the last 7 metrics are decent, then you should prefer relaunching this old Ad. Otherwise, better go for a new one. The rule, in this case, would be
Start ad set if
Impressions < 100 (yesterday) and Cost per Purchase < $50 (Last 7 days) and Purchases > 1 (Last 7 days)
Wait! You need set up a custom rule for this type of Ad so that it only runs at midnight.
Increase Budget for Top Performing Campaigns and Ad Sets
Increasing the budget for the top-performing Ads is an instrumental way to maximize the ROI. The Ads that are already performing well have low risk involved and will perform even better if the budget is increased at the right time.
Conditions are more or less similar to the pause rule, but you need to do the opposite in this case.
Set budget to $600 once a day if
Purchases > 2 and Cost per Purchase < $30
Remember to set the time less than 12pm so that it doesn’t delay in changing the budget.
Plus, you can build separate rules for when the metrics are good- and manipulate the budget correspondingly.
If the maximum CPA comes out to be $30, then you need to follow this rule:
Increase budget by 20% once a day if
Purchases > 5 and Cost per Purchase < $30 and Cost per Purchase >= $20
And if you are lucky to get the CPA below $20, you should prefer pouring some further money into it. Like:
Increase budget by 100% once a day if
Purchases > 5 and ROAS >3
Moreover, you can also increase the budget in the middle of the campaign, particularly when you have already spent half of the budget.
Increase Budget by 50% once a day if
ROAS>3 and Spend (today) > 0.5 * Daily Budget
Play Around With Bid:
Bid Management is one of the most crucial aspects of Facebook Ads Automation. However, it is the most undervalued automated tool as many marketers leave it on Facebook to decide the bidding cost.
Moreover, Facebook has already said that even if you place a higher bid value, you will only be charged to the amount that is needed to win the auction.
What’s the ideal bid? There isn’t any benchmark set. In order to control the cost per optimization, add a target cost.
As I mentioned earlier, If the bid is too low, it isn’t going to win the auction and will eventually fail in running. If that’s the case, use the following rule:
Increase bid by $0.5 every 2 hours
Impressions <100 (last 2 hrs)
Duplicate Ad Sets and Ads:
This is also an interesting aspect of Facebook Ads Automation that is widely used by the marketers in automating horizontal scaling and relaunching the paused Ad sets.
Duplicate ad set once in a lifetime if
Spend > $100 and Purchase > 0 and Cost Per Purchase < $50
If the ad was paused, then go for this:
Duplicate ad set once in a lifetime if
Time is less than 12 p.m.
Don’t forget to un-pause ads in the duplicated Ads sets.
Start ad if
Hours since creation is less than 1.
Troubleshooting:
Unexpected behavior is something that can’t be detected. You need to check the logs to see why there is a dip in the behavior but if you still face a problem, our customer support will be ready to answer you anytime.
It’s Time to Create Your First Automated Rule
I guess you have thoroughly studied the concepts of Automated Rules and the conditions they are applied for.
1.State a clear name to your Rule:
The best way to write the rule is to state the action followed by the condition.
For example : Pause all ad sets in 2 campaigns if spend > $200 or CTR < 1%
2. Choose the rule application level:
The rule can be applied to the campaigns, ad sets, or the ad level. You are only allowed to associate a single rule with objects on the same level.
3. Select the objects you want to be affected
Select the specific campaigns/ads sets/ads individually.
4. Choose What your rule does:
Now is the time to set the conditions/rules that are needed for your Ads Automation. Few of the examples are mentioned below:
- Pause campaigns / ad sets / ads.
- Setting Bid strategy: Either go for automatic bidding or set the target cost.
- Increase / decrease / set budget
- Duplicate Campaigns / ad sets / ads
- Delete Campaign / ad set / ad
- Start (pause campaigns) / ad sets / ads.
All of the mentioned rules are given in the Facebook Automation Rules. All you need to do is to place them correctly, and sensibly.
5. Define Conditions:
There is a fine boundary between the conditions & the rules. When you have set the rules for your campaigns/ad sets/ads, you are supposed to set criteria to trigger the given rules. Those are called Conditions.
6. Set the rule check frequency:
Prefer setting up a check interval or use a schedule
7. Set up the conversion window:
The justified rule is to set the same conversion window you used for optimization.
8. Set Alerts:
Yup, it’s important. You can get instant emails about your triggered actions. You can even get notifications on Facebook messenger.
Over to you:
Thank you for reading that out. I sincerely hope that this guide to Facebook Ads Automation would help you in dealing with your campaigns/ad set and other key areas. The rules defined are already experimented and offers a guarantee ROI if done with the right set of conditions & time frames.
Don’t forget to say a word.
