Best Practices Won't Guarantee Results

Here’s what to focus on when you’re doing everything else right.

I’m convinced that most advertisers obsess over all of the wrong things. My theory is that this is mostly due to a lack of understanding of how things work. So they focus on fixing perceived problems or adding complexity based on the latest tip they saw on Reddit.

The reality is that most campaigns should be super simple. The vast majority of advertisers can get away with a single campaign with one ad set, preferably optimized for some sort of conversion.

Especially when optimizing for a purchase, you should care very little about the things you can change in the ad set. You should take a mostly hands-off approach to both targeting and placements.

And even when it comes to ads, the focus should be on providing good assets for Meta to work with. In the spirit of creative diversification, that means uniquely different creative, different formats, using the primary text and headline options.

But today’s advertiser shouldn’t be focused on isolating the winning combination of copy and creative because a successful ad or ad set will have many winning combinations for different people.

When you follow best practices and prioritize a simplified approach to campaign construction like this, advertisers get understandably anxious. If they’re not constantly tweaking and testing and changing, they don’t know what to do. They think their value has been taken from them.

But the reality is this: You can follow all of the best practices and do everything right, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get good results.

The difference is that the natural instinct is to add complexity or turn off features when you don’t get the results you want. The advertiser who follows best practices, especially when optimizing for purchases, should focus their energy elsewhere.

Let’s talk about that “elsewhere” so you can be the most productive.

First is a more general focus: The ad.

There’s a lot that goes into the ad, but I want this to be your first thought when things aren’t going right. It’s not the targeting or placements or five ad sets you didn’t create for testing.

You simply don’t have the right ad that resonates.

Think about your ad from the potential customer’s perspective, not from a technical one. Why aren’t people acting on it?

Evaluate the imagery and videos you’ve used. Is it eye-catching? What story do they tell? Is it compelling?

Who is your ad intended for? What customer persona does this type of customer represent? What is their primary pain point? Does the ad adequately capture it? Does it do a good job of positioning your product as the solution?

Critique your ad copy and creative. They can always be better, and you will undoubtedly need to create new versions. But think of different angles that you could take that are uniquely different from what you’ve already tried.

Second is more specific, and that’s the offer.

I can speak firsthand to this that it’s far more challenging to generate a sense of urgency when there isn’t a discount involved. That doesn’t mean that a discount is required. I’m just saying that the offer can change everything when it comes to conversion rate.

You may have an amazing ad, but people still need a reason to get out that credit card and buy right now. The offer needs to be clear and easily understood. But it also needs to actually move someone to act.

A 10% off discount is rarely an offer that will change someone’s mind. They probably would have converted anyway. So if you are comfortable with offering a discount, make sure it’s actually one that will inspire action.

The next place to focus your time is on your landing page.

Does your landing page fulfill the promise made by your ad? Does the text feature similar language? The same product? Similar imagery? Do you focus on a pain point in the ad that isn’t mentioned on the landing page?

We can spend all of our time creating the best ads, but the landing page can’t be ignored. Not only does it need to fulfill the ad’s promise, but it needs to actually be functional.

It needs to be clean and professional. If your landing page loads slowly, expect people to give up and close the window. If you take shortcuts to build it with low-rent creative and design, don’t expect anyone to invest in your product.

The landing page needs to inspire trust.

So here’s the bottom of the glass.

I encourage you to start with a solid foundation based in best practices. Prioritize a simplified approach to campaign construction. Make sure you have attribution and conversion events set up properly.

When that foundation is there, you can dedicate most of your energy in a productive and meaningful way.

Because following best practices won’t guarantee results, it will still require some work.

Focus on the ads. Your offer. And your landing pages.

And go in that order, without getting too wrapped up in over-testing individual elements of your ads and landing pages.

These are the places where you’ll make the most impact.