Your Ad Creation Process Might Be The Problem

Your ad creation process might be the problem.

So let’s assume for a moment that you’re doing all of the right things related to campaign construction. You’re not overcomplicating things with unnecessary campaigns and ad sets, watering down your budget and hurting results in the process.

When you strip away those things, they’re no longer a distraction. But you can feel naked and exposed in the process.

It’s just you and your ads. And when it’s just you and your ads, you start to realize how important those ads are.

The mistakes I see at this point range from complete opposite sides of the spectrum.

One group micromanages and tinkers. They’re testing everything, trying to isolate high-performing text and creative, trying to find winners, and constantly stopping low-performers and starting new ads. They often have multiple campaigns and ad sets just for testing.

The other group is terrified of doing anything.

“What should I do? Should I start a new ad? Should I turn off that ad? How should I do it?”

As tends to be the case with Meta ads, there isn’t one approach that is going to work for everyone. And you should expect me to say that at this point.

Don’t trust anyone who says there’s a single, magical strategy that works for everyone.

But there is a standard approach that you can use that’s flexible based on your budget and other factors.

So let’s talk this through, beginning with the initial launch of your ads.

It’s a clean slate from a new campaign and ad set, starting fresh. When creating those new ads, I encourage you to start simple.

One mistake advertisers make is that they think, because of creative diversification, they need to launch with a dozen or more ads.

You don’t.

Truthfully, you can launch with just one or two. Let’s say you have a primary approach or theme that you want to start with.

If you have the new creative workflow, you could technically create one ad with at least one static image and one video.

Otherwise, create two ads, one with an image and one with a video. In each case, use five primary text and headline options.

Understand the importance of your copy and creative. It needs to lean heavily into a pain point, your product as a solution, and clearly articulate the call to action. Your offer needs to be crystal clear and it needs to inspire action.

Now, the reason I say you can start with one or two ads is that it strips away any potential distractions.

You certainly can start with five or 10 ads, but only if you’re okay with what happens next.

Meta may choose to run with only one or two of those ads. If your feelings aren’t hurt by this and it doesn’t feel like a complete waste of time that you created all of those ads, feel free.

But especially at more modest budgets, there’s no good reason to start with a high volume of ads.

When you run that first batch, you have an option based on your personality. Some advertisers want a true A/B test. Some don’t care and will take the natural algorithmic results as a sign regarding what Meta prefers.

If you need a test, start with Meta’s creative testing tool when you launch that initial batch.

But make sure that the test generates enough data for it to be meaningful. And understand that since you’re forcing Meta to deliver your budget via a test, it’s less efficient and results will be suboptimal.

What do you do with that information?

Do not start trying to isolate the winning combination of copy and creative. A successful ad should have many winning combinations now.

You can get a sense of what primary text, headlines, and format drove the most conversions so that you can learn from it. But you should not use that information to repeat that strategy with identical text or creative.

Okay, so the first batch of ads ran for a week.

If you used a creative test, also let your ads run for an additional week after the test is complete.

How are your ads performing in aggregate?

I don’t care whether Meta’s picking one ad over another. I don’t care if one ad has a good CPA and another doesn’t.

What do the ad set metrics look like?

If they’re great, there’s no reason to do anything. If you feel like performance isn’t good enough, it’s time to move on to the next stage.

Create your next batch of ads with uniquely different creative and text. Take a different psychological angle with a different pain point, solution, or offer.

Understand that these are the things that are driving your conversions, or preventing you from getting conversions.

It’s not your targeting or placements or some other setting.

So create that next batch of ads.

My preference at this point is to not start these new ads with another creative test. Publish those new ads to the existing ad set and see what happens.

Something that most advertisers misunderstand is that the way your ads are delivered on day one may not be the way they’re delivered on day eight.

So don’t obsess over which ad Meta is choosing to run or ignore on a day-to-day basis.

After a couple of weeks, review again: How are your results in aggregate?

Do not obsess over how individual ads are doing. Do not assume that if Meta showed this ad more than that ad, you’d get better performance.

This is an example of the Breakdown Effect, where we can often be misled by low-volume data.

Let’s say you’ve gone through multiple rounds of this. You now have 10 to 15 ads, and you’re still not getting the results you want in aggregate.

You’re tired of creating more ads and you aren’t convinced that’s the solution. You’ve exhausted several text and creative angles and you feel that you’re doing a good job of creating ads that should convert.

It’s also possible that you simply don’t have the resources to churn out more ads, so that’s not immediately an option.

You have some things you can try at that point.

The first two are more for peace of mind than they are for likely solutions.

Let’s say that you have an ad that is barely being shown and you feel that it was neglected unfairly. If you have the Push Delivery to This Ad feature, use it for a few days and see what happens.

If you have one ad that’s dominated delivery but performed miserably, turn it off and see how it impacts overall performance.

Again, these aren’t necessarily high-confidence solutions, but the algorithm isn’t perfect either.

The next step, assuming you’re not eager to create another batch of ads, would be to focus on your landing page.

Are you getting a high volume of clicks on your ads, but no one is converting? Do you have a way to see what people do when landing on that page? Are they adding to cart but not completing the purchase?

I’ve seen a lot of confusing, low-performing landing pages in my day, and I’ve gotta be honest with you.

The best ad will be killed by bad landing page construction.

Make sure the landing page is clear, limits options, and guides the visitor quickly and easily to the conversion. Don’t hide the price or make anything about the product mysterious.

Don’t give a potential customer a reason to have doubts.

Here’s the bottom of the glass.

There isn’t a magical number of ads that will lead to results.

Start small and publish more ads as you go. Depending on the resources available, you can create more. But resist the urge to micromanage and feel like you need to find the winning headline, primary text, creative, or combination of those things.

Your goal is to give Meta the assets it needs to find many winning combinations of ad copy and creative.

When you aren’t getting the results you want in aggregate, look at your ads and landing page and be critical.

Why aren’t people convinced? Why aren’t they acting on the ad? Why aren’t they completing the purchase?

Start there.