Should you listen to your FB rep?

There are several FB reps, some are Account Managers, Marketing experts, ecommerce specialists, Business Dev. managers, etc. and some of them do have actual experience running ads, but it’s possible they’ve never ever bought an ad placement in their lives. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ Hey ! We want to share an example of why you should never rely only on your FB's rep advice... Ya we said it. FB reps come from a variety of backgrounds. Some are Account Managers, Marketing experts, ecommerce specialists, Business Dev. managers, etc.  Some have actual experience running ads. And, some have never ran an ad in their life. DISCLAIMER: We're not saying FB reps are useless when it comes to media buying. I'm sure they do have extensive knowledge in running ads in theory and most importantly they have access to several ad accounts of successful businesses with $1K, $100K, and $1M+ ad spend. Plus they understand how the algorithm works, and have access to internal case studies and insights we don't. However, you need to keep in mind... They are employed by one of the largest advertising platforms in the world, whose profit comes from us advertisers spending money... Therefore logically, their number one priority is and will always be the ad spend you have. It’s not a coincidence that you only get a rep once you spend higher budgets. So when should you listen to your rep? Of course, you can and should use their help... sometimes. You should listen to your Facebook rep in instances: - Reps can see stats hidden from you - Access your audience overlap aka who you're competing with - They can run tests in the backend that you don't have access to - Increase the process of ruling out new features to your ad account and even give you a heads up about a new ad policy or change. - Technical issues with the platform like when your ad approval is stuck or provide insight on why you ad is getting disapproved. - They have an option for previewing your ads before uploading them - If you ad account gets disabled, they can help - Plus, you might even get VIP services through a rep like Mobile Works or VIP support. Truth of the matter if, your rep can really be detrimental to your success. That is no lie. So what’s wrong when they help with the strategy? When it comes to exact strategy and adspend I would never listen to them, primarily because they are not media buyers, and secondly, their priority is your ad spend, not your Performance. Having said that, they probably want you to reach your KPI’s so that you can spend more. But if you are spending a lot without success, they will still sleep like a baby at night. You will never hear them telling you to reduce budgets. So back to the example…. We started working with a new client a couple of days ago and overall their ad account was getting a lifetime average of $50 CPA. In the past 1-2 months, their FB AM started actively guiding them on how to set up and scale campaigns, giving them clear instructions on the campaign structure and budget. Her advice overall wasn’t bad → she made them open a CBO campaign with high budgets, 3 ad sets only (one broad, one interest, one LLA) and left it up to the algorithm to find conversions. As I said, it’s a pretty general strategy, nothing is wrong with it. However there are several things that she did not take into consideration. After launching the campaigns, the average CPA from day one is around $200 and the campaign already spent over $80k! Yes $80,000 with a 4x higher CPA than the target or the previous averages. Her strategy also included a Retargeting CBO campaign as well, with a high daily budget and only 2 adsets (180 day pageview and 180 days ATC) which in theory allowed the algorithm to find conversions and scale easily. The results are - again - average $200 CPA with ad spend already over $30k. So what happened next? In order to get better results she advised them to open another campaign, which is a cost cap campaign with $200 bid! And surprisingly the campaign did not spend at all, because it didn’t find a conversion for $200! It’s also worth noting that the client was still running 1-1 campaigns on the side with very low budgets and all performing around $40 CPA. I was very curious about what she had to say about this. Where is her strategy going? Is she happy with the results? What is the next step? I have never known a FB rep to be this much involved with the guidance, so I was wondering if there is maybe something I missed. On the call she was still very confident that I needed to continue with this strategy because if we have big budgets, only then will the algorithm will find enough conversions for the learning to complete which is at 50 conversions / week / adset. I asked her what she thinks will miraculously reduce the CPA from $200 to $40 if it hasn’t happened yet and the "algo" learnt that $200 CPA is okay? She said this campaign had so much data already and that it would be a mistake to turn it off. At this point I was still under the impression that she just wants to believe that the algo can make this right, because her "strategy" is not bad in theory and that it could maybe have worked. It might even have worked for several other accounts she internally overviewed. But there are a couple of things that raised a flag: 1.) I noticed that the pixel has a serious attribution issue. The pixel set up was all messed up, and 50% of the events were not attributed at all. There were 2 pixels on the page (neither of them had the right events firing) and at the time, we didn’t even know who the 2nd pixel belonged to. In Events Manager, it showed that on a certain date most of the pixel events stopped attributing, so we looked at it together with the AM. I was sure that that was the first time she has ever opened Event Managers for this client, or checked the pixel events on the website with the pixel helper. She also noticed that there is something wrong, but told me that she is not really a technical person, so maybe I should send an email to VIP support and ask them about the pixels, and that she also does not know who the other pixel belongs to. I was floored. I'm not a developer, I don’t know coding and I am far from being "technical", but without understanding how the pixels work, and understanding and checking the data we attribute per event, how can you advise to run ads relying fully on the algorithm which works on based on the data the pixels attribute? 2.) During our call she has never mentioned the product, the offer, the message or the actual ads. When I brought it up, she suggested that the Mobile Works program is available for our client and that the client should use it to improve their ads. Fair enough. One of the most fundamental parts of media buying is the offer. If you have a great strategy and your pixels are okay, you can still fail many times until you find the best offer that converts. With your ads, you might need to test several angles to find the right message that reaches and resonates with your target audiences and then it converts on the landing page. This process starts from the ad and ends on your thank you page after the order was placed. 3) And lastly it’s okay to fail with a test - running ads is all about that. She should have identified the moment when it was time to try something else! Making the client believe it’s normal and it will improve is wrong. Our conversation then shifted to how to continue with the ads and I told her that I don’t have any intention of keeping this campaigns on, but that I don’t want to just turn of a campaign that spent $80k. She agreed with me of course and told me that she is happy to test other strategies, but whatever I do - I need to make sure to allocate the budget to the new campaigns :) At this point I was like: "okay, sure" If your AM missed these "small" factors during your meetings as well and they think the budget is the key for scaling then something is wrong. And if that’s the case: hit us up and we can have a chat about what should actually be going on in your account. Or just go here: [( Monika from the DimNiko team :) DimNiko Pty Ltd, 4 King Street, Prahran, Melbourne Victoria 3181, Australia [Update your subscription]( — [Unsubscribe](