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- Stop bleeding money on ads!
A lot of people think Meta ads is the most important thing to growing an ecommerce business. Most of DTC Twitter likes to make outrageous and hyperbolic claims like “I successfully scaled my FB ads to $100K/month overnight!” Yes, it is true that Meta ads can play an big role in helping grow a business, and it is still one of the easiest ways to reach a broad audience. But in reality, most brands end up losing money when running ads. The biggest mistake I’ve seen brands make when they start running ads is that they don’t have the key things in place to make ads successful. Please don’t be that brand. Here are the 5 things you absolutely must have in place and get right before you start pouring money into ads.
(Before I jump into these 5 things, I want to caveat this by saying that I’m assuming you have validated your product/service and know that you have product market fit. Without adequate product market fit, doing the following 5 things still won’t make ads successful. I’ll be talking about how to figure out whether you have product market fit in a future newsletter.)
Ok, let’s assume you have a kick ass product or service and we just need to find your customers. What should you do before you start running ads? Let’s go.
Optimize your product page for conversions
Your product page is where potential customers will make the decision to purchase. Make sure it is well-designed, easy to navigate, and includes compelling product descriptions and images. Things that make a product page optimized for conversions: high quality product photography, 5 star reviews (at least 50 4/5 star reviews is a good number to aim for), FAQs that answer all the questions a potential customer may have.
Have enough user generated content to test for ad creative
We’ve found that UGC videos continue to be the top performing type of Meta ad creative. Make sure you have enough UGC videos to put into testing before you start running ads. For most brands, I recommend starting with 3 to 5 15-30 second videos. That will give you enough data to understand what messaging resonates with your target audience and you can continue to optimize from there. Don’t know where to start when it comes to UGC? Check out this post I wrote that outlines the basics of developing high quality UGC.
Set up proper tracking
Proper tracking on your website is essential for measuring the effectiveness of your ad campaigns. Make sure you have tracking in place to monitor key metrics such as click through rates and conversion rates, which will help you understand your ROAS (return on ad spend). If you don’t have a technical background or a developer in-house, I recommend finding an expert who can help you set up tracking. You can find developers on Upwork or Fiverr who specialize in pixel set up. AdTribe also helps our clients with tracking set up.
Have a clear understanding of your unit economics.
What should be your target CAC on Meta? If you don’t understand your unit economics, you have no idea if your ads are performing ‘well’ and whether you should be scaling up spend. Before running ads, it's important to have a clear understanding of your unit economics, including your cost of goods sold (COGS), average order value (AOV), and customer lifetime value (CLV). This will help you determine how much you can afford to spend on ads while still remaining profitable.
Install post-purchase survey and upsell apps
These two things are easy to do and give you powerful insight into what is really convincing customers to make that purchase. We know that ad platforms have a tendency of over attributing sales to their own platforms, so post-purchase surveys help provide a more accurate picture of what’s driving conversions. Upsell apps help you increase AOV with little downside to the brand, so it’s a no brainer to get upsells set up on your site. We help our clients with app set up and these are the ones we recommend:
What we’re discussing around the AdTribe Watercooler
10 Ecommerce Landing Page Templates & 100+ Examples from the Best DTC Brands. It’s a lot of useful information - bookmark for future reference!
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Need help optimizing your site?
Does your website need to be optimized for ads? Or just want to get some free advice on what to do or where to start? Reply to this email or email me directly at [email protected] and let’s chat!