7 Common Mistakes We Find During Facebook Ad Audits
Updated: February 16, 2021
by BROCKTON CONWELL
CEO at Kintsugi Digital
CEO at Kintsugi Digital
"A lot of the time, we're seeing the same issues in every ad account we audit."
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Every month, we complete a few complimentary Facebook Ad Account audits as part of the Strategic Account Plan we prepare for new prospective clients.
It's a great opportunity for us to gather more context about the brand by looking at raw data, and it gives us a chance to provide some upfront value to the prospect by giving them feedback about issues we see in the account that could improve performance (often in a big way).
On occasion, we're able to give really positive feedback (yay!) — but more likely, there are some major issues.
In fact, a lot of the time, we're seeing the same issues in every account that we audit.
Today, I'm going to break down some of the most common mistakes I've seen personally from the past 3-6 months of audits. Our audit process consists of a conversation with the prospect and a review of both the Facebook Ad Account and Google Analytics account, so I'll bucket these into those three buckets.
It's a great opportunity for us to gather more context about the brand by looking at raw data, and it gives us a chance to provide some upfront value to the prospect by giving them feedback about issues we see in the account that could improve performance (often in a big way).
On occasion, we're able to give really positive feedback (yay!) — but more likely, there are some major issues.
In fact, a lot of the time, we're seeing the same issues in every account that we audit.
Today, I'm going to break down some of the most common mistakes I've seen personally from the past 3-6 months of audits. Our audit process consists of a conversation with the prospect and a review of both the Facebook Ad Account and Google Analytics account, so I'll bucket these into those three buckets.
1. No Paid Social Channel in Google Analytics
Our audits start with a deep dive in Google Analytics to look at basic traffic and conversion rate data.
Specifically, we evaluate the current state of the brand's performance by looking at these metrics:
Usually we find that the Google Analytics account doesn't have a dedicated Paid Social channel setup. Properly segmenting traffic from Facebook Ads (and other paid social channels) is crucial in evaluating traffic quality, post-click experience data, and revenue attribution.
(Especially with the incoming effects of iOS14 related to privacy.)
We have a whole guide on setting this up, which you can read HERE. It only takes a few minutes.
Our audits start with a deep dive in Google Analytics to look at basic traffic and conversion rate data.
Specifically, we evaluate the current state of the brand's performance by looking at these metrics:
- Breakdown of Traffic Acquisition by Channel
- Website Session Volume measured over time
- Traffic Quality Metrics: Bounce Rate, Avg. Session Duration
- Storefront Conversion Rate, AOV, and RPC (Revenue per Click)
Usually we find that the Google Analytics account doesn't have a dedicated Paid Social channel setup. Properly segmenting traffic from Facebook Ads (and other paid social channels) is crucial in evaluating traffic quality, post-click experience data, and revenue attribution.
(Especially with the incoming effects of iOS14 related to privacy.)
We have a whole guide on setting this up, which you can read HERE. It only takes a few minutes.
2. No Middle Funnel Engagement-Based Audiences
There are three main types of targeting within Facebook Advertising: prospecting (top-of-funnel), retargeting, and re-acquisition (previous customers).
Retargeting can include everything from home page visitors to a cart abandoners—or even just someone who engaged on Instagram.
While most accounts we audit have at least some form of retargeting in place, it's usually limited to on-site activity. This is great for bottom-of-funnel campaigns (like Dynamic Product Ads served to recent product page viewers). However, there's an opportunity to greatly increase retargeting audience size by expanding targeting to include recent Facebook/Instagram page engagers and even individuals who have recently opened an email.
Here are some middle-funnel audiences I love (that I don't see in accounts very often):
Because the Return on Ad Spend (RoAS) from retargeting ads will inherently be much higher than a prospecting campaign, it's often advantageous to expand it as much as possible. Of course, it's also important to align ad creative and messaging to the audience based on where they would be within the customer journey. Speak to someone who abandoned checkout yesterday differently than someone who has engaged on Instagram but hasn't even been to a product page yet.
There are three main types of targeting within Facebook Advertising: prospecting (top-of-funnel), retargeting, and re-acquisition (previous customers).
Retargeting can include everything from home page visitors to a cart abandoners—or even just someone who engaged on Instagram.
While most accounts we audit have at least some form of retargeting in place, it's usually limited to on-site activity. This is great for bottom-of-funnel campaigns (like Dynamic Product Ads served to recent product page viewers). However, there's an opportunity to greatly increase retargeting audience size by expanding targeting to include recent Facebook/Instagram page engagers and even individuals who have recently opened an email.
Here are some middle-funnel audiences I love (that I don't see in accounts very often):
- Past 30 Day Facebook Page Engagers
- Past 30 Day Instagram Engagers
- Past 30 Day Email Openers (sync with Klaviyo)
- Whitelisting Audiences: Influencer's Page Likes
- Whitelisting Audiences: Influencer's Recent Engagers
Because the Return on Ad Spend (RoAS) from retargeting ads will inherently be much higher than a prospecting campaign, it's often advantageous to expand it as much as possible. Of course, it's also important to align ad creative and messaging to the audience based on where they would be within the customer journey. Speak to someone who abandoned checkout yesterday differently than someone who has engaged on Instagram but hasn't even been to a product page yet.
3. No Targeting Exclusions in Prospecting Campaigns
Prospecting campaigns should be cold.
🥶 Like really cold.
The objective of this campaign type is to get NEW eyes on the brand—using broad targeting and Facebook's AI to serve ads to large audiences.
Therefore, it is important to set up targeting exclusions to filter out warm traffic. In most cases, this means excluding some combination of previous customers and website visitors. The most effective way to filter out previous customers is to sync a custom audience with your ESP and also exclude Past 180 Day Purchasers.
This may "hurt" the RoAS metrics you see in Ads Manager, but you can be more confident that your prospecting budget isn't being allocated to re-acquiring customers you already have on your list. (Target them separately with a dedicated Campaign with a small percentage of your budget.)
For those with Paid Search experience, think of this in the same way you'd have separate campaigns for Branded Search v. Generic/Categorical Search. You'd likely exclude branded terms from your categorical search campaigns, right? Same situation with filtering out customers and/or recent site visitors from Paid Social prospecting.
Prospecting campaigns should be cold.
🥶 Like really cold.
The objective of this campaign type is to get NEW eyes on the brand—using broad targeting and Facebook's AI to serve ads to large audiences.
Therefore, it is important to set up targeting exclusions to filter out warm traffic. In most cases, this means excluding some combination of previous customers and website visitors. The most effective way to filter out previous customers is to sync a custom audience with your ESP and also exclude Past 180 Day Purchasers.
This may "hurt" the RoAS metrics you see in Ads Manager, but you can be more confident that your prospecting budget isn't being allocated to re-acquiring customers you already have on your list. (Target them separately with a dedicated Campaign with a small percentage of your budget.)
For those with Paid Search experience, think of this in the same way you'd have separate campaigns for Branded Search v. Generic/Categorical Search. You'd likely exclude branded terms from your categorical search campaigns, right? Same situation with filtering out customers and/or recent site visitors from Paid Social prospecting.
4. Undesirable Conversion Rate from Organic Traffic
I'll quote myself from another article I wrote last summer...
I'll quote myself from another article I wrote last summer...
If your store isn't already converting well from organic channels—investing in paid traffic won't go well.
The reality is that (in most cases) paid traffic will be of lower quality than organic traffic.
We can objectively measure this through metrics like bounce rate, email opt-in rate, conversion rate, etc.
Sometimes when auditing an account, we see a very low conversion rate from organic channels like direct, search, and email. More specifically, we're looking at RPC (revenue-per-click) which is a function of AOV x Conversion Rate. (This helps compare conversion rates for brands with low AOVs to brands with high AOVs to get some more comparable benchmarks for measuring what is "good" and "bad" — all relative to traffic quality.
A low RPC from organic traffic is a red flag. 🚩 It means: people who already know about this brand are not biting.
In this situation, sometimes a brand is spending thousands of dollars per month getting unprofitable results on paid advertising. The issue here may not even be the ad account—it could be a poorly converting landing page and/or website experience. (Or just a product without sufficient product-market fit. 👎)
A good rule of thumb: get your Organic RPC to a good place before spending money on advertising.
If you need some ideas to improve RPC (especially if you're on Shopify)--read this section from our Paid Traffic Prep article.
5. No Profitability-Based RoAS Targets
Business owners deserve to be called out on this—for their wallet's sake.
This is an issue I see discussed amongst the DTC / Marketing Twitter community quite frequently...
Business owners deserve to be called out on this—for their wallet's sake.
This is an issue I see discussed amongst the DTC / Marketing Twitter community quite frequently...
It’s always sad when I ask questions about Contribution Margin or Target RoAS on a discovery call and someone can’t articulate an answer. Like how are you spending money in your ad account without knowing this?
— Brockton Conwell (@BrocktonConwell) February 16, 2021
Spending money on Facebook (or any channel) without having a clear picture on how you'll measure your success is like walking blind into a war.
It's imperative that metrics like Contribution Margin, Break Even RoAS, and Target RoAS are calculated and established first. How else will you decide whether to spend more or spend less? How else will you be able to determine whether or not you are profitable?
Often, when we start a consultation with a prospect—these are some of the first questions we ask. Often, there aren't concrete answers. Some accounts need different RoAS targets for different SKUs, etc. and that is important to acknowledge. Either way, no profitability-based RoAS targets = big mistake.
6. Poor Link Quality Metrics
Link Clicks / Landing Page Views = Click Quality
This equation serves as a way to measure the drop-off in the time it takes a website to load after an ad is clicked.
In this case, we have Click Quality manually set up as a custom metric with Ads Manager.
Often, if it takes longer than 3-4 seconds for a page to load, the user will bounce... and who could blame them?!
It's difficult to stay above 95%, but we look at anything below 85% as an issue. Troubleshoot poor link quality by reviewing page load time for landers and take care to ensure the page is optimized to load quickly especially on a mobile device. Running ads with a low click quality is a big mistake (costing $ and killing RoAS).
Link Clicks / Landing Page Views = Click Quality
This equation serves as a way to measure the drop-off in the time it takes a website to load after an ad is clicked.
In this case, we have Click Quality manually set up as a custom metric with Ads Manager.
Often, if it takes longer than 3-4 seconds for a page to load, the user will bounce... and who could blame them?!
It's difficult to stay above 95%, but we look at anything below 85% as an issue. Troubleshoot poor link quality by reviewing page load time for landers and take care to ensure the page is optimized to load quickly especially on a mobile device. Running ads with a low click quality is a big mistake (costing $ and killing RoAS).
7. No Diversity of Creative
This is probably the biggest mistake of all. 😱
Just this week I have audited 3 different Facebook Ad accounts that had only a single ad per ad set. No creative testing whatsoever.
Especially with broad targeting and large audiences working so well right now for a lot of accounts, creative is likely the first thing that should be tested. There is *almost* never a good reason why only one version of an ad should be in place, even if just testing some different copy variants for a Dynamic Product Ad carousel.
Nothing more to say here but... test, learn, optimize, repeat—forever. 🤙
This is probably the biggest mistake of all. 😱
Just this week I have audited 3 different Facebook Ad accounts that had only a single ad per ad set. No creative testing whatsoever.
Especially with broad targeting and large audiences working so well right now for a lot of accounts, creative is likely the first thing that should be tested. There is *almost* never a good reason why only one version of an ad should be in place, even if just testing some different copy variants for a Dynamic Product Ad carousel.
Nothing more to say here but... test, learn, optimize, repeat—forever. 🤙
RELATED CONTENT - How to Prepare Your Shopify Store for Paid Traffic