Why most Meta ad accounts collapse over time

▶ 0:00Hello, today I'm going to talk about how we can create really robust ad accounts to essentially a huge volume of creatives. Now, when we take on clients, quite often I'll get on a discovery call and they may be running ads already. I'll look at their ads manager or ad account or in fact go to this free resource meta ads library where you can see anyone's ads that our competitors absolutely love.

▶ 0:24And I'll go in and just see what they're currently running. And one of the key telltale signs is I'll come into their account and quite often there will be just like two ads running. And even in terms of inactive, maybe they've tested like four ads, five ads. And it's like you haven't even scratched the surface, especially if it's a higher spending account.

▶ 0:44So I've picked out three accounts with AJ Renewals, Kimball Tech and Solarfast here. And I'm just going to talk through how robust these campaigns really are. And to be honest, they're robust because we learned our lesson on this. You know, we've had a few campaigns where it's been too reliant on one creative pulling too much of the weight and that creative tails off over time or even has a sharp decline.

▶ 1:04And all of a sudden you're in a real panic state when you were getting fantastic results before. So we've made sure that all of our campaigns are as robust as possible. But there's some more like detailed strategic reasons for this. So if we just take a look at this, we've got a huge variety of ads here. Obviously, our main thing is video.

▶ 1:22Probably 80% is video. But we've got a couple images in here as well. Different angles, different reasons for someone to inquire, different things being talked about. Some of them are very heavy on social proof. Some of them are a little bit more offer based. Some of them are more educational. You know, talking to people about, you know, you've already got solar panels, but here's the problem.

▶ 1:40And then going into why you could add battery storage. And there are 37 ads live. So these are 37 ads that are either currently being tested or have already been proven to be performing incredibly well and therefore scaled up within the ad account. 37 compared to when I approach, you know, have most people on common discovery calls and there's like five or six.

▶ 2:01And they're all of the exact same format, the exact same style, which is typically priced package ads. And there's just zero of robustness to their campaigns. And quite often I'll come in and there's been an agency managing it, right? And it will say on their active ads, launched, you know, January, launched February. It's like, what are you paying these guys to do?

▶ 2:21You know, like you see here with Adrian, this is just the ones that are live. So these are all the ones that worked. We've still got ads that are live from April. Then we've got some in June. Then we've got a whole heap in July. Then we've got a whole heap in August. And then we've already got some in September and around 7th, right?

▶ 2:37We're constantly adding new creatives. And we've got a real, basically a factory in the back end that is just churning out. There's going to be 15 and 20 creators every day across the client portfolio. And those creators that just sit there, they go immediately into the testing campaign to make these campaigns robust. Because this is a really good example, right?

▶ 2:54Kimball Tech. Yeah. So, again, 22 live ads, but all running inside this ad account, all pulling the weight. Yeah. Or being tested quite actively. You can see we've started testing a bulk of ads here in September. Primarily because we had one standout performer, so we put, that has been really pulling heavy weight. And the risk is, that's great.

▶ 3:16You want to, you know, a lot of people would just go, especially if you're running your own ads, you'll go, oh my God, I've got this amazing ad, this winner. It's getting leads for £17, let me put all the budget on that. And personally, that's what I'd do as well. But our philosophy is that we want to build a campaign that goes from strength to strength and that is robust and sustainable over time.

▶ 3:32Because there's no point getting you 100 leads one month and 10 the next. I'd rather get you 55 this month and 55 the next, or 40 this month and 65 the next, you know. And build that progressively, which is what actually works with the businesses, how you actually can cope with that demand, right? So we could have just thought, okay, yeah, let's just throw all the budget onto So We Put.

▶ 3:53And in fairness, Meta does a decent job of that anyway because it realizes how much of a strong performer it is. But what we need to ensure is that we're still testing new creators, still bringing new meat into the campaign for Meta to utilize. And the other piece of this is that different ads are going to appeal to different people.

▶ 4:11So while we've got one ad that is clearly a real stand-up performer, it's likely that that is really just capturing with like 100% effectiveness one type of customer demographic. And all people are watching that and they're enjoying it, but they're not actually converting off the back of it, right? Or they are converting, but actually they're coming from, you know, they're getting all the value and entertainment from the other ads in the campaign.

▶ 4:35So you'll notice we've got a real mixing, we've got some with Chris doing his thing, basically a TV presenter at this point. We've got some that is more social-proof customer interviews all the way through. We've got some that are talking about tricky installs. We've got all sorts of different content that Meta has to choose from, essentially.

▶ 4:52And also, like, it's about it being a combined effort from all of the ads. You might have one that's incredibly good at converting, which SoWePut seems to be for this account. But you might have others that are actually doing a lot of background work in the campaign. So when a customer or a prospect watches, say, 75% of SoWePut, what's going to happen is they're going to enter a retargeting audience.

▶ 5:19Same as if they visit Kimball Server's website. When they enter that audience, they're then going to get hit with all of these. And Meta's going to continue to warn them and assess which creatives are working best for that purpose. But more generally, just show them loads of content. And the more someone watches of you, especially on video, which, again, all comes back to doing video ads, the more they're going to like you and the more they're going to be inclined to inquire or to actually go ahead and buy from you.

▶ 5:47And, of course, don't forget that this isn't just about generating the lead. This is about getting them to go ahead with you as well. Because what we found is we get, like, CPMs where it costs probably two pence to show someone one of these videos. And if they've already become a lead and you're working them through your sales process, you're basically able to show them all this really high-quality nurturing content for, like, 2p a hit.

▶ 6:09Like, what sales rep is going to be sending messages out for 2p a time in this quality, in this way that is not like a one-to-one kind of, like, chase? It's more of a really natural, they're just scrolling through their social media feed and they're going to see you come up. It's just not possible for a rep. This is why it's so, so powerful.

▶ 6:29And the same goes for SodaFost. 43 active ads. 43 ads that are either in-testing currently to find out if they are top performers or are already proven to be top performers. Think of how robust this campaign is. It's not like one creative just starts to tank and the whole thing tanks over the night. And with the amount that someone like SodaFost is spending on a monthly basis, you can't afford for that to be the case.

▶ 6:53It's too risky. You know, you might have an ad in here, and I know we've got ads in here that are sub £15 a leap. And it's like, yes, we could just make a separate campaign and put a ton of budget and just blast it into that. But it's just pointless because that ad will fatigue over time or it will fluctuate or it will be volatile.

▶ 7:10And it doesn't make sense in the context of the board of business. It would only make sense for us to look like we're getting fantastic results that don't actually correlate to what the plan was. I've got a buddy outside ranting there, but it's true. It really is true. It's about creating campaigns that serve the business that they're for, right?

▶ 7:29And about actually putting the effort in. Look at the amount of creators launched. September 6, August 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, July another 2, June 3, 4. Like insane volume of creators. And that's just the ones that are still live. If I was to turn off active ads, let's see, 51. In fairness, Joe's kind of cooked here because we've got 43 ads that are still live and 51 in total.

▶ 7:58So we've only actually failed eight ads out of the ones that have launched, which is pretty insane. I thought it was going to be harder than that, to be honest. But it just goes to show, like, yeah, build your campaigns in a way that provide long-term results. Meta is often deemed to be a short-term lead-gen platform. And it does have some of those characteristics.

▶ 8:15That you can run the campaigns in a way that encourage it to perform over the long-term sustainably and get you that demand that you need. So there you go.