-
Rapid Burnout on Facebook Issue
Hi all.
I currently have an issue on Facebook where some of my most profitable campaigns are rapidly burning out.
On day one they’ll perform amazing, but by day 5 they’re 2-5x the original CPA. The reason is clear – the frequency quickly goes from 1 to 2+. But there’s more than enough audience size for the frequency to not saturate so quickly – I’m running broad to audiences of 5-30 million+ and my budgets are low ($100/day max). The number of conversions shouldn’t be an issue either, my CPA targets are low and I’m getting 50+ conversions a day.
I’ve got two hypotheses:
1.Even though my campaign could hypothetically appeal to a very broad audience, maybe the FB pixel is only showing my ads to a very small bucket that it thinks will convert best, and it’d rather show them the same ads many times than show ads to more people.
I’ve got other campaigns that appeal to broader audiences that don’t burn out quickly at all, but these campaigns are extremely broad.
2. These particular campaigns are classed in the ‘Credit’ special ad category. Maybe FB is showing campaigns in this category to a much smaller audience for whatever reason leading to the faster burnout.
If anyone has insights on this, it’d be much appreciated.
-
5 Replies
-
Also could just be your ad creative and you need to continue to test and tweak it because what you are showing now is not working. A 2 in frequency is not that bad.
-
1. Yes, Facebook shows ads to buckets of an audience that it thinks will convert best
2. That could be the case
3. You are re-using the same creatives over and over again
4. Try different kinds of manual bidding (can’t make recommendations as I have no idea what you are doing), try 1-5x CPA
5. If your cost-per-optimization event is too high and you’re using the lowest cost bid strategy without a bid cap, add a bid cap or switch to target cost
6. Try targeting expansion option in the ad set
7. Try automatic placements
​
Just some random ideas.
-
Here’s a question, what are you doing when they burn out?
-
What is your budget, targeting method and audience size? Scale is super hard. I’ve found a bunch of smaller budgets (up to $200 per campaign) tends to work better that one $2000+ campaign with single or multiple ad-sets, but you still have to churn them at least once per week. (which goes against letting them sit to get out of learning).
My guess is that you are selling something $100 or less, that may solve a problem, but also a bit of an impulse purchase.
If that’s the case, I’ve found that the traditional funnel doesn’t work. You want new blood daily– that are potential buyers and not clickers. (eg look at your conversions, most probably happen within 24 hours)
With big budget, the fb pixel gets wrapped around a set of users that it thinks have high potential–and while 2 views is hardly saturated, your not reaching as much new blood.
There’s things you can do to try and push the pixel to others within your audience, but really the only thing that’s worked for me is duplicating the campaign and starting over. Like picking up your stuff, moving around the pond and dropping the line in a new area.
You’ll find some “take” and some don’t, just try again. This goes against the grain of sitting and waiting for campaigns to come out of “learning”, but if you are getting conversions, who cares!?..esp if performance only fades anyway.Also set up a 2nd retargeting campaign using “traffic” and give them your best offer. E.g dangling the same offer when most people convert in 24 hours is a waste of time. you’ll find CPA worse at retargeting–and traditional folks will tell you it should be way better. Phase out retargeting after a week. (would love to be wrong but I bet your conversions beyond 7 days are super low?). If you want, you can do a 30 day and set to pick up people in day 8 and hit them for another 3 weeks, but you’ll find yourself just getting pissed that it doesn’t work.
Audiences– If you are not already, you should be using your pixel data to create lookalike audiences and do the same with them. 3% usually works best.
As others have said, use different creatives (and do the same as above) but I’d caution that if you are getting best results with ads with lots of SP (social proof..likes, shares, etc). not to spin up new creatives and toss the same budget at them.
Set up separate campaigns for the new ads and do $25 a day, targeting buyers–that you know aren’t going to buy again, but will likely leave you social proof. Once you get some proof, then fold into same as above. You can also do this by “posts” to your business page–the challenge with either method is that your Creative and Message MUST be exactly what you want to run in a new $1000 a day conversions campaign from the very start–because if you amend anything, you loose all your proof. There’s all sorts of theories and ways to try and manipulate, but trust me, make sure your creative and copy are exactly what you want 60 days from now, or it’s for not.
It’s an art, not a science…I don’t know anyone spending $2500+ a day with perennial ads. Sure for “awareness”, but unless your P&G or have millions and millions to blow on “awareness”, it doesn’t happen.
Lastly, if you have lots buyers that the facebook pixel may not have picked up, make a csv of all customer data, feed it to FB and create a lookalike audience. You have to have a LOT of data to upload though, as “matches” are typically fewer than 25%. Meaning, if you have 2000 customers to upload, you probably wont find value…need more like 20,000+
On a final note, there are people struggling like hell to break even with FB ads. Sounds like your onto something so keep getting after it and blow your budget on proven audiences and ads that WORK. if you get running and 12 hours later your CPA sucks, cut bait and move on to other adsets, audiences, etc.
I’m currently trying to get reinstated with FB..over $500K in ad spend in 9 months and got disabled. Why? Because I had about 100 ads that I continually recycled, had tons of SP and success, SO….I never checked my notification dashboard. Apparently, I was breaking TOS by using terms like “You, Your” etc. and while they were ok with it for 10 months, all the sudden they started flagging as disapproved and I didn’t notice it. So I’d spin up a new campaign, grab one of the ads (with literally 4000 likes 300 shares) and run it…but they had suddenly disapproved it.
If you haven’t, take an hour and go. through FB’s free video course to learn whats in bounds and whats not. Last thing you want is to wake up and see your shut down–trust me ;-). Id literally been running ads for 12 months that were technically against terms. The FB sales guy told me “you should change copy and not use “You or Your” in the ads”…but didn’t tell me it was grounds for termination. I take responsibility, but seriously–a picture that is too close up, or teeth too white can get you banned. Do yourself a favor and review that stuff in depth, if you haven’t.
Good luck
-
Hi there.
Are you getting current customers / repeat users clicking on your ads on the first day? You might be getting clicks from people that will purchase from you anyway, or people that are already / always engaged in your content. That could account for the high first day clicks.
I would recommend also narrowing your audience so you can better target your ads. Try building lookalike audiences based on your best customers as a start. Happy to chat more!
Log in to reply.