Mastering Facebook Advertising: A Comprehensive 3-Part Mini Course For Paid Media Success

Think you can outsmart Facebook's algorithm with the tactics you picked up from your favorite marketing podcast or a bunch of articles? Think again. Trust me; it's not a game you're going to win.

What about playing safe, holding back some content you think might flop? Nope, that's not the way either. You're just letting your own biases call the shots.

What's the big problem here? You're trying to outguess an ultra-smart system based on a hunch. That's like trying to beat a grandmaster at chess with the moves you learned from a beginner's guide.

Facebook's ad platform is getting better all the time, designed to take human guesswork out of the equation. So instead of trying to beat it, it's time to join it. Let Facebook's machine learning do the heavy lifting. Your job? Fire off every bit of Influencer Generated Content (IGC) you've got.

We see accounts taking off big time by combining kick-ass influencer content, Dynamic Creative Testing Campaigns, and Cost Cap Bids.

You'll learn:

• Part 1: How to load up your account with a crazy amount of influencer creative
• Part 2: How to tactically set up your paid ads account for launch
• Part 3: How to make decisions on the fly when your ads start performing

Alright, here's the game plan: I'm ready to lay out Kynship's epic three-part Facebook Ad Strategy for you, a strategy set to skyrocket your Facebook ad game. But here's the catch— when (not if!) you start crushing it, you've got to promise to share the love and spread the word. We good on that? Great, let's go.

Part 1: Maximizing Your Influencer-Generated Content (IGC) in Facebook Ads Manager

Picture this: through product seeding efforts, you're pulling in a whopping 60-90 unique pieces of content each month — totally on the house. Now, start counting the iterations you can spin off these unique assets, and voila! You've got a creative arsenal of over 100+ ad creatives at your fingertips.

But here's the kicker: how the heck do you launch all this creative goodness in your Facebook ad account?

Do you cherry-pick your personal favorites and trash the rest? 🤔 Or do you slowly roll out the content over the coming months because you've got plenty to spare?

To explain, I'll run through a scenario where you're launching 100 influencer creatives via 10 Dynamic Creative Testing (DCT) campaigns using a Cost Cap bid marketing strategy below.

Scenario: Setting up 10 Dynamic Creative Testing Campaigns with 100 influencer creative iterations

Say you've just completed your product seeding efforts and sitting pretty with 100 creative content pieces. With that stash, you're looking at building 10 Dynamic Creative Testing Campaigns for the prospecting level of your funnel. Why? Because each DCT can hold 10 creatives.

Here's the magic of Dynamic Creative Testing (DCT) 💫— it taps into data from Facebook's machine learning system to allocate spend behind the creative, based on what Facebook's algorithm predicts will be the top performer.

Remember: It's not about what YOU think will be the winner, but about trusting Facebook’s ML system to make the call for you. The idea here is to create as many “pipes” as possible, giving Facebook's machine learning the maximum opportunity to work its magic.

For every campaign you set up, remember to:

1. Optimize for conversions
2. Turn on Campaign Bid Optimization
3. Set budgets to reach 50 purchases per week for campaign optimization
4. Turn on Detailed Targeting / LAL Expansion
5. Select Automatic Placements
6. Use Cost Cap Bid Strategy
7. Use clear naming conventions

Follow these steps to the T, and you'll be leveraging Facebook’s ML system to launch your 100 creative assets in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible.

Crafting Campaign Naming Conventions

To spark some ideas, our team typically uses the following naming pattern for these initial 10 DCT campaigns:

👉 “Kyn - DCT - Prospecting - CBO - CC $ - Insert Date - NEW SEEDING CONTENT’

The "NEW SEEDING CONTENT" part is essential, as we want to make sure the initial DCT campaigns kick off with this label. It'll change for each individual DCT based on whether the campaign is "Losing" or "Winning."

Why A Cost Cap Bid Strategy?

You'll set a Cost Cap for each of your 10 campaigns at a CPA where your brand can profit on the ad spend.

Here's the thing— usually, just 1-2 pieces of creative get 90% of the spend within DCTs. And why is that? Because only the influencer content that can beat the Cost Cap set by Facebook's Machine Learning system will get all the advertising spend. In contrast, the poor performing ads won't see a dime, as Facebook knows these won't beat the cost caps you've established.

Here’s a perfect example to illustrate this point in the thread below:

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⭐ Remember, it's not about outsmarting the algorithm. It's about leaning into it, trusting it to do its job. And that's exactly what this three-part Facebook Ad Strategy is all about. Ready for Part 2?

“The quicker we die to our prides, the quicker we’ll all become better media buyers” — Taylor Lagace, Co-CEO Kynship

Part 2: Identifying & Scaling Winning Dynamic Creative Testing (DCT) Campaigns to Maximize Ad Spend

Once you've sent your DCTs into the wild, your job isn't over. It's time to make ongoing decisions about those campaigns. We're talking about consistently recognizing the winning and losing DCT campaigns.

Once you get the hang of it, you'll have a clear idea about where to ramp up your spend, which content to recycle, and what to kick to the curb. And, of course, there's likely to be a fresh batch of content from your ongoing influencer seeding efforts to throw into the mix.

Figuring out if the 10 DCT campaigns are winners or losers

You might be taken aback by the primary success metric — it’s ad spend.

Not the top ROAS. Not the lowest CPA. Not initiated checkouts, ATCs, Outbound CTR… Nope, it's spend.

With a Cost Cap Bid Strategy in play on each of the 10 DCT campaigns, spend becomes our leading success indicator to determine if a campaign is hitting the mark or not.

As highlighted earlier, if the campaigns are spending, it means Facebook's ML system has decided that the creative within those particular campaigns will come out on top at the current cost cap we've set. On the flip side, if the campaigns aren’t spending, it signals that Facebook's ML system predicts that the creative within those campaigns will flop at the current cost cap we've established.

Simply put, those campaigns won't spend any money.

How to Scale Winning Campaigns

So, if you notice that a “New Seeding Content” DCT is racking up adequate spend, you can relabel it as a “Winning” DCT.

👉 “Kyn - DCT - Prospecting - CBO - CC $ - Insert Date - WINNING DCT"

The next step? We advise you to pump up the budget on those winning campaigns as much as possible. But wait, by how much?

To prevent your “Winning” DCT campaigns from falling back into the learning phase and out of optimization, Facebook suggests bumping your budget by a maximum of 15% each day.

So if your daily budget on a “Winning” DCT campaign is $1000, ensure you don’t crank up the budget by more than $150 that day.

At all costs, you want to keep these winning campaigns from reverting to the learning phase! So, scale as much as possible, but stick within these boundaries.

⭐ So there you have it— how to handle “New Seeding content” campaigns that evolve into “Winning” campaigns. But what about when a “New seeding content” DCT isn't pulling in sufficient spend? Stay tuned for Part 3 for a better understanding of the answer!

Part 3: Scale or Scrap? Dealing With Underperforming DCT Campaigns in Facebook Advertising

We avoid any negative vibes in our ad accounts, so we don't refer to underperforming advertising campaigns here as “losing” campaigns. Instead, the “New Seeding Content” campaigns that aren't quite hitting the mark get a fresh label, depending on the new creative that's swapped in:

• “Top Performing Content”
• “2nd Chance U”
• Or back to “New Seeding Content” (if there's fresh content)

👉 “Kyn - DCT - Prospecting - CBO - CC $ - Insert Date - 2nd CHANCE U"

If a "New Seeding Content" campaign fails to take off, all of the creative (10 pieces of content) within that DCT gets removed and replaced with an entirely new set of content.

If campaigns aren't spending, Facebook's ML system predicts that the ad creative in those campaigns will fall short of our current cost cap, so the campaigns won’t spend. So, for now, we remove all these assets from the ad account. However, don't completely discard them; they might find success later on with different ad copy.

Now the question is, what content should refill these underperforming DCTs?

🚀 Imagine you initially launched 10 "New Seeding Content" DCTs.

👍 Five took off and became "Winning" campaigns.

👎 The other five stumbled and didn’t perform as expected.

Meanwhile, your ongoing influencer seeding efforts have produced an additional 50 creative assets. For the 5 "Winning" campaigns, you can scale them as discussed earlier.

For the 5 underperforming DCTs, however, you'll pull out all 50 pieces of content and set them aside for now.

Filling Up the Underperforming DCTs With New Creative

Identify the creative that's emerged as "Top Performing Content" within the 5 "Winning" DCTs. The creatives in your Winning DCTs that are pulling in the most spend are your "Top Performing Content" creatives!

Let's assume you can spot 2 top-performing creatives in each of the 5 "Winning" campaigns. That gives you a total of 10 assets to repurpose into "Top Performing Content" campaigns. You can then take these 10 assets and refill one of the 5 underperforming DCT Campaigns.

This way, you've managed to repurpose one out of five of the underperforming campaigns. Let's now figure out how to address the rest.

Moving on to "2nd Chance U" DCTs

Beyond spotting "Top Performing Content" within our "Winning" DCTs, we also recommend identifying content within those same campaigns that didn’t get any spend. This content can be repurposed into what we like to call "2nd Chance U" DCTs.

Why? Because these creatives might still beat your CPA target. They simply didn't receive any spend within the "Winning" DCTs because the "Top Performing Content" was hogging it all.

For instance, let's say your cost caps are set at $50. Within your "Winning" campaigns, your "Top Performing Content" is hogging all the ad spend and achieving a $30 CPA. This implies that the remaining content in those campaigns could still outperform the $50 cost cap you've established. So it's worth repurposing that content into "2nd Chance U" DCTs.

Let's reuse those remaining 40 assets within the 5 "Winning" DCTs and put them to work in our remaining 4 underperforming DCTs. The name of these 4 campaigns would then shift from "New Seeding Content" DCTs to "2nd Chance U" DCTs.

So, your initial 10 DCT campaigns are now categorized as follows:

• 5 "Winning" DCTs
• 4 "2nd Chance U" DCTs
• 1 "Top Performing Content" DCT

But wait, there's more! Remember, we still have 50 fresh pieces of content from our continued influencer seeding efforts.

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It's time to kickstart the process again.

Let's get all this content live into 5 "New Seeding Content" ad campaigns each, raising the total number of DCT campaigns to 15. Let's keep constructing these "pipes" for Facebook ads to find success.

⭐ So once again. We'll stick with the "New Seeding Content" label when initially launching content. But as we track their performance, these campaigns will transition into one of the following labels: "Winning", "Top Performing Content", "2nd Chance U", or back to "New Seeding Content".

Summary: Embrace Facebook’s Machine Learning System & Overcome Personal Bias

We've now walked you through our entire Facebook Ads Strategy and how you can leverage Facebook’s Dynamic Creative Testing (DCT) to fine-tune and scale your campaigns. The objective is simple— create as many “pipes” or opportunities as possible for Facebook’s machine learning system to excel and boost your paid social media marketing efforts. The approach? Amplify what works, discard what doesn’t!

Makes sure you overcome any personal preferences or bias when it comes to selecting content. Never base your choices on historical data or personal likes. Rather, rely on Facebook’s superior machine learning algorithm and grant it the authority to determine the winning creative.

While letting go of this creative control might seem daunting, trust us when we say Facebook’s algorithm is incredibly adept at its job. Paid media is one of the most potent marketing channels used to optimize the value derived from influencer marketing, and it forms a key component of our business approach.

But here’s the thing☝️ This entire process may seem overwhelming or time-consuming. If you want to supercharge your influencer marketing efforts, save time, and avoid the headaches of managing it all alone: book a chat with us. Or, you can delve deeper into learning about our influencer marketing services. Either way, we're here to help you succeed.