Wendy Hearn

24/07/2017

I started a new ad set on Sat and by the following morning it was clear that it needed stopping due to lack of results which for this campaign was sales.

I did a quick review and as this was to a proven audience, I knew it should have worked so it might just have been it didn’t get off to a good start on Sat. I find this happens sometimes.
So, no problem, new ad set started on Sun with everything the same.

But again by this morning (Mon) it was clear this one wasn’t working and the first thought that crossed my mind was, perhaps this is the summer slowdown. That conclusion fitted for a number of reasons, 1) school holidays had started so many people could be on holiday and 2) for this business online sales could be slower in the summer.

That’s when I caught myself focusing on this one conclusion when actually although it may have fitted, there could be many other reasons.

So now it was time to open my mind and consider other reasons.

As it turned out after reviewing the data carefully and seeing that the performance was slightly down across all metrics, i.e. cost per click, click through rate etc. I dug further back into the information and saw that the video for this particular ad had been changed very slightly and it looked like that small change might have caused the drop in performance.

Of course, the next step is to analyse the video data more and at the same time get the new ad sets running with the previous video that worked and see how that is performing given that it’s now the summer break.

Jumping to the wrong conclusions with your ads can be very easy to do, especially when there is something that seems so obvious to jump to, in this example, it’s the summer.

When looking at ad performance, I encourage you to just take a few minutes and ask yourself, what else could be causing this? Come up with as many options as possible, then explore, before assuming :)

16/06/2017

A quick heads up if you've noticed a problem with your fb pixel reporting for the last few days. The problem has been widely reported by advertisers including large agencies. Mine has been messed up across all accounts.

The problems seem to vary. For me, the pixel is showing in the dashboard that it's still firing but none of this is showing up in reporting. Which means for Conversion ads there is no data to decide which ads to kill, keep running or scale bigger.

It makes me wonder also that if the pixel isn't showing in reports is optimisation still happening in the Ad Sets? So for the time being I'm pausing most ads that have the Conversion objective. I'm leaving a couple of small ones still running so that I can see when the reporting starts working again :)

01/06/2017

Facebook Ads: My thoughts on experimenting with different % lookalike audiences.

Comparing 1% vs 5% vs 10% seemed too broad to me.

I generally start with the smaller percentages as they should be more accurate.

Although 1% should perform better there has been times when I've found that 2% has outperformed 1%.

Sometimes moving up the percentages i.e. from 1% to 2% to 3%, the results can be depend on the original source that the lookalike audience was created from. For example, a lookalike audience created from say 2000 customers is likely to perform at a higher percentage than say a lookalike built from page views or a smaller number of people.

When you're testing the different percentages only compare that one variable from one ad set to another, keep everything else the same, same ad etc. so that you know whether it worked.

Sometimes I'll run 1% on it's own, 2% on it's own or 1-2%. So for the 1-2% I create both audiences then exclude the 1% from the 2%. It comes down to which works best.

Which brings me to, be sure that you measuring the right results when you're comparing these lookalike audiences. For example, if it's sales that you're going for, measure the results from the Purchases not the cost of clicks. The cost of click may be higher but the cost of Purchases lower.

30/05/2017

Facebook Conversion Ads; 1 Day or 7 Day?

When running Conversion Ads on Facebook one of the choices you have to make under Optimization for Ad Delivery; Conversion window is '1 day click' or '7 days click'. Choosing the right one can make a big difference to your results, so how do you know which one to go for?

Google Analytics has this data, so in your dashboard head to Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels > Time Lag and here you will see the number of days when conversions usually happen. This gives you a good starting point to know whether 1 Day or 7 Day click is best for your ad campaigns.

If you don't have this installed, I encourage you to get it setup a.s.a.p. (wink) because the data it provides is so helpful on the journey to improving conversions on your site and hence through Facebook Ads.

If you don't have this data, consider what you are selling and as a general rule if it's an impluse buy then choose 1 Day click and if someone is likely to look at the prduct and number or times or over days before buying then choose 7 Day click.

This gives you a starting point to hopefully get the best conversions and depending on results you could aslo test running campaigns to both 1 Day and 7 Day click.

11/04/2016

He makes some great points here about using Medium and although I'll regularly read posts on there, I don't use it myself. When I do get this one added in, I'll let you know how I get on :)

How can you get more traffic to your blog? Try republishing your blog on Medium. Learn how to boost your blog readers by using this one trick for traffic.

08/04/2016

I must be feeling very optimistic . . . getting the sun lounger cushion down from the loft is on this weekends "to do" list, ready for the sun :)

Hope your weekend is great.

06/04/2016

Read my thoughts on lessons to learn

• missed an opportunity to educate and inform their customers about a valid point being made

• As businesses, we don’t just slam the shop door when a customer asks a question, we
welcome them, engage with them and see what we can learn from them and this needs to be within Social Media too

• having your staff be aware of the situation and the company response to it will go a long way to protecting and maintaining your brand.

Read it all at http://www.wendyhearnmarketing.com/social-media-lessons-from-the-video-to-costa-coffee/

There are often lessons we can learn from others regarding the use of Social Media. Perhaps it’s mistakes they make or how they deal with and moderate feedback from customers and clients. It’s important to remember that Social Media is only one part of your business and shouldn’t be run separately and that the same level of customer service you would deliver to customers face to face, should also be delivered to customers who comment on your posts.

29/03/2016

This has been top of my list for a long time; The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. Although there's a couple more books on here that I haven't read and are tempted by :)

Generations of authors have written wisely about how to solve the puzzle of motivating ourselves to overcome the obstacles to success.

25/02/2016

See me working and my thought process on:

Checking report to see whether new ad in ad set worked well, hence can it stay in Ad Set and Ad Rotation start? The priority was finding at least one more ad for ad rotation to start running and hence keep the successful Ad Set running for longer. This is likely to avoid so called "ad fatigue".

01/12/2015

In this video I explain the steps needed to link your Instagram account to your Facebook account so that you’ll be able to run ads on Instagram.

24/11/2015