🥗 Managing Ads Should Be This Easy

Hey there,

Welcome back for another bite to chew on.

Today, we're circling back to the bread and butter of any DTC or eCom brand:

Ads.

But this time, we’re focusing on how to manage them.

Honestly, the analysis is the easiest part, but we hear of people constantly overthinking this.

So, we’re here to give you our approach on exactly how and what we’re looking at when it comes to managing our ads.

Let’s get into it.

Starting from Square One

If you missed Ash and Ankit's Motion presentation on how we’re creating our ads, don’t worry.

You can check it out here: Motion Ad Presentation

DEFINITELY worth the time to see what’s working for us and the theory behind it all.

Why You Clicked Here

But let's zero in on what today's focus is about:

Managing your ads effectively.

You have to do more than just send your ads out there.

You need to watch them closely and know how to make them better.

We're going to talk about what we do every day.

What we’re looking at, and how to make your ads work harder.

If you're trying to keep up with Meta's changes or just want to keep getting better, we've got some smart tips and tools for you.

Here’s how you can stay on top of your ad game.

A Quick Overview

We look at spend out vs. revenue in.

In the simplest of terms, we don’t worry about anything else you can’t control.

CPMs, CTR, and CPC can indicate some levels of engagement, but don’t necessarily correlate to performance—in our opinion.

Now We’re Getting Somewhere

The two most important factors we focus on are the amount of spend on an ad and the revenue it brings in.

Those are the two things we care about.

ROAS is just a function of those two—revenue divided by spend.

We know that our break even ROAS is 1.4 blended.

So we need to aim for a 1.1, 1.2 in platform.

Then we look at secondary terms where if something's not quite there yet, we can give more time to see where it goes.

This includes cost per initiate check out and cost per result.

We know that we need to be within a certain thresholds based on past winners.

If our target CPA is where we need it to be great - let it rock and move it to scale.

If our target CPA isn’t where we need it to be - We take a look at the secondary metric which is cost per initiate checkout. 

If that is within threshold - we will let the ad run a little bit longer.

If it’s not within threshold - most likely will kill it.

And then, we also look at CPA compared to AOV.

If we have a CPA that's within our threshold, but if the AOV is lower,

We might be driving lower quality customers.

Moving On to Soft Metrics

If you still aren’t sure after looking at everything above,

It might be time to look outbound clicks, outbound cost per click, and outbound click through rate as possible factors.

Essentially, what we try to do is if we’re not 100% sure whether or not we should turn off an ad because it's either not performing or it's close to performing,

We'll take a look at these softer metrics.

If something has a high CPC and a low click through rate,

That means that the ad isn't super engaging.

For example, the CPA is maybe slightly above our threshold.

We will probably recreate that ad to make it a bit more engaging.

We'll keep the angle and keep everything,

But just try to make it a little more engaging so that we can improve the CTR.

However, this has no correlation to performance whatsoever.

So you have to keep that in mind.

Because we have had ads where we have a high CPC and a low CTR

But it still falls within the threshold.

Then you have cost per outbound click.

(this is like your cost of traffic)

Typically, if something's super, super high, like $5-6,

We probably cut it because it's going be very tough to convert at a high rate.

We like to be in that $2 range.

Again, this is all based off of your account averages, right?

If you fall within your average, then it's good.

Obviously, if you're above your average, then things need to be changed.

But just look at it if new things kind of fall within your mean and make adjustments accordingly.

But none of the soft metrics ever correlate to performance.

These serve more as a guide to make changes to your creatives in the hopes that the end result is improved—money out money in.

To reiterate it again, these don’t always correlate to positive performance.

We always, always, always spend based on how much goes out and how much comes in.

Tool of the Week

When working with influencers to boost our ad campaigns,

We faced hurdles at every turn.

From finding the right partners to managing shipments,

The process was overwhelming.

Keeping up with the growing list of collaborators required more time than we had.

That's when we turned to SARAL.

It transformed our influencer marketing efforts, streamlining every step from outreach to ongoing engagement.

Now, managing influencers feels like a breeze, enriching our ad campaigns and making our work with influencers more effective and enjoyable.

See how SARAL can be your new influencer marketing assistant, designed to simplify your strategy—HERE.

#ProudPartner

The Latest Soundbite

For anyone looking to elevate their marketing game, the latest Chew On This podcast is packed with strategies for leveraging modern affiliate marketing to its fullest potential.

See Noah Tucker, CEO of Social Snowball, share his journey in the world of affiliate marketing.

From overcoming challenges to embracing the shift towards influencer-led strategies,

Noah's approach to turning customers into powerful affiliates offers a blueprint for amplifying brand presence and harnessing the power of referrals.

Hungry for More?

We couldn’t be more excited for everything Shoptalk has to offer.

Don’t miss your chance to join us in Vegas along with thousands of the most influential people in the retail space right now.

We’ll have our own trademark founders dinner ready and primed for all the stories and connections you make.

We can’t wait to hear all of them!

Thanks for Reading Along

To sum it up, keeping track of your ads is pretty straightforward.

Just focus on two big things:

How much money you're putting into your ads and how much money you're making back.

Don't worry too much about all the other numbers and stats.

What really matters is if you're making more money than you're spending.

Keep an eye on those main points, adjust when you need to, and you'll be on the right track.

It's all about making sure your ads are doing their job and helping your brand grow.

All the best,

Ron & Ash