The algorithm is touchy. If the planets align to give you great results, don’t do anything to disrupt that. Virtually every advertiser has their own story. They made a minor change. Thought nothing of it. And those great results disappeared.
This isn’t just a theory, this is an actual thing to be concerned about. Of course, the root causes aren’t clear, so we’re never entirely certain about how, when, or why this happens. One very likely connection is the Learning Phase. This is the period of time after an ad set is launched or a significant change is made that the algorithm learns. This is when your results are the least stable.
It really doesn’t matter how long you’ve been advertising. No matter how many times you’ve been burned by this, you’ll do it again. It’s not that we like danger. It’s that there are often so many good reasons to make changes that we just can’t help ourselves.
My example is a lead ads campaign. It performed pretty well, and it was doing everything you’d want a lead ads campaign to do. The results were improving nearly every day. Everything was going great. It seemed as though the Cost Per Lead could conceivably get better.
But there was one problem, and it had virtually nothing to do with the campaign itself. I was testing an application to sync leads to my CRM. Due to some beginner ignorance, I missed a step somewhere and most of these leads were labeled as “unmarketable.” That, of course, is a bad thing. If I can’t even email these leads with the thing they requested, they aren’t really leads at all.
So, while I sorted out this issue, I switched to Zapier, the software I normally use for CRM syncing. But, I didn’t like the idea of syncing to the same lead form. I wanted a clean break from what wasn’t working properly to what was. So, I duplicated the lead form and renamed it. Didn’t change anything to the campaign, ad set, or ad otherwise. The form would look the same.
And then, this happened… Okay, that’s bad. My Cost Per Lead multiplied by four, but even that is misleading. This switch happened mid-day, so the leads were virtually drying up. I then compounded the problem. Okay. Leads stopped coming in. Let’s just switch it back to the old form and pretend that this never happened. The algorithm will be able to go back to where it was, right? Yeah, no…
So, just days earlier, the Cost Per Lead was dipping under $1.50 and seemed to be on the way to going even lower. Now, I have to spend about $20 to get even one lead. Needless to say, these were disastrous decisions on my part. While I had hoped this “minor” edit wouldn’t restart the Learning Phase or negatively impact my results, it was a gamble. I lost that gamble in a big way.
The issue here is that my situation is common. There are so many reasons that an advertiser might want to make a very minor edit. But doing so is such a significant risk. And while I totally understand why major edits can tank your results, it makes no sense why this one would. Sure, the algorithm is stupid and doesn’t realize that the form looks exactly like the old one. In theory, it could be a completely different form.
But it wasn’t. And this AI stuff is supposed to be so much
In today’s highly digital world, there is no surprise that Facebook Ads are one of the most popular digital marketing tools used by marketers. Facebook Ads are effective, customisable, and most importantly, affordable. The key to having a successful Facebook Ad is to let it work. When it comes to running a successful Facebook Ad campaign, an essential rule of thumb is “Do Not Touch a Facebook Ad That’s Working”.
This is because one of the biggest mistakes marketers make when running a Facebook Ad campaign is to make too many changes. When marketers start fiddling with the advertisement by changing targeting, negotiating ad creatives, changing bidding strategy, and the like, it is often for the worse. The more changes the advertisers make, the worse the ad performs.
Running a successful Facebook Ad campaign is all about trial and error. Marketers need to find the right balance between ad creative, targeting, and bidding strategy. Once the marketers have found this balance, they can then “set it and forget it”. Even if the ad is performing significantly well, do not change anything. Marketers need to let the ad run and see how it performs over time.
When advertisers give up on ads too quickly, they end up losing out on an opportunity to really maximize the reach of their ads. If an ad is performing well, there is no need to mess with it – let it keep running until the marketer has gathered enough data to make smart decisions.
At the end of the day, the goal is to maximize the reach of the ads for less budget than expected. The best way to do that is to “Do Not Touch a Facebook Ad that’s Working”. That way, you will be sure to have a successful campaign.
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