My Testing Protocol That Saves Time & Money with New Ad Campaigns | 90
As business owners, we are always doing the best to manage our money and spend it well. With that in mind, I’m going to be super honest with you: if you aren’t testing your Facebook ads, you are wasting your time and money.
Plain and simple.
Testing gives you concrete evidence that your ads are effective (or need to be redone immediately!) That way, when you start spending big bucks on your campaign, you are getting the most return on every dollar.
For longer running ad campaigns, testing your Facebook ads is an absolute must!
What does it mean to test your Facebook ads?
Testing Facebook ads means that you are running several small, 24 hour ad campaigns to test out different aspects of your ad. Personally, I always run tests on the copy, images, and headlines.
When you are designing your Facebook Ad, you want at least two to three options for each. That means…
2-3 images, videos and/or GIFs.
2-3 variations of ad copy of varying length and with different hooks
2-3 headlines
You will then run separate trials over three days to determine the best performing variations. For example, headline number two might receive a might higher click rate than headline one or three.
How do you test your Facebook ads?
Just like any good science experiment, you want to have controls when running your Facebook Ads. These controls will remain the exact same in every trial ad. When I work with clients, I keep the budget, audiences, and length of the campaign (24 hours and 1 minute 😉) the same.
When you are testing Facebook Ads, there are lots of metrics you could look at. Personally, I look at the click through rate, cost per click, and cost per result to determine the winning variations.
Here is an inside peek at the day-by-day plan for testing Facebook Ads…
Day 1: Copy
Take each version of your copy, and create a different ad for each. For example, if you have three versions of ad copy, you will have three ads. Everything else remains the same in the ad.
Run the ad and then look at the metrics. Choose the one you feel is the winner based on your desired outcome and the metrics. This is now the copy you will use for your ad.
Now, duplicate the winning ad and reuse it for day two.
Day 2: Images
Essentially the same steps! Take your duplicated ad with the winning copy, and now create several ads with the test images you have. For example, if you have three different images, you will have three ads (all with the winning ad copy). Remember: Everything else remains the same in the ad.
Run the ad and then look at the metrics. Choose the one you feel is the winner based on your desired outcome and the metrics. This is now the image you will use for your ad.
Now, duplicate the winning ad and reuse it for day three.
Day 3: Headline
Take your duplicated ad with the winning copy and image, and now create several ads with the headlines you have. For example, if you have three different headlines, you will have three ads (all with the winning ad copy and image). Remember: Everything else remains the same in the ad.
Run the ad and then look at the metrics. Choose the one you feel is the winner based on your desired outcome. This is now your winning ad! You will use this ad for your long term campaign.
I know that oftentimes it’s easier said than done, which is why I created a testing facebook ads mini-course for only $37. This mini-course will give you an in depth walk through with guided videos to make implementing this testing protocol simple. You can learn more about this mini-course below.
Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @heyitsjenzaia and tune in next Saturday for more business tips and strategies!
xo, Jenzaia
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Episode Transcript:
Hey there I’m Jenzaia. I'm and this is market scale growth. A podcast created for ambitious entrepreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world. Achieve freedom, and flexibility, and ultimately make more money. With weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers, just like you. My goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams.
Hello, welcome to this week's Saturday strategy session. I'm your host, Jenzaia and I am super pumped that you are here today. We are gonna be talking about the testing protocol that I use with all my clients. We test their ad campaigns before we go into live mode. I mean, When we're testing them, they're live as well, but like the official campaign, if we will just to make sure that the images, the copy, and the headlines that we are running are the best ones possible.
We also do this in order to save time and money because doing it this way, we are. Um, what's the word that I'm looking for? We're stabilizing. No, not stabilizing. We're controlling all pieces and we're like, we have a microscope zoomed in on exactly what we're testing each day, so that we're not wondering, well, is it the images?
Is it the ad copy? Is it the audience? Like, is it the, is it the, is we don't need to worry about that because we're controlling. All of the other pieces and we're just looking at one thing. So it saves time and money because we can very quickly go, okay, this is working or this isn't working. And we know that it's the ad copy, or we know that it's the headline or whatever it might be.
Right. Also, I just wanna mention that this strategy is number one best for. Campaigns that are running long-term. So if I know that a campaign is only gonna be up and running for seven or 10 days, or maybe even 14 days, I won't use this method. So for something like a launch, we might not use this method.
Or, um, and there are other types of campaigns like a bundle sale or something. If the campaign is gonna be shorter in duration, then I don't usually use the testing protocol. That's the first reason. And then the second time I don't use the testing protocol is if the budget is really, really small, so less than $20 a day, it could be really hard to run the testing protocol without it.
Having a budget of $25 a day, which is my recommendation. If you listen to the last podcast, I did talk about that at the end that my recommendation for running ads was $25 a day. And so if your budget is smaller than that, if you have a lower budget, then it may not be cost effective for you to run the testing.
But if you do have a longer timeframe, if you're setting up an evergreen funnel for your lead magnet or webinar or whatever it might be, then I definitely recommend that you start with the testing protocol. Now, before we dive into the protocol, I just wanted you to know that this is gonna be an overview.
If you want in-depth. I like to walk through it. I do have a minicourse with the testing protocol. It is $27. It's linked in the show notes, or you can go to market scale, grow.com/testing protocol, all one word, and you can grab it. Uh, again, it's $27. I went through all three days exactly how to set it up. All the different pieces of the campaign, and what it looks like.
And then with the results of what I'm looking for each day to help me determine what to do the next day. And then once the entire testing protocol's done, we walk through exactly how I use the data from the test to create the official live campaign. So this. Podcast is an overview of the testing protocol.
If you want, the more in depth strategy and the how behind it go to market scale, grow.com/testing protocol. So, as I just mentioned, this is a three day testing protocol on day one, we test the ad copy on day two, we test the images and then on day three, we test the headline. Everything else. Stays exactly the same.
So I'm always in, in all of the variations, there is always the exact same budget for each adset. And this is one of the cases where I use adset budget optimization. I like a hundred times over prefer campaign budget optimization, which is now called something different advantage campaign budget plus, or something along those lines.
I do prefer setting the budget at the campaign level, except during the testing protocol, when I'm doing a testing of a campaign, I will set the budget at the ad set level so that I know each ad set is getting the exact same amount allocated to. In that, the testing period and the testing period is 24 hours.
And one minute because Facebook won't let you set it for exactly 24 hours. So I said it for 24 hours and one minute just to get around their little rule there. And I'm sure if there's anyone at Facebook, who's like, Seize these campaigns. They probably just roll their eyes at it. But anyway, that's what I do.
24 hours. And one minute I place these ads. I only place them on the Facebook and Instagram feeds. Facebook and Instagram stories, the Instagram Explorer and Facebook search. So the, the main places, if you were to look at the breakdown of where your ads are showing up, these six places are gonna probably rank like the top six.
I don't put them in any of the more obscure places. The right hand column marketplace. No, no, no. Um, in the article, no, thank you. Reels. No, thank you. They're just staying in those places. Placements. And then the other thing that stays the same throughout the entire testing protocol is the audience for my testing protocol.
I use lookalike audiences. So I take the lookalike of Facebook engagement, Instagram engagement, the pixel, um, so like website, traffic, and then their customer list or email list. I take those look likes, I pull them all together. I keep the ages open to whatever our normal age range would be. So often it's like 25 to 55 somewhere in there.
And then if we're specifying a gender, then I'll do that. And. Uh, countries again, if we normally run ads, like the client normally runs ads to just us, then I leave it to just us. Normally they run ads in the five main English-speaking countries: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
Then I'll open it to that. That is my preference to do those five countries, but some of my clients do exclusively run into the us. So whatever we would do normally for location. Age and gender is what I continue to do. Okay. So we are controlling the audiences. It always looks like the audience. We are controlling the budget.
It's always the same for every single ad set, a minimum of $10 per day. Maximum. I say like $20 a day. You don't really wanna go. You don't really need to go higher than that. Um, so 10 to $20, every single ad asset has the same budget. So let's say $10 a. They have the exact same timeframe, 24 hours and one minute.
And they are in the exact same placements. The Facebook feed, Instagram feed, Facebook stories, Instagram stories, Instagram Explorer, and Facebook search are the ones I use. You can pick different ones, but, um, as I said, those are the most like the big ones for me. So we've controlled for all of that. Now on day one.
I'm testing a copy. So usually we have two or three variations of copy. I pick an image and it's the same image that I use. I picked a headline. It's the same headline I use for all the ads. The only thing I'm changing in the ads is that ad copy. So I will create a different ad set for each. Variation that I wanna test.
So let's say I have three variations. I will create three identical ad sets with three identical ads. And the only thing in those ads that I'm changing is the ad copy. I let them run for 24 hours. And then I look at the data. I look at the click through rate, the link, click through rate. I look at the cost per click.
I look at the cost per result and I make a decision on which one of these. Three variations performed the best. Sometimes it's really, really, really, really obvious other times less so, and everything is really close, but did well. Everything's really close, but I didn't do well. Um, sometimes there's one like a really clear winner and one really clear loser.
There's lots of different variations. But what I try to do is find what I call the winning variation. I take that winning variation. And I duplicate that ad set and I use that ad set as my default. So that ad copy the winning ad copy is my default for day two. And on day two, we're testing the images. So the image that I tested on day one is image number one.
And then on day two, I test image number two and image number three. And when I say image, as always, I'm talking about the visual aspect of your ad. So it might be an image, a video or a GIF. Uh, but I just said image. So I tested again with either two or three different images and the same thing. Each image has its own.
Adset. Now I create one campaign and I test, I do testing day one. Testing day two and testing day three, all in that same campaign, I think it keeps it clean. It keeps it easy to find and it keeps it well organized on day three, before I set up any ads, I look at what happened on day two and I decide what was the best image.
I take that image, which would obviously have the winning. Copy from day one. So I take that and I create, I duplicate it to create day three's ads, where I'm now testing the headline. And the reason I tested the headline last is because this is the attention grabber. This is what people will see first. Then they see the image generally speaking, and then they look at the ad copy.
Sometimes the image is what stops the scroll, but what they usually will read first is that head. And so we want, first of all, if there's multiple headlines, we want to get as many of them in there as possible. And second of all, it's what people will really remember because it's the first thing they read.
So it's what they'll remember. And so it's, it's nice to have that variation there. So we tested the headlines on day three and we saw which headline was the best and the same thing. Each variation has its own ad. and I switch it out and keep everything else the same. So only the headline would be changing after it has run for 24 hours.
And one minute I take a look and I figure out what was the winner of the final day. But I also look at the entire testing protocol and how it happened and like what happened throughout the three days so that I can determine. Which of the, all of these different variations that I ran. What were the best performers?
Do I need to run any additional tests? do I wanna try image number two with copy number one that it hasn't run with. Do I want to mix and match a little bit more? I need to make those decisions based on the data. Again, the data I'm looking at is the link click through rate, the cost per click and the cost per result.
In most cases, I mean, yes, you can look at some of the other pieces as well, but those three really, really help to paint a picture. Once the winners have been determined. I do one of two things. If there're some very clear winners, I will either just pull those. I'll get the post IDs and I'll pull them into the official campaign to get running, or if kind of everything or a lot of things.
Ran really well, I can create either a dynamic creative campaign with all those different, like amazing aspects in, or, um, and I, I prefer this method where I will personally mix and match what happened and what went well. So I'll find the three different variations of copy that did well. And the two images that went well with the two, the headlines that did well and I'll mix and match and create my own ads from.
And then I have my final campaign. That's set up and I click go publish. And then that one will run ongoing until the ads start to dwindle or the campaign is just done, whatever the case may be. But this is a really, like I said, a really easy way to quickly and cost-effectively isolate.
Each of the different pieces to test and to move forward. If this overview has been like, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I need. Then definitely head to the link in the bio or in the, the show description, market scale, grow.com/testing protocol, all one word so that you can grab the minicourse for $27 and you can get the insider scoop the insider view of how.
The testing protocol is set up in all of the different steps, and the different phases, so that you can implement this testing into your business to make sure that your ads are having the best bang for their buck and that you are getting the testing done in a time efficient manner cost effectively. So thank you so very much for joining me this week and I will be back.
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