Five Essentials You Must Have to Win with Meta Ads in 2024
As we dive into another transformative year in digital advertising, staying ahead of the curve is more crucial than ever. With digital advertising platforms like Meta and TikTok constantly evolving, the strategies that worked in 2023 might not yield the same results in 2024. In this blog, we'll explore some essential tactics that every savvy ad buyer should master to not just survive the year, but thrive in the dynamic landscape of paid social and PPC advertising in 2024.
Have a creative testing framework and strategy
Have a creative testing sandbox in accounts in order to have a structured approach to testing. A creative testing sandbox allows you to have a place to build ads to keep all original ads (for building Existing Posts/social proof off of), allows you to move ads from a standard campaign to ASCs (since you can’t use Ad IDs as Existing Posts when built originally in an ASC)
Let ads run long enough in order to gather a reasonable amount of data that is full enough to make decisions off of
Have adequate creative diversity so that you have a full approach to creative testing with testing large and small variables from creative type to length of copy, length of video, thumbstops, hold rates, and so much more.
Here’s a past Foxwell Blog on how to set up a creative testing structure that’s still relevant and verrryyy helpful
Have an understanding for all bidding types - and don’t be afraid to test them!
Some ad buyers will swear by cost caps ONLY or bid caps ONLY. And some refuse to use manual bids and will only bid lowest cost/highest volume 100% of the time. So what’s the RIGHT thing to do if you don’t care about the drama and you just want a profitable account? You have to test this. Knowing how to test bidding, too, is critical to your success in 2024. Each account and brand is different, so there is (and will never be) one right way to ad buy, or bid in advertising. Test cost caps (here’s a good blog on cost caps), try bid caps if you have reason to believe they might work, and don’t be afraid to lean into lowest cost/highest volume. We talk about what is working right now all the time in the Foxwell Founders Community. Not a member? We’d love to see you there.
Testing, learning from, and knowing when to scale Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (ASCs)
ASCs were all the rage in 2023 — and for good reason. They worked! But it takes a LOT of data and algorithmic learning for ASCs to work. Since they’re all AI, they require lots of data, which means lots of spend. So the longer you can let it run and let it get spend, the better optimized it’ll be. Some helpful information on the Foxwell Blog to learn more about ASCs include: Can I run multiple ASCs at once?, How to lower audience overlap in ASCs, and ASC in 2023 - a blog we wrote when it was first released. This blog can provide some good background info for what ASC was in its early stages. Not to name-drop again, but we talk about ASCs in the Founders membership nearly EVERY DAY. If this is something that you struggle with and need support on, we’d love to have you.
Have a sense of true north for reporting and analysis, and be able to look at multiple data points and metrics in order to make decisions
It’s not that you HAVE to use TripleWhale, or Northbeam, or GA4, or Databox, or any of those. It’s important, however, that you have some version of truth for your advertising. We know that post-iOS14, and even more post-iOS17 and beyond that customer data tracking is murkier than ever. So as advertisers, we must work around this data loss to determine what is real, what is (or isn’t) working, what our Shopify says, and optimize from there. So it doesn’t matter exactly what you’re using, just that it works for you and your brand, and everyone on the team is bought in to believing that source of truth.
At Foxwell Digital, we usually aim for 7-day click (no view) attribution in Facebook/TikTok ads, TripleWhale 7-day click Triple Attribution, and if possible, GA4, to navigate what is true and what matches best to our Shopify (or whatever our site/sales platform) says. This gives us the most accurate representation of the data and what’s working so that we know what to optimize, scale, iterate on, or turn off or down if needed. However, there is nuance to this and reason some ad buyers opt for 7-day click/1-day view to gather more data, especially for smaller spending accounts. This decision is ultimately a personal preference, though we usually opt for more accurate (quality) data over having extra view-based data that’s modeled. This will likely always be a hot topic in the ad buying community - and one we have often in the Foxwell Founders Community. Which brings us to our last point…
Being part of an ad buying community to get feedback from other ad buyers on the ever-changing current status of advertising
We’ve mentioned this a couple of times during this blog and it’s worth mentioning again. Being alone in ad buying is AWFUL. Honestly, it’s nearly impossible to stay afloat as a one-man-band not knowing what is or isn’t working industry-wide, and whether your account is a one-off/nuanced account or if what you’re experiencing is also happening with other accounts. Gaslighting yourself into thinking you’re crazy for the ad buying decisions you’re making is unsustainable and quite lonely. In 2024, there’s no need for you to go at this alone. We have over 500 ad buyers that focus on all aspects of digital marketing in the Foxwell Founders Ad Buying Community - Meta ads, TikTok ads, Google/PPC, YouTube, LinkedIn, Snapchat - and even further than ad platforms into covering things like email & SMS, agency ownership, brand ownership, and so much more. YOU ARE NOT ALONE! And you don’t have to pretend to be! So whether it’s the Foxwell Founders community or another community of ad buyers - locally or virtually, get involved with other like-minded marketers and surround yourself with people who can gut check with you on what best practices are day in and day out. This industry isn’t for the faint of heart! We’re in this together.