What's working in Ads Right Now - March 2023

February 2023 was a mediocre month for Meta and TikTok ads performance. And, when ads performance is down, it leads us all as ad buyers back to the drawing board to try to turn things around. With the downwards performance, ad buyers across the Foxwell Founders Membership took the opportunity to rethink how they were communicating brand value props & overall messaging to regroup for the coming months.

We worked with some of the best ad buyers in our space to see what’s working for them, as well as brought ideas from our own accounts we manage to bring you some ideas you can implement today to get your ROAS (and MER) back in the positives.

8 things working right now in ad buying that you HAVE to try

1. ASC!!!!: Use ASC in tandem with traditional campaign types to ensure a) ASC+ is improving performance and B) you’re ensuring a fresh flow of new users to the site (in case ASC is over delivering to warm/retargeting users)

• Test 100% new customers (0% Existing Customer Budget Cap) and give the ASC a full 2-3 weeks to self-optimize without adjusting or tweaking

• Spend anywhere from 50-90% of budget in ASC (if your account has it enabled)

2. Cost Caps: If you’re running an account that’s spending $50K+/mo, consider testing cost caps again. We recommend starting your cap at 1.5X the target in-platform CPA, then walk the cap up or down based on performance and daily amount spent of the daily budget, then adjust the budget as you see performance hitting. Remember, if the audience is there, it spends; if it isn’t, it doesn’t. One member’s setup that’s working: Using your best-performing creative into a CBO with cost cap; Have two ad sets: one for top performing video creative, and one for top performing static creative. Then, set the cost cap set just slightly above goal.

3. Broad/Manual Sales Campaign: This is different from ASC in that it’s a standard campaign where you still have the ability to use target audiences and exclusions, instead of an ASC setup where the only lever you have to pull is the existing customer budget cap. Don’t be afraid to go broad with minimal exclusions and see where it goes.

4. CBO: We shyed away from CBO and into ABO for a while, but in some early tests across the Foxwell Founders Membership, we maayyyyy be seeing a comeback.

If you love this stuff, you gotta join our membership.

5. Creative Iterations & Different Layouts: Iterations and incremental changes can skyrocket your creative success and profitability times 100.

• Also iterate a winning creative into different types of creatives (i.e. take the general theme of the piece or the main problem/solution and turn it into a graphic, carousel of graphics, a shorter or longer video, a lifestyle image (or video screenshot) with a text or quote overlay, etc.)

• Break up the News Feed and capture attention with an ad style people do not see as often, like static/text overlay graphics

• Create and test UGC testimonial as image ad creative for retargeting campaigns

  • Use copy that is a direct quote from a real customer testimonial. (One member improved CPAs 30-40% doing this)

• Theory: These ads feel like Facebook posts from friends, thus feel super native

• Also part of the UGC playbook of “real people, real success”

6. Creative Testing: Still VERY important.

• Reels and TikTok videos are still working well in most accounts. Don’t be afraid to make a quick-cut, low-quality iPhone video of your product with a voiceover, and don’t forget to use text overlay with keywords from what the voiceover is saying and the video is showing.

• Also try static image graphics with text overlay of a bold statement or the 2-5 words that the customer should take away from your ad if that’s all they see. Canva will be your friend for this.

• Each new asset can be an opportunity to improve performance, however each new asset is an opportunity to reduce your account efficiency, by reducing the number of new creatives you are launching into the account each week, you are increasing the amount of time you can apply to developing the idea / quality / purpose of the creative = a higher chance of winning

• Simplify your creative (one focal point, one message, one main value prop)

• This improvement helps the reframing of the messaging to be more consumer focused (what's in it for the consumer rather than why is our product/service what you need right now)

7. Seasonality Call-Outs: People like looking forward to something, which includes warmer weather. Use creative and/or body copy that mentions spring, summer, warmer weather, outdoors, or other things that create happiness in your customers and make them look forward to getting out of the dead of winter. Excited and happy customers = purchased products.

8. Geofencing/Grouping Locations (For accounts advertising to multiple countries/territories only): To improve efficiency (i.e allowing the account to spend OR not spend on a location), in most cases this will mean the top performing locations will get most of the spend. The benefit of this is your account performance will be better. The negative is certain locations will not get spend, which could cause stock / growth into new territory issues.

A huge thank you to Phil Kiel, Brockton Conwell, Brad Klein, Alex Afterman, Shane Cicero, and Mark Pereyra from the Foxwell Founders Membership for their input on this blog.