Chapter 13. Analyzing Results and Optimization
The key to having success with Facebook ads lies with analyzing the results,
making adjustments, and killing ads when they are not working. Secondly,
you will want to ramp up the campaigns that are working.
Begin by identifying variations that you want to look at targeting. You can
start with a general advertisement and go from there. In fact, you should
include a general advertisement in your campaign in case the variations you
imagine that might be required really aren’t valuable. Using the example of a
slot machine game, slot machines are popular in multiple countries such as
the United States, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, and the United
Kingdom. At first glance, you might think that different ads need to be set up
for say Japan and the United States. And sometimes this is true, but it's not
always true. Sometimes you can hit on an ad creative that just works. The
only way to find out is to test, test, and test.
Continuing with the slot example, we can make a single ad with our favorite
video creative and then simply show it across the board. Then we can set up
ad campaigns for each individual country and then run those alongside it. At
the week's end, we compare results. If there is no distinct advantage to
specialized ads, we can kill them. If they perform worse, we definitely kill
them.
The specialized ads might work in some cases but not in others. So maybe the
same ad works in Japan and the United States, but it doesn’t work in Hong
Kong. In that case, then you’ll want to work on tailoring an ad specifically
for Hong Kong.
There may be other reasons to keep your campaigns separate, but for the
most part, Facebook will let you break out reports that will let you break
down things by location or gender. However, one reason that you may want
to keep locations separate even though they may perform the same with the
same interest targeting and ad creative is that costs are different in different
countries. This also means that rewards are different in different countries.
You can take this same lesson to the bank for different states and cities in the
United States too.
Let’s have a look at it. The cost per acquisition may be about the same if