Your Meta Account Structure Could Be Costing You Thousands in Lost Sales

Dahna Borg – Bright Red Marketing (00:00)

I don't think you're going to be successful with one campaign, whether that's a winning campaign structure, a winning audience, or a winning piece of creative. I think we're really moving into a space where there is no such thing as a winner. There's just what is working now, and it's about keeping an eye on that and always trying to stay across what could be working best for you in the future. What are your goals? What are you actually trying to achieve? And what are you currently getting?

Dahna Borg – Bright Red Marketing (00:26)

Hi, and welcome to the Bright Minds of eCommerce Podcast. I'm Dahna, founder of Bright Red Marketing, and I created this podcast because I wanted to bring you the best advice from Australian experts in eCommerce and eCommerce store owners. If you're after relatable stories and actionable advice, as well as the latest Facebook advertising strategies, you're in the right place. So let's get into today's episode.

Dahna Borg – Bright Red Marketing (00:45)

Welcome back to the Bright Minds of eCommerce Podcast. Today we're going to talk about account structures. Now, I know that's not the sexiest of topics, but this is one of those episodes that, if you're running Meta ads and you're running the wrong structure, or maybe not the most ideal structure, it can be costing you thousands in lost opportunities. It's one of those things that's really important to get set up properly.

Dahna Borg – Bright Red Marketing (01:07)

There are kind of two types of people when it comes to account structures. One is they've set it once and never touched it again. The other is the group who see a LinkedIn post or a viral Instagram reel and change their structure every other day. So it's one of those things you really need to have a clear strategy in place for. You need to know what it is you're trying to achieve with that account structure and setup, and then use that information to make changes and adjustments as necessary.

Dahna Borg – Bright Red Marketing (01:36)

At the end of the day, what we want is a Meta account structure that's built for your goals. What I mean by that is Meta is really good at giving you what it thinks you want. That's not always what you actually want. To give an example, we had a client who was spending a lot of money on their Meta ads. There was a lot of sales coming through, but what they weren't doing was growing. They were with another agency and came to ask us to have a look.

Dahna Borg – Bright Red Marketing (02:05)

We had a look and used the breakdown tool (we actually have a podcast episode on that if you want to go back and listen). What it essentially came down to was that Meta had learnt it could get them a better ROAS and a better cost per purchase if it went after their existing customers. This business had quite an established customer base and had been around for ages, but what they weren't getting was new customers. They had a pretty standard Advantage+ setup, and it was spending a huge portion of their budget on existing customers and engaged people, essentially people who already knew the brand, which is why their business wasn't growing.

Dahna Borg – Bright Red Marketing (02:49)

So it's really important that you keep an eye on what Facebook is doing, because it can change too. For instance, once we took over that client's account and everything settled down, we still keep a pretty close eye on it, because there will be weeks, periods, months where it starts to swing back.

Dahna Borg – Bright Red Marketing (03:03)

In different ways. We've done an interesting structure with them so we can keep back a little bit of control where we need it, because so often Meta will just decide to do its own thing anyway. So it's really important. To be clear, Meta wasn't actually the problem in that situation. It was that the data Meta was relying on wasn't actually reflecting the goal of the business. At the end of the day, we want to make sure that goal is what Meta is working towards, which is why we recommend using a purchase objective over a traffic objective. Meta is really good at giving you what you ask for, and it'll do its best without context, but you're the one who has to provide that context, and unfortunately it's becoming harder to give it that context.

Dahna Borg – Bright Red Marketing (03:57)

That's why sometimes just having a really simple Advantage+ structure isn't always the best thing if it's not giving you what you need. That's where the breakdown tool is really helpful, to work out exactly what's going on in your business so you can fix it. So in terms of account structures, Advantage+ is a really good system.

Dahna Borg – Bright Red Marketing (04:21)

It has its place. Don't be afraid to take back that control. There are a lot of people at the moment saying you've got to use Advantage+ and that anything else is dead. There's definitely a time and a place for taking back that control and saying to Meta, "No thank you, I'd like you to spend most of my budget here and a little bit here," and taking back some of those decisions. We're still seeing success with audience testing and location testing, and playing with different demographics. As much as Facebook makes those things seem like a bad idea, because they're like, "Are you sure you want to limit your audience?" sometimes yes, you do, because what Meta is doing with your budget isn't necessarily what you'd like it to be doing. And at the end of the day, it's your budget. You've got your account structure, it's going to be there. As much as I want to say you shouldn't be changing your account structure too much, I also want to say don't be afraid to test.

Dahna Borg – Bright Red Marketing (05:18)

And change that account structure if you don't think it's working for you. We'll have clients where we run one structure for a good couple of months and then start to go, "I don't know that this is as effective as it probably could be, let's start doing some testing." I think there used to be this idea with Facebook ads that there's going to be a winner, whether that's a winning campaign structure, a winning audience, or a winning piece of creative. I think we're really moving into a space where there is no such thing as a winner. There's just what is working now, and it's about keeping an eye on that and always trying to stay across what could be working best for you in the future.

So the accounts we see the best success in are the ones that are really solid in their structure and goals, but not afraid to test things. We don't want to be in a situation where we're so solid we go, "This is our structure and we never want to change anything." But we also don't want to be flip-flopping every other second because there's always someone with a great idea and a new twist on things. The advantage of working with an agency is that we can be testing and tweaking across a couple of different accounts to find out what's working a lot faster than, for instance, you in your own account, where you only have the data you have access to. So we want to make sure there is some consistency. Definitely not saying we want to be changing things all the time, but we do want to be

Dahna Borg – Bright Red Marketing (06:42)

not afraid to make changes and tweaks in the interest of testing, because if you've ever heard me speak, you'll know what a big fan of testing we are. Now in terms of your account structure as a whole, some general rules: we want to make sure we keep it clean, and have good naming conventions. It's better with fewer campaigns, but don't be afraid of having an extra campaign if you need it. I don't think you're going to be successful with one campaign.

Dahna Borg – Bright Red Marketing (07:12)

I do think most businesses spending decent money on Meta will need to have at least a couple, but you certainly don't need 50 campaigns, and you certainly don't need 20 unless you're spending mega, mega, mega dollars. So what having that clean structure gives you is that it makes things tidy, you can actually see what's working. I will say, if you're reading or listening to this and thinking, "My god, I have 60 campaigns, I need to clean it up," please don't go and delete them. We don't like deleting things in Facebook. Once you delete things, you can never get them back, and that data is gone forever. So if you do have quite an untidy campaign structure, little tidbit for you:

Dahna Borg – Bright Red Marketing (07:52)

what you can do is actually click the tick boxes down the left-hand side, and then in the filter section you can filter by the ones that are checked. That way you can give yourself the illusion of a clean campaign structure without getting overwhelmed, and without deleting your data. So save that little tip for later, because it's very helpful.

Dahna Borg – Bright Red Marketing (08:05)

So look, if you're listening to this and you're like, "Okay, well what structure do I want, what's going to work best for me?" My first question for you is: what are your goals? What are you actually trying to achieve? And what are you currently getting? For instance, if you're really actively growing the business and after new client acquisition, what you need to do is go and check your new customer ads. How much of your budget is going towards those people? How effective is it? Is it converting the way you need it to?

Dahna Borg – Bright Red Marketing (08:34)

If you're more established, and what you're trying to do is go through more of a solidification process where you're really trying to get more out of your existing customers, how much money is being spent on your engaged and existing audiences? How much of that storytelling and relationship-building are you doing for those people? Are those ads being shown to the right people? Because at the end of the day, most businesses will fall into one of those two goals, and you can then go into Facebook and check how much of your budget is actually being spent on these people. Because what I don't want is for you to be in a position where your budget is being spent on the wrong thing, too much on new customers, or too much on existing, or maybe it's not that simple and the wrong creative is being shown to the wrong people. So you might have all this wonderful community-building and relationship-building content, but it's being shown to your new audience, not the people you want it to be seen by.

Dahna Borg – Bright Red Marketing (09:30)

So yeah, it's really important that you have those breakdowns, but you need to know what your goals are first. Really clearly identify what your goals are, what it is that you're wanting, have a look at what Facebook's actually delivering, and then make those adjustments based on that. Because I can't sit here and tell you in a 10 or 15 minute podcast episode exactly what structure you need to be running. What I can tell you is: find out what your goals are, make sure Meta's delivering, and if it's not,

Dahna Borg – Bright Red Marketing (10:00)

work out the best way to do that. Maybe it's creating a custom Advantage+ setup that helps break things apart. Maybe it's having some campaigns with exclusions. Maybe it's going back to some more manual targeting and taking back some of those reins. So I really recommend that you don't run your Facebook ad account or your Meta Ads account and just go, "It's done, I have the great structure, the end." It's something you probably need to be looking at monthly, going back into those goals and targets, and asking: am I doing what I need to, is it hitting the right mark?

Dahna Borg – Bright Red Marketing (10:41)

And if all of this has you thinking, "I don't understand, where do I start?" — this is what our audits are for. If you head to our website, there's a free audit, and there's one on our Instagram too. I'll check whether the link is in our podcast notes. But essentially, if you're listening to this and thinking, "I just want a second set of eyeballs to make sure my account structure is set up properly," I'm more than happy to go through it with you, it's one of my favourite things to do.

Dahna Borg – Bright Red Marketing (11:00)

So go have a look at your account structure. Make sure your goal is clear and that Meta is delivering for you. And if not, don't be afraid to change up your account structure. Thank you for listening to the Bright Minds of eCommerce Podcast. As always, you can find the show notes on our website at brightredmarketing.com.au. Just look for the podcast page. Thanks for listening.