Scaling Meta Ads: An Advanced Playbook for eCommerce Growth → Marin Ištvanić
52:30 Share

This episode is brought to you by Address Validator. Stop delivery issues in their tracks with real-time address verification that saves you money and keeps your customers happy. Facebook ads are just a set of assumptions. You have an assumption, you create the ad around that assumption, you have multiple variations, then you get the data, and then you double down on what's working and you discard what's not working.

So I'm not a fan of like making a lot of daily tweaks in the budget because that turns out to be just a day trading. So in order to scale, I need consistent results, at least three days of good results at my target CPA. If both conditions are met, then I would increase the budget.

So for me, it doesn't make sense to run the ads until you have a product market fit and until you have a proven offer. Because although I'm a media buyer, for me, ads are just an amplifiers. They're like a fuel on a fire when you have something that's already working dialed in. So structure is product, offer, then the creative, and then the stuff in the ad account. Just by technical stuff, you can improve the results

In this episode, we're unlocking the secrets of scaling meta ads with Marin Istvanek, a master of data-driven media buying. This is the 2x e-commerce podcast hosted by Kunle Campbell.

So welcome back to the Truex Ecommerce Podcast. Today, we're going deep into the world of meta ads, where Marin Istvanek, who's a partner at Inspire Brand Group, shares his specialized strategies for scaling e-commerce ad campaigns. Marin's journey from freelance media buyer to agency partner has given him unique insights into how to structure, test, and scale ads on the meta platform.

We cover best practices for sandbox testing with ABO, ad set budget optimization, leveraging advantage shopping plus for high performance scaling and fine tuning your creatives to reach your ideal ROAS or return on ad spend and CPA, which is cost per acquisition goals. So if you're focused on driving e-commerce growth with meta ads, this episode will help you refine your strategy for a competitive edge.

Make sure to subscribe to the 2x Ecommerce podcast where we bring you top industry experts to help you scale your business. Hey, Marin, welcome to the 2x Ecommerce podcast. Thanks for having me. It's my pleasure to be here after listening to so many episodes of yours. Incredible. I like to speak to listeners of this podcast. So thank you for your support all through the years. Marin, you have quite an interesting background.

Do you want to give us your journey into just media buying in general? How did you get to doing what you are? You're now a partner at Inspire Brand Group, and it's been a phenomenal journey. Do you want to share that journey with us, please?

Yeah, definitely. It is definitely an interesting journey. I was on my senior year of college studying computer science, but alongside I was playing semi-professional football. So basically I was playing in second Croatian division and I was trying to figure out like what to do with my life. Should I go with the computer science that is like probably the best option at that time in Croatia to become a developer? Should I like go full in on football?

But then somehow I stumbled upon digital marketing. I saw an ad for digital marketing apprentice. I started learning everything there is about it. I didn't know what that was. So I went through the whole Google literature to understand like what is, uh,

what is an auction, how the ad works. Like it sparked my attention just because I'm very analytical, good with numbers. And that was like way more interesting than what I was studying. But obviously I didn't want to just like start running ads for the sake of running ads to learn them. I did not have money at that time. So luckily I had one guy that was doing Facebook ads. He was probably the only guy in Croatia at that time doing Facebook ads. He was a friend of a friend.

So I started working with him, you know, like he was giving me those small tasks. Can you find the audience? Back in the day when the audience was a thing in Facebook, can you upload these creatives? It was great for him because he got someone who could do those like basic tasks. It was great for me because I got the experience to actually see how it works when you're working with the client.

Soon enough, I started freelancing and soon after that, I connected with Matt, founder of the Inspire agency. So I started working as a junior media buyer. Soon enough, I advanced to mid, to senior, to head of performance. And currently now, after seven years, I'm a partner at the same agency and also partner at one of the internal brands.

Because we realized through the years that we can scale other people's businesses through Facebook ads. So we thought like, okay, why not scale our own? So currently I'm juggling between the roles of

of a partner in the agency and internal brand on the internal brand side we hit 15 mil in our second year and this year we are on a path to do 30 so this is doing way better than what we expected so my attention is currently divided between those two do you see your brand activity eclipse in what you're what you're doing in the media buying or do you think they can coexist sustainably

So whoever I talked to, they said like, you'll get to the point where you have to decide which route do you want to go. But my partner is kind of like more leading the brand. I'm more leading the agency. I'm just doing the media buying on the brand side and helping with the growth. So at this point, we are in a good spot that we are not necessarily overlapping, but we are assisting one another. So at this point, I think we are in good position.

Yeah, one of the businesses is very high margin and the other is a low margin business or big numbers. So it's a big decision or a good problem to have. So best of luck with that. Thank you. You said that perfectly. So you're talking about initially when you were looking for roles. Where did you find the initial role?

You mean where I started as a freelancer? Yes, you said you saw an advert somewhere. I'm just curious to know where you found the advert. Yeah, it was an ad like for one of the digital marketing agency here in Croatia in my hometown. It was just like a digital marketing apprentice, someone who would, you know, like fill the spreadsheets and do those basic tasks. But like

I never before heard about that role, so that's what got my attention. But then actually my first job as a freelancer, I got on Upwork. Okay. It's phenomenal that you were able to move from junior to eventually head of performance and then a partner. What is it in you do you think Matt saw?

and continue to reward in terms of responsibility and value over the years, over the seven years.

That's a great question. So I would say that like I'm born for this job. Like if I go through, you know, like some personality test, I will get results that like that are suitable for this job. Very responsible, detail oriented, great with numbers, curious, trying to find some hacks, you know, to beat the system. So basically everything that I'm doing

that is describing my character is like great.

personality trait for this job. So I think that's one thing. The other thing, I saw this opportunity and I saw that I'm enjoying this job. I don't see it as a work. It's a pleasure to me. And anytime that I have a free time, I do some extra. I'm listening to many podcasters. You know, I went through the whole Google literature support. I'm engaging with other people. I'm just like constantly learning. So that was probably a combination of my

character and hunger to learn more because I actually find something that doesn't feel like a work to me. Super interesting.

So remember our chat in May earlier this season, episode 33 with Sam Pelliero about scaling from $1 million to $10 million with Google Ads? We talked about the power of maximizing your ad spend. Now, imagine supercharging your Google search and shopping ads with reviews.

As a Google partner, Reviews.io enables you to seamlessly integrate product and company reviews into your ads, helping you build trust and increase click-through rates. Adding verified reviews to your ads can be a game changer for standing out in any competitive space. One of my personal favorite ways to extend the reach of reviews is through their reputation management feature. This tool helps you

Distribute reviews to third-party platforms like Trustpilot and Facebook or even Google itself.

Whether you want to send all your reviews to one platform or have Reviews.io automatically spread them where you need the most visibility, this feature ensures your reviews are working harder for your brand. With Reviews.io, you can manage both product and company reviews in one place, which streamlines your efforts while amplifying your brand's presence.

If you're already using reviews or feel like you're not getting enough, there's a faster way. With Reviews.io's review booster, you can collect reviews not only from new customers, but also from past customers, so you're not having to wait around for fresh orders to start building trust. Simply upload a list of customer details and Reviews.io will handle the rest automatically sending out review requests with customized email invitations.

This means you can quickly boost your credibility and start converting more shoppers. And if you're stuck in a long-term contract with your current reviews provider, Reviews.io makes switching easy for listeners of the 2X eCommerce podcast. Through their contract buyout program, Reviews.io will honor the time left on your contract so

so you can transition seamlessly without having to double pay for services. Once your buyout period ends, you'll enjoy their flexibility, no commitment, monthly plans, giving you freedom and results without being locked into something that doesn't work for your business. Ready to make your reviews work harder for your business? Use the code 2X to get 10% off your first year with reviews.io. Just

Just click the link in the episode description or ask the support team to apply the code for you. Applies to new customers only. Terms and conditions apply. I want you to either disagree or agree with this statement. 80% of media buying is in creatives for meta.

I would disagree because Facebook told us that 56% is impact of the creative to the performance. It definitely has a huge part, but I would not say 80%. Let's jump into it. So why do you think, so what are the other bits outside of creatives that really matter? 56 is a big number. We're talking 44% now. What's in that 44%?

So let's go a step back. So for me, it doesn't make sense to run the ads until you have a product market fit and until you have a proven offer. Because although I'm a media buyer, for me, ads are just an amplifiers. They're like a fuel on a fire when you have something that's already working, something that's dialed in.

So I would say that like structure is product, offer, then the creative, and then the stuff in the ad account. Just by technical stuff, you can improve the results maybe just by 20, 30%, depending on how bad the ad account, in what shape it is. But then actually I had so many ad accounts

started performing better just when we like switch the offer when we find a performing good performing angle so i would say that in between the creative and the technical part you need to sort your offer and you need to sort your angle your offer on your angle should we speak to to this offer and what what is a breakdown what do you see brands

that are really killing it with you, working with you, do to really nail that offer and get the product market fit? So, like, once you have a product market fit, you know you have a product that people want. It's now to, like, how to make it appealing enough that they would pay the price that you put in.

So first thing is like, okay, you need to nail the pricing or you need to justify your pricing in a way that it is appealing to the users. So for example, I can speak about one of the tests that we did. We had one month bundle, two month bundle and three month bundle. And basically we price anchored that 99% of people bought three month bundle because they

the difference between two month and three month was just $10. So nobody in their right mind would buy two month bundle.

And then we thought like, okay, this is crushing. So then what we did then is that we increased the prices. And then we said, if you buy two month bundle, you will get additional two month for free. So basically we did a BOGO, but for two month. And then everybody switched to buying two month bundle. Although our margins stayed the same, our AOV stayed the same because we increased the prices, but our conversion rate went up. So that means that we were actually earning more.

So just by two tweaks, my Ross in the ad account for the same ads in the same ad account structure increased 30% just because we had an offer change that was converting way more. So for people that was that, like you want to find that something that looks like an irresistible offer that people, when they see that, like they say like, hey, this is a great deal. I don't want to miss that.

It makes a lot of sense. So in this experiment that you're talking about, it sounds to me like this offer, Bondling, these were like on-site offers. So these are landing page tweaks as against like meta account tweaks. Is that correct? Exactly. Okay. The reason I asked the initial question around the 80% is because

I know for a fact that your agency, you focus exclusively on the media buying aspect of things and you essentially work with your supplied creatives and then you give feedback. Do you want to give us a synopsis of how you do this and why you choose to not play around with creatives from an agency perspective?

Yes, I thought about this extensively and multiple times and chatted with my partners and with some other agencies. They all said, when you start doing creatives, it's basically like you have another business. So you need to like at least four more people. You need to create the strategies, copywriter, video editor, graphic designer, maybe project manager, someone who's going to source the creatives. And like that's another that's totally another business. And then like we are starting from scratch.

We need to build our processes. We need to find proper people. We need to dial in everything that other creative agencies are doing for the couple of years already. They have proven track of records. That's one thing. The other thing is I want my agency to stay boutique.

I don't want to add additional services. I don't want to add additional people because all of that is like additional headache. I'm currently at that spot where we have limited number of clients. I know that I can pick who I want to work with. I know that we can deliver great results with our media buying. So at the moment, it's like a perfect mix between the

how do I say it, results and number of clients and not to be overwhelmed and not to stress too much and still earning well enough.

Makes sense. So you have how many clients and where are they located? I know for sure that all your clients, the reason why I really wanted to catch up with you on this podcast is because all your clients are e-commerce. So how many clients do you have and how are they geographically dispersed?

Yeah, so we have a limited spot of 20 clients. Obviously, let's say in Q4, we can onboard one or two extra. Also, sometimes it depends what the size of the client is. But usually, as I said, three media buyers plus me and there's 20 clients. So basically, each of media buyers can handle 20.

between four and let's say six or seven ad accounts. Most of the clients are based US, Canada, and then I would say some are based in Australia and UK. So basically big four English speaking.

Absolutely. It's the same kind of breakdown for the listener base of this podcast. We've reached 150 countries, but yeah, over 50% of our audience is United States. And then it trickles to all of the other geos you talked about English speaking. Okay. Now, from a client perspective, how much do clients, your 20 clients on average, typically sort of spend with you guys?

So basically the minimum they need to be spending is 50K a month. That's kind of like the minimum, minimum when we onboard something. But we have some clients that are spending, you know, 1 mil, 1.5 mil a month. So average is, I would say, around like 10 to 15K a day, which turns out to be like 300 to 500K a month.

Okay. So if I'm spending 300K a month on Google, on meta ads, how many creatives must I send your agency in order for you to sort of deliver my target ROAS or CPA I have in mind? So I'm always the guy that goes for quality above quantity.

So I would say like minimum is let's say four concepts a week each concept with at least three Variation because when you build a video just like having a different hook or a different length or a different thumbnail in a video or different layout or a text message in the image

it maximizes our chances of finding a winning creative. So when I say four concepts, that's like a unique concept, but we need each concept with at least three variations to maximize our chances of finding a winning creative. Got it. So four creators, four concepts, and then three variations each to do it. And then you can give feedback if one variation starts to work really well, so you could further iterate on it.

Okay, so that would mean about four times four. So 16, 20 creatives a month. Yeah, that makes sense. And then what is the process from handing over this creative to yourselves? What do you then sort of do? Where are you tweaking? What are you doing in the ad account to deliver my target CPA or my target ROAS?

Yeah, so basically client sends us a link, say, hey guys, this is ready. We download it, we upload it, and we have our sandbox testing campaign. Basically, we are doing all of our testing in an ABO, which means that each new ad set

is a new test and each new test is a new concept. So basically if I get four concepts that week, I would have four different ad sets. In each ad set, I would have only variations of that concept because my goal is not to find one ultimate winning ad. My goal is to find a winning variation within the concept and then whatever works in my testing, I can keep scaling

So although my testing campaign is labeled as testing, I have multiple ad accounts where my testing campaign is actually my highest spending campaign just because I increased the budget there. And then, okay, whatever works, I would take the post ID of a winning creative and I would put it into additional campaign, which is scaling campaign, which is advantage shopping plus with a cost cap. So I'm not a big fan of using cost cap for testing, but I'm a huge fan of using it for scaling campaigns.

This way, we are taking only proven winners and we are setting up a cap with a high inflated budget, which we are okay Facebook spending. And there's a very, very low chance Facebook delivering bad results because first of all, I pick up the target CPA that I'm comfortable with. And the second of all, even if Facebook like overspends, it cannot overspend to the extent it would be terrible just because I graduated only winning ads there. Mm-hmm.

There's a lot to unpick from there. Let's start out from the first, which is AVO. Do you want to give listeners just to break down that acronym, AVO?

Yeah, so basically that's ADCET budget optimization. That means for each of the ADCET, we are dedicating a specific budget that we want to spend. So basically if I launch four tests and I put $100 on each of the tests,

I would spend $100 on a daily basis for each of the tests. That's a bit different compared to the CBO, which is campaign budget optimization, where you put the budget and when you put like, let's say those $400 on a campaign level, and then Facebook decide on which concept, on which ad set it would spend. So it could be happening that

Concept number one gets $350. Concept number two gets $50. And concept number three and four don't get any spend. I'm not a fan of that.

Because Facebook can often push the budget towards the ad that has the highest click rate, ad that has the maybe, let's say, click-baity hook, ad that has the longest watch time, ad that's targeting the biggest country. So all of those signs, indicators are not necessarily correlated to the performance.

And in ABO, I can control my budget over the performance and I can adjust my budget accordingly. That actually is maximizing efficiency of my account. Makes sense. Makes sense. Makes sense. So back to the testing, you know, the sandbox testing phase, how much of reach...

or impressions you want to reach in order to make a statistically significant decision as to whether to go for an ad concept or to just scan it. Yeah, so it's very hard to wait for a statistically significant decision

Especially if we have multiple tests running, we have some clients where we are testing, you know, 15 concepts a week. And if I start with $100 and I want to reach statistical significance, like, and most of the tests are failing, I would get into position that my ad account is struggling. So there's no fixed level of spend or level of impression that we need to reach.

It depends on the AOV, on the number of tests that I'm running and the overall ad account budget on a daily basis. So if I'm spending, you know, like 2K and I'm launching $400 on a daily basis, that's 20% of the budget that goes for testing, I could be overwhelming the ad account. But on the other side, if I'm spending 10K,

a day and then I launch 10 tests that's just 10% so basically I can allow myself to be more aggressive and I can allow some of the tests to run longer

Also, some of the tests might look bad on the ad set level, but when you enter the ad level, you could see that there's like one ad that got most of the spend, but bad results. So we would kill that one and let other running. And then after, let's say, I don't touch like anything for three days, but after three days I evaluate, okay, is there any variation that is performative?

performing bad and then like let's say after five and seven days i can actually make a decision whether it makes sense for me uh to kill the concept completely if it's performing then i can scale it so i get to the point that's let's say out of 10 tests i turn off four i keep two at the same budget and then i increase budget on the remaining ones so it's always a mix um

And the budget and the performance is evaluated always based on the ROS or CPA. I like that. You know, there's a broad concept or heuristic that says like,

to optimize, you need to see what you can cut off, you know, take away rather than add. And from your concepts in this respect, you're seeing what can be taken off initially, what's really weighing everything down. And then you're putting more concentration into what has prospects to be potentially graduated to the scaling campaigns. Exactly. Because like for me, Facebook ads are just a set of assumptions.

you have an assumption, you create the ad around that assumption, you have multiple variations, then you get the data. That's the beauty of digital marketing, where you get the data and then you double down on what's working and you discard on what's not working.

And then if you're constantly applying learnings, what angle is working? If the older creator is working better than the younger creator, if when we mentioning the product is working better than we like opening up with a problem, when we are showcasing the product compared to when we are having a long intro about the problem, like you get so many learnings when you stack one on another, you get to the point that you actually are getting better with every ad that you're running.

and you're actually, which is actually allowing you to spend more with the better results. That's how you actually scale. What's your takeaway on ad copy? So we have the creatives, which could be image or video, correct? What's your agency's approach to headline text, you know, text in the description, and then, you know, ad copy? Do you...

I'll leave it to you. Yeah, so we are pretty much not testing that at all because Facebook told us that creative has almost 60% impact on the performance of the ad. So we want to have the most focus on that. We usually just have an ad copy that's aligned to the angle of the video. So let's say if we have a video that's talking about anti-aging, we would have an ad copy and the headline that matches that angle. If we have a video that's talking about anti-acne,

or like video that's talking about like not wearing a makeup, we would have the ad copy that's aligned to that angle. From time to time, we would challenge that ad copy with existing winning videos. But in most cases, it's like I would rather test hook. I would rather test thumbnail. I would rather test length. I would rather test creator in a video compared to the ad copy.

Okay. Okay. And then what's your take on static images versus video? What's a good ratio to aim for?

So again, there's no clear answer. It depends what your product niche is. For example, images work amazing for clothing, shoes, jewelry, basically where you can understand what the product is just with an image. So for clothing, some of the best performing ads are carousel ads, catalog ads, you know, like you just see an image.

Because I know like my girlfriend she likes to swipe through those like, you know, like a lot of the clothing combination on that carousel ad but for the other products where you actually need product explanation product demonstration Identifying the problem. It's very hard to sell it with an image That's one thing. The other thing is no matter how good image ad you create. I

most likely it would be doing retargeting. So Facebook is pretty good at allocating type of the ad to the funnel, to the part of the funnel where the user is. So I can see by percentage of new visits in Orbeam and in Triple Whale that no matter how good image ad I create, it does retargeting. Also, for example,

If you create an image ad that says like 50% off and you launch that with a broad audience and with all the possible exclusions of your buyers, of your video watchers, of your Facebook, Instagram engagers, of your website visitors, basically you're instructing Facebook to go after like completely new people. But you have an ad that says 50% off, that ad would like 100% do retargeting. And I can see that my percentage of new visits, no matter the full exclusion, is just 20%.

So sometimes no matter like how good image ad you have, you cannot reach cold audience. What I would say, creative diversification is extremely important. So you want to have videos, you want to have UGC, you want to have unboxing, you want to have reviews, you want to have

image offer ads. You want to have us versus them. So you want to like cast a wide net of your creatives because that's how you're reaching different pocket of the audience. And then obviously you double down on what's working. So I would say it's definitely a great thing to have a mix of video and images, but don't rely too much on the images because you'll get to the point that all of your ad account is doing just retargeting.

Yeah, and I guess this creative diversification is something you sort of instruct or guide your clients through, particularly if they are initially skewed towards a certain creative type. Yeah, exactly. We do analysis to understand what's the split, what kind of formats are working. And we have a document called Ads Bible with, like,

With the styles that we know are performing, let's say founder ads, unboxing, us versus them review, mini VSL and stuff like that. Basically, our formats that we know have the highest chance of getting best results. Okay, that makes a lot of sense.

Okay, so let's talk about the next step. So an ad has clearly shown prospects. What are you looking at? Are you looking strictly at conversions in the test in sandbox stage? So if I'm making decision whether I will scale an ad set or not, yes, I'm always looking at the CPA or ROS.

If I'm looking how to potentially iterate on a video, then I'm looking at soft metrics, which are like early indicators. So if I see an ad is crushing, okay, let's increase the budget, but I want to replicate it potentially. So, okay, let me check for the opportunities on which metrics I should iterate.

For example, let's say my hook rate is not great, but my hold rate is amazing. So I would check that video. I would try to understand, okay, why this video is keeping the attention of the users, why they're interested in watching more. And then my hook rate is below the average. So that means I can make even better winning ad if I improve the hook. So I want to understand where's my opportunity and I'm iterating only when I have discrepancy.

So if I have bad hook rate, bad hold rate, probably that video would not be a winner. And there's no point for me to be trading on that. If I have a winning ad, I would analyze this metric to try to improve it. Also, if I have an outliner, let's say a video with an amazing thumb stop ratio, but pretty bad hold rate. I know there's potential opportunity to improve that video and become and create additional winner from that video. Then I would iterate on that part very slacking. So to summarize that,

To make a decision based on optimization and whether I will kill something or increase the budget, I'm looking at the ROAS. When I'm looking at the iterated creatives, I would look at timestamp ratio, hold rate, watch time, and click-through rate. Got it. And the graduation phase, what's your approach? Do you just scale with the specific number in mind from a budget perspective? What are the

metrics, what other things need to be made, tweaks need to be made in order to scale a creative

So I'm not a fan of like making a lot of daily tweaks in the budget because that turns out to be just a day trading. So in order to scale, I need the consistent results, at least three days of good results at my target CPA. If those both conditions are met, then I would increase the budget.

how I would increase the budget depending on what budget level we are. So for example, if I'm on $50, I can bump it to $100.

But if I want $500, I cannot bump it to 1K because that would be overwhelming. So then I need to go more gradual, let's say from 500 to 700, from 700 to 950, or stuff like that. That's one thing scaling in the testing campaign. And the other thing, which I call graduating, is actually taking the ad post ID and putting it to different campaign that Advantage Shopping Plus.

That ensures that all the comments and likes, that social proof is spread. So when I graduate the winner, it's not starting from scratch. It's already a proven ad with a lot of comments, which Facebook is favorizing, which users are favorizing. So that ad has, let's say, a jumpstart in terms of the performance. And when I graduate five ads, which are all winning ads, there's a very low chance that that campaign would not perform just because whichever the ad is,

Facebook picks, that's a good ad. That's a proven winner. And is it CBO you're using now at this stage of scale? No, it's Advantage Shopping Plus. That's, you know, not really new, but like the last campaign time that Facebook introduced two years ago, which is kind of more simplified campaign.

You cannot pick gender. You cannot pick age range. You just have one ad set and you pick exclusions of your audience and you pick country and you put ads there and that's it. Are all your graduation campaigns on Advantage Plus now?

Pretty much. I would say ABO testing and then scaling Advantage Shopping Plus with cost caps. With cost caps. Okay. Do you want to explain cost caps to the audience? I know it's been explained in a few other episodes, but it'd be great to just explain, to recap what cost caps are to the audience, please.

Yeah, so basically cost cap or in other words is cost per results. So you're defining Facebook a number that you don't want it to potentially spend if it cannot hit that number. So let's say we are selling something for $200 and our target for us is two. So then we tell Facebook, hey, Facebook, I'm going to put the cost cap of $100. And if you cannot hit cost per purchase for $100, do not spend.

And then in theory, Facebook would not spend if it cannot hit. But sometimes it doesn't work that way. It works like on a seven day period. So some one days it would spend 120. It would get you a CPA 120. The other day it would get you 90. The third day it would get 105. But it would average out on 100. For example,

We see that during the weekends, conversion rate is always higher. All of my clients have better performance on weekends. So if you leave the cost cap same, let's say, and you put 10K budget. On Thursday, it would spend five. On Friday, it would spend five. But let's say on Saturday, it would spend nine. On Thursday,

Sunday, it would spend 10. So Facebook kind of like adjust the budget and just the pacing to the estimated action rate. And then basically you on an average, you get that you get the CPA of that target that you put as a cost gap. Makes sense. Makes sense. Makes sense. Is there any other thing we've not covered in this scaling phase? That's that's very important.

Not really, that's pretty much it. I would just want to highlight once again that I'm scaling all of my tests, no matter if the campaign is labeled as testing.

and I'm not turning off any ad that I graduate into scaling campaign. So a lot of times I would see someone like has a good ad with ad set in testing and they graduate the winner, but then they kill the ad set in testing. It just doesn't make sense just because you don't want to compromise whatever is working in testing. That's one thing. And the other thing is you still want to scale the winners in testing, no matter if it's labels as testing. So those are like,

Two main rules. And third rule is like, don't be too aggressive on testing. Some guys would like get, you know, two sales after like one day and they're like, they would immediately increase the budget. Like it could be just a fluke. So you want like at least three days of data before you make any adjustments. So you're saying that in the test campaigns, if something's working, just leave it.

Yeah, don't ever kill whatever has good results. Okay, but what's the benefit of that if you're moving it, you're graduating it to a scaling campaign and you're throwing more advertising dollars to it or at it?

Actually, Facebook told us that ABO and Advantage Shopping Plus are slightly different algorithms and that the overlap should not be more than 30%. So basically, even though I'm scaling the same ad into different campaigns, they're not necessarily hitting the same people. And also, even if they are, like I'm,

I care more about the performance than about the overlap. So I would rather scale from 5K to 15K and have good results and then have, I don't know, 60% overlap than be on 5K and then have 20% overlap just because all of my clients care about the performance and that's how I'm making my decisions.

Makes sense, because I was just of the impression that the spend in the sandbox test is typically a few hundred dollars, I guess, a month, a day, rather. It depends how many tests I have. I have one at account where I have currently, like, we are testing 10 concepts a week, and I have probably...

20 ad sets active and some of the tests I launch all of them with 100 I have some I have some ad sets that are like 2k that are like on 700 so depending how good the test is in testing campaign I'm scaling it there so in that account yeah so basically in some ad accounts my testing campaign is actually my highest spending campaign just because I scale whatever is working there okay okay okay okay that makes sense that makes sense to make sense

And with all of that, when do you start to sort of pick up on the signs to start to cut down? Sometimes you do not necessarily need, do you cut down a campaign over time or do you just stop it?

Do you cut down budget rather in a campaign or do you just... Yeah, I cut budgets if the performance, again, is not good at the selected period. So if the performance is bad at one day, I would not act on it. But if the performance is bad for two, three days, I would, okay, see what's happened, like what changed. Because there are only four metrics that are impacting your loss. CPM, click-through rate, AOV, and conversion rate. So when performance is down, one of those changed.

So for example, if I see that click trade started dropping, okay, there's something with the creative. So, okay, let me check if I can actually like resurrect the ad. I call that, uh,

resurrection and the handbrake, basically I would pull up the budget a down because maybe I scaled it too aggressively. And at this current level, Facebook cannot get me the target CPA or target that I need. That's one thing. And the other thing is I would duplicate that ad to give it a fresh chance that I call a resurrection. Because if something worked for a month and a half,

And one ad and the audience combination worked for a month and a half. And like I managed to scale it from 100 to 2K in that single ad set. And now magically five days are bad. Okay, like it tells me there's like something outside of my control that happened. So I would kill that ad. I would duplicate it to give a fresh chance.

And in like probably 70 to 80% of the cases, that ad just starts picking up with the performance again. And I get to the point that like this is working good. So I would not necessarily turn off something when it's bad right away if I managed to scale it. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. So you give it another chance. You duplicate it, see where it goes. And do you, if it goes the right way,

that's fine. If it doesn't, would you just gradually start to cut? Would you kill it completely or would you sort of say, okay, let me cut this 2K to 1K or to 500 and see where... Yeah, so basically that handbrake is when I first pull up the budget. So let's say we were on 2K and then like, okay, it's not working as intended. Okay, let's pull up the budget to let's say 1.5K and let's duplicate the ad. If none of those help, then I would probably kill it. You just kill it. Okay. It makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense.

And speaking about things outside of your control and circling back to your first points around offer tweaking, how much agency do you have as a media buyer to say, okay, this landing page needs to be adjusted in order for my target ROAS to be realized or my target CPA to be realized?

Yeah, so I have a funnel calculator that I built in Google Sheets. It basically tells me where in the funnel brand has drops. So, okay, we have a number of clicks, then number of landing page views, which tells me, okay, whether the page is loading fast enough. And we have number of landing page views that proceed to view content. So basically...

to what extent people are interested in learning more about the product and we have percentage that tells us what percentage of people that act that landed on a product page actually added to cart and what percentage of people that add to cart initiated checkout so before i start with every client i do this analysis to tell them clients hey like you have gap here like people are not even adding to product so you need to fix that to order to get that better ross or for example

average of people that proceed from checkout to purchases is 50%, but on your side, it is 25%. So, okay, let's check what's happening there. Maybe you're charging shipping that people are not expecting. Maybe they have some objections. So, okay, we want to sort that before we actually start by our media and before we start scaling, because otherwise it would be very hard if you don't have your funnel dialed in. That's why I said ads are just a cherry on the top.

I agree. I agree. I agree. That analysis is amazing. If you can share it with members of the audience, please do. For sure. I'll add it to the show notes in this episode. What's your take on... So we're recording this just for some context at the end of October 2024. What's your...

outlook for Q4 we're into Q4 already but for Black Friday Cyber Monday of 2024 we could do a whole episode just on that but I'll try to try to make it short and meaningful so basically first

Q4 is a period where brands could have up to 60% of their revenue just in those three months, especially if you're a gifting product. So I would say align your targets properly. For example, for our internal brands, we decided that we want to lower our targets for October because we want to fill up the funnel for November. Because from the last year, we have data that a lot of people converted during that period.

So we intentionally lowered our targets and we were running like just on a break even because we know those people will convert. That's first thing, understand your number. The second thing is,

Make sure that you have inventory that you can actually support the scale during the Black Friday. Thing number three, make sure your ad account is not capped. So you don't get into position that you're scaling, but you just magically cannot spend more than 10K a day or like 5K a day, which because Facebook put the cap. So that's going to hurt big time.

The fourth thing is define your offer and define it based on your margins. Okay, do you want to have a discount, which is the easiest to implement, but it hurts your margin the most? Do you want to have a free gift with purchase that has a

high perceived value but it's not going to necessarily convert as much as discount do you want to have some aggressive offers like buy two get two buy three get three do you want to make bundles which are my favorite way for q4 because they allow you to increase your aoe so even if you give them a discount you're still not hurting your margins too much and people have like a

a perceived value that this discount of 20% on $300, that's $60 compared to, let's say, 20% on $50, which is just $10. So basically that perceived value for discount is way bigger on the bundle and it protects your margins. And the fourth thing is make sure to like

align your start date and end date when you're going to launch the offer. And for this year, just a small tip, be mindful that this year Cyber Monday is in December. So if you're making forecasted revenue for your Q4, for your November, just make sure that like you do not take last year data because last year Cyber Monday was in November and this year it is in December. Okay.

I think Shopify does a really good job now at that, but not all analytics or grinding, you know, analysis rather is, is done on the Shopify dashboard. You want to do that, use other platforms to do that. Marin, it's been an absolute pleasure having you. Thank you for the final set, set of tips for people who want to find out more, you know, about Inspire. It's,

Inspire, inspire digital group.com. That's where to get you. I'll link to it in the show notes. Are you active on any social media platforms? Yeah, pretty much. I'm most active on Twitter. And I'm sharing this like tips and tricks on a daily basis.

And in the past year, there's not a single day that I did not tweet something that's going to be useful for you to run the ad account. And recently, I started posting on YouTube. So those are probably two places where you can find me and learn more about me, how I work, and actually get some actionable insight that you can implement in your ad account right away.

It's been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast, Marin. I'm going to link to your ex as well as your YouTube. All I can say is I have extreme gratitude for this hour. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me once again. Thank you for tuning into this meta-focused episode of the 2X e-commerce podcast. I hope our conversation with Marin Istvanek from Inspire Branch Group provided valuable, actionable information

insights into the world of meta ads from optimizing with ABO and scaling with Advantage Shopping Plus to perfecting your creatives. Myron's approach shows the effectiveness of a focused data-driven strategy for e-commerce growth. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the 2x Ecoross podcast and don't forget to leave a review. Your support helps us continue bringing expert insights directly to you.

Until next time, folks, keep testing, keep scaling, and keep elevating your meta ad campaigns for optimal growth. Thank you for listening.