2X eCommerce Podcast

Scaling Meta Ads: An Advanced Playbook for eCommerce Growth → Marin Ištvanić
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Kunle Campbell: [00:00:00] 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.

Marin Ištvanić: 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.

Mhm.

Marin Ištvanić: So I'm not a fan of 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.

Mhm.

Marin Ištvanić: So for me, it doesn't make sense to run the ads until you have a product market fit. And until you have a [00:01:00] 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

Mhm.

Podcast Introduction and Guest Welcome
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Kunle Campbell: In this episode, we're unlocking the secret of scaling meta ads with Marin Istvanic, a master of data driven media buying.

This is the 2x e commerce podcast hosted by Kunle Campbell.

Kunle Campbell: So welcome back to the 2X eCommerce podcast. Today, we're going deep into the world of Meta ads, where Marin Istvanic, who's a partner at Inspire Brand Group, shares his specialized strategies for scaling eCommerce ad campaigns. Marin's journey from freelance media buyer to agency [00:02:00] 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 or Adset, 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 eCommerce 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.

Marin Ištvanić: Thanks for having me. It's my pleasure to be here after listening to so many episodes of yours.

Kunle Campbell: Incredible. I like to speak to, to listeners of this podcast. So thank you for your support all through the years. [00:03:00] Marin, you have a, quite an interesting background.

Marin Istvanic's Journey into Media Buying
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Kunle Campbell: 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?

Marin Ištvanić: 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 creation 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 [00:04:00] about it. I didn't know what that was.

So I went through the whole Google literature. To understand like what is what is an auction, how the ad works. Like it, it sparked my attention just because I'm a 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 start running ads for the sake of running ads to, 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, like he was giving me those small tasks. Can you find the audience? When 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. On enough, I started freelancing. [00:05:00] 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't scale other people's businesses through Facebook ads.

So we thought okay, why not scale our own? So currently I'm juggling between the roles. Of a partner in the agency and internal brand in 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.

Kunle Campbell: Do you see your brand activity eclipsing hat you're doing in the media buying, or do you think [00:06:00] they can co exist sustainably?

Marin Ištvanić: So whoever I talked to, they said you'll get to the point where you have to decide which route do you want to go? But my partner is 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 a good position.

Kunle Campbell: Yeah, 1 of the businesses is very high margin and the other 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.

Marin Ištvanić: Thank you. You said that

Kunle Campbell: perfectly. Yeah. S, you're talking about initially your, when you were looking for roles, where did you find the initial role?

Marin Ištvanić: You mean when, where I started as a freelancer? Yes.

Kunle Campbell: You said you saw an advert [00:07:00] somewhere.

I'm just curious to know where you found the advert.

Marin Ištvanić: 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, fill the spreadsheets and do those basic tasks. But I never before heard about that role.

So that's like what caught my attention. But then actually my first job as a freelancer, I got on Upwork.

Kunle Campbell: It's phenomenal that you're able to move from junior t, to head of eventually head of performance and then a partner, what is it? In you, do you think Matt soar and continue to reward, in terms of responsibility and value over the years, over the seven years?

Marin Ištvanić: That's a great question. So I would say that I'm born for this job. If you, if I go [00:08:00] through, like some personality test. I would get results that like, that are suitable for this job very responsible detail oriented great with numbers, curious, trying to find some hacks, to, to beat the system.

So basically everything that I'm 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. 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 [00:09:00] to learn more because I actually find something that doesn't feel like a work to me.

Kunle Campbell: Super interesting..

Mhm.

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Mhm.[00:12:00]

The Role of Creatives in Media Buying
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Kunle Campbell: ​I want you to either disagree or agree with this statement. 80 percent of media buying is in creatives and for meta.

Marin Ištvanić: I would disagree because Facebook told us that 56 percent of Is impact of the creative to the performance. It definitely has a huge part, but I would not say 80%.

Kunle Campbell: 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%?

Marin Ištvanić: 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, [00:13:00] 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 percent 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,

Effective Offer Strategies for Better Conversion
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Kunle Campbell: your offer and your angle, should we speak to this offer and what is a breakdown?

What would you see brands that are really [00:14:00] killing it with you working with you do to really nail that offer and get the product market fit.

Marin Ištvanić: So once you have a product market fit, 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.

So first thing is 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 percent of people bought 3 month bundle because the difference between 2 month and 3 month was just 10.

So nobody in their right mind would buy 2 month bundle. And then we thought okay, this is crushing. So then what we did then is that we increased the prices. And then we said, if you [00:15:00] buy 2 month bundle, you will get additional 2 month for free. So basically we did a BOGO, but for 2 month. And then everybody switched to buying 2 month bundle, although our margin 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 raw Cindy ad account for the same ads in the same ad account structure increased 30 percent 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.

People, when they see that they say Hey, this is a great deal. I don't want to miss that.

Kunle Campbell: It makes a lot of sense. So in this experiment that you're into you're you're talking about, it sounds to me like this offer bonding was, these were like onsite offers. So these are landing page tweaks as [00:16:00] against like meta accounts tweaks.

It's not correct. Exactly. Okay. Okay. Okay. The reason I asked the initial question around the 80, 80 percent is because. I know for a fact that your agency, you focus exclusively on, 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 serve?

Lay around with creatives from an agency perspective.

Marin Ištvanić: 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 a strategist, copywriter, video editor, graphic designer, maybe project manager, someone [00:17:00] who's going to source the creatives and that's another That's totally another business.

And then we are starting from scratch. We need to like, build our processes. We need to find proper people. We need to like, dialed in everything that other creative agencies, they are doing for the couple of years already that 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 that's 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 perfect mix between the ow do I say it [00:18:00] results and the number of clients and not to be overwhelmed and not to stress too much and still Earning enough

Kunle Campbell: makes sense.

Agency Operations and Client Management
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Kunle Campbell: 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 eCommerce. So how many clients do you have? And how are they geographically dispersed?

Marin Ištvanić: 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 between four and let's say six or seven ad accounts. Most of the clients are based US, Canada. And then I would say [00:19:00] some are based in Australia and UK. So basically.

Kunle Campbell: Absolutely. It's the same kind of breakdown for the listener base of this podcast.

We, we, we've reached 150 countries, but yeah, over 50 percent of our audience is United States and then it trickles to, to all of the other geos. It talks about your English speaking. Okay. From a client perspective, how D o clients your 20 clients on average typically spend with you guys?

Marin Ištvanić: So basically the minimum is the minimum they need to be spending is 50k a month. That's like the minimum, minimum when we onboard something, but we have some clients that are spending, 1 mil, 1. 5 mil. A month. So average is, I would say around like 10 to 15 k a day, which is, turns out to be like 300 [00:20:00] to 500 KA month.

Kunle Campbell: So if I'm spending 300 KA month on Google, on sort on meta ads, how many creatives must I send your agency in order for you to deliver my Target ROAS or CPA? I have in

Marin Ištvanić: 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. 'cause 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 concept, that's like a unique concept, but we need each concept with at least three variation to [00:21:00] maximize our chances of finding a winning creative.

Kunle Campbell: Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. So four, four, four, 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. Exactly. Okay. Sure. That would mean about four times four.

So 16, 20 creatives a month. Okay. That makes sense. And then what is the process from handing over this creative to yourselves? What do you then do? Where are you tweaking? What are you doing in the ad account to, to deliver my target CPA or my target ROAS?

Testing and Scaling Ad Campaigns
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Marin Ištvanić: 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 APO which means that [00:22:00] 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 Adset 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 idea of a winning creative, and I would put it into additional campaign, which is scaling campaign, which is Advantage Shopping 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 this way We are taking only proven winners and we are setting a cap with a high inflated budget [00:23:00] Which we are okay facebook spending and there's a very low chance facebook delivering bad results Because first of all, I pick a 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.

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

Marin Ištvanić: Yeah, so basically that's A B O,

Kunle Campbell: B O, A B O.

Marin Ištvanić: Yeah, ADCET budget optimization. That means for each of the ADCET we are dedicating a specific budget that we want to spend on. 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 [00:24:00] different compared to the CBO, which is campaign budget optimization, where you put a budget and you, when you put 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 through rate, ad that has the, maybe let's say click baity hook, ad that has the longest watch time, ad that has the biggest 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 ad account.

Kunle Campbell: Makes sense. Makes sense. [00:25:00] Makes sense. So back to the testing, the sandbox testing phase.

How much of reach or for or impressions you want to reach in order to make a statistically significant decision as to whether to go for, an ad content or to just can it.

Marin Ištvanić: Yeah, so it's very hard to wait for statistically significant, especially if we have multiple tests running. We have some clients where we are testing, 15 concepts a week.

And if I start with 100 and I want to reach statistical significant, and most of the tests are failing, I would get into a 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, [00:26:00] 2K and I'm launching 400 on a daily basis, that's 20 percent of the budget that goes to for testing, I could be overwhelming the ad account, but on the other side, if I'm spending 10K. 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 entered the ad level, you could see that there's 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 performing bad? And then let's say after five and seven days, I can actually make a decision whether it makes sense for me to kill the concept completely. If it's performing, then I can scale it. So I get to the point that let's say out of 10 tests, I [00:27:00] 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. And the budget and the performance is evaluated always based on the Ross or CPA.

Kunle Campbell: I like that, there's a broad concept of heuristic that says to optimize, you need to see what you can cut off, take away rather than add. And from your concept in, in, in this respect you're seeing what can be taking 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.

Marin Ištvanić: Exactly. Cause 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.

The Power of Data in Digital Marketing
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Marin Ištvanić: That's the beauty of digital marketing. You get [00:28:00] the data and then you double down on what's working and you discard on, 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 opening up with the 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, which you stack one on another, you get to the point that you actually are getting better, which 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.

Ad Copy Strategies and Testing
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Kunle Campbell: 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, text and in the description [00:29:00] and then, ad copy, do you, I'll leave it to you.

Marin Ištvanić: Yeah. So we are pretty much not testing that at all because Facebook told us that creative has Almost 60 percent 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 you have a video that's talking about anti aging, we would have an ad copy in the headline that matches that angle. If we have a video that's talking about anti acne or like video that's talking about 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 is 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.

Kunle Campbell: Okay. Okay.

Static Images vs. Video Ads
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Kunle Campbell: And then what's your take on static images versus video?[00:30:00]

What's a good ratio to aim for?

Marin Ištvanić: 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, like you just see an image.

Because I know like my girlfriend, she likes to swipe through those like a lot of the clothing combination on that carousel ad, but for the other products where you actually need a 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. Most likely it would be doing retargeting. So Facebook is pretty good [00:31:00] at allocating type of the ad to the funnel, to the part of the funnel where the user is. So like I can see by percentage of new visits in Norbeam and in TripleWhale that no matter how good image ad I create, It does retargeting also, for example, if you create an image ad that says 50 percent 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 percent off.

That ad would like 100 percent do retargeting. And I can see that my percentage of new visits, no matter the full exclusion, it's just 20%. So sometimes no matter like how good image ad you have, you cannot reach cold audience.

Creative Diversification and Client Guidance
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Marin Ištvanić: What I would say, creative diversification is extremely important. So you want to have videos, you want to have UGC, you want to [00:32:00] have unboxing, you want to have reviews, you want to have image offer ads, you want to have us versus them, you want So you want to 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 many, too much on the images because you'll get to the point that All of your ad account is doing just retargeting.

Kunle Campbell: Yeah. And I guess this creative diversification is something you instruct or guide your clients through, particularly if they are initially skewed towards a certain creative type.

Marin Ištvanić: Yeah, exactly. We do analysis like 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 [00:33:00] them review mini VSL and stuff like that.

But basically our formats that we know have the highest chance of getting best results. Okay. Thanks.

Kunle Campbell: Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Okay.

Optimizing Ad Performance Metrics
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Kunle Campbell: So let's talk about the next step. D has clearly shown prospects. What are you looking at? Are you looking strictly at conversions in the test in sandbox stage?

Marin Ištvanić: 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 a 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 potential.

Okay, let me check for the opportunities. on which metrics I should iterate. For example, let's say my hook rate is [00:34:00] 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 user, why they're interested in watching more.

And then my hook rate is below the average. So that means I can make even better winner, 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 iterating 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 where it's lacking.

So to summarize, To make a decision based on optimization and whether I will kill something or [00:35:00] increase the budget, I'm looking at the ROAS. When I'm looking at the iterator creatives, I would look at the thumbstop ratio, hold rate, watch time, and click through rate. Got

Kunle Campbell: it. Got it. Got it.

Scaling and Budget Management
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Kunle Campbell: And the graduation phase, do you want to, what's your approach?

Do you just scale with the specific number in mind from a budget perspective? What are the. Metrics, what are the things need to be made, tweaks need to be made in order to, to

Marin Ištvanić: scale, creative. So I'm not a fan of 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 a consistent results, at least three days of a good results at my target CPA. If that, if those both conditions are met, then I would increase the budget. How I would increase the budget depending on what budget level [00:36:00] we are. So for example, if I'm on 50, I can bump it to 100, but if I'm on 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. For stuff like that's one thing scaling in the testing campaign. And the other thing, which I call graduating, is actually taking the ad account, 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 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 campaign would not perform just because whichever the ad Facebook picks, that's a good ad. That's a proven winner. [00:37:00]

Kunle Campbell: And is it CBO you're using now at this stage of scale?

Marin Ištvanić: No. It's Advantage Shopping Plus. That's not not really new, but like the last campaign time that Facebook introduced two years ago, which is more simplified version.

You cannot pick gender. You cannot pick age range. You just have one ad set and you, you pick exclusions of your audience and you pick country and you put ads there and that's it.

Kunle Campbell: All your graduation campaigns on Advantage Plus now?

Marin Ištvanić: Pretty much. I would say ABO testing and then scaling Advantage Shopping Plus with cost caps.

Kunle Campbell: 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 up to the audience, please.

Marin Ištvanić: Yeah, so basically cost cap or in another words is [00:38:00] 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 ross is 2. So then we tell Facebook, hey Facebook, I'm gonna 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 you 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 a 90, the third day it would get 105, but it would average out on 100. For example, I, 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 [00:39:00] 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 Sunday, it would spend 10. So Facebook adjust the budget and just the pacing to the estimated action rate.

And then basically you, on an average, you get that you get CPA of that target that you put as a cost gap.

Kunle Campbell: It makes sense. It makes sense. It makes sense. Is there any other. Thing we've not covered in this scaling phase that's very important.

Marin Ištvanić: 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 setting testing and they graduate the winner, but then they [00:40:00] kill the ad setting 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 create, 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 don't be too aggressive on testing. Some guys would get, two sales after one day and they're like, they would immediately increase the budget. It could be just a fluke. So you want At least three days of data before you make any adjustments.

Kunle Campbell: So you're saying that in the test campaigns, if something's working, just leave it.

Marin Ištvanić: Yeah. Yeah. Don't ever kill whatever has good results.

Kunle Campbell: Okay. But what's the benefits of that? If you're moving it, you're graduating it to, to, to a scaling campaign and you're throwing more advertising dollars to it or at it.

So [00:41:00]

Marin Ištvanić: 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 in two 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 like scale from 5k to 15k and stay and have good results and then have, I don't know, 60 percent overlap than be on 5k and then have 20 percent overlap. Just because all of my clients care about the performance and that's how I'm making my decisions.

Kunle Campbell: Makes sense. Cause I was just of the impression that you, the spend in the.

In the in the sandbox test is typically a few hundred dollars, a month, a day, rather.

Marin Ištvanić: It depends how many tests I have. I have one ad [00:42:00] account where I have currently like we're testing 10 concepts a week. And I have probably. 20 Adset active and some of the tests I launched all of them with 100.

I have some, I have some Adset that are all 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 ad 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.

Kunle Campbell: Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. That makes sense. Makes sense. And with all of that, when do you.

Resurrecting and Adjusting Campaigns
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Kunle Campbell: start tf 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

Marin Ištvanić: budgets [00:43:00] 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 through rate started dropping, okay, there's something with the creative. Okay, let me check if I can actually resurrect the ad. I call that resurrection and a handbrake. Basically, I would do that. 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 draws 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 [00:44:00] one ad and the Audience combination worked for a month and a half And like I managed to scale it from one from 100 to 2k 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 percent of the cases, that ad just starts picking up with the performance again.

And I get to the point that like, this is workingh, good. So I would not necessarily turn off something when it's bad right away, if I managed to scale it.

Kunle Campbell: 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 it? Would you kill it completely? Or would you say, okay, let me cut this 2k to 1k or to 500 and see where it goes? Yeah. So

Marin Ištvanić: basically that handbrake is when I first pull up [00:45:00] the budget. So let's say we were on 2k. And the, okay, it's not working as intended.

Okay. Let's pull up the budget to let's say 1. 5 K and let's duplicate the ad. If none of those help, then I would probably kill it.

Kunle Campbell: You just kill it. Okay. It makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense. And speaking about things outside of your control and circling back to your first points around offer tweaking, when 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.

Marin Ištvanić: Yeah, so I have a funnel calculator that I built in Google Sheets, which basically tells me where in the funnel brand has drops.

Okay, we have a number of clicks, [00:46:00] 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 ROS. Or for example average of people that proceed from checkout to purchases is 50%, but on your side, it is 25.

Okay, let's check what's happening there. Maybe you're charging shipping that people are not expecting. Maybe they have some objections. 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.[00:47:00]

That's why I said ads are just a cherry on the top.

Kunle Campbell: I agree. I agree. I agree. That's analysis is amazing. You can share it with members of the audience, please do. For sure. I'll add it to the show notes in this in this episode.

Preparing for Q4 and Black Friday
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Kunle Campbell: What's your take on, so we're recording this just for some context at the end of October, 2024.

What's your what's your. Outlook for Q4 we're in Q4 already, but for Black Friday, Cyber Monday of 2024.

Marin Ištvanić: We could do a whole episode just on that, but I'll try to make ituh, short and meaningful. So basically first, Q4 is a period where brands could have up to 60 percent of their revenue.

Just in those three months, especially if you're a gifting product. So I would say [00:48:00] 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 are 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 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 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 turns your margin the most.

Do you want to have a [00:49:00] 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 a perceived value that this discount of 20 percent on 300, that's 60 compared to, let's say 20 percent 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 [00:50:00] 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.

Kunle Campbell: I think Shopify does a really good job now at that, but not all analytics or grinding, analysis rather is done on the Shopify dashboard. You want to do that, use other platforms to do that.

Final Thoughts and Where to Find More Tips
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Kunle Campbell: Marin, it's been an absolute pleasure having you. Thank you for the final set of tips for people who want to find out more, about Inspire.

It's. Inspire, inspiredigitalgroup. com, that's where to get you. I'll link to it in the show notes. Are you active on any social media platforms?

Marin Ištvanić: Yeah, pretty much. I'm most active on Twitter. And I'm sharing this like tips and tricks on a daily basis. [00:51:00] And in the past year, like there's not a single day that I did not tweeted 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.

Kunle Campbell: 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. L I can say is I have extreme gratitude for this hour. Thank you very much.

Marin Ištvanić: Thank you for having me once again.

Kunle Campbell: . Thank you for tuning into this Meta focused episode of the 2X eCommerce podcast. I hope our conversation with Marin Ištvanić from inspire brands group provided valuable, actionable insights into the world of meta ads.

From optimizing with [00:52:00] ABO and scaling with Advantage Shopping Plus to perfecting your creatives, Marin's approach shows the effectiveness of a focused data driven strategy for eCommerce growth. And Hey, if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the 2X eCommerce 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.