We are bringing you a case study from Ismael Mouhab, a Facebook marketer and e-commerce entrepreneur who was able to generate over $1 000 000 in total sales by using Facebook ads right after the 2021 Apple iOS 14 update.
The iOS 14 update destabilized the Facebook ad performance of many advertisers as it affected the event tracking by Facebook on iOS devices. Facebook themselves explained this as:
"Apple has released changes with iOS 14 that affect how we receive and process conversion events from tools such as the Facebook pixel. Businesses that advertise mobile apps, as well as those that optimize, target, and report on web conversion events from any of our business tools may be affected."
Many advertisers had struggles with their Facebook campaigns during this period but the few who cracked the code earlier on made tons of money. Ismael was one of the advertisers who cracked the Facebook algorithm post-IOS update earlier and quickly scaled it to 7 figures.
In this case study, Ismael shares the strategies he applied together with his team to scale his e-commerce brand through Facebook ads ever since the iOS 14 update.
Summary of the Brand
- Niche: Office supplies
- AOV: $120+
- ROAS: 3.5
- TOF: 80% ad budget
Creatives
Ismael states that Facebook post-IOS 14 is all about creatives and offers. One great creative can get you to $100 000 at scale. All you have to figure out is your ideal customer avatar, then you’ll know what to talk about in your creatives.
To find and keep producing many winning creatives faster and predictably in the post-iOS 14 era, Ismael had to apply a couple of strategies, which are:
- Explainer Ads
- Founder Story Ads
1. Explainer Ads
An explainer ad is a 5-15 second ad that shows the exact principle that gets people to buy most of the "ah-ha moment." It’s basically educating your customer on how your product works in a short snippet.
A powerful ad that cuts right to the heart of what the product has to offer and why it’s different. Because the explainer ad is so short, Facebook will loop the video multiple times. This ad can work especially well as a remarketing ad but can also work as a prospecting ad IF the video is clear.
When you have your audience dialed in you will be able to figure out the reason why they buy it and formulate the “ah-ha” moment for the explainer ad video.
When it comes to creatives, knowing your customer avatar is a must. Determine the top value point that customers care about and brainstorm 3 ways to demonstrate this value point visually.
Keep in mind, these should work with the sound off, with minimal text in the ad, minimal movement (many times you can add motion to text or a still photo), and should only be 8-15 seconds maximum in length.
2. Founder’s Story Ads (FSA)
Founder’s story ads are ads that capture the problem-solution journey of how the founder created the product or service. They are so powerful because they can sell potential customers on your product without them feeling like you’re selling.
These ads work so well because they are based on a story. If you tell the founder’s story right, it can be entertaining, inspirational, insightful. People will watch it to learn and then when you ask them to buy, they’ll be much more willing to. While many of the other easy ads are geared towards logic, this ad can help you sell to an audience that responds more to emotion.
This works very well as a prospecting ad. However, these ads can be tricky to do right if your founder isn’t great on camera.
The ads should take less than an hour to record and these questions can be answered in the interview:
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself (Founder).
2. What was the problem that motivated the creation of this product/service?
3. What was the big a-ha moment for developing your solution to that problem?
4. When did you know that you had a product/service that would really work well for customers?
5. Why is this product/service superior to others products/services?
6. What is one thing about the product that makes you particularly proud?
7. How have you seen your product/service improve the lives of your customers? How has this impacted the world?
Offers
Ismael experimented a lot with offers and the single strategy that proved to work the best for him is a Video Sales Letter(VSL) and an additional discount. VSL and additional discounts are the two ways to increase the Average Order Value(AOV) while also increasing the Conversion Rate(CR).
Ismael says that, nowadays, offers like ‘buy 1, get 1 at 25% discount’ rarely do work. One of the best offers he implemented have was a 20% discount + an additional 10% on another order, and free shipping for orders over $100.
Once the AOV increases, he increases the minimum order value to unlock the additional discount. So he keeps increasing the minimum order value until the AOV stops increasing.
"An offer like this generated $63 000 in 4 days for a children’s toy brand. This was 10% of the revenue that was generated by that brand in the previous 3 months ($600K in the past 3 months).
By giving out discounts, nobody will think your brand is “cheap”. Offers are an excuse to get customers to buy now. If the ROAS is not profitable with this offer because of a high conversion rate, then focus on your creatives and upselling." — Ismael explains.
Facebook Ads Strategy
Ismael organized his Facebook campaign in the following 3 phases:
- Phase 1: Customer avatar testing
- Phase 2: Audience, creatives, and offer testing
- Phase 3: Stability and scaling
Phase 1: Customer Avatar Testing
Customer avatar campaign structure:
- 3 ABO campaigns (1 campaign per customer avatar)
Adset 1 — interest 1, 1-day click, $30/ day
Adset 2 — interest 2, 1-day click, $30/ day
Adset 3 — interest 3, 1-day click, $30/ day
- 5 Ads per adset — 2 Videos, 2 Images, 1 carousel
The adsets’ details like age and gender depend on the customer avatar. Also going broad gives a skewed performance.
Run the campaigns for 2 days, the customer avatar with the lowest CPA wins. Even though at times, all customer avatars are not profitable, choosing the customer avatar with the lowest CPA is still a safe bet.
Phase 2: Audience and Creatives Testing
Once you have the winning avatar you can start launching more adsets with relatable interests. Next up, pick 5 new interests and use the first 3 interests if they are working.
The goal here is to test audiences and creatives at the same time.
Adset 1 — interest 1, 1-day click, $100/ day
Adset 2 — interest 2, 1-day click, $100/ day
Adset 3 — interest 3, 1-day click, $100/ day
Adset 4 - interest 4, 1-day click, $100/ day
Adset 5 — interest 5, 1-day click, $100/ day
Adset 6 — interest 6, 1-day click, $100/ day
Adset 7 — interest 7, 1-day click, $100/ day
Adset 8 — interest 8, 1-day click, $100/ day
- 5 Ads per adset — 2 Videos, 2 Images, 1 carousel
Run for 3 days, but in between the 3 days if the engagement of the ads is low, CPC is high or CTR is low you can stop them and introduce other creatives or products related to the interest/audience being targeted.
Creatives with low CPC and high CTR qualify for the next round, the stability phase. In the stability phase, we introduce offers and start focusing on achieving our minimum KPIs. (Usually, ads till this point are yet to be profitable — now is the time to focus on profits).
Phase 3: Stability and Scaling
Moving towards stability, Ismael focuses on increasing the AOV and CR through an offer. You can use the offer strategy mentioned above, as it’s proven to work on multiple niches.
Stability campaign structure:
- CBO 1 — TOF — $1 000/ day
Adset 1 — interest 1, 1-day click or view
Adset 2 — interest 2, 1-day click or view
Adset 3 — interest 3, 1-day click or view
Adset 4 — interest 4, 1-day click or view
Adset 5 — interest 5, 1-day click or view
Adset 6 — interest 6, 1-day click or view
Adset 7 — interest 7, 1-day click or view
Adset 8 — interest 8, 1-day click or view
- Winning 3-5 ads per adset.
Run for 2 days, if not profitable turn off the poor performing ad sets. If after 2 days, the campaign is profitable, let it run for another 4 days without changing anything including the budget.
Here the goal should be campaign optimization, if profitable.
- CBO 2 — Broad TOF — $1 000/day
Adset 1 — PUR LLA 1%, 1-day click or view
Adset 2 — PUR LLA 2%, 1-day click or view
Adset 3 — PUR LLA 3%, 1-day click or view
Adset 4 — PUR LLA 4%, 1-day click or view
Adset 5 — PUR LLA 5%, 1-day click or view
Adset 6 — Broad, 1-day click or view
- Winning 3-5 ads per adset.
"Usually, broad and 5% LLA adsets spend most of the budget. if they are profitable, let it be. If they are performing badly, then turn the bad ads off. And if they are still performing poorly turn off at the adset level." —Ismael explains.
Scaling
Here, the goal is to get the initial $100 000/ month, by introducing MOF and BOF. This can be done through the following steps:
- Increase budget for both TOF campaigns by 10% every 2 days.
- If ROAS drops by 0.5 or more, wait 3 days (instead of 2 days) before increasing the budget again.
- Meantime, relaunch the ‘TOF — audience testing’ campaign.
- Add more winning adsets from the new ‘TOF — audience testing’ campaign to the ‘TOF - Scaling campaign’. This gives more audiences to your budget to avoid ad fatigue (This is how to fight ad fatigue for months).
- Introduce MOF&BOF at this level.
MOF Campaign Structure:
Adset 1 — 3 sec vv — 1-day click or view, $50/ day
Adset 2 — 50% vv — 1-day click or view, $50/ day
Adset 3 — 95% vv — 1-day click or view, $50/ day
Adset 4 — 180 days APE — 1-day click or view, $80/ day
Adset 5 — 365 days APE — 1-day click or view, $80/ day
- 3 ads per adset — Creatives & copy should talk about benefits, hook or offer.
Increase the daily budget depending on whether the ROAS is profitable.
BOF campaign structure:
Adset 1 — 30 days AWV — 1-day click or view, $80/ day
Adset 2 — 60 days AWV — 1-day click or view, $50/ day
Adset 3 — 180 days AWV — 1-day click or view, $80/ day
Adset 4 — 30 days ATC — 1-day click or view, $50/ day
Adset 5 — 180 days ATC — 1-day click or view, $80/ day
- 3 ads per adset — Creatives and copy should talk about benefits, hook or offer.
With this structure and budget, Ismael was able to hit $100 000. The next target was to hit $1 000 000 in the next 30 days, and this is how he did it:
The only way he could reach the $1 000 000 target faster was by improving the offer.
- Current offer: 20% discount + 10% off & free shipping if cart value is $100.
- New offer: 40% discount + 10% off & free shipping if cart value is $150.
After improving the offer, the next steps are:
- If AOV increases then increase the minimum cart value for the additional discount - $50 each time.
- Introduce the new offer on all the levels of the funnel — TOF, MOF, BOF.
- If the new offer is profitable after 2 days, then let it run for additional 2 days before increasing the campaign’s budget by 20%.
- If the new offer is not profitable, change the offer accordingly till you find one which converts at a minimum of 2%.
- If campaigns don’t perform, duplicate them & increase the budget, while turning off the old campaign.
That’s how Ismael managed to scale to $1 000 000 in 30 days during the post iOS 14 update period. When it came to tracking, he used the Hyros tracking software only after scaling to $100 000.
