FACEBOOK: HOW TO ACHIEVE MORE PERFORMANCE WITH AUTOMATED RULES
Facebook offers advertisers the possibility to automate certain adjustments in campaign management by means of "automated rules". We will use examples to show how automated rules can increase performance and what needs to be taken into account.
WHY AUTOMATED RULES CAN BE USEFUL
The basic idea of "automated rules" is to recurrently automate certain actions depending on achieved key figures.
However, through manual evaluations of user behavior, for example, based on historical meta pixel (formerly Facebook pixel) data and/or CRM data, automated rules can also influence budget control accordingly.
EXAMPLE 1: BUDGET INCREASES AND REDUCTIONS AT DEFINED POINTS IN TIME
Most long-term campaigns are defined with "daily budgets", as these are easier to scale and are not necessarily dependent on fixed end dates. This way, Facebook delivers the budget every day (+/- appropriate fluctuations) evenly distributed. Also on weekends.
Evaluations of campaigns can show that people tend to make more desired conversions on certain days of the week than on other days. This can also be due to the fact that people are more active on social channels on certain days of the week due to leisure time or seasonal factors, but the advertising pressure remains constant on all days of the week.
If the advertiser knows whether and on which days of the week the most conversions are achieved, performance can be increased through automated rules.
Example: The advertiser determines that performance is historically best on Sundays, so the following rule logic can be applied.
Rule No. 1 - Increase daily budgets by x% every Sunday, 00:00 hrs.
Rule No. 2 - Reduce daily budgets by y% every Monday, 00:00 hrs.
(Attention: y is not equal to x, see item "There are rules to consider")
In this way, on the one hand, it is possible to ensure that more media budget is invested on defined weekdays on which it can be assumed that more conversions will be achieved without an additional campaign.
EXAMPLE 2: DEFINE WEATHER-DEPENDENT RULES
First of all: No, this rule cannot (yet) recognize how the weather will behave in the coming days and carry out defined actions on the basis of this. But it is possible to create "rules on-demand". These rules are created and deactivated in advance.
If it can be assumed, for example, that the weather will be bad at the weekend (especially relevant in summer), the rule can be activated on Friday. In this way, it can be ensured that the expected higher user volume on the social channels can be exploited in the best possible way and at the same time the momentum of the higher conversion probability is utilized.
In principle, the identical rule logic as in example 1 can be applied here - but with the background that this is not activated automatically every week, but only on manual request.
Of course, it is also possible to define the rules in the other direction and to reduce the daily budgets when fair weather is expected. This assumption is based on the fact that people are less active on social channels during fair weather, especially in summer.
THERE ARE RULES TO CONSIDER…
... or also: these are the most common mistakes when dealing with automated rules:
A rule is needed for increasing the budget and a rule for reducing the budget so that the daily budgets return to their original level.
If rules are defined with % figures, the rates for increase and reduction must not be identical, see example calculation:
Wrong: Daily budget CHF 100.00 +50% = CHF 150.00 -50% = CHF 75.00
-> This would reduce the basic daily budget each week.
Correct: Daily budget CHF 100.00 +50% = CHF 150.00 -33% = CHF 100.40
-> This would keep the basic daily budget (+/-) constant.
Select the frequency of the action correctly, for example, once a week. Otherwise, there is a risk that the rule will be triggered several times and thus increase the budget significantly more than intended.
If rules are no longer needed, they must be manually deactivated or deleted again before the next automatic activation.
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE LEARNING PHASE?
In the implemented campaigns, sometimes no campaign was reset in the learning phase, both for budget increases and budget reductions. Only increases of max. 50% of the daily budget was applied. Nevertheless, this point should be checked several times on an ongoing basis. A non-reset of the learning phase cannot be guaranteed by the procedure of the sample applications.
CONCLUSION
Automated rules can lead to an increase in conversions and more efficient use of media budgets in addition to a reduction in effort. Several birds with one stone.
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