Facebook Power 5: How To Execute & Profitably Scale Your Facebook Ads

Are you trying to profitably scale your business using Facebook Ads in 2020?

If so, you NEED to start using the Power 5.

I was recently asked “what’s  your favorite Facebook Ads hack?”

And to be honest, I was a little dumbfounded.

Hacks? I don’t use hacks! I use well-planned strategies that require hours of research, testing, brainstorming, and collaboration with my team. As a professional media buyer, there’s no room for hacks! 

However, in the age of growth hacking where every guru has a popular YouTube channel, I didn’t want to come across as an amateur without any of these so-called marketing hacks.

So I responded with the Facebook Power 5. And it really got me thinking…

You see, Power 5 is so incredibly effective at scaling revenue from Facebook Ads, one might actually consider it a growth hack.

Over the past year we’ve seen Facebook’s machine learning take a big step forward. It’s gone from not to be trusted to the way of the future. It’s not only consistent and reliable, it simplifies everything and frees up your time to focus on bigger picture, strategic decisions.

Bottom line, we’ve seen serious results using Power 5. It’s been the difference maker, enabling us to lift profitability while also scaling these results.

This is what Facebook Power 5 can achieve:

Additional Facebook Power 5 Results:

• • We’ve been able to increase revenue by 166% while only increasing ad spend by 12% for an electric skateboard company. The complete Power 5 system was implemented in March 2020.
  • We decreased cost per lead by 55% while increasing ROI by 350% for a lead generation client in the dating niche.
  • And we were even able to scale a luxury apparel brand by increasing ROI from 190% to 370% while doubling ad spend…in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

About the Author

I wrote this guide because If I’m working with a brand to scale, then I’m using the Power 5.

But not many people are aware of this strategy, and I’ll tell you why: Facebook Agency Partners (like us) and large advertisers were the first to know. We’ve received resources and training from Facebook, and we’ve since tested the hell out of it.

I encourage you to implement this strategy, and in doing so you’ll see that profitably scaling your Facebook Ads might not be as challenging as you think.

What is The Facebook Power 5?

Power 5 is a playbook for structuring ad campaigns in a way that enables advertisers to leverage Facebook’s algorithms.

It’s used by professional media buyers, and considered to be the de facto set of best practices for creation of a modern campaign framework.

Simply stated, it’s how to run highly profitable campaigns that scale.

But before we dive in, I have an important disclaimer:

If you think you can outsmart Facebook’s algorithms via manual optimization, I’ll encourage you to think again (and don’t waste your money trying!).

How To Use The Facebook Power 5

1. Turn on Facebook Auto Advanced Matching
2. Always use Facebook Automatic Placements
3. Maintain a Simplified Facebook Ad Account Structure
4. Use Facebook Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO)
5. Utilize Facebook Dynamic Ads

The benefits are simple. By harnessing Facebook’s machine learning, you’ll be able to concentrate more on creative strategy rather than tinkering with your campaigns every single day. Less day-to-day “tweaking”… and a whole lot more time to strategize and test your core audiences, messaging, and customer lifecycle.

Honestly, you’ll have time to work on things that actually make a difference rather than manually split testing dozens of ad sets.

By using the Power 5, you’ll become the CMO of your ad account…not the intern.

Power 5 Tactic #1: Auto Advanced Matching

What is Facebook Auto Advanced Matching?

It’s a feature that tells your pixel to search for information about your website visitors, in order to more accurately determine which people took action in response to your ad.

To enable Automatic Advanced Matching, all you need to do is flip this setting on.

This little tool is like adding steroids to your pixel!

Facebook describes it best:

“Automatic Advanced Matching will tell your pixel to look for recognizable form fields and other sources on your website that contain information such as first name, last name and email address. The Facebook pixel receives that information along with the event, or action, that took place. This information gets hashed in the visitor’s browser. We can then use the hashed information to more accurately determine which people took action in response to your ad.”

So, how do you find this button and implement?

All you need to do is toggle it on in your Events Manager:

1. Go to “Events Manager”
2. Select your Pixel
3. Click “Settings”
4. Under “Details”, toggle on Auto Advanced Matching
5. You will also be asked what data you’d like to collect. Select all.

What are the benefits of Auto Advanced Matching?

Essentially, this helps Facebook track your customers across multiple devices and emails.

We all have a separate email for junk subscriptions, right?

And it means better attribution for your ads, and, ultimately, better data for knowing exactly which of your marketing campaigns are affecting your bottom line.

Key Takeaways

1. Always turn on Automatic Advanced Matching when working with a Facebook Ads account.
2. Automatic Advanced Matching tracks users across different devices and emails.
3. You can turn on Automatic Advanced Matching in Events Manager.

Power 5 Tactic #2: Automatic Placements

What Are Facebook Automatic Placements?

This feature allows Facebook to automatically select the best placements for your ads.

The days of manually segmenting ad sets by placement are over!

It’s time to let Facebook do the heavy lifting.

What are the benefits of Automatic Placements?

I’m going to be a little selfish here: my favorite benefit is that it takes MUCH LESS time to create campaigns.

And you no longer need to worry about segmenting ad sets between desktop and mobile, Facebook and Instagram.

Thanks for pulling us a solid, Zuck.

The other, much more important benefit is this…

Automatic placements will generate superior results compared to traditional campaigns that manually segment out ad placements.

As a rule, I almost always use automatic placements, unless I’m segmenting out Instagram Stories or under strict client guidelines.

I’m telling you right now, automatic placements always outperform manual placements.

Key Takeaways

1. When creating a new ad set, turn on automatic placements to allow Facebook to determine the best place to show your ad.
2. Automatic placements are a best practice, used by nearly all professional media buyers. The only real exception is manual segmentation for Stories placements.
3. Automatic Placements outperform manual placements. Try it and see for yourself!

Power 5 Tactic #3: Simplified Account Structure

What does a simplified account structure look like on Facebook?

When I first started managing Facebook Ads, it was customary to segment out every variable into its own ad set.

Age, location, gender, demographic, placement, device, etc.

And then I’d layer in various lookalikes and interest-based targeting. I was trying to manage 50+ ad sets…in every campaign!

This old school strategy required campaign managers to slowly increase budgets within each ad set, when performance was favorable. When it wasn’t, we’d flip poorly performing ad sets off.

Facebook’s Simplified Account Structure is exactly as it sounds…a simplified way to structure your account.

• • One of our favorite tactics to use with the Power 5 is to combine one of our best performing ad sets with a broad ad set.
  • The best performing ad set could be any of your best performers, but we also suggest testing out a “Super Lookalike” or Super Interest ad set that combines all of your best performers. Learn more about Super Lookalike Audiences.
  • This will go a long way in building a sustainable framework that scales.

How to simplify your Facebook account structure:

• • Campaign #1: TOFU (top of funnel) – Targeting cold traffic
  • Campaign #2: MOFU (middle of funnel) – Targeting engagers on social media and your website
  • Campaign #3: BOFU (bottom of funnel) – Dynamic Product Ads

The old way (it’s terrifying):

Benefits of a simplified account structure

The major benefit here is that Facebook Ad accounts are just so much simpler to run. It’s much easier to diagnose and fix problems, and you’re able to spend your time on more important areas like creative, which is much more likely to have an impact on your bottom line.

Key Takeaways

1. Simplify your account structure. At Fetch and Funnel, we do that by separating out the top, middle, and bottom of funnel into their own campaigns.
2. No more separating ad sets by geo-location, demographics, and placements. KEEP IT SIMPLE.
3. With this added simplicity: take time to test more creative and customer avatars.

Power 5 Tactic #4: Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO)

What is Facebook CBO?

Campaign Budget Optimization, or CBO, allows you to set your budget at the campaign level, instead of at the ad set level. CBO utilizes Facebook’s algorithms to automatically distribute your budget across multiple ad sets based on where you are most likely to get conversions, for the best price.

See our Advanced Guide to Facebook CBO.

CBO allows for budget distribution to be handled by the algorithm. And yes, contrary to old school methods, you want the algorithm to manage your budget.

Why? Because machine learning is extremely powerful, and it’s more capable than you and I.

Remember this from above?

Well, here’s a full funnel view of that same CBO campaign, using a broad audience scaling strategy for ad sets:

• • Here you can see how retargeting comes into play: for this particular client we saw the major drop off point occurring around 14 and 30 days, so we built a traffic system full of curated content and offers to invite more customers to make a purchase.

Benefits of Facebook CBO

Frankly, campaigns that use CBO tend to perform better. Even more so when scaling.

The algorithm is more capable than any advertiser, and it will allocate your budget where it knows it can get the best results.

Again, this translates to less day-to-day “tinkering” on your behalf.

Another massive benefit offered by CBO is that it acts as a safeguard against audience overlap.

Sometimes the same people are included within two or more ad sets, in any given campaign.

Facebook realizes this, and will regulate itself in order to prevent users from seeing the same ads, which provides for a better overall user experience.

Your cost to acquire a customer will decrease. Frequency will decrease. And your audiences won’t get annoyed with your ads.

Key Takeaways

1. CBO will automatically shift budget to ad sets it knows will get the best results, on any given day.
2. Use CBO for your prospecting campaigns, your scaling campaigns, and all of your retargeting campaigns.
3. CBO prevents audience overlap, and saturation. If someone happens to fall into multiple audiences, Facebook won’t overload them with ads.

Power 5 Tactic #5: Facebook Dynamic Ads

What are Facebook Dynamic Ads?

There are actually three types of dynamic ads:

1. Dynamic Creative – This can be turned on at the ad set level, and it uses up to 10 images or videos, up to 5 headlines, and up to 5 pieces of copy to dynamically create and test ad variations across your audiences.
2. Dynamic Formats and Ad Creative – Turned on at the ad level, this uses a catalog of creative and ad formats to show to people based on which they are most likely to respond to.
3. Dynamic Product Ads (DPA) – Set up at the campaign level, as “Catalog Sales”. This setting dynamically shows people the products that they’ve viewed on your website, or that they’ve previously indicated having interest in.

While we do use a blended approach to all three dynamic ad strategies, the one that ads real juice to the Power 5 strategy is Dynamic Creative.

What are the benefits of Facebook Dynamic Creative?

Dynamic Creative allows you to add 10 pieces of creative content, 5 copy texts, 5 headlines, 5 descriptions, and CTAs. The Facebook algorithm then dynamically combines these variables and shows users the kind of content Facebook believes they will most likely act on.

Dynamic Creative is super powerful when you’re just getting started, and facing uncertainty about the types of ads that will resonate most with your target audience.

But that’s not all!

Dynamic Creative doesn’t just search for the best overall combinations. It also selects the best combinations for each individual user.

Meaning it’s a powerful way to scale at the top of your funnel (cold audiences).

Key Takeaways

1. Dynamic Creative allows you to select 10 images or 10 videos, 5 copy texts, 5 headlines, 5 descriptions, and CTAs. Let the algorithm find your highest performing combinations.
2. Dynamic Creative also works to find the best combinations, for each individual person.
3. Use Dynamic Creative when you don’t know what your audience will respond to.
4. Use Dynamic Creative to scale your top of funnel prospecting campaigns.

Conclusion: How To Set Up The Power 5 Playbook

This is a really powerful playbook. But the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

If you really want to maximize performance, and see the greatest benefit…use these plays together, in tandem.

How to implement the Power 5, to reduce your workload and increase revenue:

1. First make sure that the Auto Advanced Matching is turned on in Events Manager.
2. Then compile your creative. If you’ve advertised in the past, take your best performing copy, and content, for use in Dynamic Creative. If you haven’t advertised yet, just use your best performing organic content.
3. Next, map out your Facebook Ads strategy and begin building your campaigns. Determine your overall budget, and how it will be split between TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU (according to the account simplification structure outlined above).
4. Select CBO for (2) retargeting campaigns. Ad sets for prospecting. Or, if your account only has CBO, set up minimum budgets for each ad set. Read our Advanced Guide to Facebook CBO for more details.
5. During build out, select automatic placements at the ad set level.
6. Also select Dynamic Creative at the ad set level, for all creative. Consider testing different pieces of copy at the bottom of your funnel. Read some of our favorite tactics to increase revenue without increasing spend, by implementing a bulletproof retargeting strategy.