Facebook Ads may just be the most powerful PPC advertising platform available today. And while part of what makes the platform great is that there are many incredible options to customize your ads, the ad system can be a little too complicated for some users.
It’s not uncommon for new users to struggle to navigate the interface, find time to split test multiple ads, or learn out how to optimize the ad campaigns. They get intimidated or overwhelmed and just give up.
Whether you need to simplify the process and save some time, or you struggle to keep up to date with Power Editor, AdEspresso can help. In this post, we’ll show you how to use AdEspresso to its full advantage.
What is AdEspresso?
AdEspresso is a Facebook Ads tool that makes ad creation and optimization easier and faster compared to the Power Editor. Since it was founded in 2011, it has grown to become a Facebook advertising partner and a preferred marketing tool for brands all over the world. With the platform, users can create Facebook and Instagram Ads right through the interface, which syncs with your pre-existing Facebook Ad accounts. It can even import active campaigns:
When setting up campaigns, you can add tags to easily locate them with search later. All campaigns automatically give you the option to create split test variations as you proceed, so you don’t have to duplicate any work. In doing so, you can enter in multiple headlines, descriptions, and visual components for each campaign to split test:
As campaigns run, you can monitor them through a customizable dashboard, which allows you to view its most important metrics in a single place. AdEspresso’s own proprietary algorithm will also automatically provide optimization tips based on campaign performance, giving you quick insight on how to improve your ads without extensive analysis on your part.
Simply put, it removes the guesswork from a complicated ad system while simplifying the process altogether. Furthermore, since Facebook Ads can be effective for both B2B and B2C businesses, AdEspresso is applicable for any business regardless of size or industry.
What products and services do they offer?
The central product is the subscription to their ad management and optimization software, which allows you to create, split test, monitor, and optimize campaigns. On top of that, AdEspresso also offers one-on-one consulting with an ad expert.
AdEspresso University
This is a service-based product that gives you access to exclusive resources such as their private Facebook Group. This group is managed closely by AdEspresso’s ad experts who are available to answer all questions about Facebook Ads, AdEspresso, or your own individual ad campaigns:
Regardless if you’re a customer or not, the following free tools are available for all users. They are all designed to make Facebook Ads management significantly easier:
Pixel Caffeine
This WordPress plugin that makes it easier to install Facebook’s tracking pixel and create a large number of custom audiences.
Facebook Ads Compass
This complimentary service generates reports about your ad campaign that will compare your results against industry benchmarks and help you troubleshoot and optimize the campaigns.
Free webinars
Content topics mostly include Facebook Ad optimization and management tips presented by AdEspresso staff.
Is AdEspresso worth it?
Numerous case studies demonstrate how AdEspresso’s split testing capabilities coupled with the algorithm’s optimization recommendations have increased users’ campaigns ROI significantly. Some examples include:
- Indiegogo’s million dollar campaigns: 3x-9x return on investment thanks to AdEspresso’s split testing.
- GlobeIn’s subscription box campaigns: 9x return on investment after A/B testing and AdEspresso’s automated optimization process.
- Fritton Lake Retreats’ campaigns, which used split testing to lower ad costs from $3.85 to $1.12, and boosting return on investment.
And from personal experience, AdEspresso has helped me manage and optimize my clients’ campaigns for several years. As a result, those campaigns enjoy an average of 150% ROI increase when I optimize through the platform.
How to use AdEspresso
The AdEspresso platform offers a lot of value to users, so let’s break it down piece by piece.
How to create ads
Once you create a campaign, you’ll be asked to name it, select the ad account you want to run, and add tags that can help you find it later if necessary:
Next is choosing what you want to promote (website, app, or Facebook page), and how you want to promote it:
Then, you’ll enter headlines, copy, and visual components. At this point you can choose to A/B test specific combinations of different assets, or allow AdEspresso to create all potential combinations:
For this example, we’re creating a lead gen ad for Instagram, so next you’d build or select a lead form. Underneath this, you’ll notice a drop-down menu that allows you to automatically add users who take certain actions on your ads to a new custom audience for retargeting purposes later. Under this, you can choose your Instagram account and your CTA:
Next, you’ll enter targeting criteria, including location, demographic, and interest-based. You can also select custom audiences that you’ve created (or that AdEspresso created for you):
Just like with different creative options, you can test out different targeting criteria to determine what combination performs best in delivering your campaigns to the audience:
Finally, set your budget and schedule your campaigns to go live. Here, you can have AdEspresso optimize your campaigns, which will show the ad combinations that are getting the best results most often, or choose to have them distributed equally. After that, you’re all done and ready to publish your campaign:
How to set optimization rules
Despite your best efforts, it’s almost impossible to manage all of our campaigns manually on a daily basis. That’s where AdEspresso’s optimization rules excel.
This feature allows you to set terms that follow an “if this then that” process automatically. For example, if your ad campaigns have a CPC higher than $2, you might pause the campaign. Or maybe your ad campaigns will be turned off altogether if there’s a CPC higher than $2 and the average frequency of your campaigns is above a 3:
Whatever your hard lines are, you can establish rules to automatically stop campaigns that aren’t profitable so you can analyze them more closely before a bunch of ad spend gets chewed up.
How to use AdEspresso’s reports to optimize your campaigns
This may sound ridiculous, but I believe AdEspresso’s reporting dashboards are superior to Facebook Ads’ reporting features. Let’s face it; if you’re a third-party tool, you need to provide value if you expect people to pay for it.
Their reporting dashboard shows you:
All the key ad metrics you need to know, like CPC, frequency, clicks, and actions taken, along with your ad’s progress over time:
How different audiences are interacting with your ad, and how much you’re spending on them. You can sort by demographics like age, gender, device type, region, ad placement viewed, and more:
Your best times and dates that generated the most results. If you’re interested in day-parting your ad campaigns, this will give you a lot of insight into when you should run them. As an added bonus, it can also give you some insight into when you should post organic content, too:
A list of your top-performing ads and worst performing ads, which will show you the actual ad and its exact performance metrics. You can also click on the digital card to see the post on Instagram or Facebook to immediately see the comments and engagement on-platform:
AdEspresso best practices
Over the years I’ve learned some best practices that help me get even more out of the platform. Here are the top three that I recommend following:
- Always, always take advantage of split testing. This is one of the biggest benefits of the platform. Even if you’re convinced you’ve created the perfect headline/description/offer combo, test it anyway. You may be surprised at the results as to what’s performing well and what isn’t.
- Give your campaigns some breathing room. This is true with all Facebook Ads because you need to give your campaigns some breathing room to level out. Give your campaigns between 3-7 days, you’ll see where your relevance score is, your CPCs, and your action rates. This goes for changes, too. Any time you make a big change to your campaign, give it a few days to see the effect.
- Watch your campaigns closely. Just because AdEspresso has great optimization tips doesn’t mean you can set your campaigns on autopilot and hope everything goes well. Watch your campaigns closely so that you can make any necessary adjustments.
Conclusion
AdEspresso is a user-friendly advertising tool that can revolutionize how you approach Facebook Ads. With the power to quickly create multiple versions of a single campaign, coupled with split testing options, marketers can gain valuable insight into their audience and hopefully generate maximum ROI.
Today there are thousands of digital advertising software for brands to automate and optimize their campaigns. Knowing which type of software and the leaders in those categories can only benefit your team. Get the guide that explains it all and details the 9 categories in the advertising stack.
Author bio
Ana Gotter is a freelance writer and ghostwriter specializing in marketing and business writing, though she writes for clients in a large variety of different industries. She is one of the top contributors to the AdEspresso blog since the beginning. She can be contacted at anagotter.com.