You’re not sure exactly what went wrong, but your ads are barely working. In fact, they’re pretty much on strike. What happened to the weeks of late-night strategizing, arduous copywriting, and endless how-to blogs? Well, first and foremost, let’s discuss what exactly a successful ad campaign looks like.

Metrics to keep an eye on

From an ad perspective, here’s what you need to pay attention to: add to cart rate, initiate checkout rate, purchase conversion rate, as well as CPMs from Facebook and Instagram. You also need to determine your cost per click, cost per lead, cost per acquisition, and, ultimately, your Return On Ad Spend (ROAS.)

These are typically the biggest metrics because they influence everything else.

When performance doesn’t correlate with purchases

Your targeting, ad creative, and copywriting is 100% on point. So, you’re getting all the right metrics like a low cost per click rate, but you’re just not getting the add to carts, initiate checkouts, and purchases to match it. It’s a website problem, not an ad problem.

We often work with clients who first think their ads aren’t working, only to find out that their website is actually failing to convert the traffic into purchases. 

How to optimize website conversion:

• Increase your website speed and mobile performance. In the age of instant gratification, no one is going to wait 10 seconds for a site to load.
• Optimize for mobile so that you actually show up where most of your traffic will be coming from.
• Focus on how you communicate and emphasize your Unique Selling Proposition (USP), and offer clearly-displayed shipping information. Keep in mind that people are driven by instant gratification and expect a quick delivery time.
• Assess the social proof on your website and make sure you have enough testimonials – with text, images, and high-quality videos, if possible. About 75% of website visitors check for reviews and, if they don’t see any, they go to a competitor who has reviews. If you’re scared of reviews – evaluate your product offering and customer service. It’s especially important to share testimonials on the cart page to instill trust, feature trust badges for safe checkout, and include the types of payments you accept.
• Ensure your product pages themselves have enough information about the product, how to use it, and its benefits so that customers can make an informed buying decision.

Basically, if your paid ads aren’t performing and you’re not getting those sales, you really need to drill down on the data. Do you have a good cost per click? Do you have a good cost per lead? Are you getting solid traffic? If you’re checking off all those boxes where the ads are concerned, you need to start looking at your website.