Everybody loves that first sip of a freshly-brewed cup of coffee in the morning. But what if we told you that in the time it takes you to prepare your morning coffee, you could optimize your Facebook ads? Just as easily too. We introduce you to AdEspresso.
What is AdEspresso?
It is well known that coffee stimulates the release of a neurotransmitter dopamine, which is often associated with happiness and other pleasant feelings. The same feelings usually get evoked after you see the results of a successful Facebook ad campaign. What do coffee and successful Facebook campaigns have in common? AdEspresso.
In the words of its creators, AdEspresso was born ‘after countless nights of coding and rivers of caffeine’. AdEspresso is an automatic ad optimization tool, originally geared towards small and medium businesses. Its main purpose is to make managing profitable Facebook campaigns (even when on a limited budget) easier and more straightforward.
Creating, analyzing and optimizing your Facebook ad campaigns has never been simpler thanks to this tool. Originally spun out of an Italian kitchen in 2013, later relocated to San Francisco, and eventually acquired by Hootsuite, AdEspresso has today become one of the first choices when it comes to Facebook advertising optimization.
Microsoft, Hubspot, Kabbage, and TeeSpring are just some of the big names using it.
By better optimizing your Facebook ads, you should be able to grow your fan base, increase engagement, and eventually boost your conversion rate (or simply sell more products). Plus, you’ll avoid overspending while doing so. Let’s take a look at some of AdEspresso’s main functionalities that can help you achieve some of these goals.
AdEspresso Features
Comprehensive A/B testing
If only you could apply A/B testing to everything in life, it would be… well, much easier. Unfortunately, in real life, most things you can do only once and there’s no going back after that. Luckily, in the world of social media advertising, almost anything can be split-tested.
We’ve already discussed the importance of split testing your next quiz, but it applies to literally any piece of content, including, and particularly referring to Facebook ads. According to some studies, 44% of companies use split-testing software to optimize their conversion rates. Those who employ it properly have managed to use A/B testing to reduce their bounce rate by 20%.
AdEspresso enables you to test numerous elements in order to create different ad variations. After you’ve chosen what to test, it will automatically create all the variations for you.
Let’s say you’ve decided to test 2 images, 2 post texts, and 2 genders. The tool will automatically take all the combinations into account and create a total of 8 ad variations (2 x 2 x 2 = 8). Some of the things you could choose to test are various aspects of ad design and targeting.
If you decide to test the design of your ads, some elements you may want to consider a/b testing are:
- Image
- Post Text
- Landing Page
- Headline
When it comes to ad targeting, you can test a bunch of elements, such as:
- Country
- Gender
- Placement
- Interests
- Age
- Custom Audiences
- Relationship Status
- Purchase Behaviors
- Education Level
After deciding what to test, what follows is the inevitable question of budget. How much should you spend on your first AdEspresso campaign?
Although there’s no universal answer, the people behind AdEspresso recommend allocating at least $5 to $10 daily for each experiment you’re running. So, for example, if you’re split testing 20 ad variations, a daily budget between $100 and $200 should be optimal. Of course, it’s up to you to determine the budget, but surely you realize that testing 100 ads with a daily budget of $10 would be a complete waste of money.
Do it properly, however, and that money becomes an investment expected to bring you profit. In an exclusive interview, AdEspresso’s founder Max Chieruzzi has shared some information on how you can achieve a high ROI from Facebook advertising while spending as little as $0.03 per click.
Clean and Powerful Analytics
Forget about messy tables and tons of unorganized data. AdEspresso Analytics keeps it super-simple, extremely visual and eye-pleasing. The metrics are displayed in a clean and actionable way, making it simple to track the progress of your campaigns. If you’re running multiple campaigns, you can easily compare them to see what works and what doesn’t. That way, you can learn from your mistakes.
If you’re one of those organization freaks, you can add tags to your campaigns to easily organize and group them. This allows you to get aggregated reports and statistics for each group.
The entire purpose of Facebook advertising (contrary to popular belief) isn’t to get as many likes as possible, but to boost your business and customer engagement. So, you’d want people to engage with your page after liking it or to interact with your app after downloading it. Of course, you’d expect all of the above to contribute to the greater number of visitors, leads, and sales – those being the ultimate goal for most businesses. AdEspresso Engagement Analytics enables you to track these things and measure your success.
Campaign Optimization
They say the first impression is the most important. In light of that, as soon as your campaigns start delivering first impressions, AdEspresso will give you an overview of their results. You’ll be able to instantly see what’s working and what isn’t, and act accordingly. Getting to know your audience has just become much easier!
Instead of analyzing data day and night, all by yourself, you simply let AdEspresso do all the dirty work. Its Optimization Algorithm analyzes all the relevant metrics for you in real-time and makes recommendations for improvement.
You’ll even receive a daily tips box with suggestions on what to do next to improve your campaigns’ performance. For example, if an add with one copy/image combination has much higher CPC than the other active ads, AdEspresso will urge you to stop running it and save you money that way.
If, however, you prefer a higher degree of control or would just like to delve deeper into the data, AdEspresso offers its Advanced Analytics tool. It will enable you to perform a more manual optimization and better understand your campaign metrics.
Report Builder
Social media managers and other marketing enthusiasts will appreciate this one. After spending days or weeks creating and optimizing Facebook ads, you don’t really want to spend even more hours on generating reports. But still, you’d like to have that shiny, good-looking report to present to your boss or client.
With AdEspresso’s Report Builder, generating stunning PDF reports will take only several minutes. The reports you create are highly customizable so that you can drag & drop the elements you want to display, choose the most important metrics and the way they appear, and voilà – your PDF report is ready for download. You can also get it delivered to your email, on a daily, monthly, or yearly basis.
Automatic Post Promotion
Tired of having to promote all your posts one at a time? With AdEspresso’s Automatic Promotion, you can boost all (or groups of) posts at once, based on the parameters you set. AdEspresso gives you complete control over what’s promoted, how often, and for how long.
You can boost posts based on the post type, specific keywords or domains, or engagement, and all within the limits of your daily budget. And, as with any paid promotion, you can choose and filter your audience based on a bunch of criteria.
AdEspresso Pricing
AdEspresso subscription prices range between $49 and $499/month, depending on the plan you choose. What may be seen as a downside is the fact that each plan is tied down to the amount of money you spend on Facebook ads.
With the Base Plan, for example, you’ll be able to spend up to $3000/month on ads. However, if you overspend, you’ll be ‘forced’ to switch to one of the more expensive plans.
Of course, there is a 14-day free trial period in case you’re still not sure whether this is the right tool for your needs.
Is it worth it?
Why pay for something you can get for free, you may wonder? Well, there are two key advantages of using AdEspresso compared to going directly with Facebook Ads Manager.
Brew up ads as quickly as morning coffee. Creating, A/B testing, and optimizing ads is made super-fast. After you add multiple headlines, text copies and images, AdEspresso does everything else. It can create hundreds of ad combinations in just a few minutes. If you’re short of time or would like to spend that extra free time elsewhere, it may be well-worth it to spend a few bucks more on AdEspresso.
On-spot optimization recommendations. Once you set up those ads and get them running, AdEspresso will make optimization as smooth as butter. It will let you know which ads or variations to keep/stop running. It will also tell you if you need to consider adjusting your target audience. For not-so-proficient marketers, this is a lifesaver.
Long story short, if you’re a seasoned marketing expert with plenty of time on your hands, you could probably manage without AdEspresso, as you should be able to do everything it does ‘manually’. In that case, maybe you should consider spending the subscription money on some actual ads.
On the other hand, if you’re a novice or intermediate Facebook marketer, or just looking to simplify the entire process and save some valuable time, AdEspresso may be well worth it. Numerous case studies show that AdEspresso’s comprehensive split-testing options, combined with its tested optimization recommendations, can significantly increase your ROI.
Back to success stories, let’s point out a couple more case studies:
In its million-dollar Indiegogo campaign, BionicGym has achieved up to a 9x ROI in certain campaigns while using AdEspresso. Or take the example of Fritton Lake Retreats, which used AdEspresso’s A/B testing to decrease CPC from $3.85 to $1.12, thus significantly boosting their ROI as well.
You’ve probably finished your coffee by the time you’ve finished reading this article, but at least you know what to do while drinking the next cup – almost nothing. Just sit back, enjoy your coffee, and let AdEspresso deal with your Facebook ad optimization instead.
