Trust Your Own Data: Lessons From a Digital Strategist

Trust Your Own Data: Lessons From a Digital Strategist

What’s the one thing that you never stop doing for your job? 

Learning, right? 

Your day-to-day tasks might be similar but hopefully, you’re always striving to learn something new to perfect your craft. 

Let’s say you are a Meta specialist (like me). This could be reading up on the latest news either provided by Zuck (Mark Zuckerberg) or a well-known third-party person like Jon Loomer. You can also watch YouTube videos or attend webinars. 

Actually… maybe not webinars.

I don’t know what it is, but I have had a terrible track record with webinars. I’m all for the idea of them because I love to learn, but to be honest, I have never learned anything new.

Most of them don’t teach — they just preach with nothing backing it up. They’ll make giant claims of what you should be doing for your Meta ads, but won’t show you any proof or data. 

Now, I promised the editors of my blog that I wasn’t going to go on a long rant, so let me keep it short and sweet and tell you about a test I ran to prove that dealerships and businesses should trust their own numbers and data over webinars

Show Me the Pudding

What’s that old saying? The proof is in the pudding. Show me the pudding!

A webinar I attended last summer drove me crazy. They didn’t have data to back up any of their claims. SHOW ME THE PUDDING! Give me some real data and numbers backing up what you are saying. 

There was one claim these webinar hosts made that caught my attention: They claimed that the Instant Form Collection ad format was the “best format for automotive dealerships” to gain results. 

They had nothing backing this up. No fancy schmancy infographic with charts proving this. No results. 

I was taken aback by this claim because we have been making ads for auto dealers for years and we’ve always seen that carousel ads perform better for our audiences.

These people made me question my entire career’s worth of firsthand experience on Meta ads without any form of pudding in sight. 

No tapioca, no chocolate, not even butterscotch!

Put Money Data Where Your Mouth Is

You see, I take pride in knowing what works and what doesn’t work with Meta ads. I’m in ads manager multiple times a day with different clients in different types of businesses, ranging from automotive, livestock, healthcare, and manufacturing. 

I’m pretty confident about which ad formats gain the best results. So I decided to challenge the webinar team to prove me wrong on my claim. 

Let’s get this straight: I didn’t attack them or call them stupid. 

I framed the question with, “What are your thoughts on carousel ads? You said collection ads are the best format for auto, but I’m not seeing that with my clients. In fact, I’m seeing the exact opposite.” 

They completely ignored me and answered every other question. 

I thought, maybe I missed something. Later the recording sent to me confirmed I was just ignored.

After that happened, I went on a small(ish) rant to my co-workers about the nerve of these webinar people. After getting everything out, I came up with an idea: Why not put real data where my mouth is and put these two ad formats head to head? 

For the month of August 2024, I made sure that I ran an A/B test for all automotive clients that I work on. I had one ad set being all carousel ads and the other ad set being all collection ads. I split the monthly budget in half between the two ad sets and let them run for the entire month.

Carousel vs. Collection Ads: The Biggest Blowout of the Century

Do you guys remember the dominant season of 1995-1996 Chicago Bulls? With a record of 72 wins and 10 losses, the Chicago Bulls team has been deemed the best basketball team ever made in the NBA. 

During this month of A/B testing these Facebook ad formats, I consider the carousel ads as the ‘95-‘96 Chicago Bulls of Meta ads.

The test wasn’t even close! The carousel ads completely dominated the collection ads. It was so lopsided that I developed an evil laugh while collecting the results. 

Of the 10 campaigns that were tested in one month, 9 campaigns saw the carousel ad formats win with statistical significance, which means that each carousel ad had a significant amount more clicks than the collection ads.

The one campaign that didn’t have statistical significance had the carousel ads gaining 100+ more results (clicks) than the collection ads.

via GIPHY

The Moral of the Story

Every story has a lesson learned. For example, the story of “The Tortoise and the Hare” had the lesson that slow and steady wins the race. 

The lesson here is to listen to your own data.

Your audience tells you what types of ads and messages they like — and you can see that in your results.

Be cautious if this webinar or that article says you’re “supposed” to be doing something a certain way or that something is “the best” for you. Your audience tells you what works best for them and you can tell what that is through your own results. 

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t try new things. Of course you should! 

Try testing things against each other like we did to see what works best for your audience, and take time to look at your data and listen to what your audience tells you. (And look beyond the metrics the platform gives you with other less-biased tools, like Google Analytics.)

Attending this webinar made me realize that sometimes the “professionals” don’t know what they are talking about. 

Make sure they back up their claims. If they can’t, then do it yourself. 

Skip The Webinar and Work with 9 Clouds

If you are looking to learn more about digital marketing for business, we are the company to ask. We offer digital marketing platform setups (and custom options) of all types for your business. 

We value data as much as we value the creative side of things. What is your audience telling you about your ads? We can let you know and give you options to better connect. 

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