Social Media Expert Series: Q&A with Chris Mikulin

Ads that don’t look like ads are outperforming ads with fancy graphics or animations. Especially on TikTok. I love the saying, “Make TikToks not ads.”

Influencer marketing is still doing well, but we’re seeing a better return through using Branded Content or raw creative from creators or micro-influencers. This allows us to have more control over the creative by editing them into multiple ads or UGC mashups.

A trend that isn’t so great right now is that attribution is broken. We’re having to focus more on MER (or Blended ROAS), by looking at total spend vs total revenue and knowing what’s acceptable based on margins.

We’re still seeing the best return on Facebook, it’s just a lot tougher now and takes a full ecosystem approach.

TikTok is also doing amazing for the right products and price points. It’s more of an impulse buy type of customer there. So it’s important to match them with the least amount of friction to buy.

The first 3 seconds of an ad is very critical. You want to be able to grab attention right away and stop people as they scroll. It’s important to be able to explain the problem your product is solving ASAP, while bringing your brand in within 6 seconds to help with recall.

Branded Content for retargeting is crushing right now. For some of our brands 90% of retargeting is all Branded Content.

For prospecting, lead with your products that are most popular and have the highest AOV. Save the discount codes for retargeting.

We’ve lost a lot of data, and the crummy part is that it was already being hashed so it wasn’t like we could do anything with it. Performance has definitely taken a hit for a lot of brands.

On Facebook, we’re still not sure if it’s the frequent platform changes, or if it’s ATT not giving us data. It takes time for algorithms to relearn with new data.

Right now is the time of the generalist who can do everything, or at least, be able to direct the specialists. It used to be so simple, where you’d toss up an ad on Facebook and for every dollar spent you’d get three back. But it’s not that easy anymore.

We’re finding that the brands that are doing well have a multi-channel approach, a solid community built, their email flows are dialed in, landing pages are optimized and tested often, their site loads fast, new products are being released often, and they’re doing frequent creative tests.

I think a lot of brands have given up on Facebook, but audiences and opportunities to connect are still there. We just need to get more creative with how we’re reaching them.

Your overall angle/idea. Then it comes down to your hook, how your problem is setup, what’s the solution, benefits/promise, responses to common objections and your CTA.

Many advertisers focus too much on features, your customer doesn’t care about your product’s features. They want to know how it can make their life better.

The biggest opportunity I see coming is with Shopify’s Shop Pay integration for Facebook/Instagram. This will enable customers to check-out with the click of a button, without having to leave the platform, similar to how they would on Amazon. Most buyers are already comfortable with Shopify’s Shop checkout, so it already has a level of trust already established.

A common mistake I see brands make on Facebook is with balancing their spend across prospecting and retargeting.

Each brand is different, there are no strict rules, and a lot of people will say 70% prospecting and 30% retargeting. It's a good place to start, but I’ve seen accounts perform best with 85/15 or 60/40. It really depends on how much traffic is coming to the site across all of your channels.

You need to see what performs the best and optimize for it. Then, as you increase your spend, keep that percentage split consistent between prospecting and retargeting. There will be a sweet spot, but be ready to go a bit heavier for retargeting during sales and new product launches.

Chris Mikulin is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Kulin, a full-service eCommerce consultancy, and a partner at Oddit, which provides advice on DTC conversion and optimization. You can follow Chris on Twitter or LinkedIn.