If you’re in business you’ll know that Facebook and Instagram constantly keep changing. As an ads manager this is extremely frustrating but it often also opens up new opportunities.
Whereas in the past the changes mostly involved the Facebook ads dashboard and how it operated, this year and some of last year we’ve seen major changes to the advertising industry and things are really different.
It’s not just a matter of having a button moved or a dashboard refreshed.
No, this time around Apple made changes that have affected everything.
Of course it’s not just Apple. Privacy laws keep changing and the industry is affected by those too.
On top of that, there are now a lot more advertisers on Facebook and Instagram than when I started as an ads manager 7 years ago.
So in this episode I want to talk about what has changed in terms of advertising and what this means for you specifically.
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Transcript
Hey, welcome to the podcast. I hope you’re well, wherever you are.
If you’re in Victoria or New South Wales, I’m sending you lots of love and strength to get through this lockdown. It’s so incredibly tough.
Some of you might have been tuning in for a while, and some of you might have known me for even longer and followed my blog for years. Either way, I’ve been a Facebook advertising strategist and ads manager for quite a few years now.
If you’re in business you’ll know that Facebook and Instagram constantly keep changing. As an ads manager this is extremely frustrating but it often also opens up new opportunities.
Whereas in the past the changes mostly involved the Facebook ads dashboard and how it operated, this year and some of last year we’ve seen major changes to the advertising industry and things are really different.
It’s not just a matter of having a button moved or a dashboard refreshed.
No, this time around Apple made changes that have affected everything.
Of course it’s not just Apple. Privacy laws keep changing and the industry is affected by those too.
On top of that, there are now a lot more advertisers on Facebook and Instagram than when I started as an ads manager 7 years ago.
So in this episode I want to talk about what has changed in terms of advertising and what this means for you specifically.
This episode is designed to help you course correct if you’ve been advertising and things have suddenly changed inside of your account.
A lot of us are not seeing the same results that we used to, so that means that we need to do something differently and come up with new strategies to test.
But before I go into this I want to get back to basics and mention that your foundations have to be solid before you throw any money at Facebook ads.
Facebook ads amplify, so it’s going to – in a way – blow up what’s already happening in your business.
But first let’s start at the start.
What are the foundations?
The foundations of your business and marketing are a mixture of your offer, your message, your audience and your infrastructure.
Let’s talk about each of these foundations.
First up, your offer.
What you sell is important.
As you can imagine, if you offer a product or service that nobody wants, it’s really hard to sell. Equally so, is when your product or service isn’t good or doesn’t look great.
So it’s important to have an offer that people want.
Secondly, your message.
You may have heard the saying ‘he/she can sell ice to eskimos’.
If your sales message is on point and speaks to your ideal audience, your offer (and dare I say it, even if it’s not the greatest offer) has a much higher chance of selling.
Your message is essentially what needs to sell the offer. It’s your ‘sales person’ so to say, and for those of you who cringe at the word sales, it’s not a sleazy salesperson. Your message needs to speak to the right person and tell them in their own words why they need this offer.
Next is your audience.
Knowing your audience is so incredibly important. I keep saying this in just about every episode, but I mean it.
You need to know your audience and what their challenges or dreams are.
Who are they? What do they really want? What solution are they looking for? How do they speak?
Get to know them like you know your bestie and you’ll be able to create an offer for them that they want and speak about your offer in the exact way they need to hear – only then will they open their wallets and purchase from you.
And also, your infrastructure.
All of the foundations I just mentioned are only good if you actually have the infrastructure set up for people to purchase from you.
If you have an offer but no way for people to purchase from you and give you their money, it still isn’t going to sell.
You’d be surprised at how many people make it hard to purchase from them.
You need to make it as easy as possible for people to buy from you.
No hoops to jump through. Make it easy.
The easiest way is to put a ‘buy now’ button on your website and hook it up to a payment portal. Or if people need to make an appointment before they can pay you, then make that easy for them too. If you run a service based business where people need to make an appointment to work with you, give them an online calendar option or option to send you a message or call you on the phone. Even better is if you give people multiple options to contact you.
Your infrastructure needs to make it easy for people to buy from you or work with you.
Ok, now that we’ve gone through the foundations, let’s talk about how advertising has changed this year.
I want to mention that for some people it hasn’t changed much, but from what I’ve seen with my clients as well as my peer group of advertisers, things have changed.
Marketing has always been about building relationships, but this is even more important right now. In previous episodes I’ve spoken about the know – like – trust factor and how crucial it is to build a relationship with your audience.
This is something that has become more important in the past few months.
The way I used to advertise for my clients, especially course creators and service based business, was by promoting a free lead magnet and then let the funnel do the rest.
This isn’t working as well as it used to, or at least costs have gone up dramatically.
This is partly because of the iOS and privacy changes, but also because there are simply a lot more advertisers in the space and they’re all competing to have their ads shown in people’s newsfeed.
So what we’ve started doing is continuously run engagement or video view ads, which are basically organic posts that perform well turned into ads. It helps my clients be seen by new audiences as well as current audiences without asking them for something in return. It’s just a way to show up, engage and build a relationship with their audiences.
We can then re-target these engagement audiences and video view audiences with ads later on where we ask them to sign up for a downloadable lead magnet or webinar.
In a way it’s making the runway longer but we’re seeing positive results with this.
Another change in the Facebook ads landscape is that Facebook needs longer to work out what’s working and what isn’t. The algorithm is always a mystery to me, but previously we could run webinar ads 7-10 days out from the actual webinar date. Right now this doesn’t work because it takes Facebook longer to gather data, UNLESS (yes, unless) you constantly advertise from your account and have recent data available.
Of course this data is probably not for a webinar unless you run them all the time, but Facebook really loves it when your ad account is ‘so to say’ warm and you use it all the time.
So in the past you could only run webinar ads when you have a launch and you’d get leads to sign up, right now it takes longer for Facebook to optimise so running webinar ads 7-10 days out doesn’t work that well.
What we’ve been doing for clients is continuously run ads, even list building ads with a downloadable lead magnet so that we can then invite those warm leads to a webinar.
Again, we’re making the runway longer and are trying to find out what’s working right now. This two step approach is what we’re adapting for course creators that launch as well as service based businesses.
So to recap, things have changed in the Facebook ads space.
- iOS changes are making it harder to track results
- It has changed how Facebook optimises and it takes longer for ads to ‘work themselves out’
- Privacy laws are changing which means changes in the ads landscape
- And there are so many more advertisers competing in the space that means that building stronger relationships with your audience is increasingly important.
The ads landscape is forever changing. In the past 7 years that I’ve been an ads manager I’ve seen so many changes I can’t even count anymore, but these are some of the biggest changes I’ve had to navigate.
And if you’re confused or worried about them, please don’t. Know that you’re not the only one.
Even seasoned ads managers like myself are navigating these changes without knowing what’s around the corner.
Nobody gets a heads up from Facebook, they love surprising us.
But they also love seeing people get results so they’ll keep making changes to improve their customer experience.
If you’re looking for support with your Facebook ads journey, I welcome you to join me in one of my programs where we navigate anything Facebook throws at us together.
Facebook ads are a great way to find more customers and get your products seen by more people. It’s still the most affordable way to advertise as far as I know, and with billions of people on Facebook and Instagram, you’re bound to find your audience there too.
