Salome Schillack:

Hello, and welcome to episode number 117 of The Shine Show. And today, I'm going to share with you Facebook ads and the iOS update. What is working, if anything, right now. Enjoy.

Giving up your time and freedom to make money is so 2009. Hi, I'm your host Salome Schillack, and I help online course creators launch, grow, and scale their businesses with Facebook and Instagram ads so that they can make more money and have an even bigger impact in the world. If you're ready to be inspired, to dream bigger, launch sooner, and grow your online business faster, then tune in because you are ready to shine, and this is The Shine Show.

Hello, my friends. You have not heard me talk about Facebook ads in a while. It has been awhile. Maybe you think, "Does she even still geek out on ads?" That is an emphatic yes. I totally still geek out on ads. I just also geek out on all the amazing things we can do with ads, like launch profitable online courses and build scalable online course businesses. So Facebook ads supports all of those things. And let's face it, nobody really wants Facebook ads. I mean, if we're serious. Maybe if you're on geek level, like I am, you like it. But we like what Facebook ads gives us. It gives us an easy tool to launch online courses. It gives us a tool to build profitable businesses, which in turn gives us a way to make an impact in the world. And it gives us a way to create more freedom in our lives because it brings money into our bank accounts.

So we love Facebook ads, but maybe not lately so much with all this iOS shenanigans, right. So it was around March this year that I did the episode on iOS. And I thought, "Holy cow, it's been a long time since I have spoken about iOS," and a lot's gone down since then. So I had my team of Facebook ad geek geniuses, ladies who are geniuses, Caroline and Hannah, put together a exhaustive list of things that are going on in iOS and in Facebook at the moment. And I'm going to talk you through this. And it is... you will hear the papers rustle as I turn my pages because these girls provided me with four pages of what's going on and what's happening. And I'm going to do my base to interpret that for you. So let's begin by what we're seeing overall. What's the big picture?

How has iOS... how's it rolling out right now? And what is the impact that it's making? So the biggest thing that is causing absolute mayhem and chaos right now is the lack of tracking. You remember, I told you that when iOS rolls out and people opt-out of being tracked online, our audiences and our tracking are going to become like Swiss cheese. Where the algorithm used to be able to see the actions people took because we had pixels on our pages and we were tracking them on our pages. Now the algorithm is blind. The pixels are blind. It's kind of almost like the pixels have been, what's the word, switched off, disabled. The pixels are completely blind. So the algorithm's having a really hard time optimizing because it is flying blind. It cannot see. Once that person clicked on your ad and it went to your landing page, it cannot see if that person actually gave you their email address or not.

And then it cannot feed that back to your ad account. And then your ad account can't learn. The algorithm can't learn. And so, it cannot optimize because this artificial intelligence is now blind. So that is our biggest challenge at the moment. One of the things that I think might happen at some point is people might opt back into tracking. And the reason I say that is, I was scrolling through Instagram last night, and I don't know what I said that Siri overheard or which website I went to. But suddenly, Instagram decided it has to show me every ad by every builder or home renovator in Brisbane. Because every second post I saw was a local renovator or builder. And I was like, "Dude, I'm neither building nor renovating." But somehow, Facebook decided this is what I need to see now. And I think that's what's going to happen.

We're not going to see less ads. We're not going to see fewer ads. We're just going to see irrelevant ads, which will make us go back and say, "Hey, please track me so that you can show me ads that are actually relevant to me. Show me all my favorite online marketers. Please, I want to see their ads. I have no interest in seeing who's building houses in Brisbane right now." So I think we're going to see people opting back in. I also believe that a lot of people were automatically opted out when this rolled out. In fact, I have never, ever been asked if I want to opt-in or out. And here we are in August. I have never had that request. Someone sent me a screenshot of what it looks like. And that's the only way I know what it looks like because I have never had it.

Now, I don't know if it hasn't been rolled out in Australia. We're certainly seeing the impact of it in ads in Australia. Or if I've just automatically been opted-out, I don't know. But I think people are going to start opting back in. I hope so. The challenge with this lack of tracking is that it is making ads that we run in short window periods, short time periods, really tricky to optimize. So, for example, a webinar where we only have a small window of opportunity to get our ad optimized and to get our ad out in front of our people doesn't have enough time to really get there. And during our recent The Launch Lounge launch, the ads for the webinar that we were running to cold traffic only really started hitting a stride two or three days before they were meant to be shut down.

So it took much longer for the ads to actually optimize and collect data. So that's a little bit of a challenge in short promotions like webinars. It also is a challenge with retargeting. So if you can imagine when somebody lands on your landing page, or they land on your sales page. They've been to your webinar, and now they've gone to your sales page. But they haven't yet purchased. We want to put ads in front of them that says, "Hey, here's another bonus. You're going to miss out if you don't take... grab this extra bonus or make sure you know that the doors are closing in 24 hours." We want to put those ads in front of the people who have shown intent to buy. And that is not happening right now because the algorithm is just blind. So that's where it's impacting a lot of people.

And then the biggest, biggest thing where we're absolutely pulling our hair out is evergreen funnels, evergreen webinars, and self-liquidating offers. And it seems to be like some people are just victims of it and some people are completely unaffected. And in most cases, the self-liquidating offers or the webinars, the evergreen webinars, evergreen funnels that were only barely scraping by. Like, if your return on ad spend was anywhere between... anywhere from two to three, those webinars are now just absolutely tanking. And if you have had a self-liquidating offer that was only just breaking even, then those are now costing money. Funny enough, some other ones are completely unaffected. We have no idea why some accounts are completely unaffected. But that's the name of the game.

I'm sure we're in this space where there's a lot of static. There's a lot of static, and it's not always easy to tune in and hear which parts are the... which way should we turn these dials to get the music back on? And which way should we turn the [inaudible 00:09:45]? You know when you had these old radios, and they had these knobs and kind of if you turn it, you go to the one radio station and if you turn it to the other side, you go to another radio station. Right now, there's just a lot of static, and we're pretty much turning knobs trying to find radio stations. And sometimes we find it quickly and sometimes it takes a while to find it. So that's how the lack of tracking is impacting online course creators' ads right now. We are also seeing, and this is the big catch 22 that I'm always raving about, is that the ad accounts with lower spend and where your ad account is fairly new and where your budget is fairly low, they're being hit the hardest.

And I hate that because I feel like you guys who are just starting out are already at a disadvantage because the organic algorithm is not working for you the way that it did work for some of the other people who started five, six, seven years ago. So you're already competing in an organic algorithm that is basically dead. And now you're being penalized in the paid algorithm as well for being new. So, my friends, that makes it even more important, even more important for you to start running ads early and start with engagement ads. Start stimulating the activity on your account. Start giving that whole Facebook system that works together with your Facebook page and your Instagram account and your ad account and your pixel and your conversions and everything, start giving it something. And if you only have $5 a day, that something should be engagement ads.

So that, at least when you're running engagement ads, you're getting in front of people, there's activity happening. Your pixel is getting some data. Your account is seeing clicks because the algorithm remembers all of that, and it learns from that. And the people with a lot of data on their accounts, they are going to continue to get the impression over you unless you start building that history inside your account. So account mojo matters now more than anything. Please, start running ads as soon as you can. And get those ads up. Get those engagement ads up. And then I think the most important thing here is run more top-of-funnel ads. And by top of funnel ads, we're talking about engagement ads and video views ads. Like those ads that is what I call, it's the Joey ad.

It's the, "How you doing," ad. It's the one that just introduces you in a nice, friendly way to your ideal customers, shows off what you've got. Make them associate with you. Make them feel something, but doesn't ask for anything. Okay. So that's kind of a nutshell. That is the nutshell. So let's think about what's new right now. So now, I've explained to you all the crappy bits. I've told you about all the things that are not working. Are you depressed yet? I hope not. My intention is not for this to leave you feeling depressed. My intention is for this to leave you feeling empowered to make good decisions here. And if you only make one decision today, and that is to start running engagement ads, then I have done my job. That's great. Okay. So let's think about what is new right now.

Okay. Facebook is working on a thing called conversion modeling. And I am not going to explain this in detail. But what I will say is they are taking all of the data from all of the accounts that run ads and kind of smushing them into models, into models of behavior. So now, for the first time, your competitor is actually doing you a favor. Your competitor, who's running ads, is doing you a favor because based on what Facebook learns from their account, they're going to apply that learning to your account too. So that's conversion modeling. And I believe that as Facebook moves into what they call conversion API, we are going to see more and more of this. Where the conversions are actually no longer being tracked by the pixel, but it gets tracked by a server that is linked to your verified domain. And all of that information goes into one giant big pool of information and becomes part of this giant big artificial intelligence that learns from all of our collective efforts.

I think that's where they're going with it. That's the first thing that is new. I hope that is a little snippet of interest for you. Everyone who geeks out on ads is going to love learning more about that. The second thing that is new. So for a while there, when you were setting up your aggregate events, Facebook would literally bring everything to a grinding halt on your ad account every time you made a change to those aggregate events. Now that was a problem if you were running a... if you're in a launch and you had your webinar ads up and running, but you haven't yet set up your sales ads. Now you want to go in and set up your sales ads, and you need to create your aggregate event for a sale. You go in, and you do it. And Facebook stops your webinar ads dead in its tracks and holds everything for 72 hours.

That was happening, and that is no longer happening. So that makes us really happy because that means we no longer have to ask our clients to give a sales pages almost a month before the launch so that we can make sure everything is set up. So that webinar ads, or video series ad, or launch ads don't get stopped in the middle of a launch. The third thing that's new. Here is an exciting thing. I like this one. Instagram Reels are now available as a placement type. Have you guys noticed how Facebook is pushing Reels? I just find it incredible how quickly they adjust to what most people want. It's so funny and it leaves me feeling really, really old because I am still a Instagram news feed girl. I'm still a grid girl. I don't even watch Stories.

And it makes me feel really, really old when I... When people started doing Reels, I was like, "This is ridiculous. You're all dancing and pointing at words." But it has taken off, and Facebook is loving it, and they are pushing it out. And apparently, the whole world loves it. And so, I'm very happy that they are now making Reels available as a placement type. So how creative can you get with your Reels ads? I don't know. Have a go, have a play at it. And let me know if you do a Reels ad that works really well. I'd love, love, love to see it. We still recommend and still choose to use, in most cases, automatic placement. Automatic placement is still the best way to go. It lets the algorithm decide where to place your creative, where to place your ad. And it will do the heavy lifting for you to get the best conversions in the best placement.

Especially if you are on a smaller budget, and by smaller budget, I mean less than 10K. So if unless you're... if you're spending 50, 60, 70, $80,000 a month in ads, then start playing around with Instagram Reels, break the placements out. But if you're still on a smaller budget, please stick to automatic placement and let the algorithm decide where to put it. Another new thing that's exciting is you can now update your customer lists without it resetting the learning on your campaigns using those audiences. So let's say you have a campaign running that is retargeting your email list, or you have a campaign... Let's think. You're building your list, right. You're building your email list. So your email list gets more people and more people on it every single day. And you want to keep that list updated maybe weekly because you want to retarget everyone on your email list for your paid challenge, right.

You can now update your list without the algorithms stopping and needing to learn first. So you would just go into that ad set, make the changes you need to make, and it keeps running. It's beautiful. It's very nice. So that's a little bit of a change. So I see how we can see that Facebook is really leaning towards becoming more and more intuitive. Okay. Now let's talk about what is working really well and what are we testing right now. As we look at the conversions becoming trickier and trickier and trickier, what I think we're going to see is ads that keep people on the platform working better and better. And by that, I mean your top-of-funnel ads, like your engagement ads and your video views ads, where people interact with you, where they can have a two-way interaction with you without leaving the platform.

We've heard little whispers of Facebook testing audio rooms. So think Clubhouse on Facebook, right. And you guys know that whenever anybody else does something really well like Clubhouse, it doesn't take Facebook more than five seconds to jump on that bandwagon. So if they are testing Clubhouse, and they might as well be testing podcasts, who knows what they're doing. But the way that they're also pushing video content on Instagram. The pushing of Reels right now. A pushing of anything that keeps people on the platform, I think, we're going to see more and more of that. And I think that the platform is going to work very hard to send people... to have a reduction in sending people off of the platform and to web pages. And I want you to think about that because that impacts your marketing in a way where you now need to think about things like Messenger marketing. That might come back.

I've never been a fan of Messenger marketing. I still am not. But we may end up using Messenger marketing in a different way, in a more native way and in a more... a less marketingy way, and that might make a comeback. I want you to think about lead ads. Lead ads are ads where you collect people's email addresses the same way you would with a conversion ad without sending them off of the platform. And lead ads used to be... we used to say don't use lead ads because what Facebook did was it automatically pulled in the email address that the person has registered with Facebook, which is usually... I mean, if I think about the email I have registered with Facebook is the email I had when I was like 25, almost 41. So I don't even know what email address that is.

I'm definitely not checking that inbox. So we recommended you don't use lead ads, but now they're making it so that you can enter your best email address. So I think lead ads are going to replace a lot of conversion ads. I think they're going to do a lot of work to keep people on the platform for our bigger content pieces. Think podcasts, think blog posts. All the things that usually lives on our website, where we want to send people to. I think Facebook is going to try to keep that stuff there. And I think more and more if you think about what's happening with Reels and how it's competing with YouTube because it's so much video going up. It's just incredible to see how Facebook is constantly molding and changing and changing and changing.

Kind of seems like Facebook, the platform Facebook, has become the granddad. And Instagram is like if you look away for five seconds and you look back to Instagram, it's a whole different platform. That's how I feel. Maybe it is just because I'm getting old. But I feel like they're missing with the Instagram that I love by putting all these Reels in front of me all the time. So think about and how you can natively use Facebook. So as these new things get rolled out, you all know that I am not someone who jumps on every new bandwagon when it comes out. But if you are using ads already. If you are succeeding at ads already, start to just look at your business. Look at the places where there's currently traffic in your business, where it's important for you to collect traffic. So your podcast pages, your blog pages, your webinar registration pages. Whatever your business model is, where you are sending traffic, ask yourself, "How can I keep in mind that Facebook wants everything on their platform and start to incorporate that in what I'm doing right now?"

I'll give you an example. We are running ads to my free five-day video training. It's a free training that teaches you how to get your first list-builder ad up. If you want to have a look at that, you can find it at shineandsucceed.com/getmyadup. What we're doing in that training that is working incredibly well is when we deliver this lead magnet, this is five-day training. So we give them access to our student portal. They go into Kajabi. They get a login in Kajabi, and then they can access their five days training in there. In every day's training, I have linked that training to an Instagram post that is on my Instagram, right. So I put the post up on Instagram. And then in the training, I have one lesson each day. And at the end of the lesson, I have a little bit of a motivation.

I cheer them on. I say, "Go you. You can do this." And there I say, "Okay, now that you've done this hard thing." So let's say the day that they're doing the technical stuff. They're verifying their domain. They're placing their pixel. They're doing all the hard stuff I say to them. "Remember, you can do hard things. Click on this link and come to this post on Instagram where everyone else is declaring that they can do hard things too." And then it takes them to my Instagram account. So now, when I'm using ads, I'm bringing people into my email list. But once they're in my email list and consuming my content, I'm sending them back to Instagram. And once they land on my thank you page, I tell them, "Hit reply to this email and tell me what you're looking forward to most about learning."

So now I'm getting a two-way conversation on my email. And when they answer that question, I then send them a podcast episode so that I'm creating all these little feedback loops between my lead magnet and my Instagram account, my Instagram account and my email list, and my podcast so that we can create more of an integrated environment like a hub, as opposed to just relying on people opening an email or following us on social media. So to summarize, okay. Are you guys okay? Are you still with me? Can you breathe? Can you breathe through this? We are going to get through this okay. This is going to change how we market. But you know what? It's going to make us stronger. It's going to make us better. It's going to challenge our creativity. And I would love for you to just stay in a place where you're asking yourself resourceful questions about this.

Just ask yourself, what can I do today? What is one small thing I can do today to win at ads? What is one small thing I can do today to learn how I'm going to navigate these iOS changes? What is one small thing I can do today to mitigate the risk to ensure that I'm still getting in front of my audience and I'm still making good offers to them? Because at the end of the day, that equation, audience plus offer equals money, is always true. And Facebook and Instagram ads is just one way to build your audience. It's my favorite way. I think it's the easiest way. But there are other ways too. And I think we should just look at how Facebook and Instagram ads work in tandem, in conjunction with, like a network with all the other things. My dear friends, you've got this. You have got this.

Let me know if this episode has been helpful for you. Send me a DM on Instagram or on Facebook or anywhere you find me online. Just poke me and tell me how this has been helpful for you. And also, tell me what your one thing is because I think we need to support each other, and we need to remind each other that this journey of building successful businesses, there's always going to be an iOS. Something's always going to be the next iOS. So let's put a smile on our face, enjoy the journey, have fun and keep learning. All right, I'll see you guys next week. Bye.

If you want to sign up for that free five-day training that's going to help you get your very first list-building ad up, you are welcome to go to shineandsucceed.com/getmyadup. Look over my shoulder as I help you get started and set up your very first list-building ad so that you can start building your lucrative email list, which gets you closer to making some sweet, sweet internet money.

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