# The Facebook Ads Mistake You Can’t Afford to Make

Channel: Ben Heath
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wCZd3RxlCc
Duration: 18 min
Language: English
Words: 4119
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/6wCZd3RxlCc

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[0:00] This video is going to be a bit different from my usual videos because I want to show you an example of a business whose Facebook ads went from performing really well to completely dying. And I'm going to explain what happened, why it happened, and what you can do as a Facebook advertiser to make sure that this doesn't happen to you as well. So, the business I'm going to talk about in this video actually became a client of ours. They joined my mentorship program, and they did so because they were really struggling. They had gone from ad campaigns, Facebook and Instagram ads that were performing really well,

[0:29] consistently able to generate sales at a decent return on ad spend number. And over time, they just watched their results slowly get worse and worse and worse to the point where they were unprofitable and actually quite unprofitable by the time they they uh got involved with us and sort of asked for our help. Now, previously, they'd been spending the majority of their ad spend selling just the one product from their product range. It was one of their bests sellers. It sold well elsewhere and it was a product that was good at

[0:56] acquiring new customers in particular. It was relatively low barrier to entry. They were able to sell that, acquire a lot of customers, add a decent return on ad spend number, build a customer base, all the sorts of things I talk about that can that can really help you over the long run as a as a Facebook and Instagram advertiser and a business that wants to grow a customer base using this ad platform. Now, I can't say the name of this business specifically or even the industry unfortunately. Um, obviously I try and share as much of what we learn based on what we do with clients as possible, but understandably

[1:22] clients want to keep things um, private and an anonymous. I totally get that. Uh, but I can still tell you what happened and and you can take away the valuable lesson for this and apply it to your to your space. So this I can't say the name of the business or the industry, but this business was or it still is a known entity within this industry. So, not one of the biggest players, but a brand that if you regularly buy products within this space or you work within the space, you would have heard about. They had some brand power. And their ads had previously been doing reasonably well. Um, they weren't

[1:56] amazing. They weren't terrible either. They were just sort of average, I would say. Uh, but they were able to sort of punch above their weight to some extent because of this brand power. And just a quick aside to the sort of the real lesson I want to get through in in this video is that having a known name within your space and having that brand power

[2:12] is such a cheat code, such an advantage. And it's one of the reasons why business gets so much easier the longer you do it. Running Facebook and Instagram ads gets so much easier the longer you do it because you start to become an established name, a recognizable entity, and that helps everything uh when it comes to customer acquisition, reactivating customers, all sorts. Just something aside, if you're struggling or looking at competitors thinking, why can they run ads like that and get great results and I really struggle? It may well be that they have brand power if you're much newer and much less um established. So, they're spending most

[2:45] of their money on this one product that was selling well and this is sort of their main focus for customer acquisition. They had some retargeting focus campaigns um alongside those that would then sell other products within their range, high ticket stuff um typically. And this is this is these are the campaigns that had really sort of dropped off over time and and were starting to to well they had gotten to the point where they were very unprofitable. Now you might be thinking, okay, well this is simply an ad fatigue issue, right? They ran the same ads for too long. They became people became bored of them. They needed to produce

[3:12] new ones and that's why results sort of steadily got worse and worse and and dropped off. And it wasn't. They had regularly produced new ads. They knew that that was a potential issue. like they had solved for that problem but still seen this consistent drop off in results and we sort of had to because that was the original thought we'd had right as soon as a business tells us that story is the first thing I think is oh you've got ad fatigue you need new ads that wasn't um the case here they had created new ads and and whilst the new ads hadn't performed as well as the

[3:43] old ones it wasn't like you could directly compare and see results it was like just a general trend line of everything was worse not if you're introducing new ads to overcome advert you would expect some to perform worse, but some to perform on par, some potentially to perform better if you produce enough than the previous ones.

[3:59] That would be what we typically see. Just kind of everything was was down um over time. Now, what we found in really digging into this is that this this one product that was really good at acquiring customers, grabbed a lot of attention, got lots of engagement always when advertised, the reviews for it weren't amazing. So, when you looked at what people said about the actual product, it wasn't just tons of five-star glowing reviews, right? A lot of people would say, "Oh, a bit disappointing." They weren't terrible. They weren't sort of saying, "This doesn't work at all for what it is that is intended." It was just like,

[4:32] "This is okay. There are better alternatives." People are saying, "This thing's fine. There are better alternatives, maybe not great for the price, not as good as I was hoping for." Um, a bit disappointing. And some businesses can get away with that if they're basically a monopoly within their marketplace. no one else sells um the same or a very similar product or service. But that was not the case in for this business. They had direct

[4:53] competitors selling very similar things. And because they had direct competitors selling very similar things that had better reviews, better feedback, that really hurt this business's ability to sell this product to acquire new customers over time. And it's a really good reminder, I think, to all marketers, all Facebook advertisers that your business and your ad campaigns do not operate in a vacuum. It's not like the only source of information for these people will be your ad. They'll neatly click on it, come straight through to your website, purchase, won't question it. Now, some people might do that, of course, but a good chunk of people will look at reviews. is they'll look at

[5:33] other sources of information to try and verify is this thing that I'm thinking of buying any good? Are there better alternatives? I think that's actually something that business owners often struggle with is they think well my my thing is good and that's not really the bar. The bar is is it better than your competitors? Is it better than the similar versions being sold? Because if someone can just go through to look at the reviews and see that such and such has a a rating that's significantly higher than another one for a similar price or they look the same in terms of what people think about them, but one's

[6:04] cheaper, they're going to go with that option. At least a lot of people are. And actually, we've got interesting um data on on Gen Zed, Gen Z are far more likely to do that before making a purchase than previous generations. So things like that becoming more important. It's also impacting tracking because that generation is also far less likely to click on an ad and go through and buy. They're likely to bounce out, go and look at reviews and then like remember the name and search the company and and then go through that way. That's what people will do. Like we take this as an agency very very seriously. So we

[6:32] have someone within our team where it's part of their role to ask for reviews to repeatedly contact clients both in our mentorship program and our done for you services and say you've got great results. Would you mind leaving us a review? Like we work quite hard at that and because of that we've got a 4.6 out of five rating on Trust Pilot which is unheard of for a marketing agency. Like that's way higher than you would uh typically see for a marketing agency. So we know how key this is for our own business. And I think a lot of business owners want reviews. They think their

[7:02] thing is good, but if you actually look at what people are saying about their products services, maybe it's not quite as good as as they would like it to be. And that can be a big deal. We'll get back to the video in a second. Before we do, I just want to quickly let you know about my mentorship program. Now, with my mentorship program, me and my team mentor people daily to help them get the best possible Facebook ad results. We've actually had some amazing results recently from some of our mentees. We'll pop them up on screen right now. In fact, 82% of people that join my

[7:28] mentorship program see a notable improvement in their Facebook ads return on ad spend within just 30 days of joining. And that's a stat that I'm really proud of. There is a link in the video description below. you can click on that, come through to a page on our website and book in a free no obligation call with one of my team members to find out more about it and see if it would be a really good fit for you. Hopefully, we get a chance to work together. So, it became quite clear that the average reviews that this business was receiving for this product that they were really

[7:54] pushing and advertising aggressively and were hurting this business, this business's ability to sell and to scale and sell profitably and were impacting their cost per conversion. Now, interestingly, with this business, um, most of those sort of negative to average reviews were about this one product. The rest of their product range had had significantly better, uh, feedback, which was, which was fantastic. One of the ways to think about this as a framework, I think, for marketers and advertisers is that everyone always wants word of mouth, right? Everyone always wants that effect. They're thinking, I'm going to

[8:26] sell stuff. People are going to love it. They're going to tell friends and family, then I'll sell more. But what's very rarely considered is that that, of course, can work in reverse. And it can work in reverse digitally with reviews and and things like that and people seeing feedback and what people say about the the products and services. It can also work personto person. So, if you've had an experience with a product or service and it's been really poor, well, you are probably actually more likely to tell friends, family, write about it online than if you've had experience with something that's really good or or decently good, let's say,

[8:59] because that negative experience is going to be that much more impactful. And you might have a sense of like wanting to let people know about this company that that offers this thing that's not very good. And you want to like make sure other people don't get don't fall into that same trap and and things along those lines. like we've

[9:13] often had that had that experience. Well, of course, that can have a really big impact on your ability to advertise and the profitability of campaigns over time if you've got negative word of mouth working against you. Cuz if you're thinking about buying someone and you ask someone a a process that we all do a lot of the time, oh, I'm thinking about, you know, buying such and such, you know, this friend, this family member I know will know, they're really into that. They know all about that sort of thing. I'll ask them quickly. Um, and I think that's actually this is going to become more impactful with um, people

[9:46] using AI like chatbt for example where people are going to do more and more as part of their purchasing behavior. They're going to ask like they see an ad on on Meta and they'll say, "Oh, I saw an ad for this product. Is it any good?" The answer that's going to be provided is going to be based on feedback,

[10:01] reviews, and what people say online. Like that's what's going to be in there. So, I think it's going to become even more important. The word of mouth effect is more impactful as well if you're either operating within like quite a small niche or or if you're operating locally. Like think about how quickly a bad restaurant will die. Probably in the town city you live there are restaurants that pop up and then 6 months 12 months later they've disappeared. And I you can probably think of examples where you've thought oh I've seen such and such is new. And then you might ask someone who lives in the same town, city, etc. Oh,

[10:34] you know, there's a new such and such restaurant. I was thinking about giving them a go and they go, "Oh, don't. It's not very good. I wouldn't go in there." And that's just you won't go then most likely, unless you don't um respect the person's opinion or you don't think that their tastes align with yours, you would go, "Oh, okay. Oh, won't bother trying that then." Or even that that works to another degree as well because not only might you have that direct interaction, but I've had it many times where a new restaurant will open and you'll say, "Oh, I'm you know, I saw that place

[10:59] open. I think about going there." And the person I'm talking to will say, not that they've been in it wasn't very good, but someone they know has been in it's not very good. Oh, no. I wouldn't go there. You know, my my friend went last week and he said it wasn't very good. So, not only have they put off all of their friends, but then those people are then putting off their friends or their work colleagues or their family members because they're relaying that story as well. You can see how this can have a huge impact. That sort of negative word of mouth compounding can absolutely work in the opposite way. You

[11:28] go to a restaurant, fantastic food. You want to tell friends and family, "We should go there. It was brilliant. Uh, it was great. I'm going to take the family. I'm going to go again. It's going to become a regular of mine." Um, it it works all the way. So, if your results have dropped off over time and you're sort of scratching your head, you're working hard, you're introducing new ads, don't discount this as a potential issue. And I have spoken to literally thousands of Facebook and Instagram advertisers. I've been a a known entity, a name in this space for coming on for a decade, uh, going

[11:58] creating content, etc. I don't think anyone's ever told me that the reason why their ad campaigns are now struggling when they were performing well, which I've seen hundreds of times, maybe even thousands of times, is because their stuff's not quite as good as they would like it to be, and their reviews aren't quite as good as they'd like. Like, no one ever says that. Every business owner, every marketer assumes that their thing is brilliant and it's that might not be the case. Let's go back to the restaurant example. For a restaurant, a new restaurant, let's say, to succeed, does their food need to be good or does it need to be better than

[12:35] the alternatives that sell the same type of food. So, let's say you've opened a new Thai restaurant. Well, if you really want to succeed in that city or town, it probably has to be better than the other Thai restaurants in that space. Otherwise, they're just going to go there or it's cheaper or there's some other differentiating factor. It could still be good, but if yours is a seven out of 10 and there's a nine out of 10 down the road that sells the same type of food, you're in trouble. And the same applies across the board, all different industries, like that same logic applies, right? It doesn't need to be

[12:59] bad. It's a case of does the competition provide something um that people are better. So, a lot of businesses are obsessed with customer acquisition, not customer satisfaction. They are very much connected and interlin. And I think marketers need to be more appreciative of that. Um Seth Goden is someone I'm a big fan of as a marketer and he has absolutely you you consume his material the books he's written over time and you can see there's this shift over time where he talks less and less about like marketing traditional marketing tactics and more and more about the quality of the product and the deliverable being part of marketing because that's what

[13:34] then will allow um future customer acquisition, customer retention and the things that actually make a business valuable and successful over the long run. So, I'm going to give you a tactic for fixing this quickly in a second. But first, I want to let you know about Hyros. Hyrosse is the best tracking and attribution software for meta ads. It's a software all the big players in this industry use, including myself. I use it to track results for my own ads as well as all my organic results as well. So, if someone books a call for our done for you services, for example, I can see exactly where that person came from with

[14:01] a lot of accuracy. That allows me to make better decisions for my marketing and my business. Hyro has been able to track that from our ad spend in this campaign, we've generated £96,000, but £58,000 of that was not reported by Meta. So if I was just looking at my data within my meta ad account, I might come to the conclusion that this campaign is doing okay, but in reality,

[14:22] this campaign is doing a lot lot better. Now, this is a relatively extreme example because of the nature of our business. So most of our products, services have recurring billing elements. Meta might be able to see what we make initially from our ad spend on that initial transaction, but not those subsequent payments. That's why it it shows the importance here of being able to accurately see what we actually get from our ad spend in order to be able to make better decisions and optimize correctly. So, if you want to improve the performance of your ad campaigns without having to touch your ads, go ahead and sign up to Hyros. There is a

[14:52] link in the video description. So, let's say that what you offer is good but not the best and your reviews are decent but not exceptional. What do you do in that circumstance? Here's the way I would go about fixing that. I think you can find all the answers to what you should do from your customers. Get their feedback. Ask for feedback. Ask for reviews. Send out surveys. Then take the time to look at them. If someone leaves a really bad review for your product or service, what

[15:18] do they say? What is the issue there? What has caused them to leave the bad review? Ah, this thing took way too long to arrive. Right, you got to sort your delivery out then. um or it was far too complicated. I thought it would be easy. Okay, you need easier instructions on how to sign up for the service or how to

[15:34] install the product or whatever it is. Like a lot of the answers are going to be provided there if you take the time to to work that out. You can also do it in the opposite, right? So, when people do leave really good reviews, what do they say? Can you do more of that? Can you emphasize that even more? Maybe you can't fix a negative thing, but you can make it a non-issue by providing more of the positive thing. I think it's really important for advertisers to fix this if they think this is potentially an issue and you can always improve on your deliverable, right? So don't think this

[16:03] is either a binary, it's good, it's bad. It's like this is a scale and you can always look to improve it and do that before you look to ramp up and spend. So many businesses, they want to grow aggressively. They're impatient. They want to just spend as much as possible. But if you haven't fixed the thing that you're selling first, you haven't made that as good as it can possibly be. you can end up selling to more people, which creates more negative word of mouth, more bad reviews, and that hurts you over the long run as opposed to the opposite. And you will find that your

[16:29] advertising money spent will go that much further if everyone who buys really likes it or most people who buy really like it, they come back, they buy more, they tell other people. That compounding effect is uh is absolutely massive. So, coming back to this example of what we had to do, basically got to the point where we advised this business, you can't sell this product anymore. Like you can't aggressively advertise this on the front end like you have been. You need to start advertising other products and services that get well in this case products other products that get better reviews and better feedback. And like

[17:01] client was reluctant first and news big. It was a product that got a lot of attention naturally. It's why it sold well on the front end. They did eventually do that. The campaigns along with a bunch of other changes but the campaigns were able to be massively improved and and the business got to the point where it's profitable. And I also think with that sort of situation as well, you've got to think about long-term brand reputation. Do you want to put a mediocre product in someone's hands? Well, they're always going to think of your brand as mediocre then and look to go elsewhere. Maybe might be

[17:26] better in this case, and it was to pay more to acquire a customer, but have them leave with a really positive interaction um because of the compounding effects that we've uh that we've talked about. So, like this is quite a harsh harsh lesson, I know, when it comes to meta ad performance. These things absolutely tie in. And I said this video is going to be a little bit different and everyone always wants the latest ad trick ad hack, but like this stuff can be far more impactful than the latest AI feature um on the ad platform. If you want more harsh lessons that are most likely going to be really helpful for

[17:59] you getting better results, check out this video here. I go through a bunch of stuff that I've learned over many many years of doing this and can be the things if you do them right separate you from the pack and mean that you in 3 5 years time are miles ahead of where you would expect to be. So go ahead and check it

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