I Found a BETTER Way to Advertise on Facebook in 2026

0:00What if I told you there was a better way to run Facebook ads? A strategy that I haven't really talked about before that is very different from what we used to do and is producing the best results right now. And if you've been running ads for a while, by the way, I fully expect this to blow your mind. This video is sponsored by HubSpot. More about them later. So, what I'm going to start by doing is quickly bit give a bit of context around what we used to do cuz that will help you understand why what I'm about to recommend is now the best approach. Right? If we rewind a few

0:26years, the way we used to run Facebook and Instagram ads was typically with like a three-step salesfunnel approach. So, we might create a traffic campaign or an awareness campaign in the first instance. And this would be our topfunnel campaign. So, I'm just going to go and head and label this um so that we can follow along. That's our topunnel campaign. That's going to include ads that are maybe making people problem aware. So, explaining what the problem is that our product or service solves in the first place. Sort of introducing them to our company, to our products and services. starting to make them solution aware. And then we would create a second

0:58campaign, which would be our middle of funnel campaign, could be a leads campaign, could be a sales campaign, could even be an engagement campaign depending on um your uh type of business and what is you're looking to sell. I'm going to go with a sales campaign. That was probably the more recent version of this was typically a sales campaign. And this would be our middle ofunnel campaign. And in our middle of funnel campaign, we'd be focused more on our products and services, more on how it works so people could understand uh might be looking to get some leads and conversions from this. These ads in the

1:25middle of funnel campaign would be put in front of people who had already engaged with the top ofunnel campaign so they're warmed up a little bit. And then we would go with a third campaign option which again would normally be leads or sales depending on your business. And this would be our bottom offunnel uh campaign type. And this would very much be going in for the kill. This would be conversion focused, CTA heavy, uh might include reviews, customer testimonials, things like that to try and get people over the line. And people go through, they start the top of funnel, then the middle of funnel, then the bottom of

1:54funnel. And the logic was that we needed to warm people up to get them to the point where they were ready to buy from us or become a lead. And this was the standard way of doing things for for many years. But then as Meta's ad platform became more sophisticated and was able to correctly identify the people for us that were most likely to convert, a lot of advertisers ended up doing away with their topfunnel campaign and in many cases doing away with their middle ofunnel campaign. And what they were often left with was a one-step salesunnel that was a combination of middle middle ofunnel and bottom

2:29offunnel content. So stuff that's basically just about our product and service, maybe include some testimonials, call to action heavy. And Meta was able to go, actually, we can work out who's just about to buy one of these things, who's just about to inquire into for a service along those lines. Let's put ads in front of those people. And often this is going to be open targeting, maybe just the one adset, maybe a couple of different adsets, one for cold audience, one for warm audiences. But that was kind of the the simplified salesunnel structure. And we did this cuz it improved results. But the problem that a lot of advertisers

2:59saw was that Meta would find those people that are just about ready to buy or just about ready to inquire. They would put ads in front of them first and therefore advertisers would run a new campaign and they'd get great results for a couple of weeks. And then once you run out of those people because there's not many of those people, results would really drop off because you didn't have that more broader awareness action occurring that then creates more of the people that are sort of moving down the sales funnel as it were. closer to that conversion action. And the logic the the the human behavior element didn't

3:33change. Like there is absolutely still logic too. You start by warming people up uh explaining the problem, explaining the solution, then you show them the next stuff and then you go for the conversion. Like that logic still applies. It's just that as the platform changed, we moved more towards this structure because it improved results. Like I said, sometimes on a more short-term basis, we missed out um on the long term. And that's sort of where we've got to today or until fairly recently. But now we can change things up. I'm going to run through that in a second. Have you noticed that funnels aren't working anymore? 60% of Google

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4:58spending hours or even days researching, you can use their 100 AI prompts to get answers fast. Check the link in the description below and thanks to HubSpot for sponsoring today's video. Now, I'm very pleased to let you know that as Facebook and Instagram advertisers, we can now benefit from the best of both worlds. So we can benefit from that multi- salesfunnel approach but also consolidate it into one campaign which I know sounds a little bit crazy. How on earth do you go about doing that? I will demonstrate. So let's re label this as allfunnel campaign right. Okay. So here's now from a like a strategy and

5:32structure standpoint what's being recommended and what we're seeing is producing the best results. So you have let's say you're selling let's say selling products. This can apply to services as well. Let's say you're an e-commerce business selling products right? You've got the the one sales campaign, the allfunnel campaign. Then within this campaign, we're going to have just the one ad set, which you might be thinking, how on earth are you going to have a multi-step salesunnel

5:52with one campaign and one one adset? Like I said, I will explain. Now, this adset is going to target a combination of warm and cold audiences. I'm going to explain more about that later and the mechanism behind that um as we go through. And then within that ad set, we are going to have lots of different ads because Meta is now smart enough to be able to take multiple different ads within one ad set and use it in a salesfunnel approach. So work out that okay, yeah, these ads are a bit more top of funnely, these ads are a bit more middle of funnely, these ads are a bit

6:24more bottom of funnel. and they can put the top of funnel ads in front of people first and then maybe a middle of funnel, maybe a bottom funnel, maybe they use a two-step process as opposed to three. Meta has complete flexibility um around this. And not only is Meta able to do that, you might be thinking, well, what's the point of letting Meta do it versus we could just manually break these campaigns out and go back to how we used to do things ourselves? Like, what's the advantage? Meta can personalize this to the individual. So, some people might just be ready to buy, in which case, don't bother putting the

6:53top funnel ad or middle of funnel ad in front of them. just go straight with a bottom funnel ad. That's a more efficient way to spend your budget, quicker to get the conversion, better return on ad spend. But other people are going to need that warming up. Meta can work that out, right? Okay, this

7:06person's going to need more warming up. Let's put a topunnel ad in front of them, then a middle of funnel maybe, or maybe just do a bottom funnel. But they can use ads in an ordered approach. This is only possible because of Meta's very sophisticated delivery system. And you actually may have seen this happening within your ad account already without realizing it. So if you've ever had a scenario where you're running say a sales campaign and you can see that there are multiple ads within your adset, some ads aren't getting a very good cost per result or a very good return on ad spend depending on which

7:38you're you're optimizing for most. But Meta is continuing to spend money on it. You think, what is going on there? Why is Meta putting money into this ad when it's just got a not a very good return on ad spend? It's because Meta is using that as a topfunnel ad. They're using that one for awareness. Even within a sales campaign or a leads campaign,

7:56they're using that one for awareness. And then they are retargeting with other ads. So you see the one ad getting lots of ad spend, not very good results. Other ads getting less ad spend but great return on ad spend. It's because those ones are being used as retargeting. That's what Meta is doing. Now, many advertisers have had the experience where they go and turn off the ad that's performing looks like it's performing poorly. It's got a bad return on ad spend and then all of a sudden all their other ads start performing far worse as well. Well, that's why because you've basically eliminated your top offunnel ad. This is all happening

8:29within one adset and therefore you're asking those more bottom offunnel style ads to do all the heavy lifting. Their cost per conversion goes through the roof. Their their rowass drops off. That's what's happening in your ad account. So, if you've seen that happen, you've already seen Meta applying this approach of a multi-step salesunnel within one adset. Now, one of the big recommendations that Meta has been making to advertisers recently is around creative diversity, is around having lots of different types of ads in an adset all together, all live at the same time. And and I've seen how hard Meta is pushing this. I speak to Meta all the

9:04time. I have contacts. I'm part of the better megaphone partner program and they're really keen on this and the reason why they are really keen on this is because of exactly what I've just described. If you basically just have variations of the same style ad, meta can't use a multi- salesfunnel approach within the one adset within your sales campaigns or within your leads campaigns. But if you have that creative diversity, if you have different formats, if you have different styles, some are UGC based, some are more top of funnel, some are more bottom funnel, more uh customer testimonial and and CTA based. Well, Meta has the flexibility to

9:35do that. Meta might choose not to, by the way, and like I said, they can personalize that between different people. Some may need it, some may not. That's the way to spend your your budget most efficiently. But if you have different ads and and the way to think about it when it comes to the creative diversity is to think about it as

9:50hitting different stages of awareness. So, you may well be familiar already, but within marketing, there's like an awareness ladder, right? So, you have people that are uh at different stages. So some people might not even be aware there's a problem in the first place, right? So you can make them problem aware. You see ads for that all the time. Did you know that such and such is bad for your health as an example,

10:10right? And you've got solution aware. People know there's a problem, but they don't know there's a solution. Did you know that you can fix that problem that you've got with this solution? Then you've got people going down who are more product aware. So they know there's a solution, but you want to make them aware that your specific product is a good option for the solution. And and and you can go on and on. the basic principles apply uh between the different stages. So think about creating ads of like right do I need to make some ads people that don't even know that there's a problem that my

10:37product or service solves. Then I kind of create ads that are aware of the problem I can tell them that what the solution is. Then I can create ads people aware of the solution that tell them that my product is the right way to go. You can think about the different awareness um stages as a good way to create lots of different ads that have creative diversity to allow matter to do its thing in this instance. Now, this new strategy, this new structure brings up the interesting question of how do you actually optimize a campaign like this. I'm going to run through that in a second, but first I want to quickly let

11:05you 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 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

11:35call 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, how do you actually optimize a campaign like this with this structure and with this dynamic of some ads being used more top of funnel, other ads being used in a more bottom of funnel um setup? Because the traditional way of optimizing a meta ad campaign would be to look at the ads that have got the worst cost per

11:59conversion or worse return on ad spend. Turn those ones off, then create new ads, introduce those into the adset to run along the previous best performers, and see if you can further improve performance. But if that's being done as sales on a structure, you don't want to do that. We've actually got some advice from Meta around how we should do that now. You should turn off the ads that Meta is not spending budget on. So let's

12:20say you add in six ads into an adset. Most likely Meta is going to spend the majority of the budget, not during the first few days when they're experimenting, but once the campaign's had a bit of time to to learn, most of that budget is going to be spent on one, two, three ads at most typically. So, what you want to do is the ones that Meta's just simply not spending money on. Turn those off. Those are your new underperformers. Meta's basically gone, "Nah, we can do better with these other ones." Then create new ads. Introduce those into the same adset and run those alongside the ones Meta is spending

12:51money on to see if you can further improve performance. And then use where Meta spends its money as your guide as to what's working best, not just a return ad spend number. So, for example, if you had one ad that Meta was consistently spending on, but the return on ad spend didn't look very good, and you introduced a new one that was kind of similar, and Meta switches budget from that one, the previous one to the new one, but again, the rowass isn't very good. Well, that's a sign to me that that previous ad was your being used as your topfunnel ad. Meta has decided the other one's better, and

13:20they'll use all sorts of metrics to work that out, like engagement and things like that. That one's better. Therefore, they've switched budget over to the new one. And you can safely say that the old one's not as good a performer. you can turn that off, create new ones and introduce. And you can go through that process, right? And and just keep in mind if you're turning off ads that are, you know, at different stages of the salesunnel, basically within the one ad set, you want to make sure that you are replacing with ads that also hit those different stages of the sales funnel or different awareness stages like we

13:45talked about previously. So I mentioned earlier that you don't want to create multiple ad set. It's typically in this sort of campaign structure in this strategy that's recommended. And one of the the push backs that I have on that when I've mentioned that to some people is they say well surely you need to

14:00separate out cold and warm audiences. And the thing is meta is going to target a mixture of cold and warm audiences in your adsets basically no matter what unless you really restrict the campaign. You use sort of old school targeting methods. So if we jump back into our campaign here uh go to the adset level which we've got right now. If we come in here and we're adding in targeting options into this adset. So underneath the audience section, we've got controls which are hard constraints, hard boundaries when it comes to our targeting. Meta won't go beyond those limits when it comes to targeting, but they that only covers certain things,

14:34mostly being things like locations. And then we've got the suggestion audience section, right? And in this suggestion audience section here is where we add our custom audiences, our warm audiences, but those are suggestions, right? Look, custom audience inclusions. I can click in here and go ahead and I'll this is an example ad account, so there'll be some in here. Uh something like website visitors, for example, be in here at a thought. Yeah, all website visitors 180. I've got examples set up

14:57like I said for demonstration purposes. So, this adset is not just targeting these website visitors. It's targeting those people, but also whoever else it wants. Just like if we didn't include that custom audience, Meta would target whoever it wants, including people who visited our website. So, anything added in this suggestion audience section, which is the vast majority of the targeting, is a suggestion to Meta. and meta is going to choose whether or not to target it based on the specific things you've included or to go outside based on whether or not it thinks you can get you great performance. The only way to fix it in terms of I just want to

15:32target these people, no one else is to click on this further limit the reach of your ads. You can see matters trying to persuade us from doing that and then go through the process. I've got videos on targeting if you want to check that out. But I typically would not recommend doing this. So what that means is that

15:46let's say we had three different adsets. one targeting a lookalike audience, one targeting a warm audience, and one targeting interest audience. Meta is going to put your ads in front of the same people in those three scenarios for the most part. And we can see this because we can look at the data and I've done a video on this previously where you want to define audience segments in advertising settings. Uh let me just quickly show you right. So if you go into advertising settings in here and then what you want to do is select here audience segments and then you can define this is an example ad account so

16:12I don't have it set up. You can define your engaged audience, your existing customers, and then everyone else is obviously by default a new audience. So here is where you'd want to add in different custom audiences. So you might say, look, anyone who's visited my website, for example, if I can type um that's an engaged audience. Whereas existing customers, well that's going to be, you can see meta's defaulted to website purchase um custom audiences um

16:37as an example, people on our email list. I've got lots of example custom audiences in here, custom audiences in here for demonstration purposes. So, okay, great. So, we've defined those two audiences and then when we go back into our ad account, uh let's go into ads manager. Sorry, let's go back into ads manager. Once we define those audiences and then we look at the breakdown by audience segment, click on campaigns here. Uh and then we click on breakdown here and you can do

17:02by audience segments. Um now, obviously this isn't going to show you select that. This is going to show the data in this ad account because it's an example ad account. But what you will be able to see is the split between how much is spent on engaged audience, how much is spent on existing customers, how much is spent on new audiences. Now, if you run this experiment where you have one adset that's set up to target warm audiences, but in that suggested audience option, and one adset where it's set up to target cold audiences, but again, it's within that suggested an audience part, suggest an audience part

17:33within the adset level. This part here down here, where are we? In this suggestion audience, you will see that the the percentage split on budget spent between engaged existing and new audience is basically the same across those two adsets. So what does that mean? Basically means meta is not really taking this into consideration all that much and not differentiating much uh particularly once campaign's been up and running and had some time to to optimize. So what does that mean? That means we don't want to therefore spread our budget across multiple adsets. We want to consolidate. We want as much money and as many conversions going through the one adset as possible

18:08because that helps Meta learn and optimize and get us better results. So, it's a bit of a long-winded way of explaining and I've shown you how you can run this experiment or just go in and look at your own data assuming you've got these audience segments um set up. Look at your own data and and you will see this happening and that is why this is the new recommended strategy, the new recommended structure which I know for people who've been advertising a while it will blow your mind. Very interesting development. It's a good thing for us advertisers because like I said, it gets it allows us to

18:36benefit from the best of both worlds. So, in this video, we've been talking quite a bit about creative diversity and having different types of ads within an adset and how important this is. But there is one type of ad, one style of ad, you can create them for different awareness stages, but one style of ad that is consistently producing the best results when it comes to Facebook and Instagram ads. And I go through that in detail in this video here. There's direct information from Meta that shows a significant percentage increase in a return on ad spend when we create ads

19:05with this in mind.