The BEST NEW Facebook Ads Feature Has Arrived!

0:00Meta has finally added a new Facebook Ads feature that I have wanted for years. I'm very excited about this. I think it's going to help so many advertisers. Let me show you what I'm talking about. So, I'm here in an example ad account. I'm in Ads Manager at the campaign level. I'm going to go ahead and click on this plus create button and then select sales. Click continue. Not going to worry about all the other campaign settings and everything like that. I have videos that cover literally everything. I'm going to jump to the ad set level, which is where this new feature is. And then we've got

0:26this customer lifecycle strategy section up here. Now, some of you watching this might be thinking, "Hang on, I've seen that for a while." Meta has actually been testing this in a few ad accounts for a long, long time, for months and months and months. But, they're now properly rolling this out to ad accounts more broadly. So, I think it was a good time to to demonstrate it and tell you guys about it. And this is really exciting. This is something I was

0:47expecting Meta to add a while ago. Google has had their equivalent of this for a long time. And when one of the two major online advertising platforms, Meta and Google, introduces something and it works and advertisers like it, most of the time the other one will copy. And that's exactly what what Meta has done here. Now, this answers or solves, I should say, a problem that a lot of Meta advertisers have had for many, many years. And that's advertisers feeling that their ads are being put in front of their existing customers at far too much or predominantly. They're spending way too much of their budget on it. They're

1:21like, "Would I have got these sales anyway? This feels like it's not a good use of budget. At some point, I've got to advertise to new people." And sort of that that that's the frustration that this is looking um to solve. And if you ever wanted to check to see if that's a problem in your ad account, some advertisers have this as an issue, but they're they're not aware of it, then you can do that by coming into taking a look at your campaigns and then selecting breakdown and then audience segments. You can just search and audience segments pop up. And then you'll be able to see your results

1:48by audience segments. So, we can see for this campaign here, you know, out of the 581 purchases generated in the last 30 days, 310 have come from new audience, 43 from existing customers, and 227 from engaged audience. I wouldn't say this account has a problem at all, but we can see some very interesting like corresponding numbers. The frequency for existing customers is really high. It's kind of what you'd expect. And then we've got corresponding cost per results like coming in a bit cheaper from existing customers. And you can do that by campaign, by ad set, etc. Um if you come in here and you don't have data,

2:18you just see unknown in your audience, that's because you haven't set up you haven't defined your audience types. So your existing customers and your engaged audience um in your advertising settings, you do that by clicking on these three lines all tools. Let's get rid of that. I've got advertising settings over here in the shortcuts. Otherwise, it would be under advertise

2:36and then advertising settings. And then what you need to do, you need to come in here and you can see we've got engaged audience, existing customers, and they are defined. And you click in here and you basically say, "These audiences are my engaged audiences, the people who visited my website, people who are on my email list, people who've engaged with my social profiles, etc." I've got videos on how to set this up and, you know, how to create the custom audiences behind

3:00this should you want to check those out. And then you want to do the same with the existing customers, right? So show these are people that have bought from me, etc. So a little bit of an aside, but you want to actually make sure that this is set up in order to be able to use the the customer life cycle strategy properly. Okay, so let me go back to where I was. And when you do that, you may well see in the data, you're like, "I didn't realize so many of my purchases were coming from existing customers. Like we're only really advertising in the same pond here. Like

3:26we have to expand out reach the people otherwise our business is not going to grow." So if you do that, set that up, come in here, you look at your audience segment breakdown, you see that there's an issue, you now have a solution for it, which is this customer life cycle strategy. So the default here is get conversions from all audiences. And if you leave it as a default, basically this ad set is going to perform as it normally would. Nothing's going to change. We're not using this feature in any way, really. But we can go ahead and change that from get conversions from

3:54all audiences to acquire new customers. Choose this if conversions for people who have never made a purchase generate more value for your business. This may increase your cost per result. Now, those two little points there are true. There are other considerations as well. Like, choose this if you feel like you're only spending money on warm audience, on existing customers would be uh would be another one, right? So, we go ahead and click on acquire new customers. This is why it was important to have those audiences defined. Your existing customers and then potentially re-engaged audiences because this is what we're going to use to tell Meta we want to you to focus on

4:26acquiring new customers, so please don't put ads in front of these people. If we go ahead and and select uh existing customers, you can see that Meta's auto selected these. This again will be based on if you've got information added to your existing customers at the advertising settings in your ad account, but even if you don't actually, sometimes Meta will pull through into this section. And we can go through and we can customize this, right? So, you can say like, "Look, no, actually that's not right. I want to delete that one out." or, you know, that's just an example. I don't want to put that one in

4:52there. So, I should I should go through uh and you can edit this as you see fit. You can also search to add new ones in. So, if you had a a different type of custom audience you're like, "That's not in there. Why am I such and such not in there?" then you can go ahead and and go

5:05and get those uh those added in, right? So, so pretty straightforward to come in and define who your existing customers are. You may need to set up some extra custom audiences in order to do this properly, so you may need to export your customer list from whatever CRM you're using, get that uploaded to your Meta ad

5:19account if you haven't already done so. Oh, and that's actually another quick thing to mention. If you created a custom audience based on people who have triggered the purchase conversion event via your pixel a while ago, the maximum used to be 180 days, so you can only see 180 days into the past and include those people in your custom audience. That has now been changed to 730 days. Um so, you can get a lot more data in there in case you really do want to exclude existing customers. So, you may want to go in and and manually update that. You can see I've got that. This is an example ad

5:45account, so there's a few in there that we've created in the past, right? So, if I go ahead and minimize that, now by default, Meta won't also exclude your engaged audience. So, that exclude when you select acquiring your customers, that exclude people who have bought from you previously, but not people who have interacted with your business, but not yet bought. And Meta makes this

6:02distinction to the three categories. There's new audience, people who have not interacted with you before, there's engaged audience, people who have interacted, but they haven't yet bought, and then there's previous buyers. I think that's a really good way of thinking about it because someone who's been on your email list, or who's watched videos of yours on Instagram, or who follows you on Facebook, like they're not totally new audience, but they're also not customers if they haven't bought. So, being able to have that middle selection, have those people defined is is really valuable. Now, Meta won't automatically exclude those people unless you tell it to. So, I can come in

6:33here and I can start to say, yes, go ahead and exclude my, you know, website visitors 180, and go ahead and exclude my email list, for example. And whatever else you've got to denote people who have engaged with you, but but not yet bought. Now, I typically would not recommend using this option. Fine to be excluding existing customers if you're seeing an issue, if you're seeing that's where tons of your spend is going, and you really want to reach new audience, maybe what you sell is a one-time

7:01purchase, that'll be another example. But your engaged audience being excluded is almost certainly going to really increase your cost per result because think about the dynamic of that, particularly as a lot of these audiences are going to be dynamic as in your website visitors, that updates as more people visit your website, your social engagers, that updates as people engage with you on on Meta, on on Facebook and Instagram primarily. So, do you want to not put ads in front of someone that visited your website yesterday, but didn't buy? Like, no. Of course you want to put ads in front of them. They're

7:29your best prospects. They're interested. They may be doing their research. They may be asking their partner about whatever it is that you offer. Should I buy this? Do you think this is a good option? Et cetera, et cetera. So, I would not recommend excluding this unless you've got a really specific use case where you want to, but excluding these existing customers in order to use this customer life cycle strategy is absolutely something that you're going to want to do. So, I'm going to go ahead and delete those app. I just wanted to mention that's an option. We've got this option here, label your custom audiences as

7:56general customers. You just go through and it's just it's just an organization thing. You can either choose to do it or not, totally up to you. With that in mind, one of the absolute keys to scaling ads is working with the right data. Meta ads especially are driven by AI targeting. Bad data means not only

8:08bad ad decisions, but bad AI targeting. Meta tracking is consistently off by 20 to 30% and as much as 50% plus for long-term sales. This leads to that bad data. That's why I wanted to tell you about Hyros and their new form of attribution called AI swarm data. It fixes this gap and A, allows you to make the correct decisions with your ads. B, sends the right data to Meta. This results in an almost immediate boost to ad ROI via better targeting and better decisions, which is why it's used by major players like Alex Hormozi, Tony Robbins, myself, Four Seasons, Playboy WAP, and thousands of large-scale

8:40e-commerce stores. Here's an example. Hyros helps point out gaps in tracking. If I couldn't see this data, I wouldn't be able to scale as effectively. More importantly, it feeds the ad platform the right data for better targeting, cutting your cost to acquire customers. That's why I'm comfortable recommending Hyros. They literally guarantee increased ad ROI or you don't pay. Their usual result is around a 10 to 15% increase in ad revenue. And if you're an agency, not only does it get your clients better results, Hyros pays up to 40% for lifetime commissions on each client you bring. Even better, they will set it up for you, then help you

9:09optimize ad platform AI targeting with it. Use the link below. The first 15 people to do so will get a 30% discount. So, the obvious question is, should you use this feature at all? Should you change from get conversions from all audiences to acquire new customers? I actually think by default, no. You want to use this if you feel that you've got a problem. And that's why right at the beginning of the video, I showed you how how to look at the audience segment breakdown and how to set up your defineable audiences so that you can check that. I have seen many ad accounts that do have a problem and they need to

9:41to make a change here and we used to come up with alternative ways that I'll quickly cover in a minute that weren't as good. This I much prefer, but don't do it unless you're seeing an issue. And in general, the businesses that are more likely to see a problem with this are going to be established brands within a marketplace, a name that people might know. Doesn't necessarily need to be really big business, might just be a known name within that within that industry within that lane. People who have a lot of existing customers, they have a lot of market share already and naturally when you're spending money on

10:10ads, Meta's going to try and find the cheapest conversions. That's often going to come from existing customers even if a lot of them would have bought anyway and you end up spending money on ad impressions that you think, "This is just not the best use of our budget. We could have spent it better elsewhere, gotten better incremental results." And also those businesses have just been

10:27advertising on the platform a long time. That comes with the package, right? It's an established brand. It's a bigger spender, one who's been advertising a long time. Yeah, those are the businesses that that typically struggle with this. It's also important to note that this isn't going to be 100% accurate. Now, in order for Meta to be able to exclude someone from your advertising, they need to be able to match them in the custom audience. So, let's say you've got a customer list that you've exported from your CRM, uploaded into your Meta ad account. Meta needs to match the people on your list with actual users. Meta's not going to

10:58be 100% accurate, not even close to that, honestly. Might be more like 50% accurate because people might use different email addresses like they're having to match contact information and things like that. So, whilst this might help with that problem, don't think of this as a perfect solution to like, "I need to absolutely guarantee that none of my existing customers see my ads because I've got a new offer, for example, for new customers that doesn't apply to existing customers." Some of them are going to see it as well because this is not 100% accurate. So, you need to be aware of that. It's also likely to worsen the results you see in your ad

11:29account. Some of the cheapest conversions and best return on ad spend you can get is going to come from existing customers. If you get rid of them, then you are likely to see a higher cost per result, a worse return on ad spend. That doesn't mean that it's the wrong decision for your business. You might be making conscious decision to say, "Yeah, I'm okay if my ROAS goes down a little bit if I'm getting new

11:49customers. I'm growing my market share. I'm getting my stuff in front of new people." You might be willing to make that trade, but you need to be aware of it cuz I've seen some businesses turn this on, see their ROAS drop, and be like, "Oh, I'm really disappointed." And then they don't want to continue with it. So, you need to be aware of that before you um get into that. Now, there are some alternatives to this customer lifecycle strategy that I'll get to in a minute. The first I want to let you know about my school community called the Ben Heath Meta Ads Academy. In it, I've got

12:14110 plus exclusive videos not on YouTube, not anywhere else. Exclusive content there. I respond to every single post, question in the community. So, if you ever want me to answer your questions, that's the place to get them answered. I do weekly live Q&A calls where again, you can get direct feedback on your setup, on your ads, etc. To help you get the best Meta ad results possible. If you're interested, there is

12:35a link in the video description. Hopefully, I'll see you on the inside. So, there are some alternatives to this customer lifecycle strategy and it's worth quickly running through those and explaining why those options are different cuz I know that's something that some of you will ask about and and and will come up, right? So, the first

12:49is going to be incremental attribution. So, if I, you know, if I change that back to the default and scroll down, we've got attribution model down here. The default here is standard. We can change this to incremental. How does this differ? Incremental attribution is designed to get your Meta ads to spend in a way that gets you purchases, leads, etc. that you wouldn't otherwise have gotten. Because I think if you advertise on Meta for a while, you'll realize that some of the purchases that Meta's are taking credit for, you may have gotten anyway. Let's say someone's on your email list and they're emailed about a

13:27special new sale that you're running. Now, maybe they were going to buy anyway or likely to buy anyway, and Meta just sort of snuck in some ad impressions to those people because they happen to be on Instagram before they bought or in around that time. And then Meta's like, "Hey, we got a purchase." And you're

13:39like, "Yeah, but that's not incremental. I would have gotten that one anyway." Such and such person buys from your store every month. It's part of their routine. They need more of whatever it is that you sell. Does putting Meta ads in front of those people make sense? Does paying to do that make sense? No, not really. They were going to buy anyway. That's not incremental. So, that's what incremental is designed to do. It's designed to try and work out these are the purchases you would have got anyway. We're not going to count those. We're not going to attribute those to the ad campaign, which will affect your delivery, means

14:07we won't put ads in front of those people going forward. These are the incremental ones, the ones you only got because of as a result of of your advertising. Now, this is a bit softer than using the customer life cycle strategy, where you're only going after new customer acquisition, because Meta can still put ads in front of your

14:23existing customers. There are times where advertising will get existing customers to buy when they would not otherwise have bought. Your previous customers are not walking around in life thinking about your brand 24/7, right? So, those reminders are helpful. Oh, yeah, I forgot about them. Yeah, we will go into that location. We will go and buy. Yeah, I do need some more of that. I really like that when I tried it last time. I'm going to get another one or whatever it happens to be, whatever you sell, right? So, that is an alternative that you may want to experiment with. Again, you need to be aware that if you're using incremental

14:53attribution, your ROAS is likely to come down on what's reported in your ad account. Your cost per result is likely to get worse. So, you know, factor that in. But, that is an alternative option that's that's probably a bit softer. It won't exclude existing customers, though. So, if that's really what you want to do, then you're better off with a customer life cycle strategy. The other option is to scroll down to the audience section and just exclude your existing customers as custom audiences

15:18from your targeting. So, we can come in here. We can click on show more controls. and we can select this option here, which is legal and operational custom audience exclusions. Click into that, and then we can go ahead and say, "No, I don't want to advertise to people who have bought from me previously. Please get rid of my, you know, website purchases from the targeting." Uh we could do the same for, you know, the customer list. Again, there's lots of example custom audiences cuz this is is an example ad account I use for demonstration purposes. And we can say, "I just don't want to advertise to people. Go ahead and get rid of

15:48them." And you might think, "Well, surely this is the same as the customer life cycle option." It doesn't seem to be in practice. Like in theory, yes, but in our testing, I don't like this. This really seems to disrupt delivery. If you take an ad set that's running, and you go ahead and add these in, so often you will see the return ad spend just absolutely tank. Your cost per conversion shoot up. Sometimes it completely affects delivery in the meta will either stop spending altogether, or they'll massively reduce how much they're spending. So, if you've got a $200 a day budget, they're all of a sudden spending $50 a day, and you're

16:17like, "Why?" It's like meta just doesn't seem to handle this exclusion very well. You are much better off, cuz I said, in theory this operates the same way as the customer life cycle option up here, when we select acquire new customers, in my experience you're much better off going for this option, and and allowing meta to do its thing. I think it's because customer life cycle strategy option is sort of built into the delivery mechanism and how bidding is going to operate. Like it's part of

16:44how it's planning what it's going to do. Whereas when you use this option down here, you're kind of like, "I want you to operate this way, oh, but just don't do this bit." Hopefully I've explained that in a way that's comprehensible, but that's that's basically what I think is going on, why there's a difference. Either way, we've tested a whole bunch, and this option up here seems to produce better results than excluding custom audiences um at the targeting stage. Now, if you do decide to use this customer life cycle strategy, please let me know how it goes in the comments. You know, we've done a bunch of testing, we're still in

17:14the information gathering phase about this. I'll would curious to know your experience. Also, Meta is kind of going crazy with new features at the moment, which is very exciting and you want to jump on the new features cuz often they give you first mover advantage if you do. One that I strongly recommend you check out I demonstrate in this video here. It's called Meta One. Whole new subscription options that have big ramifications for us advertisers, but also for businesses that are looking to do things organically on Facebook and Instagram. So, if you haven't already,

17:41make sure you check this out.