Stop Searching for the Magical Ad Strategy

So I often hear from advertisers who are stuck. Whether they've booked a one-on-one with me, shared their roadblocks in my private community (make sure you join PHC Elite, by the way), or posted about it on social media. Reddit is a disaster, by the way. It’s a familiar story.

They’ve tried everything and still can’t get good results. Then comes a long list of strategies: Advantage+ Shopping, catalog ads, lookalike audiences, detailed targeting, remarketing. They've created intricate testing strategies to isolate the most clickable ads. Or they've followed various guru strategies that guarantee results.

They sound impressive because they’re complicated. These gurus and their students share amazing results, so we assume it works.

When someone tells me all this, I want to shake them a little and say: Wake up.

The problem is rooted in an industry-wide misunderstanding of what impacts results. Gurus have convinced people that some magical strategy is the secret. It’s not. Most of it is snake oil.

These strategies often ignore the fundamentals. The true sources of performance that have nothing to do with gimmicks packaged in a course. And in many cases, these strategies actually hurt results.

Targeting Strategies

Let’s start with targeting. Most of the strategies you’ve heard are pointless.

Back in the day, we were all chasing the perfect targeting strategy. Different interests, lookalikes, layering, and creating ad sets to test each one. Maybe it was a split test, maybe not.

Some advertisers are still doing this.

But now, you can’t avoid algorithmic targeting. When you optimize for conversions, interests, and behaviors are just suggestions. The same goes for lookalikes. It doesn’t matter if you’re using Advantage+ Audience or not, the algorithm will do what it wants.

So when you create multiple ad sets to isolate targeting strategies, you’re likely reaching the same people. The different results? That’s randomness, not a perfect combination of interests.

Don’t get lost in interests and lookalikes.

Remarketing

This is where a lot of magical strategies live. And yes, they can show amazing results. But they're misleading.

Those numbers are often propped up by view-through conversions. And remarketing today isn’t incremental, scalable, or always necessary. It happens naturally now.

People targeting website visitors, email lists, and Facebook engagers? Meta’s already doing that. You can prove it with audience segments.

I’ve done an entire episode on the pitfalls of a remarketing-centered strategy. Go listen to that February episode.

Testing Strategies

Most testing strategies are counterproductive.

They create the illusion of being productive: separate campaigns for testing, ad sets for each variation, optimizing for link clicks to isolate high CTR (which, by the way, is nonsense).

Then you take the “winners” and move them to your main campaign. It sounds smart, but it’s not.

There's no guarantee your “winning” ad will perform in the main campaign. Especially if your test was small and results were random.

I've seen small-budget advertisers waste their time and money doing this. And I covered this in an episode a few weeks back. Small budgets using big budget strategies.

Any potential lift you get from testing is usually canceled out by fragmentation. Testing isn’t bad, but there is no magical testing strategy that will fix poor results.

Complex Structures

You’ve seen them.

Strategies like: Create a bunch of ad sets at $1/day. Or build 10 ad sets targeting the same audience. Why? I don’t know.

These structures are based in voodoo. Supposedly, they have mystical power over the algorithm. Really, it’s just distrust in Meta and misunderstanding of how the algorithm works.

Focus on What Matters

It’s time to block out the noise. Not just the gurus, but the chaos you're creating for yourself.

Your problem is likely not about magical strategies. It’s your:

• Ad copy

• Creative

• Product

• Offer

• Landing page

No strategy will fix a broken product or ineffective creative.

Bottom of the Glass

Here’s what I want you to take away: Abandon complex strategies.

Most of this stuff doesn’t matter.

If you're stuck, don’t get lost in how you're running ads. That’s not what makes or breaks your results.

Keep it simple.

Check out my blog post on this at jonloomer.com/simple. I also recorded a podcast on it in March. Go back and listen.

You won’t believe this, but most advertisers (not the ones spending thousands per day, but everyone else) can get by with one campaign.

That doesn’t mean you should only run one campaign. But you can. And it might be the best way to learn what’s working.

One campaign. One ad set. Optimized for conversions. A few well-thought-out ads.

If that doesn’t work, guess what? It’s not because you didn’t follow a secret structure. It’s because your ad, offer, or landing page didn’t do its job.

And realizing that? It's freeing.

So refocus. Look at your ads. Look at your product. Look at your landing page.

Ask yourself:

• Why aren’t people converting?

• What can I do differently?

Then try again.

Because most advertisers, when things don’t work, add more complexity. They think the problem is in how they’re running ads.

It’s not. Focus on what matters.