Your Excuses Are Holding Back Your Results
Advertisers love to blame Meta when results tank, pointing to outages, Advantage+ enhancements, and automated settings as proof the platform is out to get them. There's a little truth in every complaint, which is exactly why they spread, but they're also excuses that keep you from finding actual solutions. Jon explains why blaming Meta makes you look like an amateur to clients, how to troubleshoot performance drops by using breakdowns to isolate the real cause, and why the answer is almost always something within your control, usually the ads themselves.
You need to take an excuse-free approach to advertising.
One of my least favorite things in Meta advertising is reading the long list of excuses advertisers have for their bad results. They see a few other advertisers share their struggles and then they decide that EVERYONE is getting bad results right now.
They see a post about Meta’s outages, and then they KNOW the problem isn’t them. It’s those pesky outages that are keeping them from getting good results.
They jump all over the social media conversations about Meta’s enhancements. Advantage+ Creative keeps screwing up their ads. All of these settings keep getting turned on automatically. I can’t target the people I want to reach because Meta keeps reaching whomever they want to reach. It’s all a ploy to take my money!
Look, it’s not that there isn’t a little bit of truth in all of these complaints, which is why they’re popular in the first place. There are seasonal downturns when things are tougher. There are outages, though that doesn’t mean they’re always impacting you. Meta’s automated enhancements aren’t perfect, and Meta can improve them.
While all of these things are true, they’re also all excuses that prevent you from finding solutions.
It baffles me when I’ll read a social media post or comment from someone going on a diatribe about Meta. They go through a long list of all of the reasons you shouldn’t trust them, that they’re a scam, and only trying to take your money.
And in their bio, you see them display it proudly: Meta advertiser. Agency owner. Advertising consultant.
What are you doing?
Again, I’m not going to battle anyone over the various complaints they may have about Meta. But if your trust is so low, why would you run a business that relies on that platform?
Ignore all of the noise about the things that you can’t do anything about. Know about the outages and enhancements and various things that can impact performance. Educate yourself on what is and isn’t an actual risk to your results. Mitigate the risks the best you can where you can.
But otherwise, focus on the things that are actually within your control.
First, know how to troubleshoot and diagnose problems. When your performance tanks, blaming Meta is just bad form. You look like an amateur.
Start with a checklist of the most logical explanations. Use breakdowns to diagnose shifts in delivery and performance by time, demographic, platform, placement, and location. And when you isolate the problem, have a list of things you can try that are proven to solve it.
These aren’t magical fairy dust solutions. These are solutions that are based on how Meta advertising works. It could be campaign and budget consolidation, performance goal, Advantage+ settings, or value rules when you have information that Meta doesn’t.
Don’t forget about other problems within your control related to event tracking, conversions API, your landing page, or your website performance. We love to think something Meta did changed everything, but it’s typically something on our end that we haven’t thought about.
But most often, the solution is actually quite simple.
It’s the ads.
One of the most common excuses I hear from advertisers is that “this ad has worked for months and then it just stopped working.” Okay.
If you’ve proven that nothing dramatic changed in your breakdowns, it’s entirely possible the ad just isn’t that effective anymore. Stop trying to force your favorite ad to work.
Create better ads, which is something that is always possible. No ad is perfect, and there’s always room for improvement.
Most advertisers aren’t actually sales copy experts, so we take for granted what a difference the ads can make. Consider the psychology of the words you use, the pain points, the solutions, and imagery you focus on.
It’s not that your current ads are bad, but it’s time to take a fresh approach. Create new ads that look and feel different and inspire the action that you want.
So here’s the bottom of the glass.
It’s human nature to point the finger at Meta and the things you can’t control when you’re not getting the results you want. It’s not that things like outages and Meta’s own optimizations aren’t part of the problem, but it’s a freaking waste of time worrying about these things.
Even when there are outages, you aren’t necessarily impacted by them. You look like a beginner when you focus on these things rather than obsessing over troubleshooting and solutions.
Know what to look for so that you can isolate the specific cause of your problem quickly. And be ready with solutions that are proven to be successful based on how things work.
An excuse-free approach is the grownup way to deal with the inevitable drop in performance that we will all deal with.