How to Succeed with Facebook Advertising after the Apple IOS 14.5 Update    

If you spend any amount of time in online advertising you know this is a hot topic.

Apple has decided to give consumers the choice to opt-out of online tracking so the various platforms that sell advertising don’t have a way to collect data about what each person is interested in.

This means using online advertising could become more like newspaper or radio advertising where everyone who subscribes or tunes in see the same ads. It works but is not as efficient.

Apple says they’re doing it for the consumers’ protection. I’m not sure, but that is another article on another day.

Given the reality we have, how can a business be successful using Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and any paid online advertising?

The Good and Bad.

I talked with a Facebook representative this week and got some good insights.

Facebook can see what everyone does on their device when they are on Facebook.

This means that the number of people reached by your ad, how many interact, how many watch a video, and who they are as well as who clicks on a link.

This matters for tracking as well as for targeting and optimization of delivery.

What Facebook can’t track as well is what happens after a person leaves Facebook.

This means that once the person clicks the link in your ad, Facebook won’t know what they do afterward.

They also won’t be able to pick up people who Opted out of tracking that come to your website, so your retargeting won’t work as well.

What to do.

Given the new reality, some solutions are going to work better than others.

The first thing you need to take care of is getting your domain verified and setting up your conversion events. This has been available for several weeks but many people ignored it, now it’s critical to your success.

The next item to understand is that the secret to success on Facebook is to use it consistently. Stopping and starting Facebook advertising is going to get less and less effective.

As of now, Facebook still has data on everyone so their targeting is as good as ever, but each week their targeting is going to get less accurate. People pick up new hobbies and interests and Facebook isn’t going to know about that as fast.

This means that it’s critical you know who your audience is and stay engaged with it. As you talk to the same people over and over again they get to know you.

That means that looking at your ad results every day and deciding that you had a bad day so you’re going to stop advertising and make big changes is not going to be successful.

Also, it’s going to take longer to test your ads. In the past, in 3 to 5 days you could see how your ads were doing and make decisions. My estimate now is that it’s going to take 14 days to get enough results to know if your ads are working.

This means that you’re going to need a larger testing budget. The amount per day will stay the same, but they will need to run longer.

The key to success with Facebook and online marketing is going to be commitment.

You’re going to get results from every campaign, some will be good others not what you want.

You just need to make changes and then do it again.

This is just like anything else you do, nothing is guaranteed.

For those willing to commit, they are going to see success and for those who dabble in it, they’re going to struggle or give up and say it doesn’t work.

The one thing this is going to do is make Facebook marketing even more complex.

It hasn’t been “easy” to get started for a long time now, and this is another layer of complexity.

If you’d like help with your Facebook marketing or would like to talk to someone about what strategy to use, reach out to me at http://fearless-cattle.flywheelsites.com/workwithus

Stay tuned for more updates both in my blogs and in my podcast.

Have a great day!

Brian

P.S. If you aren’t a subscriber to my podcast check it out at www.gosocialexperts.com/podcast or you can find it on Itunes or Spotify. We talk about topics related to marketing and growing your business.