Back in episode number 567 we talked about Facebook ads tracking and how to improve the validity of your data.

Today I’m here to tell you that Facebook ads are dead, unless you do what I’m talking about today.

Facebook ads really aren’t dead, but I want to dive into and piggyback off of episode 567, which talked about the validity of data and how we improve it.

To understand how well your ads are doing you need to do what I call “triangulating the data.” You basically take data from multiple sources: Facebook ads manager, Google analytics, and your email CRM.

There are other tools that you can use, but essentially what I talked about in that episode is taking data from multiple sources, and then comparing each source to try to tell the story—to paint the picture of what’s actually going on with your campaigns.

Today I want to expand on what we talked about in episode 567, and talk about the latest advertising and data collection changes Facebook is making to their platform.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How Facebook is improving lead ads and data accuracy
• An ad strategy that gives you a huge upper hand over your competition
• How to get the most out of Facebook’s lead ad and data collection changes

Links & Resources:

• Episode 567: Facebook Ads Tracking: How to Improve the Validity of Your Data
• 10XPRO
• The Art of Online Business website
• DM me on Instagram
• Visit my YouTube channel
• The Art of Online Business clips on YouTube
• Full episodes of The Art of Online Business Podcast on YouTube
• The Art of Online Business Podcast website
• Check out my Accelerator coaching program

*Disclosure: I only recommend products I use and love and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.

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Other Episodes You’ll Enjoy:

Facebook/IG Ads: Avoid This (Overlooked) Mistake When Running Conversion Ads

Quick Tip: Ads Freak You Out? It’s Time To Geek Out On Data

Using Facebook Ads For Your Membership? (What Would Rick Do)

[00:00:00] Rick:
Hey, my friend, before we get into today’s episode, I want to let you know about the game-changing marketing tool we started using in early 2021 for the backend of our business. We started using 10XPRO.io. I absolutely love it. It allowed us to consolidate tools that we’re using for our online courses, tools that we’re using to create order forms.

[00:00:56]
Tools that we’re using to create landing pages, et cetera, et cetera. It gets super complex and overwhelming really quickly, not to mention super expensive when you add up all those tools. 10XPRO.io solved all of that.

It’s an all-in-one tool. They’ve been around for about 10 years now, and I absolutely love them.

[00:01:17]
It is super simple. You can create your whole website in there, not to mention landing pages, funnels, pre-made marketing campaigns. Your online courses can be housed there. You can create offers. You can do your membership in there, forums. It has a built in affiliate center, and their online support is off the charts.

[00:01:37]
The link to check out 10XPRO.io is Rickmulready.com/10Xpro. You can get a super, super inexpensive trial, like a dollar, and check them out.

If you do decide to go with them, I do get a small commission. So thank you in advance for that. Rickmulready.com/10Xpro.

[00:01:58]
All right, my friend, let’s dive into today’s episode.

[00:02:01]
Welcome back to the podcast. This is episode number 597, almost at 600 episodes here on the show. I can’t even believe it. I feel like we’re just getting started here, honestly. Thank you, as always, for tuning in today. Hope all is going well.

Back on episode number 567 here on the show I talked about Facebook ads tracking and how to improve the validity of your data.

[00:02:30]
Okay. And today I’m here to tell you that Facebook ads are dead, unless you do what I’m talking about here today. So Facebook ads really aren’t dead, of course, but I want to kind of dive into and sort of piggyback off of that episode. I did on 5 67 talking about the validity of data and how do we improve that validity of it.

[00:02:54]
So when you were running conversion ads, right? So this. You choose the conversions objective. and it’s, it’s actually called sales now in, in Facebook’s ads manager. So this is where you were sending people to an external page. They click on your, on your ad. They go to a landing page or a registration page or a sales page or whatever it is, right.

[00:03:17]
In order to. Really get to the bottom of how well your ads are doing. you need to do. What I call triangulating the data and where that comes from is you’re basically taking data from multiple sources, Facebook ads manager, which isn’t very, which isn’t very solid data. you know, another tool, you know, like Google analytics, for example, and then your email CRM.

[00:03:41]
And there’s certainly other tools that you can be using. To do this, but essentially what I talked about in that episode is you’re taking data from multiple sources and then comparing each source to try to tell the story, try to paint the picture of what’s actually going on with your campaigns right now.

[00:04:00]
Another challenge that arises with conversion ads is Facebook’s algorithm is trying to optimize your ads based on the campaign performance. Right. It would use data that it is getting based on. the types of people that are converted, that are converting and using all these data sources and data points, right.

[00:04:24]
To optimize the delivery of your campaigns. And when the data that’s actually being reported in ads manager is, will be nice and call it a little bit suspect, right? The optimization that’s going on behind the scenes, in the delivery algorithm, right. And the AI, well, Would leave a little bit to D to be desired too.

[00:04:48]
Right. And Facebook it’s it’s being said right now that they’re moving to kind of a predictive intelligence modeling where basically all that means is they are going to start using, and they’re already doing this now, by the way, they are using the data, all the data that they have to make predictions like prediction modeling in terms of.

[00:05:15]
Reporting and in terms of possibly optimization. So what that means is just on a very, very high level is the data that you might see in ads manager. It’s not going to be super accurate and be reflective of actual conversions if you will. Because, well, number one, Facebook can’t track all that stuff because of the high, the whole iOS, privacy update, right.

[00:05:45]
Where people opt out of tracking. So we can’t track them. And. So what Facebook is one thing that Facebook is doing is moving to this sort of predictive modeling, meaning taking all the data and saying, well, we know based on the data and that we can model that this campaign here would get this many conversions based on the data that is getting within the campaign, right.

[00:06:10]
Over a certain period of time. Right. And it’s, it’s not a hundred percent accurate, right? Like no reporting right now, online is a hundred. Accurate. So with all this said, right, if you’re not willing to stay in the game while all these changes are taking place in terms of Facebook and Instagram, as well as from these platforms, as you knew them are dead, right.

[00:06:37]
If you’re not willing to stay in the game with all these changes going on, you know, what ads look like today compared to. You know, a year and a half ago, very, very different, obviously so much has changed. Tech so much has changed in the past few months. Right? So if you’re not willing to play the game, if you’re not willing to stay in the game and continue learning and continue testing, then for all intents and purposes, as you knew ads, they are dead.

[00:07:03]
Right. But if you are willing to stay the course and keep learning and keep testing. Not only will that give you a huge upper hand over other people who are pulling out because you are. Willing to try testing, right? And by the way, like the, and we’re not going to get into the, in this episode here, but you should absolutely be diversifying what you are testing, whether it’s TikTok ads, whether it is YouTube ads or Google ads or whatever it might be.

[00:07:36]
Right. If it makes sense for your business, you should absolutely be diversifying. Okay. Now what we’re talking about, obviously here is Facebook and Instagram ads on this app.

[00:07:46]
So again, if you are willing to stay the course and keep learning and keep testing, this is where the fun starts. Right? So for several years now, for many of you listening right now, this is not going to be anything, anything new, but what I will share with you, there are new, say updates and aspects to it, right?

[00:08:06]
So for several years now, Facebook has had lead ads. This is the, this is that confusing campaign objective that when you’re like, okay, I want to run. I want to get, I want to run people to my lead magnet. I want to get them to opt in. So you go into Facebook, you go into set up your campaign and at the objective level, and you know, whether it’s for webinar registration or a lead magnet or whatever it is, there’s an option there for Lee.

[00:08:37]
And then there’s an also there also option also an option there for conversion. Right. So most people gravitated towards leads because they’re because they’re like, well, I want leads. So I’m choosing that objective, which is what Facebook is calling it, which made it very confusing. Right? When it was really conversions that you were looking for, because you had an external landing page that you want to send people to.

[00:09:04]
And again, as I mentioned earlier, the conversions objective now, by the way, Facebook calls it, sales in. which again, I feel like is kind of misleading, right? Of course you can do it for, for purchases and so forth, but not all conversions, not all. you know, when you’re sending people to an external landing page, not all of that is obviously a where you’re selling something.

[00:09:30]
Right. A lot of it can be just like I’m talking about free lead magnet or registration or whatever.

[00:09:36]
Now getting back to lead ads, right? This is where the user experience is such that the ad looks exactly the same as. You know, a conversion-based ad, right? Just you see your ad in the newsfeed or, in Instagram stories or whatever, whatever, it might be a real ad or whatever. So the user experience is such that the ad looks the same.

[00:09:59]
They click on the ad, but instead of taking it to an external landing page, the experience is right within the ad unit. So you’re collecting the information from the end user right there within the ad unit. Now, It can auto-populate. So let’s just say, for example, you’re asking for first name and email address, right.

[00:10:21]
And you get to choose what fields that you ask for. If you are asking, just as an example, if you’re asking for first name and email address, well, you can set it. I believe it’s defaulted to it where it auto-populates the name and the email address that. The end-user has as, as the, as their, Facebook or Instagram email address right now in the past, these tended to be super poor quality, right?

[00:10:55]
People would get great lead costs. Like their cost per lead would be super cheap, but yet the quality of the lead was really poor. Because the email address that was auto-populating was the email address that for so many people were. You know, was the Facebook email address that they were using for their account.

[00:11:17]
Right. And a lot of times it’s just like a throwaway email address. Well, Facebook has made a lot of improvements on this, to this ad unit and to the technology behind it. What I think one thing that Facebook is doing is they’re pulling the email address from somebody’s instant. Account. That’s just a guess.

[00:11:41]
I don’t know that at all, because the quality of the email address is being collected on lead ads has greatly improved. Okay. And so why is this important? Well, the leads now ha there it’s a higher quality lead and it’s first party data. So. What that means is again, the entire user experience is happening within the ad unit.

[00:12:11]
So people aren’t leaving. To complete the action that you want them to take, meaning you want them to opt in for your lead magnet or sign up for your webinar or, you know, purchase a paid challenge or whatever. It might be all that’s happening within the ad within the ad unit itself. So there’s no pixel tracking involved at all.

[00:12:32]
There’s no pixel tracking needs. So, this is where this is why they call it first party data, because it’s all happening within the platform, whether it’s within Facebook or without whether it’s within industry. Right. Third party data is where you would use the pixel. For example, you would send people you’d use the conversions or the sales objective.

[00:12:55]
People would click the ad. They go to your landing page and then do their thing over there. And then, you know, the Facebook pixel would be tracking this, but this is where the whole thing with, with iOS privacy, where people are opting out of tracking, et cetera, et cetera. You’ve heard this a million times now.

[00:13:09]
Right? So this is first party data. Okay. So not only. Has Facebook made a lot of improvements to the lead ad as an ad unit, but also the technology behind it. So you’re getting higher quality leads for a less expensive lead costs. Right? We’ve seen much lower lead costs. And again, the conversion tracking because it’s first party data is much more accurate.

[00:13:42]
That’s pretty cool. Right. And so, and you can also do things like, just like you could do with a conversions based, objective, you can still set up retargeting audiences. So what you can do with this is you can base, you can set up retargeting audiences based on, for example, how people interact with the.

[00:14:02]
The lead ad unit itself. So for example, anybody who opened the form. So if anybody clicked on like the learn more button and it opened up the forum, you can retarget those people. You can also target people who opened up the form, but didn’t opt in, which is the exact same experience. Building a retargeting audience where somebody lands on your opt-in page, but doesn’t opt in.

[00:14:27]
Well, you can do the same thing within the ad within the lead ad unit itself. And again, there’s no pixel tracking needed here. It’s all within Facebook. So it’s that much more, it’s that much more accurate and. You can also target people, retarget people who open the form and opted in and completed it.

[00:14:47]
Right. So now you’re building an audience of those people as well. And also if you’re doing say, like, let’s just say you’re doing like a live webinar or you’re doing an evergreen webinar where you’re not using an evergreen webinar software. Well, you can connect a tool like Zapier, Zapier. To the lead ad unit so that when people register to the webinar within the ad unit, they get registered for your webinar.

[00:15:17]
Whether, again, whether it’s a live webinar or an evergreen webinar and they get a link to the webinar and then it triggers email followups and so forth. Now it will say if you are, if you have a landing page and you’re doing. a live webinar over a few days and you have different times and so forth.

[00:15:33]
And on your landing page, you’ve got choose from whatever time of day works best for you. You can’t do that with the lead on the unit because. You know, it’s the multi-select option. So you would have to send people off to your external landing page to do that. Right. the other thing that you can do with lead ads is you can also do a one time offer, for example.

[00:15:56]
So somebody ops in and then on the quote-unquote thank you page after, again, all this is happening within the ad unit itself, right? You can offer a one-time offer, right? So, Hey, would you also like to get X or whatever it might be right there after they opt into your lead magnet or register for the webinar or whatever it is now, remember you are going to need to connect your email CRM to Facebook so that the leads that you’re gathering, the leads that you’re getting from your campaign go right into your email.

[00:16:31]
CRM. If you don’t do this, they just sit in Facebook and then you’d have to go in and manually export them, which is a terrible user experience. Because when people opt in my friends, they want their stuff, right. We all want immediate gratification. I’m one of those people. Right? And so you can, it’s very simple to do this.

[00:16:47]
You can do this directly by connecting your email CRM right there in Facebook. They have integrations, right there in Facebook, or you can use a tool like Zapier again, to make the connection. And so, we’ve seen great results with the lead ads. And so if you’re looking to test something new, test, something different than what you’ve been running in the past, I would very much encourage you to.

[00:17:16]
To test out lead ads for all the reasons that I’ve just mentioned to you. here today, the, you know, I, as I mentioned before, the they’ve made a lot of improvements to the ad unit themselves. Well, there’s different things that you can do with it now, again, the user experience within the ad unit. It just feels so much better than it used to be.

[00:17:38]
You know, one thing that you can do, for example, if you don’t want to, well, if you do, if you choose the, you know, automatically, fill in the user information, right. There’s a screen there that will ask, the audience, right. Who’s opting in to confirm their name and their email address.

[00:17:58]
And so if I’m opting in for something and it auto-populated a crappy email address, whatever I’m using, I’m like, no, I need to change that because I really want that. And so it gives people the option to do that. They can edit them, right. Edit it right there. You can also turn off the auto fill option and still ask for their first name and their email, for example.

[00:18:18]
They would just have to enter it right there. But again, it’s all happening within the ad unit itself. First-party data, no pixel involved, et cetera, et cetera.

So, here’s your challenge from today’s episode: if you haven’t tested lead ads in a while, or maybe you’ve never tested lead ads, I want to challenge you to give them a try.

[00:18:42]
Especially if you’ve been running conversion ads, give the lead ads a test, then compare the two results from an interaction standpoint and from a lead cost standpoint. I really think that you might be surprised by what you see in terms of the results from lead ads. I’d love to get any kind of feedback that you have.

[00:19:05]
Have you been testing them? Or, if you decide to start to test them, shoot me a DM over on Instagram. I’m @RickMulready, give me an update. I’d love to hear from you.

Also, if you haven’t already, and you want to support the podcast, it’s still very much appreciated if you leave a quick rating and review for the show over on Apple Podcasts. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast, whether you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or whatever platform that you’re listening on, Spotify, etc, so you don’t miss any episodes.

[00:19:36]
Thank you, my friend, for tuning in today. Super appreciate you. Until next time, be well, and I’ll talk to you soon.