[social_warfare]

SHOW NOTES

Feeling exhausted trying to keep up with all of the new changes from iOS 14?

Don’t beat yourself up, you’re not alone.

Team Hirsh has put together an iOS task force dedicated to staying on top of all the latest changes and creating solutions for any challenges that we’ve encountered.

It is absolutely critical that you have the most up to date information and strategies to navigate all of the backend changes.

Otherwise, you’re going to start seeing a HUGE dip in your results.

In this episode, I’m sharing Team Hirsh’s current ad hacks for success with iOS, for features like:

➡️ Aggregated Event Measurement

➡️ Click Attributions

➡️ Value Optimization

Everything we think we know changes by the day, and if you aren’t up to speed you will lose money, without a doubt.

Want To Work With Team Hirsh?

Honestly, we’re more than a marketing team — we’re a tactical partner who will care about your business growth just as much as YOU (maybe even more)! We’re here to play the long game and help you create a powerful impact! APPLY NOW!

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Emily Hirsh:

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the podcast. I am a batch recording a ton of content today, and I think I have ADD. I really do, because whenever I have to do content, maybe it’s like this for you too, but I find myself getting so much more distracted than normal. Sometimes I think I book my calendar full of calls because that keeps me not distracted. But man, when it’s content days I do get in the groove and I can be very productive, but I find myself getting up and going to get a snack, checking my phone, and going outside. It’s really weird. So I’m noticing that today because I had no calls on my calendar and all content and I’m like, what is wrong with me? I keep going to say hi to my kids, I don’t even know.

So anyway, in today’s episode, I am going to dive into some current ad hacks in this new era that I’ve been talking a lot about, which is very relevant to the iOS updates, but just all these changes on Facebook. There’s actually been a lot of tactical changes on Facebook too. So this will be a little bit more techie of an episode, but I like to make sure I cover that on the podcast too because we talk a lot about strategies and bigger picture things, but you also need to know what’s happening in the backend of ads manager itself. So if you’re not running any ads, this will still be an episode that’s good for you to listen to just to be aware of. If there’s verbiage, you don’t understand, don’t worry, Google it, whatever, or it’ll make sense when you actually go to run ads. If you are running ads, this will all make sense. 

This will be a pretty quick episode, but I wanted to cover these things because right now we have an iOS task force on our team and we’re constantly getting updates just to make sure we stay on top of that. So these are coming straight from those updates and are the recent updates, especially once iOS actually rolled out. The way Facebook works is they don’t tell us these updates, they just happen in the backend of accounts. That’s the way Facebook works, they are huge, they’re very difficult. They’re a huge company that they don’t care really about their customers and they care about the money they make, but honestly, advertisers who spend less than a million dollars a month are not a priority to them. They just make these changes and you have to figure it out, which is frustrating, but it is what it is because most of us need to market on Facebook ads and get leads and generate leads, so we’re forced to adapt and pivot with that. So here are these two ad hacks that are a big deal and need to be paid attention to. 

The first one is the aggregated events, that’s what it’s called. My team kept using this language and I’m like, “what is AEM?” Aggregated Events Manager. Basically, with the iOS update, you can only have eight standard events in your account. A standard event is something like purchase, or lead, or complete registration, initiate checkout. Those are the standard events in Facebook. You can also create custom conversions where you name the event. So if you have a funnel where you want to do initiate application, I think that it actually is a standard event. But let’s say you want it to have bought this product or something as a standard or as a custom conversion. 

In the past, you could create as many of those as you wanted. Now, you can only have eight in total. That’s combining your standard events with your custom conversions. For the most part, you should try to use standard events, but an example that I would give you is our application funnel. We have initiate application and then we have booked call. On one of those, we use a custom conversion because I think initiate application is a standard event, and then we use booked a call as our custom conversion because they don’t have that as a standard event. That is a funnel that we run all the time so we’ll always need that event. You don’t want to create custom conversions for just a one month live launch. You really want to try to use standard events and then create custom conversions that are ongoing, you’re gonna always need it in your account, but you can only have eight. 

So that’s number one, but a hack that you need to know about because it’s kind of a big deal is what happened was after the iOS update officially rolled out. In the last couple of weeks, if you go to change your events in the backend, or you change the event on your ad itself and you’re adding a new event, Facebook’s going to pause all of your ads for 72 hours. That’s a huge deal. If you are in a live launch, or in a time-sensitive promotion, or you don’t realize it’s going to happen because then you have to wait three days. They’re just pausing them, I think, to verify the domain, verify the tracking. I don’t know exactly why they’re pausing it, but they are. So when you go to add these events, try to make sure that you have already thought ahead of any ones you’re going to need in the future so you don’t have to do this multiple times, because obviously for most people, we don’t want your ads paused for three days. If you do this and you’re in a live launch, that sucks because live launches are time-sensitive promotions. You only have a certain amount of days, so pausing your ads for three days during something like that is not ideal.

The hack and the advice my team said is one, plan ahead with this. Two, if you got in a situation where you needed to do it, try to avoid having to add an event and use what you can, what’s already created. Then three, think ahead. What our team did was thought ahead in all the accounts on what events we were going to need now, what events we’re going to need in the future so we can try and do this one time. Obviously, something might come up and we might have to do it again, but planning for that plan for that 72-hour pause. We’re not 100% clear if it’s happening across the board. I think it will, if it’s not but plan for that. 

Number one, you need to have your events chosen, you need to have your eight events chosen. You need to have that set up correctly in the backend of your account. If you’re seeing any weird notifications, try to get support, or if you have a team to support you. If you’re in one of our programs, we of course can support you if you’re a client of ours, but there are some confusing things in the backend around this. But also knowing, because again, Facebook did not say, “you guys, just so you know…” That would be really nice of them, but it just happened and we were like, “oh, this is a thing.” So our whole team shared it with each other to make sure we were prepared. So that’s one thing. 

The second thing is the click attribution change. So before iOS updates, you could do what was called 28-day click attribution. That was the standard that we used to do, which basically means if someone sees your ad and then comes into contact with your ad again in the next 28 days, it would go back and be attributed to your ad. This is especially relevant for e-commerce or direct-to-product ads because it’s very often that somebody sees an ad and then buys later on after seeing that initial ad. It’s helpful if you know where that sale is coming from. Now with the updates, and this is not in the last few weeks, this is probably in the last couple months, Facebook changed it to seven-day click attribution and that’s the maximum you can have. So that means if someone sees your ad today and then buys in 10 days, it will not be attributed back to your ad because the maximum they’re going to store that data now is for seven days.

So that, number one, can impact your tracking and you need to know that, but number two, you also have the option for one-day click attribution. So our team decided to test a few things and see now what’s the difference between one-day click attribution and seven-day, and in the case where it’s a live launch or a short funnel or customer journey. So for e-commerce or for live launches where you want a fast result, you want those webinars signups, you want volume, and there’s not a very long customer journey like you would have in a high ticket sales or an evergreen webinar, we have found in some cases that the one-day click attribution actually does better. That’s super interesting because you wouldn’t really expect that, but our theory is Facebook is optimizing for the one-day click attribution. When it’s in those fast responses, fast response campaigns, like a live launch, you’re getting that data back faster and saying, “reward the campaign. I want more of that.” But if it’s a long customer journey, you want the most attribution you can have, which is the seven days. 

So it would be worth it if you have a campaign right now to test and compare against one-day click attribution and seven-day. As with everything with Facebook, there isn’t a blanket answer. Mostly I’m encouraging you to test it because I think sometimes when we’re marketing, we get into a rut where we just do the same thing and we don’t question it. We are always pushing our team to be like, why not just try this new thing? Yeah, it hasn’t worked in the past, so we should try it again to make sure because everything’s changing on Facebook so much and so quickly. So if you’re running ads, I would recommend that you just have a new campaign and test that one-day click attribution to compare the results, because you might see less results than the seven. And you might not, and then you don’t do it, but at least you know. That’s part of the game, right? Especially if you have that shorter customer journey, you’re going straight to a product or you have a live launch, it’s, it’s definitely worth it to test it. 

Then the final ad hack that I want to mention is the option to optimize your ads for value. So this actually used to be something you could do on Facebook, and then they took it away, and now they kind of put it back. Basically what that means is usually you would optimize your ads and you’d say, I’m optimizing for clicks or I’m optimizing for conversions or video views, depending on the goal of your ad. Now you can say I’m optimizing for value, which means I want the most money out of my campaigns. This is a great option for e-commerce or if you are selling it as straight to a digital product like a SLO funnel or straight to a membership site, whatever you have, to have purchase conversions. You have to be getting at least a hundred a week, so it’s definitely for higher volume, but we’ve seen great results on a couple of our accounts that have that higher volume straight to product testing this because you’re telling Facebook to optimize to a higher quality buyer for that value. 

Yes, you want purchases, but you want high-value purchases, you want higher average cart values, and you want to get more out of that. So they’ve brought this back and if you are in a boat where you get a hundred purchases per week triggered on your pixel, that’s enough data for Facebook to know that value, right? The reason it needs to be a hundred is because they just don’t have enough data to optimize you for value. You need to be getting that back to your pixel to know that. So that’s another option to try again if you are going straight to an offer. This would not be good for webinars, for lead magnets, because you’re not going to an offer. So the value connection there is messy with the tracking. I would do it if you’re going straight to a product and test that because you might get either a less cost per purchase, but even more importantly, a higher average cart value if you have upsells or multiple products for people to purchase. 

So those are current ad hacks. A little bit of a techie, nerdy episode for you guys, but I think these things are really, really important to stay on top of. It feels like right now it’s literally changing by the day, so it’s exciting. It’s a lot of work to keep up on all of that. If you don’t have support with it and you don’t have the time to do this and you’re outsourcing your ads, I highly recommend you get some form of support. Whether that’s a course, whether that is an ads manager, an agency, something, because at this point with the updates, with everything happening, I’m not just saying this because we offer these services. I’m saying this because if you’re going to spend money on Facebook ads, go all in and do it right. These things literally are changing by the day, by the week. It’s very hard to keep on top of, and you’re ultimately wasting money if you can’t keep on top of it. So that’s my little rant to you guys. This is my TedTalk. Thanks so much for tuning in today, guys and I hope these are helpful. Let me know if you end up trying any of them, and I will talk to you next week.

Have questions? Text my team at +1 (512) 648-5723!

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