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Facebook is cracking down on ads lately, more so in 2019 than ever before.
They look at the messaging in your ads.
They look at the connection to your landing pages.
They consider the promise you’re making to potential customers.
(You might have noticed this if you’ve had more ads disapprovals than normal – or the ever-increasing total account shutdown.)
In this *SPECIAL GUEST EPISODE* ads manager, Jordan, talks all about what you can do when disapprovals + shutdowns happen, plus how to avoid these things altogether – especially if you’re in the “how to make more money” space.
Here’s a few highlights from this episode…
- Jordan’s top lessons learned from an especially tricky account
- What you should do after *multiple* ad disapprovals (+ how to avoid account shutdown)
- Messaging that works, especially if you’re teaching a social platform
Tune into this information-heavy episode for the latest information about Facebook + Instagram marketing, and then head over to Instagram and share your lightbulb moment. Tag @emilyhirsh for a shoutout. (Jordan drops a lot of great, actionable advice, so listen closely for what you can start doing differently right now!)
Key Points:
[2:11] Why you need to talk with more than 1 rep at Facebook
[4:55] “Don’t put a timeframe on your promise!” (+ other vital tips)
[5:48] Facebook looks at your landing page, too.
[8:01] What you need to know if you’re running your own ads
[13:44] This is why you hire an ads team!
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Episode Transcripts:
Emily Hirsh: I’m Emily Hirsh, and this is The Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast. Attention innovators, influencers, creators, and game-changing entrepreneurs: your internet domination begins right here. We are the powerhouse marketers that you’ve been looking for. You’re already making waves in your industry, and we’re here to help amplify those waves of change by creating a connection that cuts through the noise. We take everything you’ve built inside your zone of genius and find its audience. With killer strategy and laser eye for impact, we launch multimillion dollar campaigns and skyrocket your reach online. And now we are doing the unheard of. We’re unveiling everything we’ve learned, taking you behind the scenes with the Hirsh Marketing team, and giving away the secrets to our clients’ success. Stay tuned for top converting strategy, ROI reports, and insider knowledge that you won’t find anywhere else. You’re changing the world, and we’re the team to help.
All right. In today’s episode, I have one of our amazing ads managers, Jordan, on our team here, to talk all about ad disapprovals and account shut downs. So in the last, I’d say, three months, Facebook has really … Well, really in the last like, 12 months, Facebook’s really cracked out, but the last three months has been particularly bad. And Jordan specifically has dealt with an account that was like, impossible to get any ads live. We’ve gone through, I don’t know, you could tell us, but probably four accounts, and it was almost as if this person’s face was flagged by Facebook, and we couldn’t get any ads approved. So because of that, Jordan spent a ton of time learning and talking to reps and figuring out the tricks and the tips in how to get them approved, and so I wanted to bring him on the podcast to share that information with you guys. So thanks, Jordan, for taking some time out of your day for this.
Jordan: No, thank you. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Emily Hirsh: Awesome. So let’s just start with like … We were just briefly talking before we started recording, just about some top things we learned from all of this, and so let’s just start there. Like, the top things you learned from the last three months dealing with those few accounts that we had to really spend a lot of hours trying to get things approved.
Jordan: Well, the first thing I would say is not to panic, because that’s like the first, my first instinct was to panic, and I didn’t know what to do when our ad account got disapproved. Not just the ad, but the actual account. So the first thing I would say is just don’t panic. Just immediately start talking to Facebook reps, and don’t just talk to one Facebook rep, because usually the information they give you is useless. They each give you a little bit of information, and I’ve noticed that every time I started a new chat with a different rep, they gave me a different piece of information. So collectively, when I talked to multiple reps, I got a lot of information, but I only got bits and pieces of information from each rep.
Emily Hirsh: Yeah. And so I don’t know the exact URL, but if you Google like, “Facebook live chat support,” you can find … And not a lot of people know this, but you can actually talk with a live person during business hours through Facebook Messenger chat, and they’ll call you, and it’s like, actually pretty good. I mean, it’s annoying that you have to go through multiple reps to get answers, but it’s at least a live person versus, I think when you just … Like the first instinct, they want you to do is just like, appeal it and then wait for their response, which that doesn’t really work that well. Right?
Jordan: No, because that’s more of a bot that usually looks over your stuff, and it’s the same bot that disapproved your ad in the first place and disapproved your account in the first place, so I would not recommend… Even when you check “manual review,” I wouldn’t even recommend that, because half of the time it’s not a manual review, it’s a bot.
Emily Hirsh: Right, and it’s very slow, and you can wait days. That’s what we’ve always kind of found for the last year. So going the route of going to talk to a Facebook rep is the way to go. I honestly don’t remember the URL, but seriously, if you Google, “Facebook live chat support,” it’s like the first thing that comes up, and it’s actually pretty good service in the way that they’re fast during business hours, so that’s good. And so Jordan is saying you have to probably talk to multiple reps in order to get an answer, which is really good information as well.
So, yes, don’t panic. I mean, just hear, hearing … Like, we want you guys to know, too, it’s actually happening a lot, so be prepared that this might happen to you, especially if you’re in the space of promoting how to make more money and how to grow a business. Like, they’re really cracking down on that. The interesting thing I’ve always found is they’re never fair. Like, one account can get away with crazy language, and then the other one gets shut down with barely anything, and it’s just like, that’s the way it is. You kind of have to push your boundaries a little bit, but then also have back-up, at least has been my insight over the last however many months that this has been really a problem.
So account gets shut down, you go talk to a rep, and then what’s your process from there? What usually happens?
Jordan: I kind of dissect the problem. So after getting that feedback from the rep, I will go ahead and make those corrections. So for example, most of the time, 99% of the time, it’s your messaging. That’s usually the problem. You’re either promising something, whether that’s an income claim or a result claim. So if you’re an Instagram guru, promising 50,000 followers within X amount of time – you can’t do that. You can’t promise that they’re going to get a certain amount of followers. You can say, “How I’ve generated 50,000 followers,” but you can’t say, “How I’ve generated 50,000 followers in a month,” or “in a year.” You can’t put that timeframe on it. You can brag about your own results, but you can’t promise somebody else that they can replicate those results.
Emily Hirsh: Right. Okay, that’s great. And then they’ve been looking at landing pages a lot, too, so let’s talk about that. Like sometimes the ads are great and the ads get approved, but then they end up getting shut down because Facebook actually is looking at where you’re sending the ads and doing a scan of that.
Jordan: Yeah, exactly. Facebook will … First, they’ll approve the ad, and then they’ll do a further investigation into your landing pages and your sales pages. And if the language doesn’t match up with your ad or isn’t congruent with Facebook’s policies, they will disable your account, they will deactivate your ad, and they won’t tell you why they deactivated your ad, so if you keep trying to run ads to that landing page, then they’ll shut down your whole account, which is kind of unfair, because they don’t tell you what the problem is.
So what I would do is, if your ads get disapproved once or a second time, then communicate with a Facebook rep, screenshot your landing pages, ask them if you’re compliant. They’ll send that landing page to their policy team, and then they’ll get back to you within two to three business days.
Emily Hirsh: On exactly what you might need to change.
Jordan: Yeah.
Emily Hirsh: Yeah. So I think that’s another important thing to note is like, once you start to get disapprovals, you don’t want to keep getting them, because then that’s when your whole account gets flagged by their algorithm and their bots. So if you start to get ads disapproved, don’t keep on trying, and sometimes the actual link is flagged. We’ve had cases where we had to actually change the URL, because there was just like no chance we were ever going to get that URL approved again. So when you get disapproved ads, don’t go create like 40 or 50 ads in your account, because then if all those get disapproved, it’s a high chance that your entire account is going to get shutdown. So go talk to a rep and actually do the due diligence of like, “I just want to make sure I’m compliant, and what do I need to change, if anything,” and they’ll tell you. Then you also have that proof in the future, if it gets shut down, that you went and you talked to a rep, and they ran it by their policy team, and it was approved.
Obviously, everybody doesn’t need to do this, but especially if you’re in a space where a lot of stuff’s getting [dis]approved or you’re in a “how to make more money” type of industry, you might have to spend some more time on this. So what are like, some things that you would tell me if I was running my ads, and how to try to avoid getting my ads disapproved or my account shut down?
Jordan: What I’ve been doing … In the last like, two months, we’ve seen three of the clients that I manage get disapproved, so what I’ve been doing is I’ve been, before I release an ad, I’ll send the copy to Facebook ad support so I can get that approval from them, straight from the source, so that if the ad manually gets disapproved or automatically gets pinged, I can go back and say, “Hey, look, I thought this was compliant. I even went to you, and you agreed that it was compliant, so can we get this reversed, and can we get this account activated again?” So that’s something I would do, and I would definitely screenshot the chat, because you never know what could happen, any funny business. I’d definitely keep track of all of that.
Emily Hirsh: Yeah. For sure. Yeah, and so especially, again, if you’re in the like, “how to make X amount of money” type of claims and in the business consulting space, this is just getting especially … And also like network marketing and all of those, they’re really cracking down on them. Is there anything on the landing page that we have to have like, any disclaimers or things that they look for there?
Jordan: Yes, absolutely. At the bottom of your landing page, you should definitely have a disclaimer saying that you’re not associated with Facebook or Instagram, or with the company in general, and on that note, you can’t mention Facebook or Instagram in your ads or landing pages, because the company doesn’t want any association with any product you are selling.
Emily Hirsh: Yeah. I mean, if you have a Facebook or an Instagram course, this is some of the accounts Jordan’s managed that we have the most issues with. So how do we get around that so that it still obviously made sense in the marketing?
Jordan: It’s all about your language. You can use “IG,” like grow your IG following, or “the gram.” That’s what we’ve been doing.
Emily Hirsh: Yeah.
Jordan: And another thing is, to get around that, is just your language. So if you want to grow social media, say “social media following,” or … like, for YouTube, it would be “subscribers,” for Facebook, it would be “likes and comments,” on Instagram, it would be “followers.”
Emily Hirsh: Yeah. Okay. That’s super important guys, if you’re listening, because you used to be able to say like, “My Facebook ads course,” or, “My Instagram course,” but now they’re really cracking down on that, and that’s some of the biggest issues we’ve had.
So okay. Basically to summarize this, first of all, to make sure that your ads don’t get disapproved or your account shut down, if you start to get ads disapproved, don’t go crazy and get a bunch disapproved in your account, because you’ll probably get your account shut down. So use those Facebook live reps and talk to them. You might have to talk to multiple, screenshot your conversations, be really thorough, even if it pushes your advertising back a couple of days. That’s better than getting your whole account shut down and having to start over from scratch. So be really thorough.
They really like it when you are like, super nice, and “We just want to follow the rules, and we really appreciate Facebook advertising!” I mean, I know I’ve got [accounts] turned back on by that type of language, of like, “We’re so sorry, and we really appreciate Facebook, and we didn’t know we were doing anything wrong.” You’d never want to go at it like, “This is ridiculous,” and being rude to them, because you will get nowhere, like for sure. So if that starts happening in your account, do that, and then making sure that you’re compliant with your disclaimer and being careful with your language from the get-go. And then is there anything that you’d recommend … Like, I know some of our clients, we have multiple ad accounts for back-up. So what do you recommend somebody does, especially if they’re in a space where it’s like iffy if they’re going to have issues, what do they do to prepare so they don’t lose that pixel data?
Jordan: Definitely have back-up accounts and have that pixel installed, have multiple pixels installed on the same pages, and also have multiple business accounts. I mean, like business pages, fan pages, because a lot of the times, it’s the business page that gets banned.
Emily Hirsh: Yeah. That was one of our cases was we had to make it … which is really unfortunate. I mean, hopefully most of you don’t get to that point, because then you obviously lose your likes, and I think it’s rare to get there, but we did have one account where that was the case, and we couldn’t even run any ads from that business page. But you also want multiple business managers if you can, especially if you’re in a risky spot, because if you get your whole … You can have five ad accounts in a business manager, but if they flag one … like let’s say you haven’t made all five. If one gets shut down, you can’t make any more either, so you need a business manager, make all your ad accounts so you have them, and then you also may need a separate business manager. Is that right?
Jordan: Yes. You’re going to want back-ups of everything, basically. You’re going to want backups of your business manager, because of that exact reason, and you’re going to want backups of your ad accounts, and so that you have multiple pixels with all that data, because if you have multiple pixels on a site, all those pixels are going to collect that data.
Emily Hirsh: Exactly. That’s the biggest thing. If you get your ad account shut down and you were counting on that pixel for so long, and then you lose that data, that’s really the biggest downside of getting accounts shut down. Otherwise, it’s fine to move ads over. I mean, it’s a lot of work, but it’s fine. So losing the pixel data is definitely by far the worst thing, so have that backup pixel ready, and yeah, just have the backup and the backup pixel and the backup accounts, and Facebook’s very smart. I mean, they tag IP addresses, links, faces, as we’ve realized, in ads. Like they are very smart, and so we’ve even had an issue with an IP address getting blocked before by a Facebook account, I think, and so we had to have us make the ad account.
It’s crazy, but that’s why you have an ads team do it for you. I mean, Jordan like, just estimate how many hours … I know we’re not going to say the client’s name, but on this one client’s [account], that we’ve had four accounts shut down and everything, like how many hours do you think you’ve spent trying to get this result?
Jordan: So many. I’ve had to spend a lot of days just going back to Facebook support. I had to keep pinging them. Because even when they tell you that it’s their final decision, you keep wanting to pursue the problem, because again, you get a different ads rep each time, and one just might have been like, having a bad day, so just keep pinging them. Make them want to help you. Like don’t go at them so aggressively. Make them want to help you.
Emily Hirsh: Yeah.
Jordan: Some of them will show empathy, so definitely keep reaching out to them, keep inquiring about this ad account, even if they say it’s the final decision, and you will eventually get it turned around.
Emily Hirsh: Yeah.
Jordan: If you’re willing to comply with what they’ve told you and make changes to your advertising.
Emily Hirsh: Yeah. Yeah. But it’s definitely frustrating, I’m sure. Frustrating for you and our client, but there’s … Some of it’s out of our hands. Obviously we don’t work at Facebook, so it’s out of our hands, but I just know Jordan has worked probably at least, what, 40 hours over the last month on just…
Jordan: I would say so.
Emily Hirsh: … account shut down issues? Which is crazy. So you don’t have to do it yourself. Thank you so much, Jordan, for sharing this information. I think it’s going to become harder and harder. I think this is … You know, Facebook is going to crack down as people see more success on Facebook in the “make money” space, and so it’s just important to stay ahead on this, have backups, and don’t panic because it does happen, and so it’s not like … I mean, we’ve had it happen many times, and there’s always a way around it. There’s always a solution, even to this client who’s had four accounts shut down and their face pinged. Like, we’re still able to get some ads approved slowly but surely, but there’s always a solution. So thank you so much for sharing with everyone today.
Jordan: Of course. Thank you for having me.
Emily Hirsh: Yeah, and if anyone wants support, if you’ve had issues getting your account shut down, obviously we don’t want people coming on with accounts shut down, but we have helped people like that! So go to HelpMyStrategy.com to book in a call and apply to work with Team Hirsh, and I’ll see you guys all next time.
Thanks for listening to The Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast. Go behind the scenes of multimillion dollar ad campaigns and strategies, dive deep into The Hirsh Process, and listen to our most popular episodes over at HirshMarketingUnderground.com. If you loved this episode of the podcast, do me a favor and head over to iTunes to subscribe and leave a review, so we can reach more people and change more lives with this content. That’s all for now, and I’ll catch you next time.