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Are Facebook and Instagram ads dead? This is something that I've been hearing from a few business owners, both in conversations for coaching and from some of our clients or prospective clients for the digital marketing agency. Should we be investing in Facebook and Instagram ads? Are they dead? I heard they're not doing as well anymore Is that really where I should be putting my money or should I be putting more money into TikTok or Pinterest or some of these other platforms?

The reason I think a lot of people are thinking this or maybe hearing something about this is about a year ago, Apple released iOS 14 which is their operating system software and in iOS 14 people can opt out of data tracking. And if someone opts out for data tracking, it's much more difficult to be able to serve them with really targeted, relevant ads. So rather than getting an ad maybe for a beer hat because it's Father's Day and you know this dad is fun and funny and and and he likes to go drinking with his other dad buddies or whatever. You wouldn't be able to target him based on some of the really specific targeting options anymore. And that resulted in slightly lower performance for some advertisers, because you weren't able to target as effectively and if you're hitting someone who's maybe not so perfectly targeted, they're less likely to make a purchase which would negatively impact your metrics. I think that's why we're seeing this language around are Facebook and Instagram ads dead.

But there's still many ways to get in front of the right audience and make your ad strategy really work for your business. There's still plenty of opportunity here and I would just say that from our experience with clients, we saw a bit of a dip in performance in the weeks following the iOS 14 release, but since then they very much have leveled out and we've still seen continued growth and a lot of success for our clients. There's always changes that are happening ads. There's always going to be something new that's affecting it that we have to figure out how to work with and work around and things like that. What's important here is if you have an advertising partner or agency that's running ads for you, they should really be talking you through here's what we're expecting in terms of how this would affect your outcomes and your conversions. And if anybody is ringing alarm bells to you and telling you oh no, they don't work anymore on this platform, you should put all your money over here. That's a little bit of a red flag for me, because we have still seen a lot of success for our clients, you know, 5x in revenue and really great returns on investment and returns on ad spend.

So are Facebook and Instagram ads dead? Absolutely not. You just have to work a little bit smarter, not necessarily even harder but a little bit smarter to make sure they are still working effectively for your strategy and for your business. If people don't want to do that, then you're not going to be able to get ads to work really well for you. We continue to see that for a lot of brands, a lot of businesses, Facebook and Instagram are still a fantastic option. They're still the best way to get the most qualified leads the most qualified eyeballs on their products, their services, their business. While we do have clients running ads on TikTok, Pinterest and other platforms who are seeing success, by no means would I say that Facebook and Instagram ads are dead and that you should be jumping ship from that platform because again, we continue to see massive success for a lot of our clients on those platforms. You just have to be in there educating yourself and testing and optimizing to make it really work for you. Gone are the days where digital advertising was really simple and any business owner could just pop in and give it like a $5 a day budget and see really great success from it and they could be managing their own ads. They're much more complicated. The platform is more complicated, the capabilities, the functionality, everything is more complicated. Most often when I see business owners trying to run their own ads or having maybe their virtual assistant run their ads for them, they are not only seeing lackluster results, but more often than not, they are actually just losing money and throwing money away on ads. Now is really the time with all of these changes to make sure that whoever is running your ads is in there day to day and really familiar with what's happening. What are the best strategies right now? What should we be trying and testing and what can we expect? Now is the time to invest in that higher quality support because running ads has gotten a lot more complicated over the years. And you are going to pay that premium to work with someone who really knows what they're doing. Now you need someone who knows what they're doing to truly see success with digital advertising. That's also something really important to take away for a lot of business owners.

If you ever have any questions about running ads, should I be running ads? What platform should I be running ads on? What should my budget be? Please feel free to reach out. I really encourage business owners to get an understanding of what your ad strategy should be because at the end of the day, you are the business owner, you are making that hire for your ads person for your agency so I think it's really important as a business owner to understand your own digital strategy. So that you can be sure it makes sense for you and your business. So if you ever have any questions, please reach out.