We recently LOST our Facebook ads account. 😨
After 5+ years and nearly $1,000,000 spent on paid ads via Facebook/Instagram, our business manager got hacked. We had a 3rd party media buyer helping with our advertising and a member of their team didn’t have two-factor authentication enabled. I know… unacceptable.
If you’re curious why/how someone would take over a Facebook business manager it works like this: https://mashable.com/article/facebook-ad-manager-scam-hack
As a real estate investor, we use Direct mail, PPC, Fb ads, and seo to find off-market deals.
However I have primarily grown our mastermind (CCF), Call Porter, and Ballpoint Marketing via FB/IG ads.
With 90%+ of our advertising budget dedicated to Facebook we were effectively dead in the water and had two choices…
1) Wait for someone at Facebook to help us undo the damage
2) Diversify our adspend.
***Spoiler alert: We did both!
So where did we pivot to? The answer is… Youtube.
I’ve always been a fan of the fact that Google allows you to target users based off things like their search history, intent, and hobbies/interests.
While there is a bit of a learning curve with Google I had a lot of fun playing with the creatives. I do quite a bit of Youtube/video content so I enjoyed coming up with ads to run/test for the various brands (including our We Buy Houses efforts).
What makes YouTube advertising so lucrative compared to Facebook & Instagram is the intent behind each click. When you run an ad on YouTube, you’re getting Infront of somebody that is actively searching for a solution that your offer provides… and as a business that focuses on generating high-ticket leads for our clients, nothing beats cracking YouTube advertising. Finding that winning ad and audience combination is like drinking out of a firehose.
While we HAVE since had our ad accounts reinstated we will NOT shift such a large % of our advertising budget back to “Meta”.
We found some real winners with our ad campaigns and plan on exploring further diversification (including Tiktok) in the near future.