ACCOUNT DISABLED – NOW WHAT?.
The following needs to be read through by ANYONE interested in staying alive and able to use the greatest traffic source ever invented by man… FACEBOOK.
Ok, So there have been a few recent updates to the Facebook algorithm (What’s new, huh?) As usual, Facebook and Amazon will always keep us on our tiptoes.
This is REALLY important. If you ignore this, your ad account will probably be disabled. Facebook is getting ruthless!
FACEBOOK AD ACCOUNT DEACTIVATED/DISABLED: HOW TO GET YOUR ADS BACK UP AND RUNNING?
One of the things that Facebook’s BOT is looking for (because it’s all being done by BOTS; Don’t think that real humans have anything to do with this) is a violation of the Ad Policies when it comes to Contests, Sweepstakes, and Giveaways.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Don’t think that I have an inside scoop. I don’t. It’s all pure SPECULATION. But it’s accurate speculation! I have a lot of data from my own ad accounts and from my students’ accounts. I am able to find common denominators between all ad accounts that are being disabled and I’ve found some major ones.
No matter how many times you ask Facebook, no matter how much you beg, they will never tell you WHY. So don’t bother asking. They believe that if they tell us, we will eventually circumvent the violated guidelines. I don’t blame them. (That’s true, we most likely would.)
Here are the recommended best practices based on what I’m seeing:
Don’t use the following words in your ad copy. EVER.
Tag
Tag a friend
Comment below
Share
Contest
If you are running a contest, go ahead and run it. But just don’t use the words.
You can say something like
“We are running a special promotion where you can win anywhere from 10% to 90% in discounts.
Join Our Coupon Bonanza Today!”
Any other variation of the above, as long as they are avoiding the words mentioned, will be just fine.
You can use words like Giveaway, Promotion, Frenzy, Flash Sale, etc…
Those should still be fine. But now, more than ever, you will need to be mindful of what you write in your copy and how you write it. If you avoid the words mentioned above, you should be fine.
Take a moment to read this guideline for more clarity. Check out #3 here >> https://www.facebook.com/policies/pages_groups_events/#
We are also required to include in the copy of ANY promotion ran on Facebook, Messenger or Instagram —
a statement like the following:
“This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed, administered by or associated with Facebook or Amazon.”
This can be included in the ad copy and on the landing page. It can be added at the bottom of the landing page quite easily. These are all little details that are probably being looked at by the algorithm and raising red flags.
One more thing that I will recommend to ALL students is the following:
Go back to ALL of the Ads on your Facebook Ad account and delete ALL campaigns that violated ANY of the above recommendations. By the looks of it, it seems like Facebook’s system is doing a retroactive inspection across all ad accounts and disabling them without regard to active or inactive campaigns.
Remember, Facebook’s algorithm is 100% designed to protect the USER EXPERIENCE. We all need to keep a close eye on promotions to ensure we are not sending traffic to expired pages or inactive promotions because this DESTROYS user experience and the algorithm also picks that up.
As long as you are providing valuable offers and following these simple guidelines and deleting from your Ad Account previous campaigns that might have violated these points you should be fine.
Giving up on Facebook is NOT an option. We have to continue to adjust, the same way we’ve adjusted throughout the years to the platform’s changes along the way. They are still a monster in evolution and are still working on better understanding themselves and how to best protect their platform and the users in it.
Make no mistake. Facebook IS by far the greatest TRAFFIC source for ranking and building your brand. It will continue to be so for the next few years. So it’s not time to jump ship. It’s time to adjust.
Ok now, What about if your account has been disabled already?
Here’s the action plan:
If you have only one Ad account and it’s been disabled, you will not be able to create a new Ad account. Period. Your only option will be to create a new Business Manager. On this Business Manager, you can pull the same Facebook Page in.
How do you create it? Go to business.facebook.com, sign out and click at the top right corner “Create Business Manager”. Set up a brand new one. I suggest using a generic name sort of like “Walmart” where you will be adding all individual brands in there (even if you currently only have one brand) one Ad account per brand.
Facebook will force you to spend money on the first Ad account before they allow you to create a second Ad account. So start spending money right away, and after a couple of weeks, you will be allowed to create a second Ad account.
DO NOT create an Ad account if you are not planning on using it right away. Facebook is automatically PERMANENTLY disabling Ad accounts that have not been active in the last 90 days.
If you have more than one Ad account already and only one of them was disabled you will not be allowed to create a new Ad account on that Business Manager. So still go ahead and create the new Business Manager (you are all allowed to have 2 Business Managers with the same login info you use for Facebook)
Once you have created this second Business Manager you will do the following:
A. Any and all audiences that you currently have you will share with the new Business Manager.
How do you do this? It’s very simple.
Facebook Pixel Data
Go to Business Manager Info (the new one), get the Business Manager ID. Then go to the old Business Manager (the one with the disabled Ad account), then go to Pixels, select the Pixel and select “Add Partner”. There you will add the Business Manager ID (the new one) and that will pull that Pixel’s data into your new Facebook Business Manager.
Custom Audiences (emails, video watchers, Facebook Page engaged fans, People that messaged your page, etc…)
First, go to the new Business Manager settings. Go to the Ad account and copy the Ad account ID. You will need it in the next step.
Then, you will need to go to the old Business Manager and then go to Audiences, then select all the audiences that you want to share (only audiences created inside this Ad account can be shared with other Ad accounts) and then hit “Share”. It will prompt you for the Ad account ID. Here, you will enter your new ad account ID from the new Ad account you created in your new business manager and there you go!
You now have access to continue using these audiences on your new Ad account.
Warning: You will not be able to create LookAlike audiences from these shared audiences inside the new Ad account but you will be able to create Lookalikes in the old Ad account and share these LookAlikes to the new Ad account. NINJA, right? Yes. There’s always a way.
Now you can start running ads with the same Facebook Page and Instagram profile in the new Business Manager and continue to use the same audiences that you have worked so hard to create.
Once this is all set up and you have taken all the above precautions (including deleting old ads that might be in violation of Facebook Ad guidelines), you can NOW try to get the disabled account back in action.
How do you this? Let me warn you. It takes persistence and usually many NO’s before you get a YES. Their initial answers are NOT real answers. They are ALL templates. They simply have TOO many requests every single day. The way to get around this is to NOT give up. Most will give up. So this is how you win. Trust me. I have 57 Ad Accounts and I’ve “been there” and “done that”.
So here you go:
Contact Facebook Chat support Monday thru Friday and explain the issue and have them look into it.
You can chat with them here:
https://www.facebook.com/business/form/chat
They will probably copy and paste this exact message:
“I had another look at your ad account and unfortunately we won’t be able to re-enable it.
All ad accounts are evaluated for policy compliance and quality of ad content. When accounts run ads that don’t follow our Advertising Policies, they’re disabled.
There’s no further action that you may take here. We don’t support ads for your business model.
Please consider this decision final.”
Don’t be shocked if it’s word for word. There’s no such thing as “I had another look…”
No human being is having “another look”.
You have to try to get a real HUMAN.
Wait 2 days and try again.
If they say NO, you can try again a few days later.
If they say no a 3rd time, it’s time to scale the issue. Especially if you know that you haven’t been doing ANYTHING black hat.
You can now use this link where you will be asked for a lot more detail including submitting your ID:
https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/531795380173090?helpref=faq_content#
There you have it. This should get you going.
Who said entrepreneurship was easy? It isn’t. That’s why only a few of us are successful. Because we persist and push through difficult times no matter what.
As the great Rocky Balboa said:
“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!”
So keep pushing and you will win!
Sincerely,
Manuel Suárez
The Facebook Ninja