Facebook ads are dead (do this instead)

If you haven’t noticed, Mark Zuckerberg’s on a rebrand.

The identical grey t-shirts and NPC haircut are out… chains, bespoke Porsches and $895,000 watches are in.

Putting aside how painfully transparent his attempt at becoming culturally relevant is, I don’t mind it.

Instead of driving around in an old Honda and pretending he’s a humble software engineer, the Meta CEO is now behaving like what he really is: one of the richest men in the world.

Besides, it’s my fault he is…

Senator, we run ads

Before he got cool, Zuckerberg appeared in front of the Senate in 2018 and responded to a question about how and why Facebook was free.

His response went down in meme legend: ‘Senator, we run ads’.

Forget WhatsApp, Instagram, accounts, blue ticks, stories, grids, groups, communities, marketplace, friends and everything else Facebook is famous for: Meta is the second largest advertising platform in the world.

And Google is the first.

It’s something the average person forgets as they scroll – and anyone who sells anything online doesn’t.

Unlike traditional advertising, Facebook and Google allow you to target, retarget, optimise, track, convert, cap and scale infinitely.

It’s expensive but it works. The simple truth about ‘paid traffic’ is that it’s the single quickest way to grow an online business.

I built my first business – a media buying agency – by running adverts for other people. And even used them in my digital product and ecommerce businesses... paying millions for the privilege.

But two years ago, I made the decision to leave them behind, once and for all.

Paid traffic’s #1 issue

The problem with the power of paid traffic is that it’s not just a bonus to a marketing strategy, it’s essential.

Because they ‘work’, you won’t hear a single marketer not recommend them to a business. They might be expensive, but at least they ‘work’.

The problem is, they don’t. At least not for very long. There are few things you can buy in this world that disappear instantly. The keyboard on my desk doesn’t fade as I type this sentence. The Mercedes on my driveway might depreciate, but it’s still there. And even the steak I ate last night is helping me to build muscle.

Ads are different. The second you stop paying for them, they disappear and take every trace of their existence with them.

Of course, in theory, those same adverts have converted users into your customers and you’ve profited. But unlike nearly every other marketing practice like branding, content, SEO, influencers or email, your business has nothing to show for it.

Not even a loyal customer base. Paid traffic consistently generates a lower customer lifetime value than nearly every other medium. Customers are also lower quality… and they cost more.

To make everything worse, these platforms are some of the most hostile, unprofessional and unresponsive businesses in the world.

I have a team full of some astonishingly talented media buyers who’ve spent tens of millions in advertising on every channel between them over the past five years. They know the ins and outs of each platform including Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, TikTok and Twitter, and exactly what images, copy and landing pages are compliant and in line with their policies and…

?… we get banned on a weekly basis. We get treated like shit by their ‘customer support’ team.

Ads also get more expensive over time. CPMs shoot up, fatigue sets in and any sort of predictability goes out the window. Profitability is far from guaranteed.

But there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Facebook and Google have become monopolies and know that 99% of marketers are entirely reliant on their platforms to sell product.

Like some sort of protection racket, they require that you pay them an increasingly large share of your profits every single year to even exist as a business and give you nothing in return. No legacy of your ‘investment’.

I got fed up.

The content machine

Earlier, I mentioned that laypeople and marketers see these platforms differently. Where you or I might look at TikTok in terms of low CPMs, normal people see it as a short-form video platform that makes them laugh.

They’re right. You’re wrong.

It turns out people only hang out on these places because there is content on them.

The five-second unskippable pre-roll before that video you’re about to watch? It’s there because Mr. Beast has filmed himself giving away a Lamborghini.

After Justin Bieber left Instagram, the company sent executives to London where he was performing to bribe him to return by laying on a pancake breakfast for him and his team.

This pretty much sums up Meta’s approach. It doesn’t care about the advertiser who spent $3K a few months ago with nothing to show for it. That wouldn’t even cover the clasp on Zuckerberg’s Greubel Forsey watch.

But it will do anything to woo its content creators.

These platforms are desperate for your content. And it’s not just the big players they’re after: they are as interested in someone filming GRWM videos on TikTok and Fortnite streams as they are Logan Paul.

Facebook, TikTok, YouTube are content machines. The second you understand this, your business will thrive.

The second I did, my business exploded.?

Negative cost acquisition

I’ve detailed before how I created a ‘Flywheel VSL’.

In theory, it was a long-form video that was ostensibly about the best way to start a business.

In reality, it was a 38-minute-long advert for my digital product business.

But YouTube couldn’t tell the difference. So, they sent more and more viewers to the video, more and more subscribers to my profile and millions into my business.

And the funny thing was about that video: the more views it got… the more views it got. It’s still live now, three years after I posted it, racking up thousands of views on a monthly basis.

Whilst every single digital product business owner in the world was trying to outspend one other on their ad accounts, I was doing something incredible: YouTube was paying me to advertise on their platform. $259,819.32, to be specific.

The last time I checked, that’s how much YouTube has given me in revenue for this single video. Unlike every other method of advertising, this one had a negative cost acquisition attached to it.

This wasn’t a one off.

Every single week, my content team uploads hundreds of clips to Instagram and TikTok, ‘cut up’ and edited from my existing YouTube videos. Every week, I post a new YouTube video that bridges the gap between advert and content, sending more and more people to my digital product business.?

Build your business, not Facebook’s

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve said this: when it comes to marketing, conventional wisdom is almost always wrong.

The sad fact is that if you were to ask any marketer now the very best way to scale your business, they would tell you to ‘invest’ in adverts and paid traffic.

This advice has left a generation of business owners with razor-thin margins, poor quality customers and Mark Zuckerberg wealthier than ever.

After doing the exact opposite, I’ve scaled my digital product business to 8 figures. And I’ve got something to show for it: as I foray into the world of equity and brick and mortar businesses, I’ve also got millions of subscribers and an audience that will follow me anywhere.

Of course, this newsletter has been a gross oversimplification of this strategy.

It’s not nearly as simple as uploading your adverts as organic posts, sitting back and hoping for the best.

I’ve spent the last few years painstakingly building systems, processes and a team that guarantees insane reach, views and follower growth. I know the exact script that will build my audience and sell my product.

And for the first time, I’m going to show you how to do just this.

In March, I’m hosting the 8-Figure Personal Brand Challenge. I won’t tell you everything that’s going to happen during the event but will tell you this: it’s not for everybody.

I’m going to reveal high level stuff that’s not suitable for A) beginners B) anyone who’s going to use it unethically.

If you’re ready to flip the script and get Zuckerberg to pay you to advertise on his platform, you might want to grab a ticket here. ?