Facebook Ads Fail: Are You Burning Cash?

Hey my girls!🖤

Just had a conversation with two friends from the MRR digital reselling world. I was updating them on my issue with the Facebook Ads and I realized I should update everyone with the latest news, since I've heard a lot of you complaining about the same issue.

I'll try to start with the beginning and be coherent....as much as I can 🤪 lol. But if you have any questions, feel free to DM or email me and I'll be more than happy to reply. 📧

On 16th of February, Meta announced a glitch on their systems that messed up the ads for some people. I noticed that after that date, my ad campaigns went a bit slower than how they were performing before. They were doing less purchases. I had a lot of ads to cart so I assumed I'm not doing enough or good enough email marketing. However, they were still getting sales and my ROAS was generally a bit over 1, a bit more than breaking even. 

A few days ago, on 5th of March, Facebook and Instagram experienced severe issues around the world. I don't know how, but it affected the ads too, for me and for other people on internet complaining about having a very low performance after this outage. 

My ads ROAS went from 1.42 to 0.06. #shock 😱😱

In 5 days, I've had ONE sale and 6 total adds to cart. Outrageous!😤
It literally went from 2-3 sales a day and a decent ROAS for a new site, to 0.06, burning all my budget for one single sale and six adds to cart. Even the link clicks went down, from 150ish in the previous days before the outage to 55 link click in all these 6 days, after the outage, from 5th March to 10th March. 

After 3 days of low performance, I saw some of your were complaining too on the group so I went online to do some digging. There were a lot of people complaining about the same issue on Reddit (see more screenshots at the bottom of the post).

I thought I'd give it a bit more time, maybe it picks up so I lowered my budget to half and left it on for a few more days, but nothing changed. Today I turned them off completely. 😿

I decided to contact Meta's support so they can check what's going on and ask for a refund. I only lost 150 euro, but it wasn't about the money. We rely heavily on FB ads for selling MRR & PLR digital products so I really want to turn my ads back on but before I do that, I need to know they're working. I don't want to burn more money for 1 sale that costs me 150 euro, no thanks! 😤

So I contacted Meta, from my account via chat (if you need to chat with them, click on the question mark in your left side bar of your Meta Ads Manager account - see screenshot below). I explained the problem in the chat and told them that I believe that there is something very wrong with the ads, that you can ABSOLUTELY see a difference between my campaign's performance before 5th of March and after that date. Even a 5th grader can see that lol.🤪

I told them that I haven't made any changes to the campaign, was the same campaign as I've had before the outage. Only thing I changed was the budget BUT AFTER 3 days of no sales and 2 adds to cart, and over 110 euro spent.😱  

The Meta representative, a very very nice lady, started looking into the issue and she asked if she can call me on the phone. FYI I am verified on Meta, if this is relevant, but she didn't ask me anything about that.

We stayed on the phone for a while, I explained my issue to her, I asked her to check my ads performance before 5th March and to compare it with the after. She got in touch with the tech team or engineers, something like that, and she said they replied that there was no technical issue with the ads, that they were showing in all the designated places and etc.🤨

Basically they said there was no tech issue. I told the rep to get back to them and tell them that while I understand the issue is not technical, it's clear there is AN ISSUE, of other nature, performance issue, that made my ads plummet like that after the outage. The rep agreed with me and getting in touch with the relevant departments about my problem.

At some point she told me she will call me back to give me an update whether they approve my request for the refund. She called me back after 10 minutes and yay, great news, my refund request was accepted. They're giving me back the money I wasted since 5th-10th March on the under performing Meta ads. 

The rep asked me if we can close the case/ticket, but I said not until the other half of the issue is resolved. Why I am happy I got my money back, my ad campaigns are OFF now and I do not date to turn them on until they find the issue and fix it, otherwise we will get back to square one. And I don't know if they'll give me another refund if I burn more money on ads that are not delivering purchases. 

So...right now I'm waiting to hear back from them, after they finish "investigating" the problem. Honestly I am not very hopeful. I'm sure I'm not the only one complaining, or the only one who contacted them for a refund. There are individuals or ad agencies that burned thousands. For sure those people must have said something about it....I don't understand how such a huge company didn't fix this issue by now. I know Meta may not care about a small fish like me, but maybe of enough people complain, they'll do something about it. 🤨

I know many of you are having issues as well, what's your experience with this so far? Are your campaigns still on? Have you lowered your budget or turned them off completely? Are you running retargeting at the moment, or nothing at all?

Here's what I'm gonna do. 

My Current Strategy for Navigating the Facebook Ads Outage

I'm right there with you. The outage has hit hard, and my Facebook ads are turned OFF until this is fixed. Here's my strategy as I wait for Meta ads to bounce back:

• Email Marketing - creating a special sales campaign for people who've bought from me before, increasing my email frequency. Sending out these emails only costs me the Klaviyo fee, so it's a no-brainer to go this route.
• Posting more organic content - posting reels and Instagram stories every day to stay in touch with my audience. My following is growing every day and I love to interact with my followers and fellow store owners like me.
• I also started sharing more in Facebook groups that fit my niche, just to keep my brand on people's minds.
• I turned on my Google Ads campaign with a very small budget per day, just to test, but so far, no luck. Will keep you updated on this. 
• Revamping my Etsy store, that's right, because you never keep your eggs in one basket. 
• Invested in UBC ( Ultimate Branding Course) to resell with Master Resell Rights thru my faceless Instagram account. One sale only and I've made my full investment back...so I thought I'd give it a try. 

Now, I'm curious, for those of you that are in the same boat as me, what are you doing to get traffic & sales during this time? What's your strategy? 

There is discussion about people suing Meta in a class action trial, because of the underperformance of everyone's ads after the 16th of February glitch.

Everybody is having a rough time, it's not just us. So hang in there. Try to get a refund if you can, explain the issue to them. I was lucky because my ads were working decently before this and you can see a CLEAR abrupt fall, there's no way they could justify that. If you have a clear difference in your performance before and after either 5th March or 16th Feb, I'd say you have big chances of recovering your money. 

Until this is fixed, try to apply my strategy above. Do more email marketing, be more active on social media, try to compensate in whatever way you can but without driving yourself crazy. Do what you can and take a break once in a while, if you need to. 🫶

This is it. I thought I'd make a blog post to update you all, I feel like this is a crucial information since I know a lot of you are going thru the same thing right now. As always, I'm fully transparent and forthcoming with you and I'll share anything that I believe might help you. If you wanna share something or have any questions, email or DM me on Instagram, I'd be happy to chit chat. 📧

Here are more screenshots from people in the same boat as us, the situation looks quite desperate and a lot of people burned thru THOUSANDS of $$$ with no results.