“Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice and discipline.”

I love this quote from Jim Collins.

Discipline is the #1 I’ve worked on over the past 3 years.

At the start of 2020 I weighed 247 lbs. In 12 months I lost 71 lbs and have kept it off.

But it turns out that discipline is a muscle once developed can be applied to all areas of your life.

The same discipline muscle has been the biggest driving force behind my business growth in recent years.

Here are 3 ways to establish discipline.

1. Start small. Make it easy to get quick wins and feel progress.

2. Frequency is key. To build discipline, pick actions you can do every day.

2. Never miss two days in a row. Slips will happen, make sure they are isolated.

Discipline is a muscle that builds with practice. Be intentional with your exercise. 

He was inconsolable. On the verge of tears, he explained his Facebook account had been hacked.

He lost his personal account, ad account, pixel, and Facebook pages with over 200k followers.

Years of work and hundreds of thousands of ad spend down the drain.

Here are 5 tips to make sure you never experience the same pain.

1. Turn on two-factor authentication on your Facebook profile in Password and Security. 

2. Set up Meta Business Manager and add all your pages, ad accounts, and pixels.

3. Set Meta Business Manager to require two-factor authentication.

4. Add a family member or close contact as backup admin to Meta Business Manager

5. Share access to your Meta assets with contractors or agencies via Business Manager.

These simple steps will save you massive pain and frustration in the future.

There are over 10,000,000 Facebook advertisers.

Over 90% of them lose money on their ads.

The reason why? It’s because they don’t know how to optimize their funnel.

Here are 5 expert tips for profitable Facebook ad funnel optimization.

1. Map every touch point in your funnel and identify the weak points.

2. Identify the blockage and why people are falling off.

3. Create 3/4 test variations of the funnel element that is causing the blockage.

4. Run 1 variation against the control and monitor the results.

5. Promote the winner to the control and repeat the exercise.

Remember, optimization is a process.

You are going to produce far more losers than winners.

Implement these 5 tips and let me know how it goes.

As an online course creator you can trigger positive brand perception through associations.

This is especially powerful if you are getting started in the online world.

The Halo effect is where you borrow authority and positive attributes from others.

Here are 3 simple ways to leverage the Halo Effect:

1. Interviews

Find people your audience respects and admires and interview them. Chop the long-form video into a series of short clips, turn the interview into a blog post, and then convert the blog post into soundbites and social media posts.

2. JV Promotions

Most people view JV Promotions as a way of making money; however, the brand benefits of association are even more powerful. 

3. Shoutouts

Find ways to be useful to people who are influential in your market. Go out of your way to get noticed and bring value to them. Show up and be useful and eventually you will get public recognition.

Thank you, Meta, for making advertising even more confusing.

Sometimes I think they wake up and think, how can we mess with advertisers today?

Some bright spark decided to rename Campaign Budget Optimization….

Advantage Campaign Budget…

That in it’s own right wouldn’t be too bad but when you rename Advantage Detailed Targeting and Advantage + Placements, Advantage Lookalike, Advantage Custom Audiences it becomes a bit meaningless.

Anyway, Advantage Campaign Budget is still your best way to scale winning campaigns.

Here are 3 steps to scaling success:

1. Pair 3 winning creatives with 3 winning copy variations for at least 6 ads per ad set.

2. Start off with 6 ad sets based on your best-performing audiences.

3. Give Facebook time to figure out the best people within each audience.

Remember to review each ad set individually. Depending on your Cost Per Acquisition your campaign stats may look rubbish while the ad set level tells a different story.

The average person sees between 4,000 and 10,000 ads in a single day.

We notice less than 100.

So how do you make sure your Facebook ad is one of the 100?

The secret to success is attention-grabbing creative.

Here are my top tips for attention-grabbing text overlays in your Facebook Ad images.

DO: Limit the number of words you use. Each one needs to pack a punch.

DON’T: Try to convince. Trigger emotion, not logic.

DO: Focus on a specific problem or outcome.

DON’T: Use difficult-to-read fancy fonts.

DO: Test headlines in your images.

DON’T: Launch a campaign with just one image variation.

DO: Create custom text layouts for each of the three different ad image sizes. 

DON’T: Think one and done. Update and test your text overlays every week

You’re leaving money on the table if you’re not using these 5 Facebook audiences for your online course or membership launch campaigns.

Never let anyone tell you there’s “the best” audience for Facebook ads.

If you want a profitable online business, testing is key.

Here are 5 audiences to test during your next launch.

1. Purchase Lookalike:

Build a value-based lookalike of people who have previously purchased from you.

2. Lead Lookalike:

Create a lookalike audience of everyone who has previously opted in for your lead magnet.

3. Video View Retargeting:

Retarget people who have watched 75%+ of a video on Meta over the past 180 days.

4. Launch Opt-in Retargeting

Retarget people who opt-in for your launch during your open cart promotion.

5. Sales Page Retargeting

Retarget people who visited your sales page but did not buy. 

And remember, the message for each audience is different. Use what you know about the audience’s past behavior.

Business is no place for emotion.

When we react with emotion we rarely get the result we want.

The goal is to have the ability to choose how you react in any situation.

And make sure every reaction brings you closer to your goals.

Stephen Covy said it best “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response.”

If you want to grow your online course or membership business you need to practice living in the gap between stimulus and response.

Because it is here you will build the business of your dreams.

So the next time shit goes sideways find the gap and figure out the response that will bring you closer to your goals.

Meta’s Conversion API is like a superpower.

Using it properly is your cheat code for profitable Facebook Ad campaigns. 

But most advertisers get it all wrong.

In simple terms, the Conversion API is a way for you to send web events from your server directly to Facebook

So why does the Conversion API matter? Well, with increasing restrictions on cookies, your ability to track user activity is reduced.

The Conversion API bypasses browsers altogether, ensuring your valuable data isn’t lost.

You should use the Conversion API alongside pixel events to ensure better event tracking, ad optimization, and precise audiences for retargeting.”

Most landing page builders have direct integration with CAPI.

If you’re using WordPress get the PixelCat or PixelYourSite Plugins.

If all else fails go on Upwork and get someone to set it up for you for $50.

Just make sure it’s set up and firing…

Don’t believe what you’ve been told.

Lookalike audiences are not dead.

Far from it, they are some of my best-performing audience.

But you need to know what you’re doing.

Building a Lookalike audience of website visitors is unlikely to work very well.

The same is true of people who’ve interacted with your Facebook or Instagram profile.

But people who’ve watched 75% of a short video.

Or people who have opted in for a lead magnet. They can do better.

But the best possible Lookalike audience is your customer list.

Especially if you can upload data on the amount spent by these customers and turn them into a value based audience.

Now you’ve given Facebook all the data they need to hunt down your perfect prospects.

Give it a shot, and let me know how you get on.