What was once a no-brainer growth strategy that has led to the rise of hundreds of multi-million dollar DTC brands is slowly but surely becoming a nightmare, or even worse, a money dump for brands around the world.

Since iOS14 launched on Apple devices earlier this year (and with iOS 15 launching in the near future), paid ads have been becoming increasingly difficult to make profitable. In case you live under a rock and haven’t been keeping with the iOS changes, here is a resource that you can reference to give you more background information.

So now that the operating systems have been out for a few months, what do you need to do to make sure your paid ads stay profitable?

Here are the strategies that the 253 Media team has been utilizing in 2021 for our direct-to-consumer e-commerce advertising clients.

Broad Audiences

With the rollout of iOS14 Facebook’s off-platform tracking abilities have diminished significantly. Because of this blindness, Facebook’s accuracy for niche audiences has as well, so focusing on broad audiences gives you a larger net to acquire customers. For nearly all of our clients, big, broad audiences have been the top performers throughout the ad funnel.

Focus On Your Offer 

Since your targeting capabilities have diminished, focusing on your offer is more important than ever. Think about it, because you can’t target people as efficiently, your ads are going to be shown to people who might not be as interested or as qualified to buy.

By focusing on your offer, you are going to appeal to more people simply because you are adding more value. Now when people who wouldn’t have been interested before see your ads, you’re more likely going to get them to click on your ads.

Content Is King

Content has never been more important, people love to be educated and entertained at the same time, so give them what they want.

But why else is content so important for your ads? 

Because similarly to your offer, you need to catch people's eyes even if they aren’t necessarily interested. However, content is actually even more important than the offer because if your content doesn’t catch people’s eye enough to make them stop scrolling, they will never even know about your offer.

Cross Reference Data

Since approximately 94% of iOS devices that have iOS14 are opted out of tracking, you will need to cross-reference your data on the back end of your e-commerce store (and/or other platforms) to ensure your data is accurate and that you can make educated decisions.

Because Facebook’s data is so inaccurate nowadays, it’s virtually useless to track actual conversion performance, however, it’s still very useful to determine on-platform performance for metrics such as unique click-through rates.

Diversify Your Efforts

Since tracking and retargeting capabilities have diminished, diversifying your efforts across multiple marketing streams allows you to take full advantage of your audiences. Why is this important?

Because on average it’ll take a person 7+ times of seeing an ad to actually take action on it!

Since targeting on Facebook has basically gone out the window, diversifying across platforms to get in front of your audience is a great way to not only protect your profitability, but to also get in front of the right audience more often.

Invest In A Good Website

At the end of the day, your advertising efforts are only as good as your website. Even if you have everything perfect with your ads, if people click through to your website and it’s slow, outdated, or just doesn’t give them a good experience, they won’t buy!

Getting your website dialed in will not only increase your conversion rate but will also help you get the most out of your advertising dollars. For more information about increasing your website’s efficiency, check out the 253 Media Resources page.