EP 487: Are Your Facebook Ads Costing You Sales and Hurting Your Reputation?

Show Notes:

🎯 Why every Facebook and Instagram ad teaches people something about your business beyond the headline or offer
👀 How tone, visuals, pricing, urgency, and overall feel can shape the impression people form about your brand
🏷️ Why constant discounts can sometimes train people to wait and become more focused on price
🤖 Phil’s take on AI slop and why careless AI use can sometimes make ads, creatives, and follow-up feel low quality and may create bad results.
💲 Why leading with price can sometimes attract an audience that mainly cares about finding the cheapest option
⏳ The danger of fake urgency, countdown timers, and offers that do not actually expire
📱 Why ads that look too cheap can hurt credibility, while overly polished ads can also feel less trustworthy
🔁 How repetition strengthens the message and feeling your ads create, for better or worse
🧠 Five questions to ask after someone sees five of your ads
🎯 Why the impression your ads create should match how you actually WANT people to see your business
✅ Reminder: every business is unique, results vary, and there are no guaranteed outcomes

Transcript Disclaimer

This transcript was generated automatically using AI transcription tools and may include errors, omissions, or wording that differs from what was intended. I have not reviewed every word, and no part of this transcript should be interpreted as an income claim, success guarantee, or promise of results of any kind. The information is for educational purposes only.

Transcript:

Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Next Level Facebook Ads Podcast with Phil Graham. We help you master Facebook ads and give you an unfair advantage over your competition. Are you ready? Let’s go.
Speaker 2:
What’s up, everybody? Welcome to the Next Level Facebook Ads Podcast, episode 487. I’m Phil Graham. Today, I’ve got a great show for you guys today because we’re going to be talking about a big question. Are your Facebook and Instagram ads costing you sales?
and hurting your reputation. Every ad you run can teach people something about your business. And I don’t just mean what the ad says, but they teach people what kind of company you are or brand or entrepreneur.
They teach people what you might care about, what you don’t care about, who you’re trying to attract, and what they might expect if they become a client or customer. The problem is though so many businesses and entrepreneurs that are running ads are teaching people things that they never wanted to actually teach them and things that could actually be very, very costly. So today I want to help you look at your Facebook and Instagram ads from a different angle and help you ask one important question. What are your ads teaching people about your business? Super excited that football is back, my friends. It’s a great time of year. I hope you’re doing well. Before we jump into the content, if you guys need any help with your ads or AI, whether that’s one-on-one coaching or somebody to run them for you, just go to my website, PhilGrahamdigital.com or DM me on Instagram at PhilGrahamdigital. We can set up a short Zoom call and go from there. All right, let’s keep this episode short, sweet, full of value and very actionable. And let’s talk about the question, are your Facebook and Instagram ads costing you sales and hurting your reputation? So every ad you run creates some kind of an oppression beyond whatever your copy is, beyond what your offer is. People notice more than just the headline. They notice more than the call to action. They notice little things that they don’t even really necessarily think about, but the tone of the ads, the visuals, the promises, whether there’s urgency or not, the pricing and the overall feel. And more importantly, not just the overall feel of the ads, but how you make them feel with your ads. I feel like I should say that like 10 time. That might be one of the most important things I say in this episode. They notice how you make them feel with your ads. And even if they don’t click, a lot of people are forming an opinion, whether it’s taking 10 seconds to look at it or a split second as they scroll by, they’re forming these opinions about you, your brand, your company, your product, or your service.
So one individual ad may not define your business, but repeated ads done in a similar way could define very negatively or positively. So with that being said, let’s talk about some of the issues I see when it comes to this. Number one, constant discounts.
Now that doesn’t mean that’s a bad thing because sometimes you can run discounts and you’re okay with it, your customers are okay with it and it works. So I’m not saying to never do that, but a lot of times it can backfire. Many times if you’re always running some kind of a discount, it tells people you’re priced too high in the first place and it actually trains them and teaches people to wait.
Let’s not buy today. They might have a bigger discount next week or next month. So you might actually be training them to be more price sensitive than they actually are if you’re always running constant discounts.
So you really want to think about that. For some of you, it might be the right way to go. But for a lot of you, it might be costing you a lot more than you realize.
Number two, AI slop. I’m an AI guy. I love AI.
I’ve used it for years. I use it for practically everything. But I combine my skill with it too, which is really important.
But I see so many ads are just horrible ads. Videos are AI produced and they’re just crappy. If it’s a voice ad and you can hear like voice on the video, sometimes it’s like a horrible AI voice or AI images that aren’t that good.
Sometimes you can, you know, make some good ones too. But I see a lot of bad ones out there. One crazy thing too, that is definitely something I would consider AI slop.
I see a lot of brands spending all this money to try and get a lead, try and get somebody that might become a customer or a client. And you know who’s talking to that person? A fake AI bot.
Now, I’m all for AI bots, especially for like answering basic questions and kind of filtering people out to get to the right place. I’m all for that. I love that.
But there’s a lot of people that just put the whole lead on the AI bot. You spend all this money to try and get a customer, and then their experience is dealing with a bot. And it’s a bunch of AI slop, and it doesn’t work very well.
I mean, that’s a recipe for failure for many people. So again, I love AI and I use it for lots of things, but there’s right ways to use it and wrong ways. And I see a lot of people doing what I would consider AI slop in their ads, in their copy, in their creatives, even in their follow-up.
So I’m not saying don’t use AI, but I’m saying use it in a smart way and a good way, not how I see probably 75% or more of ads use it, which is a horrible way, because it not only can potentially cost you money when you use it in a horrible way, but it can harm your brand. It can harm your reputation. It makes you look bad and you don’t want that.
So be very careful with that. The next one, when you have ads that are really focused on price, they typically will attract customers that are very price focused. So if your main selling point is low price, okay, it can work.
I mean, ask Walmart. It works for Walmart, right? But none of us have Walmart money.
So you got to be careful with that. And for so many entrepreneurs and brands, you really shouldn’t be leading with price because usually that’s a race to the bottom. There’s going to be somebody else that can do it cheaper.
And if that’s your main value that you’re bringing, then it’s probably going to get ugly. And so you don’t want to always lead with price because again, not only does it not work in a lot of situations, but you’re attracting the wrong types of customers in a lot of situations. So you got to be careful.
I’m not saying to never do it, but I’m saying you’re attracting the wrong people, whether Whether that means you’re getting the people and they’re not the right people or you’re not getting anybody at all. It might be because you’re focused on price or something like that. Another thing I want you to really look at is aggressive urgency.
So it’s normal to have urgency in your ads, but it needs to be real. When we have urgency and countdown timers and stuff, they’re real. Like when they turn off, they turn off.
Whatever offer that was available, it’s done. And we don’t turn it back on three days later or if you refresh the page. If you do that and you trick people, that’s really going to harm your reputation.
Do not have this aggressive urgency that’s fake. If it’s real urgency, that’s great. But stand behind it and make sure it’s real.
The next one is cheap looking ads. And a lot of times this is kind of hand in hand with bad AI. When you do ads that look cheap and they just don’t look good.
They look low quality. Maybe they have mistakes in them. Maybe the audio is poor quality or the visuals are bad.
Anytime something just looks bad, that’s usually not good. Now, there are exceptions. Sometimes not being too perfect is a good thing, but you don’t want to purposely make mistakes because you don’t want to be looking too cheap unless you’re like a cheap brand and then go for it.
But for most of you guys, be careful. You don’t want to look too cheap. You don’t want to make a lot of mistakes because that just does not usually work too well.
And then the flip side of that is overly polished ads. That’s something you don’t really want either for most people. And that usually does not work well.
I always tell people like I’ll have clients or potential clients ask me if they should get a professional videographer or something like that. And I’m like, no, unless you plan on doing a Super Bowl ad, then no. Pick up your iPhone or whatever phone you have and record a great ad. The camera’s great.
Maybe use a third party mic that plugs into it so you have better audio quality. But you can do this with your normal phone or whatever the case may be. If an ad is too perfect and it looks too polished and all that stuff, these days people don’t really trust it that much.
And so, you know, you don’t want to have an ad too perfect either. So you don’t want to be making a lot of mistakes, but you also don’t want to be too polished or too perfect. And then one other thing I want to mention before I have a couple of questions for you guys on this is repetition.
Whatever message you’re putting out there, not just what you’re saying, but everything we’ve been talking about, how you make people feel and all that stuff. All the things I’ve talked about in this episode so far. repetition will strengthen it. And that can either be very bad or very good. If you just do it in a random ad here and there, you know, it’s not great necessarily if it’s bad, but it’s not the worst thing in the world either. But if it becomes consistent with what the ads that you’re running and it’s not working for you, then look at some of the stuff I’ve been talking about because you might be reinforcing some of these negative things and that’s not good. So make sure you guys are really looking hard at this. And I’ve got five little questions that you can ask yourself.
And I want you to think about this. Number one, I want you to imagine that somebody saw five of your ads that you’re running right now or you used to run or you plan to run over the next month. Okay, they saw five different ads of yours.
What would they believe about your business? And you have to take yourself out of it. A normal person who has no idea who you are, what they’ll believe.
And hey, here’s a good use of AI. Show AI the ads and say, hey, what do you think people would believe about my business if they just saw this and they knew nothing else about me? You might be surprised with what it says, but ask yourself, what would they believe about your business?
Next question. Would they think that you’re helpful and credible? That’s huge.
I would say 80% of the time the answer is no, maybe even 90% or more, but only you can answer that for your ads and your audience. But you should have them hopefully thinking that you are helpful and credible and somebody they can trust. You need to ask yourself that question though.
And again, you’re not asking this based off of your overall reputation, your overall brand. You’re pretending somebody who has no idea who you are saw five of your ads and they have to answer that question. What are they going to say?
Don’t forget that part. Very important. Next question.
Would they think that you’re always discounting or always shouting, look at me, kind of narcissism kind of ads or trying too hard? Another question, would they understand what makes your business different and why that difference might benefit them? And then the last question is, would the impression that they have of your business based off of seeing those ads, would it actually match how you actually want them to see your business or would it be different?
And I got to tell you, if I was in a room with 10,000 people and 10,000 people did this, I would venture to guess that over 9,500 and maybe more would be disappointed in the answers that they uncover from these questions when they look at their ads. And they honestly ask themselves these questions. And so the good news is it’s easy to fix.
Relatively easy anyway. You can listen to this episode, make some changes, focus on running better ads, focusing on giving value and how you make people feel with your ads. So the main thing is, don’t forget, your Facebook and Instagram ads are always teaching people something, whether you planned it or not.
And it’s always bad or good. So why not make it good as much as possible? And as always, just a reminder, it’s always important to point out that every business is unique.
Results can vary. There’s no guaranteed outcomes. So always keep that in mind.
So my friends, I hope that was helpful. It’s really powerful stuff. Episode 487 is in the books.
Thank you guys so much for being here. If you want to get in touch, PhilGrahamdigital.com is the website. And I’ll be back next Tuesday with another great episode.
Until then, have a great week. Peace out.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for listening to the Next Level Facebook Ads Podcast. Please remember to subscribe and share this with all your friends. For show notes, more tips, and to learn more about Phil, please visit PhilGrahamDigital.com/Podcast. Thank you.