Latest / The Resilient Retail Game Plan - retail insights, retail trends and best practices / Meta Ads Have Changed: What will actually work in 2026!

Transcript

Meta Ads Have Changed: What will actually work in 2026! · The Resilient Retail Game Plan - retail insights, retail trends and best practices

• 0:01
  If Meta ads felt harder in 2025, then you're
• 0:05
  not imagining it. Targeting that used to work no longer
• 0:09
  works nearly as well. Costs feel higher, results feel slower, and
• 0:13
  the platform has changed the rules without clearly explaining why.
• 0:16
  In this episode, I wanted to cut through the noise and examine what's actually changed
• 0:20
  at Meta, what that means for small product businesses heading into
• 0:23
  2026 and where your effort is best spent if ads feel
• 0:27
  expensive or inconsistent. Welcome to
• 0:30
  the Resilient Retail Game Plan. I'm Catherine Edley and in the next few minutes
• 0:34
  you're about to get powerful real world retail strategies from
• 0:38
  insights shared both from my guests and myself, backed up by
• 0:42
  my 25 years in the retail industry. Keep listening to learn
• 0:45
  how to grow a thriving, profitable product business. Let's jump
• 0:49
  in with this latest episode. I'm joined by
• 0:53
  CJ Sinclair, a Meta Ad strategist and founder of Vibing Social
• 0:57
  Ads Consultants and Ads Answers for Ecom, a membership for
• 1:00
  UK product businesses wanting to run paid ads. She works
• 1:04
  hands on with product brands running Meta ads every day.
• 1:08
  And what I really value about her perspective is that she looks beyond Ads
• 1:11
  Manager at the whole ecosystem around your ads, your content
• 1:15
  and your customer behavior. This is the bit I really want you to
• 1:19
  hear, because if you're still trying to fix ads purely inside Ads Manager,
• 1:23
  it can feel like you're constantly missing something. Meta is now
• 1:26
  looking at signals from everywhere, and while that sounds overwhelming,
• 1:30
  there's actually a real opportunity here for smaller brands.
• 1:34
  The biggest, biggest change is that the whole algorithm has shifted and
• 1:38
  changed, essentially. So pre2025
• 1:42
  we were really focused on our targeting and we were being
• 1:45
  super niche with our interests. So if you had a, I don't know,
• 1:49
  kids food brand, you would be targeting parents of
• 1:53
  toddlers or women between these ages and being very, very
• 1:56
  specific. Yeah, this year that does not work. Absolutely does
• 2:00
  not work. We're looking at really big, broad audiences, so no
• 2:03
  interests. We're just targeting on age, gender and location.
• 2:07
  And we're using our creative to do the targeting. So
• 2:10
  we're really calling out our audience segments within our
• 2:14
  creative, whether that's in the copy, the visuals, the headline, the
• 2:18
  whole thing. We're using our ads to call those people out. And
• 2:22
  Meta now is not only just looking at what's happening inside the
• 2:25
  platform, inside your ads manager, it's looking at the whole
• 2:28
  ecosystem around it. How is your organic content performing?
• 2:32
  How are people engaging with your website and product pages? Are you emailing?
• 2:36
  Are people engaging with your business in that way? And are you using really
• 2:40
  diverse creative. Are you speaking to your different audience segments of your
• 2:43
  brand? So. So it's kind of mushroomed outside of Ads
• 2:47
  Manager, it's, it's not just the buttons that you press inside of Ads Manager,
• 2:51
  everything else around it, which I know sounds really overwhelming,
• 2:55
  but that was my first thought. I was like, wow. I know, I know. It's
• 2:58
  actually. And this is really going to come into play in
• 3:01
  2026. What is so exciting is that for the
• 3:05
  first time ever, I genuinely believe that smaller brands
• 3:09
  are going to have the upper hand compared to the big guns because they can
• 3:12
  pivot, they are agile, they can move much quicker to what the
• 3:16
  platform is requesting. And that is creative diversity. That is
• 3:20
  updated landing pages. If you've got an ad for a very
• 3:23
  specific audience avatar. So I don't know a young mum who's
• 3:27
  interested in running marathon, right, Then you would create a landing
• 3:31
  page specifically for that audience rather than just going through your
• 3:35
  general website. Whereas bigger brands can't do that. They can't pivot that quickly.
• 3:39
  So I think it's going to be a really interesting and exciting year. And in
• 3:42
  terms of the thing to focus on a smaller brand, it would be
• 3:46
  that creative, that creative diversity. So coming up with B rolls
• 3:50
  or talk to cameras or static images or review
• 3:53
  graphics, but having a really diverse set of creative assets, but
• 3:57
  also really focusing on your website and your landing pages as well,
• 4:01
  which we should always be doing anyway.
• 4:04
  One of the biggest fears I hear is but big brands have
• 4:08
  bigger budgets. What CJ's really saying here is that speed,
• 4:12
  clarity and relevance matter more than scale. But of
• 4:15
  course, ads still cost money. So let's talk about budget.
• 4:20
  My advice around this is, you know, I want you to be a
• 4:23
  little bit uncomfortable with your spending because nothing exciting happens within our
• 4:27
  comfort zones. But if you are struggling to pay your
• 4:31
  rent or your mortgage or your food shop, then do not spend more
• 4:34
  on your meta ads. You know you can't do that. But
• 4:38
  if you want consistent sales, I would recommend 10 to
• 4:42
  15% of your revenue as an ad budget. If you want
• 4:46
  to grow and really push it, then we're looking at more of 15
• 4:50
  to 20% that could be a bit more realistic. But the most
• 4:53
  important mindset is your budget should match
• 4:57
  your goals and your margins. So if your margins are
• 5:01
  super tight, your budget needs to be conservative. If your margins are
• 5:05
  a bit better, you can afford to scale faster. Every business
• 5:09
  is different. But the question I would be asking is, okay,
• 5:13
  how much revenue do I need to generate over the 90 days and how
• 5:16
  can ads fit into that equation? They're not everything,
• 5:20
  they're that part of the equation. That's what I would be, I'd be thinking about.
• 5:24
  It's really good benchmarks. Thank you for that. One of the things that I've heard
• 5:27
  people say previously about ads, love to hear your thoughts on it, is they say,
• 5:31
  especially in that first three month phase, only spend on ads what you can
• 5:35
  afford to lose. Which is I guess what you were saying about like don't put
• 5:38
  your mortgage on the line. If you. Yeah, I mean how does that does
• 5:42
  that. Do you think that still rings true? Yeah, I definitely do and I
• 5:46
  feel I almost put clients off, I would say when they, you know, when they
• 5:49
  come to work with me on a retainer basis. Because I say, look, you have
• 5:52
  to go into this thinking potentially for the first three months whilst we're learning
• 5:55
  and we're testing potentially, you won't make that money back.
• 5:59
  It's never happened and I've always been really successful straight out the gate,
• 6:03
  which is amazing, but it doesn't really back my point. But I do think you
• 6:06
  should go in knowing that there is the possibility that
• 6:10
  you won't make that money back. But what you are going to make is lots
• 6:13
  of learnings and if you have the right expert on board, those
• 6:17
  learnings can then be put in to your future growth and then
• 6:20
  you'll start making your money back. Once you understand what people are
• 6:24
  resonating with, what structure works for you, what creative works for you,
• 6:27
  your messaging angles, all of that sort of stuff, you can't
• 6:31
  possibly know that straight out the gate.
• 6:36
  What I like about this approach is that ads aren't being treated as a magic
• 6:39
  fix. They're part of a bigger picture and your margins matter.
• 6:43
  Which brings us to creative because this is where I see a lot of product
• 6:46
  founders getting stuck. Creative is such
• 6:50
  a big part of Mecca ads at the moment, the one that is crushing it
• 6:54
  and has this year and absolutely will do going into 2026
• 6:58
  is that real, unpolished, unfiltered creative.
• 7:01
  It's the stuff we see at the moment on Instagram and on reels. No
• 7:05
  people with no makeup on or, you know, the bloopers. And we find it
• 7:09
  really interesting and engaging and that is what people want from the ad.
• 7:13
  They don't want the perfect polished product
• 7:16
  shots and flat lays. They want to see how that product can
• 7:20
  transform their life in action and they want to imagine themselves in
• 7:24
  there. So user generated content is really big at the moment. So
• 7:27
  people using your products, founder Clips. So behind the scenes,
• 7:31
  I don't know whether you, you might have seen it, but warehouse clips, if you've
• 7:34
  got a warehouse or a fulfillment center, they're huge at the moment. Yeah.
• 7:37
  Employee generated content. So you know what people are up to behind the scenes
• 7:41
  in the office. But also things like iPhone photos, you know, like quick
• 7:45
  shots on your iPhone or you packing up all orders or a
• 7:49
  thing that I'm seeing really big at the moment with some of my clients is
• 7:51
  that they will do an Instagram live packing orders and they will talk
• 7:55
  through what they're doing. And even that sort of content on ads can
• 7:59
  work really well. My kind of golden rule of thumb is if it
• 8:02
  has performed well organically, there is a very high chance that it
• 8:06
  will perform well as an ad. So you don't need to keep reinventing
• 8:10
  the wheel. If you've got a reel that has done well organically, you
• 8:14
  can then turn that into an ad and it will mostly perform really
• 8:17
  well. That kind of unfiltered, unpolished lo fi. And I think
• 8:21
  it's really hard for founders, especially founders that are very
• 8:25
  protective of their brand and want it to look polished and lovely
• 8:29
  to shift that mindset. But I've seen it so many times
• 8:33
  when I finally crack these clients and they try
• 8:37
  the ads and they succeed and they're like, I wish I did this.
• 8:42
  You know, they don't have to be absolutely disgusting. With none of your branding,
• 8:46
  it's almost like you're sending a WhatsApp photo to your friend.
• 8:50
  That is the sort of thing that can work for you. Yeah, that's so interesting.
• 8:53
  I guess because the platforms are flooded with this kind of content anyway. So it's
• 8:57
  what blends in and doesn't sort of make people go, oh, that's an
• 9:01
  ad. It's just like, oh, that looks nice. Yeah, it's like, oh, who's that?
• 9:05
  Is that my friend? Are they sharing that? And then, then you've got the dwell
• 9:07
  time and then your messaging angles with the clear
• 9:11
  product benefits are what supports it. So your visual is going to stop them,
• 9:15
  then your messaging is supporting them. And if it really grabs them, and hopefully
• 9:18
  it does, that's when they go over to the website and then it's your website's
• 9:22
  job to then grab them towards the buy now button. Got
• 9:25
  you.
• 9:33
  Talked about diversity of creatives. Well, so sort of trying lots of different
• 9:37
  things. Yeah. I mean the, the brands I've worked with this year
• 9:41
  and that have absolutely won are the ones that are iterating
• 9:45
  every week. They're trying new things every week. And it might
• 9:48
  not seem like it is totally on brand because they're trying
• 9:52
  things that they've never tried before. But there is a cohesion to their
• 9:56
  creative. You know, you can tell that it's there, but the ideas are a
• 9:59
  bit different. So one of my fashion clients, for example, they've
• 10:03
  kind of gone down the videos of them wearing the outfit in the
• 10:07
  mirror. So they're walking to in the mirror. So something again, that you would send
• 10:10
  to your friend, like, what do you think of this outfit? And it's doing amazingly
• 10:14
  well. Like, incredibly well. Another one of my jewelry clients has used
• 10:18
  hooks at the moment, where this is the brand my friend wouldn't shut up about.
• 10:21
  And everyone's like, oh, what's it? So it's all of this sort of stuff
• 10:25
  that is really working. And my background is psychology. And this is the sort of
• 10:28
  stuff that you absolutely like. How do we grab curiosity? How do we
• 10:32
  pique people's interest? How do we get them over to the website? And we're going
• 10:35
  to be seeing a lot of this in 2026. That kind of unpolished,
• 10:38
  unfiltered storytelling content is going to be absolutely huge
• 10:42
  next year. That's fascinating. I mean, and that leads me on to my next question,
• 10:46
  which was, which I feel like you may be have even answered, which was how
• 10:49
  can smaller businesses compete without a huge budget? But it sounds like from what you're
• 10:52
  saying, that because it's unpolished, you don't need a giant budget.
• 10:56
  It can be somebody in the mirror. Yeah, yeah. Something simple.
• 11:00
  So simple, so simple. Like smaller brands. And this is why I'm so excited for
• 11:04
  2026, because smaller brands can pivot and move so much quicker.
• 11:09
  What all of this really comes back to is believability. And once you
• 11:13
  start thinking about trust, it naturally leads into how we measure success,
• 11:17
  especially when it comes to roas. So
• 11:21
  independently, roas doesn't really mean anything together. When you're
• 11:25
  looking at your cost per result, how much is it costing you to get a
• 11:29
  sale and your roas, those two things make a lot
• 11:32
  of sense when they're together. The one thing I would say to brands, and I
• 11:36
  see this a lot, that if you are running ads by yourself and you're kind
• 11:39
  of dabbling and working out yourself, is to
• 11:42
  calculate what we call a break even roas. So
• 11:46
  what is the ROAS I need to hit to break even?
• 11:49
  So anything over that is okay. I'm profitable. Anything under
• 11:53
  that is okay, I need to do some tweaks when you know that number,
• 11:57
  understand the data and letting the data guide you makes a lot more
• 12:01
  sense than just going in there going, oh, well, I want to Ross a 10,
• 12:04
  which literally means nothing because it depends on your margin. So. Yeah, yeah, totally.
• 12:08
  And also one of the things that bothers me about Roas is of course it's
• 12:11
  like, so let's say you spend £10 and you get £50 of sales back. Okay,
• 12:15
  that's great. But it's not your profit on ad spend, it's your return,
• 12:19
  it's your sales. Whereas actually, you know, you could be, yeah, you get twice
• 12:22
  as much back as you spent, but if your margins under
• 12:26
  50%, you've actually lost some money. So, yeah, and it, I mean, you know, for
• 12:30
  me, managers and run clients and the roas in their Ads Manager
• 12:33
  doesn't factor in my fee, for example. So, you know, there are
• 12:37
  so many other costs outside of the platform. Also, the other thing to
• 12:41
  mention is that in Ads Manager we're not seeing all of the data.
• 12:44
  So especially for products that are of higher value, where the
• 12:48
  consideration period from the customer is longer, we don't see
• 12:52
  data outside of seven days in Ads Manager just from looking at the dashboard.
• 12:55
  So if your buyers are taking 14 days or 28
• 12:59
  days to buy and the ad has helped do that, we don't see
• 13:03
  that data. So again, it's skewed. And the data
• 13:06
  is also delayed in Ad Manager, so we have no idea what's going on some
• 13:10
  days because the data is so delayed. I would take ROAS with
• 13:14
  a pinch of salt on its own, but just factor it into everything else
• 13:18
  and also your overall sales and revenue, not just ad sponger.
• 13:23
  So there you have it. Ads in 2026 aren't about hacks or
• 13:26
  perfect targeting. They're about clarity, creativity and
• 13:30
  trust. And if you're a smaller brand that can move quickly, test
• 13:33
  ideas and show up as a real human behind your products, that's not a
• 13:37
  disadvantage, it's an opportunity. You'll find CJ's details
• 13:41
  in the show notes. And if this episode has highlighted gaps in your
• 13:44
  margins, cash flow, or your platform for growth, that's exactly
• 13:48
  the work I do with my clients. So why not head to resilient
• 13:51
  retailclub.com to find out more about my services. Thanks for
• 13:54
  listening and I'll see you next week.