What my Meta Ad Ban Means for Your Finances

In this week's video I talk about how my Facebook page was banned from running ads with Meta this week and what that means for diversification and your finances. 

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 Transcript

Hi, and welcome to Mel's Money Musings.

So today I wanna talk about diversification and that might be diversification where you might just have a home, you're paying down your debt and that's it. It might be amongst different asset classes where you just have property and you're a bit scared to look across different asset classes. It might be diversification around where you are buying that property. And the fact that you're stuck to the one suburb or area. It might be diversification across shares, where you are buying too few shares and you need to look across industry sectors and different asset classes and more.

And I wanna tell you that story around something that happened to me and my business this week.
So I run online courses. So what I do is I do a little bit of advertising on Facebook or Meta, if you like.
And was it earlier this year or last year, last year my ad account with hacked. And this was via the Facebook manager that I had that I was using at the time, but it meant that for at least a month, I was unable to run Facebook ads.

And at that time that was pretty much all I was doing. It was a little bit of a database and it was Facebook ads. So it was jarring. So what I did as a result of that, and that realisation that Zuckerberg has me over a barrel, is to start widening. It's to increasing my database so that I hold my customers. It's looking across different platforms. It's looking at influencers, but really I have to confess, I probably got a little bit lazy and still reliant, you know, you get back towards what you know.

So I'm about to go into launch next week. And this week I'd engaged a brilliant Facebook consultant to help in the name of Victoria Gibson. And on Sunday night, I've put in the second ad and not just the ad rejected, but my whole ad account shut down.

So put in a review, which found out in hindsight probably shouldn't have done, but in two days afterwards, on Wednesday this week, I had all of my ability to advertise through that page stopped. So not one ad or two ad, but the ability to advertise with that page. And I remember seeing that email coming through and going, oh, that's sick feeling where you're like what the hell. This is how I do business. I advertise through Facebook.

And thankfully we'd also engaged in a couple of influencers that we are using for this launch that knew of me, that loved my work. So it was a really natural fit.

However, it was that reminder to me as well that I am not diversified across enough across my advertising. So I am in the process of learning LinkedIn, Pinterest and more so that I'm pulling that money. Cause I have to confess 90% of my advertising is with Facebook. So it's now I'm gonna drop that to about half and I'm going to be using it across different platforms.

Now what has that got to do with you?

So a lot of the time we know we need to diversify. We hear about this concept called diversification. But until you are all in on say, tech shares and the tech market drops, you don't realise how dangerous that can be. Or you're all in on property or maybe CBD apartments and then that market drops and you realise, oh wow, this is a really dangerous position to be. Or you are all in on property for example, and interest rates start to rise and you're heavily leveraged and you realise, ugh, okay, this might not be a safe position to be.

That's why we want diversification. We want diversification, not just in how we're investing across different asset classes, but we also want diversification within those asset classes.

So I want a mixed basket of shares and property and business and potentially gold and other, but within some of those asset classes, I also want diversification amongst my shares. I don't just wanna be just tech. Amongst property, I don't just wanna be one suburb or type of investment. It's having diversification even within.

But it's also having diversification amongst your income streams. You know, I am such a fan of developing multiple income streams. So if you just have your wage and that's it, that for me is risky, cause it's kind of one or one and done.

So it's developing multiple income streams, whether that might be dividends, rental property income, it might be trust distribution income from exchange traded funds or managed funds you're investing in. It might be some consulting income or a second job, or it might be a side hustle that you've started.

But it's starting to develop multiple income streams so that you have diversification. Now as for me with the help of the incredible Victoria Gibson, I was able to figure out that it was the page that was locked. But it's meant I've had to open another page. I start advertising with that and also just do it very slowly to make sure I don't trip Facebook again.

We've realised that within the last week with the algorithm change, I can't use words like mortgage and debt and all these words that are to do with everything that I do.

So if I didn't know that or if I continue down the Meta only path, I would be at the mercy of those words, whereas LinkedIn doesn't have those same issues. I can be far more obvious about what I'm talking about.
So I hope my experience helped you realise why you need diversification in your investments, in your income. And then not just to think, huh, that's something I should do, but to do what I did this week to take radical action, which I gotta say can be hard, can be overwhelming, but to start taking that action.

If part of that radical action is that you just don't know what you should be doing, then jump on the waitlist. The links below for the My Financial Adulting Plan. We secretly open our door to waitlisters this Sunday. And it is a beautiful way to really push you along this year so that you finish the year well. And it's kind of like being able to have me, a money expert, at your fingertips where you can learn from, ask questions and feel that you have that confidence and clarity that you need to make great financial decisions.