Catherine Edley [00:00:01]:
If Meta ads felt harder in 2025, then you're not imagining it. Targeting that used to work no longer works nearly as well. Costs feel higher, results feel slower, and the platform has changed the rules without clearly explaining why. In this episode, I wanted to cut through the noise and examine what's actually changed at Meta, what that means for small product businesses heading into 2026 and where your effort is best spent if ads feel expensive or inconsistent. Welcome to the Resilient Retail Game Plan. I'm Catherine Edley and in the next few minutes you're about to get powerful real world retail strategies from insights shared both from my guests and myself, backed up by my 25 years in the retail industry. Keep listening to learn how to grow a thriving, profitable product business. Let's jump in with this latest episode.

Catherine Edley [00:00:52]:
I'm joined by CJ Sinclair, a Meta Ad strategist and founder of Vibing Social Ads Consultants and Ads Answers for Ecom, a membership for UK product businesses wanting to run paid ads. She works hands on with product brands running Meta ads every day. And what I really value about her perspective is that she looks beyond Ads Manager at the whole ecosystem around your ads, your content and your customer behavior. This is the bit I really want you to hear, because if you're still trying to fix ads purely inside Ads Manager, it can feel like you're constantly missing something. Meta is now looking at signals from everywhere, and while that sounds overwhelming, there's actually a real opportunity here for smaller brands.

CJ Sinclair [00:01:34]:
The biggest, biggest change is that the whole algorithm has shifted and changed, essentially. So pre2025 we were really focused on our targeting and we were being super niche with our interests. So if you had a, I don't know, kids food brand, you would be targeting parents of toddlers or women between these ages and being very, very specific. Yeah, this year that does not work. Absolutely does not work. We're looking at really big, broad audiences, so no interests. We're just targeting on age, gender and location. And we're using our creative to do the targeting.

CJ Sinclair [00:02:10]:
So we're really calling out our audience segments within our creative, whether that's in the copy, the visuals, the headline, the whole thing. We're using our ads to call those people out. And Meta now is not only just looking at what's happening inside the platform, inside your ads manager, it's looking at the whole ecosystem around it. How is your organic content performing? How are people engaging with your website and product pages? Are you emailing? Are people engaging with your business in that way? And are you using really diverse creative. Are you speaking to your different audience segments of your brand?

Catherine Edley [00:02:44]:
So.

CJ Sinclair [00:02:44]:
So it's kind of mushroomed outside of Ads Manager, it's, it's not just the buttons that you press inside of Ads Manager, everything else around it, which I know sounds really overwhelming, but that was my first thought.

Catherine Edley [00:02:56]:
I was like, wow.

CJ Sinclair [00:02:57]:
I know, I know. It's actually. And this is really going to come into play in 2026. What is so exciting is that for the first time ever, I genuinely believe that smaller brands are going to have the upper hand compared to the big guns because they can pivot, they are agile, they can move much quicker to what the platform is requesting. And that is creative diversity. That is updated landing pages. If you've got an ad for a very specific audience avatar. So I don't know a young mum who's interested in running marathon, right, Then you would create a landing page specifically for that audience rather than just going through your general website.

CJ Sinclair [00:03:36]:
Whereas bigger brands can't do that. They can't pivot that quickly. So I think it's going to be a really interesting and exciting year. And in terms of the thing to focus on a smaller brand, it would be that creative, that creative diversity. So coming up with B rolls or talk to cameras or static images or review graphics, but having a really diverse set of creative assets, but also really focusing on your website and your landing pages as well, which we should always be doing anyway.

Catherine Edley [00:04:04]:
One of the biggest fears I hear is but big brands have bigger budgets. What CJ's really saying here is that speed, clarity and relevance matter more than scale. But of course, ads still cost money. So let's talk about budget.

CJ Sinclair [00:04:20]:
My advice around this is, you know, I want you to be a little bit uncomfortable with your spending because nothing exciting happens within our comfort zones. But if you are struggling to pay your rent or your mortgage or your food shop, then do not spend more on your meta ads. You know you can't do that. But if you want consistent sales, I would recommend 10 to 15% of your revenue as an ad budget. If you want to grow and really push it, then we're looking at more of 15 to 20% that could be a bit more realistic. But the most important mindset is your budget should match your goals and your margins. So if your margins are super tight, your budget needs to be conservative. If your margins are a bit better, you can afford to scale faster.

CJ Sinclair [00:05:08]:
Every business is different. But the question I would be asking is, okay, how much revenue do I need to generate over the 90 days and how can ads fit into that equation? They're not everything, they're that part of the equation. That's what I would be, I'd be thinking about.

Catherine Edley [00:05:24]:
It's really good benchmarks. Thank you for that. One of the things that I've heard people say previously about ads, love to hear your thoughts on it, is they say, especially in that first three month phase, only spend on ads what you can afford to lose. Which is I guess what you were saying about like don't put your mortgage on the line. If you. Yeah, I mean how does that does that. Do you think that still rings true?

CJ Sinclair [00:05:44]:
Yeah, I definitely do and I feel I almost put clients off, I would say when they, you know, when they come to work with me on a retainer basis. Because I say, look, you have to go into this thinking potentially for the first three months whilst we're learning and we're testing potentially, you won't make that money back. It's never happened and I've always been really successful straight out the gate, which is amazing, but it doesn't really back my point. But I do think you should go in knowing that there is the possibility that you won't make that money back. But what you are going to make is lots of learnings and if you have the right expert on board, those learnings can then be put in to your future growth and then you'll start making your money back. Once you understand what people are resonating with, what structure works for you, what creative works for you, your messaging angles, all of that sort of stuff, you can't possibly know that straight out the gate.

Catherine Edley [00:06:36]:
What I like about this approach is that ads aren't being treated as a magic fix. They're part of a bigger picture and your margins matter. Which brings us to creative because this is where I see a lot of product founders getting stuck.

CJ Sinclair [00:06:49]:
Creative is such a big part of Mecca ads at the moment, the one that is crushing it and has this year and absolutely will do going into 2026 is that real, unpolished, unfiltered creative. It's the stuff we see at the moment on Instagram and on reels. No people with no makeup on or, you know, the bloopers. And we find it really interesting and engaging and that is what people want from the ad. They don't want the perfect polished product shots and flat lays. They want to see how that product can transform their life in action and they want to imagine themselves in there. So user generated content is really big at the moment. So people using your products, founder Clips.

CJ Sinclair [00:07:30]:
So behind the scenes, I don't know whether you, you might have seen it, but warehouse clips, if you've got a warehouse or a fulfillment center, they're huge at the moment.

Catherine Edley [00:07:37]:
Yeah.

CJ Sinclair [00:07:37]:
Employee generated content. So you know what people are up to behind the scenes in the office. But also things like iPhone photos, you know, like quick shots on your iPhone or you packing up all orders or a thing that I'm seeing really big at the moment with some of my clients is that they will do an Instagram live packing orders and they will talk through what they're doing. And even that sort of content on ads can work really well. My kind of golden rule of thumb is if it has performed well organically, there is a very high chance that it will perform well as an ad. So you don't need to keep reinventing the wheel. If you've got a reel that has done well organically, you can then turn that into an ad and it will mostly perform really well. That kind of unfiltered, unpolished lo fi.

CJ Sinclair [00:08:21]:
And I think it's really hard for founders, especially founders that are very protective of their brand and want it to look polished and lovely to shift that mindset. But I've seen it so many times when I finally crack these clients and they try the ads and they succeed and they're like, I wish I did this. You know, they don't have to be absolutely disgusting. With none of your branding, it's almost like you're sending a WhatsApp photo to your friend. That is the sort of thing that can work for you.

Catherine Edley [00:08:52]:
Yeah, that's so interesting. I guess because the platforms are flooded with this kind of content anyway. So it's what blends in and doesn't sort of make people go, oh, that's an ad. It's just like, oh, that looks nice.

CJ Sinclair [00:09:03]:
Yeah, it's like, oh, who's that? Is that my friend? Are they sharing that? And then, then you've got the dwell time and then your messaging angles with the clear product benefits are what supports it. So your visual is going to stop them, then your messaging is supporting them. And if it really grabs them, and hopefully it does, that's when they go over to the website and then it's your website's job to then grab them towards the buy now button.

Catherine Edley [00:09:25]:
Got you. Talked about diversity of creatives. Well, so sort of trying lots of different things.

CJ Sinclair [00:09:38]:
Yeah. I mean the, the brands I've worked with this year and that have absolutely won are the ones that are iterating every week. They're trying new things every week. And it might not seem like it is totally on brand because they're trying things that they've never tried before. But there is a cohesion to their creative. You know, you can tell that it's there, but the ideas are a bit different. So one of my fashion clients, for example, they've kind of gone down the videos of them wearing the outfit in the mirror. So they're walking to in the mirror.

CJ Sinclair [00:10:09]:
So something again, that you would send to your friend, like, what do you think of this outfit? And it's doing amazingly well. Like, incredibly well. Another one of my jewelry clients has used hooks at the moment, where this is the brand my friend wouldn't shut up about. And everyone's like, oh, what's it? So it's all of this sort of stuff that is really working. And my background is psychology. And this is the sort of stuff that you absolutely like. How do we grab curiosity? How do we pique people's interest? How do we get them over to the website? And we're going to be seeing a lot of this in 2026. That kind of unpolished, unfiltered storytelling content is going to be absolutely huge next year.

Catherine Edley [00:10:43]:
That's fascinating. I mean, and that leads me on to my next question, which was, which I feel like you may be have even answered, which was how can smaller businesses compete without a huge budget? But it sounds like from what you're saying, that because it's unpolished, you don't need a giant budget. It can be somebody in the mirror. Yeah, yeah. Something simple.

CJ Sinclair [00:11:00]:
So simple, so simple. Like smaller brands. And this is why I'm so excited for 2026, because smaller brands can pivot and move so much quicker.

Catherine Edley [00:11:09]:
What all of this really comes back to is believability. And once you start thinking about trust, it naturally leads into how we measure success, especially when it comes to roas.

CJ Sinclair [00:11:21]:
So independently, roas doesn't really mean anything together. When you're looking at your cost per result, how much is it costing you to get a sale and your roas, those two things make a lot of sense when they're together. The one thing I would say to brands, and I see this a lot, that if you are running ads by yourself and you're kind of dabbling and working out yourself, is to calculate what we call a break even roas. So what is the ROAS I need to hit to break even? So anything over that is okay. I'm profitable. Anything under that is okay, I need to do some tweaks when you know that number, understand the data and letting the data guide you makes a lot more sense than just going in there going, oh, well, I want to Ross a 10, which literally means nothing because it depends on your margin. So.

Catherine Edley [00:12:07]:
Yeah, yeah, totally. And also one of the things that bothers me about Roas is of course it's like, so let's say you spend £10 and you get £50 of sales back. Okay, that's great. But it's not your profit on ad spend, it's your return, it's your sales. Whereas actually, you know, you could be, yeah, you get twice as much back as you spent, but if your margins under 50%, you've actually lost some money.

CJ Sinclair [00:12:27]:
So, yeah, and it, I mean, you know, for me, managers and run clients and the roas in their Ads Manager doesn't factor in my fee, for example. So, you know, there are so many other costs outside of the platform. Also, the other thing to mention is that in Ads Manager we're not seeing all of the data. So especially for products that are of higher value, where the consideration period from the customer is longer, we don't see data outside of seven days in Ads Manager just from looking at the dashboard. So if your buyers are taking 14 days or 28 days to buy and the ad has helped do that, we don't see that data. So again, it's skewed. And the data is also delayed in Ad Manager, so we have no idea what's going on some days because the data is so delayed. I would take ROAS with a pinch of salt on its own, but just factor it into everything else and also your overall sales and revenue, not just ad sponger.

Catherine Edley [00:13:23]:
So there you have it. Ads in 2026 aren't about hacks or perfect targeting. They're about clarity, creativity and trust. And if you're a smaller brand that can move quickly, test ideas and show up as a real human behind your products, that's not a disadvantage, it's an opportunity. You'll find CJ's details in the show notes. And if this episode has highlighted gaps in your margins, cash flow, or your platform for growth, that's exactly the work I do with my clients. So why not head to resilient retailclub.com to find out more about my services. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next week.