If you’ve been changing your Facebook and Instagram ad targeting but your webinar still isn’t making sales, you may be fixing the wrong problem. 

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I explain how to tell if the issue is your targeting or your webinar, and what to look at before making more changes to your ads. I also share why clear messaging is often more important than perfect targeting. 

Listen now and find out what’s really stopping your webinar from converting. 

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Kwadwo [QUĀY.jo] Sampany-Kessie’s Links:

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Phew, ha ha ha ha. So we keep tweaking the targeting, but our webinar conversion rate stays the same. And we wonder do Facebook and Instagram ads just not work for my niche? Does it work for everybody else? But not me. I hear this a lot. And I want to take a pause to address this because there’s something in that kind of statement that people are missing. And you might be missing it too. It’s in that first part. We keep changing the targeting, but the conversion rate stays the same. If targeting were the problem, then changing the targeting would improve your conversion rate. That’s how targeting works. You change the targeting, different people show up, and your numbers, like your conversion numbers, they shift. When you change the targeting lots of times, and the conversion rates stay the same, then it’s clearly not a targeting problem. You have a conversion rate problem and you need to do conversion rate problem-solving types of things. Because, well, targeting is beside the point here. And I’m not saying that targeting doesn’t matter. It does. But this is 2026. Meta’s algorithms are sophisticated enough that if your messaging is on point, and assuming that messaging is running to a funnel that converts, meta can find the right people for your business. The targeting really, if you think about it, is downstream in your funnel from your messaging. Your messaging is what is calling people the right people into the ads in the first

Targeting Tweaks With No Lift

SPEAKER_00 1:31

place. So by the end of this episode, you will know how to tell the difference between a targeting problem and a conversion problem, and why that distinction saves course creators possibly months. And why that distinction saves course creators possibly months of working on something that doesn’t need to be worked on. So let me describe what an actual targeting problem looks like so you know when you have one. A targeting problem looks like the wrong people are arriving, and you get leads who really don’t have a connection to your offer or need help from your offer. A targeting problem also looks like lots of randos leaving comments on your ads. Your ads that are pretty pretty vanilla, not even controversial. Or there’s lots of comments that aren’t even so bad. It’s just they’re off topic. And you’re like, who would think of that or who would talk about that? Well, somebody who sees your ad that has no need for what you are delivering would do stuff like that. Or people that are registering for your webinar are immediately unsubscribing once they get that webinar first delivery email because they realize that they really don’t want what the webinar is supposed to solve. And there obviously was a disconnect. Of course, they won’t say that. They’ll just unsubscribe because it had nothing to do with what they had signed up for, or your email open rates in that webinar show-up sequence will be low, not because you’re bad at writing emails, but because the folks who are opting in actually had no interest, no real interest about the topic. So a conversion problem that’s actually different. Folks are clicking on your ad, signing up for the webinar, opening some of the emails, and showing up to the webinar. And you like, we had a good webinar. The QA session was actually lit with people who were interested in the thing that you are helping them with. If you had a post-webinar survey, people are saying, This

How To Spot A Targeting Problem

SPEAKER_00 3:23

webinar, I needed it so bad. You were saying everything that I was thinking about or that I was dealing with, you knew me and you’re like, Yes, yes, I have done my research, but those folks didn’t buy. That’s a conversion problem. So then to state the obvious your targeting worked, the right people came and something in your funnel did not convert them. You know, three spots in a funnel where conversions go to die. That would be your webinar show-up rate, the webinar structure itself, and the clothes, the pitch of the webinar. Pitch and the clothes the sales pitch of the webinar. None of those are fixed by changing who sees your ads. In a perfect ideal world, if you were in a perfect ideal room with your perfect ideal customers, people who already know they have this problem and are willing to solve it, would your webinar actually be able to close them into your program or course? If your honest answer is yes, then quite possibly targeting could be the problem. And

Red Flags In Leads And Comments

SPEAKER_00 4:33

if honestly you’re not sure, then targeting is probably not your priority. And if you’re preparing for a fall launch and you want somebody like me to look at your phone really quick and let you know, is it a targeting or a conversion problem? Well, there is a free ad strategy call link sitting for you in the show notes of this audio podcast episode. So, but here’s why the distinction between a conversion problem and a targeting problem matters, especially for what you need to do next. See, because when you have a conversion problem, but you spend your whole summer working on targeting, you end up with a laser-focused, very precisely defined and targeted audience, which still does not convert in your funnel. You eliminated the wrong people more efficiently, but your right people still are not buying. When you correctly identify the conversion problem and spend your summer working on those funnel issues, you go into the fall with something, a funnel that

What A Conversion Problem Looks Like

SPEAKER_00 5:34

is closer to being ready for traffic. And then the effects of your good targeting begin to compound in your business because right people are coming to the funnel and converting to the next step. You know, vague targeting, as in targeting that’s not working so well, that can be a result of vague messaging. Assuming that your ads are actually set up the right way, when you get to talking specifically in your ads, meta has some more clues about the specific kind of people that your ads should be shown to. But hold on, I mean, this episode is not about setting up ads correctly, though it is, though it’s not, though you always should set up ads correctly and make sure that you’re not like using, say, the wrong objective, thus telling the algorithm to find the wrong types of people. This happens. I just saw it on a consulting call that I was on. There’s objectives like traffic objective, awareness objective, leads objective, sales objective, and uh, if you choose the wrong objective, you could be running ads, getting traffic to your funnel that’s supposed to sell folks, and people will not buy because meta’s looking for the wrong type of person, or at least Meta’s

Three Funnel Spots Where Sales Die

SPEAKER_00 6:50

looking for people, but finding the wrong people who have shown other kinds of signals online, not necessarily the kind of signals that pay you. So, yeah, the specificity of the message is doing the work, not necessarily your targeting. Plus, you know, this is 2026. Broad targeting is working, or AI targeting, whatever you want to call it, letting more loosely defining your targeting and letting Meta, based on all the data it has on your business because you’ve had the Pixel installed well before you needed to use ads uh is working quite well. So then in this case, before you build all your targeting for the fall, you need to get specific on your messaging. What is the one problem that my webinar or my challenge will solve? And what is the next problem that my offer solves that I need to also communicate to those people coming into the webinar and challenge? Because you know, if you have webinar and then offer, the whole name of the game oversimplified, but still we should be operating with this kind of logic in our brains is the webinar brings people in for a problem to be solved, educates them around that problem, and then why they need to solve that

Messaging Specificity Beats Narrow Targeting

SPEAKER_00 8:08

problem for sure, and opens up a desire for the solution, your paid thing that solves that problem, if it makes sense. Notice I didn’t say educate them around the solution of that problem. I said educate them around the problem and then motivate them to go and get the solution, which should be your product that you solved. Does that mean you don’t teach anything of substance in a webinar? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But you definitely don’t overteach. That was covered in the episode that went live last week. And you could click on the link in the show notes below for that episode. But yes, before you get people to the webinar, are you saying that one problem that you’re going to solve plainly, clearly enough, such that somebody who sees an ad who doesn’t know you can easily understand it and click on the ad. When the answer to that question is a clear yes, then your targeting gets much easier. Before your budget for the next launch gets committed, penciled out, typed up, however, you’re doing the thing. I want you to understand which problem. Is it a targeting or a conversion problem you have? Head down to the link below and get a free ad strategy session with me so we can dive into

Ad Objectives And Broad Targeting In 2026

SPEAKER_00 9:20

that a little further. Until the next time that you hear from me or see me, take care, be blessed, and I’ll see you in the next one. Bye bye.