#284 - The Viral Ads Strategy That's Crushing in 2026

I found a random viral post about a desk organizer that had absolutely nothing to do with my business, and I turned it into an ad that's adding 500 to $1,500 a day in profit to our business right now, plus countless backend sales. Sounds weird, right? But stick with me, because I'm about to show you the exact strategy I use to find viral post formulas and turn them into high converting ads foreign. Hey. Hey. I am Kate McKibben from HelloFunnels. CO. I'm your host and welcome to the Doing It Online podcast. Today we're talking about the viral ad strategy that's absolutely crushing it in 2026. And this is something I discovered kind of by accident when I was doing a deep dive into what was actually working with Facebook ads right now. So let me give you the backstory. At the end of last year, October to be specific, our ads really fell off a cliff. They'd been slowing down a little bit, and I wasn't sure if it was just the time of year, but then they really disappeared and I've realized I needed to go all in on figuring this out. So I went through so many different ads trainings, all promising to know the solution to the Andromeda changes. And I was seeing a lot of stuff that was very samey, a lot of people talking about their particular frameworks for different types of ads. So I tried a bunch of them. I did one training that swore the best way to run ads right now is with static images. I did another one that swore the best way was face to camera, very casual, sitting in your car kind of style. I tried those too, and they were fine, but they were just fine. I don't think I would be able to have scaled as much as I've been able to scale if I just used those type of ads. But then one day when I was doing my deep dive, AKA scrolling to the end of the Internet, I found just this random post. It wasn't even an ad. It was a post that came up in my feed. And, you know, sometimes you see those posts, those reels, and it's just really catchy. Like, I don't know, there's something about it, and you end up watching it a bunch of times. It was quite informative. They were showing you how to do something and it was enjoyable. I had so many comments. People loved it, and obviously it had gone viral. And I was looking at it and I was looking at the structure of it and the pacing, and I was like, this would totally apply this kind of timing and format would totally apply to explaining and getting people excited about my offer. So I thought I would use it like a template and try to create something that had that same sort of flow and timing and energy. And it worked really well, like, crazy well. And I was like, okay, all right, well, I need to go find more of these. And that kind of became a bit of my obsession, Looking for those viral post formulas that could be turned into ads. And I found three that I was able to use multiple times with different angles, and they just worked really, really well. So let me break this down for you now. Part of what I learned through this process, and I talked about this in last week's episode, is that there's a new structure for how to run ads successfully right now. And if you didn't listen to that episode, go back and listen to it, because it's really important. But the other piece that I discovered is that it's not just about knowing how to set up the right campaigns, the right audiences, the ad sets, the budgets, and knowing how to scale it. One of the other really key pieces to making this strategy run well is getting the right type of ads in the first place. And I've been running ads on and off for years, since roughly 2010. And in that time, I've seen so many different trends. I've seen, I've tried so many different things, and I've spent so many hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads. And so again, this is what I normally do. Whenever I'm about to launch a new ad campaign, I go and I do a deep dive. I do a lot of research. I want to know what's working now because I know that it changes. So that's what I did. So, first of all, I just scrolled a lot and I started clicking on things because I wanted the algorithm to know that I'm interested in this type of stuff. So. So that. So that more of it would come up. I started saving a lot of different types of posts as well. Now, I don't normally do a lot of social media time. I actually normally don't even have it on my phone. But this is research time, so it's allowed. And that's when I started finding these viral posts that I could turn into ad templates. Now, before I go any further, I wanna let you know that we are actually running a live training on this exact strategy inside our coaching programs. Next week is called the Viral Ads formula Training. We're going to walk you through the different types of post templates that we found that work consistently across so many different niches. We're going to show you how to find them, how to adapt them, and then how to turn them into high converting ads. If you're already one of our coaching programs, go check the calendar in the HQ and make sure it's in your diary. And if you're not inside one of our coaching programs yet and you want access to this training as well as help with refining your offers, automating your sales, setting up your funnels and scaling your profits, then grab the link below, apply now and come and join us in the workshop next week. Alrighty, let's keep going. Okay, so I can't really break down the exact different types of ads in this episode because they're very visual and that's what we're going to be doing inside the live training. But I am going to give you some tips around creating these types of ads, finding these types of ads, so you can start experimenting for yourself. So tip number one is you need to go outside of your niche when you're looking for viral posts to turn into ads. I would recommend you go and look at things that are totally unrelated to your particular topic. The ones that I found that worked the most had nothing to do with online coaching. Like, they were not even slightly related. One was actually for a desk organizer. So extremely unrelated, but I guess it would speak to a similar market, but just solving a completely different problem. So don't stay in your lane. Look at what's working in other industries, other niches, other spaces, and particularly those who still speak to a same type of person. Because it's the format that matters, not the topic. Tip number two, use the Meta Ads Library. If you haven't already, you need to make friends with the Meta Ads Library. You can just Google Meta Ads Library. It will take you straight there and then you can go and search for literally any account that's running ads and it will show you all of their ads. So here's what I recommend. If you find someone who's doing posts that you like, go and have a look at their account first, see if there are other posts. Because usually if they've done one good one, they've done others. Save those, then go and see if they've used them as ads. Because if they're running ads, you can see which of those formats are working best. So you're going to go to the Meta Ads Library. You're going to look them up and you're going to have a look at their ads. And here's a Little tip for you have a look at how long those ads have been running. You want an ad that's been running for at least a couple of weeks. If it's only been running for a couple of days, maybe come back and check it later because you can't really guarantee that it's working yet. But if it's been running for a few weeks, that means it works. And so they kept it on. All right, tip number three, do not copy. Just use this as a template. Okay? This is so important. Obviously we do not copy. We just look at these posts or these ads, we look at what it was that worked about them and then we create our own version, we use it as a template. So you look at the hooks, the first three seconds, that's really important. And you create your own version. You look at the cadence, you look at the flow, you look at the types of imaging and how long different images or videos were up. But you are going to adapt it to your offer, to your, to your images, to your videos, your message and your brand. That's what makes it work. That's what stops it from being actual copying. All right, tip number four, how to actually create them. So all of the ones that I've created have been using B roll, which is a mixture of my own B roll and some stock video. And I've just been creating them in Canva. Now that's something I quite enjoy doing. I've got a little bit of a background in media, so I have some experience with that. But if it's not something you feel comfortable with because you do want this to look good and not like your 12 year old's art project, here's what you can do. If you have the script, you have the little B roll videos and you have the examples, then you can just go somewhere like Fiverr and you can probably get one created edited up for you for like 30 to $50. Just find a video edited there and have them put it together for you. So don't let the creation process stop you. You don't have to be a video editor to make this work or pro. Tip. If you have any teenagers in the house, I bet you they could do a pretty good job on it as well. All right, tip number five, test and iterate. I definitely found that there were different ones that worked much better than others. Some that I thought would work amazingly and then they didn't. And then I made a tweak and then they worked great. So as I mentioned, I found three that work pretty consistently and can be applied to so many different niches and that's part of what going to be teaching inside the workshop. But the key is really research and then test, create a few, see what works, double down on the winners. That is how you scale. All right, so here's the thing. This strategy is working really, really well right now and I don't know how long it's going to last, but while it's working, we need to take advantage of it. So if you want to get access to the full breakdown, the three viral ad templates that we're using, how to find them, how to adapt them and how to turn them into high converting ads, make sure you join us for the live training next week. The only way to get access is to be one of our amazing coaching clients. So if you want to find out what the best fit for you and how that could work for you, grab the link below, apply now, we can have a chat and then you can come and join us in the workshop next week. I can't wait to see you there. Alrighty, that's it for today, I'll see you next week.