KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
- There are right times and wrong times to be running Facebook Ads and if you’re in your infancy as a business, it might not be the right time.
- Growing your business will either take time or money and you need to decide which one is more valuable to you.
- Not everyone is advertising on Facebook, meaning there it is a massive market to break into that is guaranteed to be effective.
- When you first get started with Facebook Ads it’s important you take the time to experiment. You won’t know what is going to work and what isn’t so you need to set aside some budget to cover this.
- A boosted post is the simplest way to create an ad on Facebook, however, it doesn’t mean you should use it. As it is a simple way to create an ad, you’re not getting access to all of the features you would get if you were using Ads Manager.
- Choose the objective that matches the outcome you want from your ad. Whether it’s likes, followers or conversions.
- Run campaigns alongside one another to test what works best.
- Think about what you’re asking people to do in your ad. If you’re asking someone to book an appointment or pick up the phone straight from your ad, chances are it’s not going to be successful. You need to warm people up first.
- In order to understand how your ads are performing, you need to take the time to learn as much as you can about Facebook Ads. Even if you’re outsourcing your ads to a professional, the more you know the better.
- There is a Facebook Support chat that you can use if you’re struggling.
- From February 2020, Campaign Budget Optimisation is going to be mandatory for all Facebook Ad accounts. If you’re worried, start getting used to it now and find what does and doesn’t work for you.
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…
Your ideal audience are probably on Facebook and they are telling Facebook EVERYTHING. This is something you definitely need to be tapping into as a brand.
HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS
- Introducing Liz – 04:58
- Why Should You Advertise on Facebook? – 08:20
- Getting Started with Facebook Ads – 16:11
- Should You Be Using the Facebook Boost Button? – 19:20
- Picking Your Objective – 23:20
- Should You Do Facebook Ads Training? – 33:18
- Getting Your Ads Accepted – 40:00
- Campaign Budget Optimisation and Dynamic Creative – 42:00
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE
Join My Masterclass
Facebook Blueprint Programme
Liz Facebook Course
Liz Melville Website
Liz Melville Instagram
Liz Melville Facebook
Transcript below
Good morning and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast, how are you? I'm having a slightly stressful morning, it's got to be said. I'm trying to send some videos to an event that wanted me to speak, anyway, as it happened I wasn't able to go and speak in person, so I've done some videos for them which is really cool actually. Really excited about the fact that I still have a presence there and they can still see me although I'm not technically there.
However, you know when the world of technology is trying to work against you and basically destroy your life, that's how I feel right now because I'm trying to upload these videos and they are not going. They're just taking forever and I've made them smaller and I've stopped everything on the computer and I've turned the computer off and I restarted the internet and honestly, things like this really wind me up and I have to remind myself to be calm and it is what it is and I can't change it but it's just so frustrating this very modern world we live in that some things just aren't exactly as they need to be.
So, anyway, my little run over for now, this week we've got an interview with the lovely Liz Melville who is a Facebook ads expert and we're going to be going through some really good, simple, getting started tips. Some new things that are new and that you might want to consider, but basically if you are looking at starting Facebook ads, then this might be a really good introduction to you.
It might give you an idea of how to get started and why you should do them and why they're good, and I honestly do believe they're really good. I use them in my business and I've used them for lots and lots of clients and they're fab, and Liz is lovely.
Before we get into the interview though a couple of reminder things. First off I have a masterclass coming up so I would love you to join me live for that. It's on the 24th of September, it's got loads of different times as always so no matter where you are in the world I'm sure there's a time that will accommodate you. If you head to teresaheathwareing.com/masterclass you're going to be able to sign up there.
And like I said, I really hope you can join me because it's going to be another fun one. I only ever do these things live. You know how sometimes when people do launches because obviously, this obviously is a step towards my academy opening again and sometimes I do them on Evergreen. Do you know what I mean by that? Basically they pre-record it and then it's a recording. I'm not keen on doing that. I love the live interaction. I love answering questions, so I really do enjoy kind of getting on there and hearing what you've got to ask and giving you that help that's going to help you directly in your business.
The other thing I wanted to mention as a side is obviously this episode we're talking about Facebook ads and the fact that obviously it's really good for your business and this could be of a real benefit. So I wanted to mention as well that in the academy, when it does open which will be on the 24th, there is, one of the courses that are already in there is a getting started with Facebook ads course and the academy itself, now I haven't confirmed the prices. At the time of recording this I'm still weighing up a few ideas, but anyway it's not going to be a huge amount of money and to come in and do that one course and then if you wanted to leave, hopefully you don't, but if you did then you technically could.
I'm just thinking if you do want to get started with Facebook ads there is a course in there for you, so it might be worth going and checking it out. Okay, let's get on with today's interview and let me tell you a bit more about Liz. Liz Melville is a highly regarded Facebook ads and marketing specialist, with over eight years experience in promoting brands and businesses online. Her clients spend tens of thousands of dollars on Facebook each month and they include some of the biggest names in Facebook and online marketing.
She has also mentored and taught countless online course creators and personal brands how to ditch the drama of Facebook ads and confidently unleash growth and scale their impact through her trusted signature strategies. Liz really is the fountain of knowledge when it comes to Facebook ads. She was fab on this episode so I really hope you enjoy it.
Introducing Liz
Okay, I am so excited this week to welcome my very lovely friend Liz to the podcast. Welcome Liz.
Oh thank you Teresa I am really honestly so excited. I've been looking forward to this.
Thank you, I've been looking forward to it, so I've said in the intro that we met through James Wetmore and being part of that community which is very exciting and very nice and that you have been doing Facebook ads for some time and you are a bit of an expert on it. So I am super excited to share with my audience some real practical stuff with them today because for me I go on a lot about Facebook ads that if you are on Facebook then really you should be exploring that and there are lots of ways you can do it for not a lot of money, which is amazing for small businesses.
But before we dive into that, Liz can you tell my audience if they haven't heard from you before, who you are and how you got to do what you do now?
Yeah, absolutely. So I started my business back in October 2010 and had other self employed businesses before then but when I was doing these things I was telling people on Facebook what I was doing and I noticed that ooh, they told their friends and I would actually get sales for what I was doing. I had two little businesses, one was walking dogs, and that was amazing, so I walk my dog in this area and look at this amazing photo and thought ooh can you walk my dog and I thought this was quite cool.
Just chatting on Facebook and another business I had when I had a proper job was selling chocolate bars and I am a complete chocoholic. I probably ate more than I sold but we made these wedding favours and personalised them for brides and again I would just take pictures of them, put them on Facebook, have a chat about them and I would go, ooh my friends getting married, she will want to talk to you and would get sales.
Yeah.
So it wasn't until I was made redundant from corporate that I realised that I needed to still earn money, what could I do? And I thought oh, there's something in this Facebook thing. It was really just gaining traction at that point and I thought you know I can see the power for businesses how they can tell people what they're doing and that's what really got me into Facebook marketing at first but at that point it was Twitter marketing and it was YouTube and it was LinkedIn.
I would talk to anyone about any type of social media platform but over the years that's really just niched in to just doing Facebook ads so it was first of all just Facebook and then really got into Facebook ads. That's been my evolution, short story, over the last nine years but loved every minute of it.
That's awesome, and finding something that you can niche [inaudible 00:07:26] in because I've always still stayed fairly wide in terms of what I talk about and what I know and that sort of thing and I've always wondered whether I should or wanted to, but I've never had that desire or call to, and I think when you do start finding that thing to grab onto and go actually no I'm going to be brilliant at this, it's fantastic isn't it because then that's what you're known for which is awesome.
What I really want to do for my audience today is, if you sat there listening, thinking I've never done it before and there are lots of people who don't advertise of Facebook and I'm not sitting here saying, I'm very careful to say that if you are doing something on Facebook right now that is working for you and you're not advertising, then great. Crack on. If it's working for you then brilliant but the chances are if you're using Facebook, you will find that the results you used to get or the results you want, you're not getting and advertising can really, really help with that.
Why Should You Advertise on Facebook?
So let's start with the basics. Why should they really consider advertising on Facebook? Why is it even a thing that they need to think about?
That's a great question and I agree with you because I don't think everyone is ready yet for Facebook ads. I think there is a right time and a wrong time to running them and in your infancy as a business owner and you're just starting out then it might not be the right time and I think if you really want to get into Facebook ads and get the benefit of them you probably want to be investing in them regularly, consistently and in the early days you might not have the cash flow to do that but I think for me if you are a business owner and you want to grow your business it's either going to take you time to do that.
If you want to do it organically, or it's going to take you money to do that and using paid traffic. So I think it becomes that choice of what's most valuable to me? Do I want some of my time back? Do I want to grow this faster? In which case you're looking at paid traffic and when you make that choice you can tap into with Facebook. You know we're talking millions and millions and billions of people out there and you can't tell me that your ideal audience isn't part of that.
I know Facebook gets a lot of bad press or its not as trendy as Instagram these days and all the old fuddy duddy's like Liz Melville are on there now but it's just simply not true and your ideal audience probably is on Facebook and what's more is they are telling Facebook everything. What they're eating, where they're eating, what magazines they like, what books they've read, where they live, their age, you name it, it is on Facebook. We spill our guts on Facebook and that is data that you can tap into as an advertiser.
So if you're sitting thinking how do I reach people? How do I get people to see what I've got to offer, then what better way then to just send an ad out and let Facebook do the work for you and take your message to millions of people.
Yeah, I love that and you know what, you've just hit on two things that I talk or think about a lot, so one my audience are on Facebook, no no no. I assure you someone, somewhere from your audience is on Facebook because like you said even though there are growing popularity in things like TikTok that I only vaguely know because my daughter's on there and I haven't yet thought about how that works from a business perspective or why or how I would use it but I know people are saying, “Oh it's not as popular.” And my stepson, he's not on Facebook but your audience are.
It's still the biggest platform by far and then the other thing is how much they do know about us. I always, I don't know about you Liz, but I always get the whole well how do they know that? You know, how can they know these things and that's not right and my argument is two fold, it's kind of like, well if you don't like it, don't be on it.
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
If you don't put your stuff on there then they not going to know it and two, it's not just about when someone says to me you can search on salary. Well how do they know my salary? My answer, you might disagree and I'd love to hear your take on this but my answer is obviously they are gathering data in from everywhere and they're surmising stuff or they're making very smart assumptions about you live here, you have this type of job, you are this type of person, you are this and therefore we assume you'd be earning this type of money. That's how I think they would work that sort of stuff out. What do you think Liz?
They actually know, they know.
How?
It's not even figuring it out or assuming.
That's amazing, I didn't know that.
It is and what a lot of people don't realise and a lot of this came out in the Cambridge analytical scandal because Facebook have partner networks that they share data with.
Yeah.
They used to partner with companies like Axiom, Experian, insurance companies so of course they know if you've got pet insurance and it's for a dog, you're a dog owner so if I want to target dog owners who live in the UK within a certain radius of whatever town, then they can use that partner data to find you and it's going to… yeah because they've got insurance policy there, they fit the criteria you've just put in, so that's it.
So a lot of us, we might not have told Facebook about our lifestyle but we may have made a transaction or done something that is publicly, well, not publicly but certainly it can be shared data that can be tapped into.
Now a lot of that got crackdown so a lot of these partnerships were closed down after Cambridge analytica so we can't now target on things like income because a lot of these categories have gone but there's still an awful lot of data that Facebook has and has access to that makes the targeting very, very powerful indeed.
And there is, so from a marketers perspective, honestly it's one of the best things I've ever seen. The fact that I can target down to those things and they've got some other super cool things that you do with pixels and custom audiences and stuff which we'll get to but that for me, and presumably you are still finding it effective and useful because again there has been talk recently, over the past year but ads are less effective than they used to be but presumably or I certainly feel that they're still as effective or still effective for my business. What about you?
I take the view that having just finished up a launch for someone where they made five million dollars.
That went all right.
We used ads extensively. Are Facebook ads less effective? I think some business owners would say no and they would call time on that kind of talk. I think Facebook ads are still as effective as they ever were. They might cost you more.
Yeah.
But that's a lot of it because there are more people coming into the advertising space and using it and advertising space of Facebook is starting to become a little bit depleted but that said, it goes back to something you said at the start Teresa, not everybody's advertising on Facebook and actually if you looked at the whole population of Facebook business page owners, normally that would mean you're a business owner. Only 6% of them are actually advertising.
So there's actually a massive amount of people who are just not touching Facebook ads at all and what's great for us is if you are using Facebook ads and you getting that experience and you getting your reputation with Facebook as being a responsible advertiser then you've got a massive opportunity there to keep doing that and they will be effective for you.
Where I tend to see struggling entrepreneurs who are saying things like Facebook ads aren't effective anymore, it's because their strategies for using them are not effective.
Yeah, I think you're right. I think we were really lucky having, a, a social media that we didn't have to pay for that worked really well for our businesses in the first place and, b, even when the advertising kicked in a bit more that it's still really cost effective to advertise through that way. I'm old school marketer, I used to work for Land rover who would put adverts out that would cost hundreds of thousands of pounds and we would have no idea how effective they were and it was too late by then because it was a press ad or it was a TV ad or it was an event or whatever.
We didn't have the way and the flexibility that we have now that if we turn an ad on and it's not working once you've given it enough time to realise whether it's working or not. You can turn it off. I joke that when people come to me and say I want Facebook ads or what budget should I put on and it's like how much could you afford to lose?
Getting Started with Facebook Ads
For instance, if you're going to test something because in all honestly I don't know about you again, you might disagree Liz but I think I might know what the outcome of that ad might be but in all reality I don't because there are so many variables for every single advert even all my own stuff, some can go really well, others not so great and that could be the time of year. That could be the type of picture, that could be the audience, that can be the call to action, that could be all these other things so I never really know how it's going to go.
So in my opinion, how much can I afford to lose and not be too upset about that and the chances are I'm not going to lose that money and the chances are I'm going to get some results from it but that's how I kind of view when you first start out. What do you think?
Yeah and I would tend to agree because I think when you first start out with ads you're absolutely testing from ground zero. You have no idea what's going to happen. You probably don't know what kind of creatives your audience is going to react you. You might not have honed your message to be 100% on point. You might have to work at that, you might have to try different variations to get your audience to react.
And while you're testing all that the unfortunate thing with Facebook ads is you're having to pay Facebook to take that ad out there, whether it works or not, so I think you're right. There is almost like okay, let's have fun with this. I'm going to experiment. I need to put aside a certain amount of budget for that experimentation but in some ways it's no different to what you mentioned, the old school marketing, because exactly as you said, when we took out that quarter page advert in the local magazine that people would put through doors, you didn't know whether the dog was going to chew it. You didn't know if the person on the other side of that letter box was someone you really wanted to reach.
So there is still that element of spending money on something that you have absolutely no idea whether it's going to work or not. So it's no different with Facebook ads. You do need to kind of speculate to accumulate and just test but I think you can also do that testing in a very, if not controlled but certainly you can make some decent guesstimates of what you should do and how you should approach the ads so that you don't just chuck your money away.
Yeah and you can turn it off, so-
Yeah.
If you decide that you're going to run something for two weeks to see how it works and you're four days in and actually it's bombing then you just go okay that's not working, we'll turn that off of we'll tweak it or we'll change it for sure.
Absolutely and what I often hear, the horror stories of Facebook took hundreds of pounds or dollars from me. No they didn't. You just forgot to turn it off as you said and if I didn't know where to turn it off, well how responsible was that of you as a business owner? To run an ad when you didn't know how to turn it off? Or how to measure that it was working and turn it off at the time where you couldn't get your money back.
So I think a lot of us need to take responsibility for understanding how to run ads and stop this blaming Facebook that they just came along and took my money or it's too expensive. Come on folks, you can control this.
Yeah, yeah. For sure and actually compare this to marketing 10 years ago and you were paying hundreds of thousands to get in magazines or-
Yeah.
Or you were spending hours walking around streets posting things through letterboxes so they have given you an amazing tool but you've got to be responsible and know how to use it, so this brings me nicely on to getting started then with Facebook ads and why, well I would like to say why they shouldn't hit that boost button but you made [crosstalk 00:19:16].
Let's talk about that boost button because that's the one thing that Facebook are constantly trying to promote to you aren't they? Should we or shouldn't we be hitting that boost button.
Should You Be Using the Facebook Boost Button?
So my question back to you is why do you think Facebook puts that boost button in such a prominent position on every post that you put on your page? They want you to hit it and then you get the next thing is, Facebook says that 95% of people are reacting better to this post than any other one you put on your page. Do you want to boost it? Again, why do you think they're doing that? It's because they want the advertising revenue and a boost post is the simplest way for a lot of people to create a Facebook ad.
Especially if you haven't taken the time to understand out how ads work, how to set them up, how to go into ads manager and do it properly. A boost post is a very easy on the fly away to do it. So you can do that but what's happening is you're not getting all the really good optimization tools and all the features that you'll get in ads manager to really optimise your ad and get the best results.
So what happens is you don't get maybe as much reach for your ad and reach is the number or people that are seeing it but Facebook is still taking your money, so they make more money out of you by you hitting that boost post button then if you went into ads manager and set your ad up properly. You'll still create the same ad, it will still have the same objective but you'll probably get better results because you've just taken that time to set it up and really get granular on all the settings.
Yeah for sure and you like you said, it's just too easy and therefore it they're making it super easy they're doing it for a reason and you're swayed by the fact I think. Businesses are swayed by the fact it's like, oh you can reach an extra few thousand people if you just press this button for four pounds and it's like yeah that's awesome but are they the right four thousand people because if they're not then what is the point of that? And actually did it do anything for you and I know you might sit back and think well it's only four pound, five pound, ten pound, fifteen pounds but actually it's still your money and if there's a smarter way to spend it then I'm always looking for that smarter way.
Absolutely and actually it's something we were talking about before we started chatting is that we've both seen ads for courses that we've already paid for.
Yeah.
Now there's a very simple way to stop that happening because why would you want to spend money on serving an ad to someone who's already bought from you when it could be served to someone who's a potential prospect. You can exclude your existing buyers from being served your ads. Very, very simply but you can't do that when you hit a boost post button but you can do it when you set it up in ads manager, you can start to exclude certain people and really narrow down your audiences, so it's a much more effective way of allocating your money and targeting people more effectively to just not take the lazy route.
Yeah, yeah, for sure and also from not just a spending money point of view but we were talking about the fact of how irritating it is for us on the receiving end to get those ads because you're like, you don't even know who I am whereas we know because we're in this industry they have the technology to know exactly who we are and therefore not send us those ads.
So not only are they wasting money but they're not making themselves look particularly great in the process. The same for, I've had it when I've been advertised events and then I bought my ticket and they've carried on advertising the event to me and it's like, stop irritating me now.
And those are the times where you're going to hide that post or you're going to say I don't want to see this anymore and that obviously has a negative impact on your ad overall doesn't it?
Yeah, absolutely. And also the ad keeps being seen by the same people and there's no way they're going to buy from you because they already have then yes they are going to get irritated. It's a bad customer experience and you're ad costs might start to rise because people start turning off. They're not reacting to the ad but they're still being served it.
Picking Your Objective
Yeah, yeah. For sure. So let's talk about getting started and one of the very first things and the things that I am keen on because the fact of when you're doing it properly and you're going through ad managers, the very first thing that you're asked to do is pick your objective.
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Now this is super important isn't it?
Yes, a hundred percent and it's where I see a lot of people go wrong, particularly with the boost post button.
Yeah.
The thing is I've hit boost post, I've created an ad, yay brilliant. Why is it not delivering any results? That's because it might be the wrong campaign objective so a boost post is just an engagement ad and when you go into ads manager as you say the first thing you've got to decide is what is my campaign objective? And you're faced with the choice of 11. Now in the main you're probably only going to need about three of those but it's very important that you chose the objective type, that most closely matches the action you want people to take when they see your ad.
So when they click on it, where do you want them to go? Chose the objective that's going to get them to do that because Facebook will take those instructions and say right, Liz wants people to click on an ad, go to an opt in page, give her their email address and sign up for something, so I would want a conversion objective and Facebook would then say right I will go out and I will find the people in your specified audience who are most likely to take that action and of course it goes back to what we said at the start. They know, because they know from past actions that you've taken across all the web, are you more likely to be a sucker? To sign up for things and get, oh yeah I want that. I want to have a look at that fridge magnet.
The amount of the most ridiculous things I've signed up for but anyway you get sucked in by the marketing but if I'm more likely to do that then I will get these ads. If you're a bit more savvy Teresa, which I suspect you probably are and less gullible, then you won't, so Facebook knows but that's really good marketing, so you chose your objective, Facebook will help you serve your ad to the right people.
You know it's funny you say that about me being gullible and I won't do that. What I do do though, is I sign up for every lead magnet I see out of interest of that process and I screen shot everything. So if anybody serves me any lead magnet I literally screenshot the ad. I then save the address because obviously it's on my phone and I email that to myself and I literally then look at their page and then I look at how they delivered the thing. Honestly it's like this crazy fascination in people's funnels and how they're doing it, so I do sign up for loads of things so I get loads of things sent to me because they're just looking at what I do.
So really interesting, quick question actually for my own personal point. I tried lead ads, that's one of the objective isn't it? That you try lead ads?
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes.
And obviously one of the main things I do through advertising is trying to get leads for people to sign up for my email list.
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
And to download a lead magnet and all that sort of thing. Now I tried lead ads when they first came out and it didn't seem to do a whole lot for me. It didn't convert as well so I still use a landing page, so just in case you don't understand I've talked about this on my podcast so hopefully you will but basically I will serve you an ad or you might see an advert from me, you click on that you go through to a new page off Facebook, it might open up within the app or whatever but it's not a Facebook hosted page, it's a page that I have created and the only thing that you can do on this page, it's a landing page, is give me your email and your name and then from there you go to a thank you page and you sign up.
But you can actually do a lead up through Facebook but then pre fills everything from what they know about you and it's all within Facebook. Is that something you've done much of? Do you find that it's working or not working? Should I give it a go again? Because I just tried, it didn't work so I stuck with what I know at the moment.
Yeah and that's a great question and you've beautifully explained the difference between a lead ad and a conversion ad so a conversion ad is getting you leads and this is where people go well I want leads, I want people to sign up for something, I'll do a lead ad, it may or may not be right for you. Normally I would say if you're marketing online it's probably a conversion ad you want if you're going to take people away from Facebook as you say to a landing page outside of it. To give you their email address, but if that's beyond you and I haven't got a landing page software, I couldn't possibly create one myself, I'm just starting out, a very simple way to collect email addresses is to run a lead ad objective and that's where you create a form that's within Facebook not outside of it and people as you say, it will be pre populated with information Facebook already has and then you can very quickly, from a user experience it's great because people will just that's it.
Submit my information and off it goes, those kind of ads are brilliant if you are perhaps a bricks and mortar business or you're some kind of consultancy and you want to take bookings or you want to book appointments they're great for that because you're getting peoples information and it will be correct because it's come from Facebook, so I love them for that kind of business, if you're a typical marketing online and you want to sign up for a lead magnet and you've got a landing page I would go with a conversion ad.
You'll probably find you'll get better results, I'd say more effective end conversions. What do I mean by that? Lead ads you might get more people signing up but what I've seen happen is that when it comes to putting an offer to them you get a lower conversion rate. It's almost like the lower costs you get more leads upfront but they're lower quality.
Yeah.
Because it's so easy to fill out and Facebook's doing a lot of that, there's no commitment from someone, whereas if they got to click on a link, go to a landing page and make the decision to give you their email address they're already showing more commitment and then when you put that offer to them you possibly find you get a better conversion to sell, but it all comes down to the testing, which of them works best for you. I love testing things alongside each other, running identical campaigns, see what happens because I have no way of knowing how you're audience is going to react. Neither do you really, until you test it.
But in the main, from all the testing I've done, that's how I would differentiate the two.
I think that's such a good point and you've bought up something else there that I think people really need to consider is what are you asking them to do with that ad? So for instance, I've run ads in the past that were click to call and it was for an estate agent, now that, it was a test ad because I just wanted to see what would happen. It didn't do anything. They didn't get any calls, because think about what you're asking them to do.
One, it's not a product that you just buy like that, it's a long decision process, so they're not just going to pick up the phone and go, “Oh I wasn't going to sell my house but now I will and I'll just book an appointment.”
Two, you're asking someone to go straight from an ad to being on the phone and speaking to someone. That is a big commitment and I know that sounds ridiculous but it is, getting on the phone and talking to someone and I've had people who have done ads and leads or they've talked to me about them, when they've asked them to go straight into booking an appointment from an ad and they're like, it didn't do very well, the Facebook ads don't work and it's like, no no no, Facebook ads work lovely, you were targeting a cold audience who don't know who you are and you are asking them to get on the phone to you.
No one in their right mind is going to do that, so it's about kind of doing that warm up thing and thinking about realistically what am I asking you to do right now and the way I like to view things, I don't know about you Liz, but I like to imagine I stood in front of someone. So imagine stood in front of someone and going, “Hey would you like this freebie?” And they've only just met you and they might be like, “Yeah, okay, we might do that.” Or you spoke to them last week because they've seen an ad of yours that's just a video and then the following week you meet them again and go, Wwould you like this freebie?” And they're like, “Oh yeah, that would be great. Thanks for that.”
Imagine then I walk into a networking situation, I'm at a breakfast and I walk up to someone and go, “This is what I do, do you want to book a call in?” They would think you were mental. Like literally mad and I think sometimes we forget online that we're talking to humans at the end. Someone in front of you is unlikely to want to do that then the chance of them doing it online are slim to none.
Absolutely and an analogy that I quite often use, it's not even an analogy, it's a real life situation is, how often have you had those calls? The telephone call at home where the phone rings, “You were in a car accident recently, do you want to claim the insurance?” You're like, “No, I wasn't, go away.” And you automatically, nine times out of ten, most people I talk to they hate those kind of calls.
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
So I ask why? Why do you hate that? Well they don't know anything about me because they don't know who I am and they just asked me this and I haven't even had a car accident yet, so why are you sending them an ad, other people an ad, who have never met you and don't know who you are and asking them to buy something from you and you've not taken the time to get to know them if it's something they want?
You need to build that relationship, so I'm a hundred percent behind Facebook ads we need to stop thinking about them as promotions and advertisements, they actually should be thought about as conversations and it's something I talk about a lot now is exactly as you said, imagine yourself standing in front of someone and saying what you wrote in that ad. How would it feel and how do you think it would be received? If any part of that feels icky or you're not sure or you think uh, they'll tell me to go away, then why would it be any different when you put that it to an ad and serve it online?
Yeah, that's such a good point isn't it and I just think, thinking and imagining standing in front of someone for me is such a good barometer in terms of is this going to work or is it not going to work? If I couldn't naturally stand in front of someone and go hey you might want to check out a video I did about so and so, it's really helpful if you're this type of business or whatever. That would feel fine. I couldn't just meet someone and go, “You want to buy my course?” You know, it just feels horrible. Absolutely horrible.
Should You Do Facebook Ads Training?
So okay, let's talk about then, obviously you've got this objectives, there are many steps then to creating your perfect ad, and there are various variables, various variables? That's too many v's. There are many variables which can have a huge impact. I always say, and we were just talking about Atomic cons, about speaking there next year at my talk, atomic con this year was about funnels and I liken them to cakes because cakes and funnels and ads and online marketing are the same because if you put one tiny ingredient wrong or you miss one thing out or you put too much of another thing, it can affect everything.
And ads are a bit like that aren't they? So if I'm sat here thinking okay, that's great. I really wanted to give it a whirl but what do I do? Do I go and find some training and do it myself or do I go and hire someone to do it? What do you recommend?
That is such a good question and I love the cake analogy because I can relate to cake, with Facebook ads it's a little bit like do you want to follow the Delia Smith recipe of do you want to be like Heston Blumenthal and just throw things in, all these ingredients and hope that it will work or do you want to follow the recipe that is most likely to work? And I think you've got to have, with whatever approach you take, you kind of got to have an understanding of what ingredients are going to go together to start with.
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
So I say that everyone should learn that. I think everyone should start with, what do I need to know to be able to understand how my ads are performing even if I'm not managing them myself?
Yes.
Even if I'm going to outsource them at some point in the future, how would I know that what my ads manager is telling me is good actually is and this is where I hear so many horror stories of people who have outsourced their ads because it's a blind spot, it's something they're just scared to silly of, they've talked themselves into this mindset of I can't run them, I'm not a techy, I'm not a numbers person, I'm not going near my ads, I'll just chuck them over the fence to someone else and make it their problem and their responsibility and actually then they get burned because the ads manager is merely spending their money and they have no idea whether what is happening is good or not, until they find out it isn't.
Yeah.
And spent thousands of dollars for that lesson, so I think you should learn it first and a great analogy here is that I often will describe is I hate accounts and bookkeeping with a passion.
Yeah, oh my God, you and me both Liz.
Absolute passion.
[crosstalk 00:35:35], I cannot bear.
So I've got a choice. I can either decide, okay am I going to do that myself? No, because I hate it. It's not that I can't do it. I can but I hate it, so I'll outsource it but I will only ever give my accounts to my accountant when I know how to understand the profit and loss account that he sends back to me because if I don't he could be embezzling me, he could be robbing me blind and I wouldn't have a clue.
So for my view as a responsible business owner I need to understand what the key numbers are to control my business and keep it profitable and from that respect ads are no different because you need to understand those basics, so how you learn that is really up to you but I mean there are lots of courses out there. I myself have a course but you can even get learning from Facebook for free through its blueprint programme as well so there is no excuse for not learning it.
No, you're right. Absolutely not. I think we'll link up to your course in the show notes, so that will be in there so go and take a look at that guys because my only advise and I don't know this for sure about Facebook but I did it with Google ads. I learnt how to do Google ads first of. I still don't know how to do Google ads, just so you know, even though I learnt it and was doing it I just couldn't tell anybody because I just thought I honestly don't feel like I know what I'm doing, but I did two lots of training.
I did training through Google and was training to be their partner and then after I passed two of the three exams and still didn't know what I was doing I was thinking somethings wrong here and then I did training through a woman who I found online who was an expert in Google ads. Based in the UK.
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
I paid to do one of her courses and do you know what? My ads were so much more successful from her than Google, because what Google wanted me to do and I would assume Facebook are the same, they want me to spend money. So yes they are going to help you but they're not going to give you those hacks, they're not going to give you those actually I have tested this and this tends to work better so if you do want to jump in at a slightly better level, try this first. They not going to be able to give you, or they won't give you those things as well I don't think as say you will in your course Liz because you're objective is to make it as profitable for that customer and who you're working with than help Facebook increase their budget, or that's the experience I've had.
Yeah, it's a really good point. I'm probably going to get blacklisted by Facebook now, don't booster post, don't do all the things that we want you to do. More money. Don't do Facebook blueprint but I think to a certain extent and another thing you'll see quite a lot is a Facebook marketing expert can help you and they'll do a review of your ads and actually they're not running ads themselves to the best of my knowledge.
Yeah.
And I think there's a lot to be said for learning from someone who has been there, worn the t-shirt, got really dirty, chucked it in the wash and still wanted to come back and wear it again. Yeah, you do learn a lot by doing that constant testing and you'll learn faster from someone like that.
And for sure because I just went in there the other day and I do ads for myself you know obviously quite a bit and I do have a team but at the moment I'm feeling like a bit of a control freak and I'm doing everything myself for whatever reason and I went in the other day and it changed and it changes fairly frequently, which is irritating and new things come out all the time so if you're not in there any you're trying to help someone, then I don't know how you could do it because literally if you're thinking about doing it and you sat there thinking oh God but it's going to change everything, obviously what you're being taught are the principals, so that if something does change but then that's where you have Facebook groups and that's where you have discussions where you can go back and go oh, this is new, what's this?
So yeah, it does change all the time. So okay definitley get some training, definitley think about doing it, so the other things I wanted to ask before we finish today is, one thing that's happening, so once you put up your ad and you've done all this and again I'm only asking for my own interest. It goes through a review process and as you said Liz, when you've done lots of ads Facebook knows you're trusted. That you're not putting anything really bad out there and you're not breaking the rules and you're not doing this, that and the other except I put an ad out yesterday and it's still in review almost 24 hours later, now, that is, I don't know what's going on there. That's really weird.
We had a conversation before didn't we? When we were in San Diego back in March, that they seem to be taking time to review things and a couple of ones, they just didn't get through and they kept rejecting it and that sort of thing. Is there… do we know if there's any reason for why it's taking so long or?
Getting Your Ads Accepted
Yeah, I mean I think Facebook's official answer would be it's a queuing system and I think that is pretty much the reason behind it but it's frustrating
Yes.
Because you want your ads up at a certain time and you want them to be running and you want to hit deadlines and if that ad doesn't get reviewed it's so annoying but there's not really any way round it, so when you create your ad and you confirm it, it goes to Facebook for approval and the first pass of approval is done by artificial intelligence. It's screening all the ads and you will go into a queue, so sometimes it's a lottery, if you happen to go in when it can go instantly be approved and other times yes it can take over 24 hours.
Facebook officially say their turnaround time is 24 hours, if it's over that you still waiting you need to get in touch with them and there's a chat support that a lot of people don't realise. There is a Facebook chat support and in the main they're great, they'll be very helpful at getting your ad reviewed, so if you find that things are sticking and not quite understanding what's happening I would get on the chat.
And ask them?
Yeah.
That's really helpful, thank you. Okay so last few things to finish off. Now they're always coming out with new things as we've said, it changes and there's a few ones that have come up that it would be really interesting just for you to explain what they are just because they seem really prominent in a lot of ads.
So they've changed the video views ad which I used a lot and I recommend that people use because it's a great way to narrow down your audience and they now instead of counting the three second view or a 10 second view they're talking about through play, what do they mean by through play?
Yeah, I don't know why they didn't just call it a 15 second view because that's what it is. Essentially that's pretty much what it is, so-
Brilliant.
Campaign Budget Optimisation and Dynamic Creative
If your video was more than 15 seconds long than somebody's watched at least 15 seconds. If it's shorter than that obviously that wouldn't count but yeah it's pretty much a 15 second view, they've done that because I think that they're realising that even a 10 second view is fairly transient. Most people make up their mind about a video fairly quickly.
Yeah.
If they watch for 15 seconds that is showing a level of commitment that is valuable to you as a marketer, so that's why they've switched to measuring that.
See why do they do stuff like that? Just say 15 seconds.
Because they never tell you.
No, no.
I would love it for one day for Facebook to say we're just going to do this poll, we're thinking of changing this, what do you think? Instead of we've just changed that.
Honestly.
I didn't tell you-
Exactly and then the other thing is, you might get it, another account might not. Someone else might get something and you haven't got it, it's really tricky.
Yes.
It makes you feel that you constantly don't know what you're talking about and it's like, no I promise, I do this for a living but it's just they change it so often.
I can always tell you when they're going to change something, it's usually just as I'm about to do a teaching or a workshop or something like that and then I put something on the screen and everybody saying, that's not what we're seeing and I'm like this is still what I'm seeing.
Yeah, not good is it. Not good.
It's crazy.
Okay, what about campaign budget optimization? Is that just another way to say, shall we spend your money for you?
Yes. That is actually a really, I must write that down, that's a really good way of explaining it. So at the moment you have got two choices. A choice of two options of how you use, how you set your budget for your ads, so the way we've always done it up to now is pretty much using ad set budget finder, so you would say at ad set level, so for anyone that's never set up an ad before, you set your campaign objective, what you want the ad to actually achieve, then underneath that you've got a layer of what we call the ad set, which is where you set your target audience, your budgeting-
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Where you want the ad to show up, so normally you would set your budget by ad set there at that level.
Yes, yeah.
And each ad set would have it's own individual budget and then the ads sit underneath that. Campaign budget optimization is where you set the budget at campaign level so that very first top level and then Facebook will apportion the budget across the ad sets underneath according to which ones are performing best.
Yeah.
Now the reason they've done this is that they say in theory you should get better results at a lower cost by them doing this because if you think about it, you can only check your ads at that time when you opened up your laptop and you could go in and you could have a look and then you made a decision on what you saw and you adjust things and tweak things and off you go again on your merry way.
Facebook can optimise that ad all the time 24/7 in real time, so it can constantly make adjustments to budget based on what it's seeing and what's performing best so in time you should see better results and I've been testing this since February this year extensively. I only ever use campaign budget optimization now and I have in the main got better results than when I run a direct campaign alongside it that's using ad set budgeting.
Oh that's interesting.
Why it makes a different is if you think about it, let's say I had three ad sets, each with 10 pounds budget on them.
Yeah.
Facebook will spend that 10 pounds each day on each ad set and my audience one might be terrible and I will get two leads for that but I still spend 10 bucks. The second one might have a brilliant audience, it's loving my ads and they're signing up like hot cakes and I might say get 20 leads for that 10 pounds and the third one is somewhere in the middle but Facebook will keep spending that 10 dollars. Sorry 10 pounds, I'm always going to spend 30 a day.
If however I was spending 30 pounds a day at campaign level, Facebook would be saying, right that middle ad is the best one, I'm going to take the budget away from number one, that's performing badly, put it onto number two where I know I can get more results and get it quickly so it's constantly doing that, so it does work.
That's really interesting because normally these things are not as effective as they sound. Do you need to run the ads for longer for that? Is it a case of it needs to learn longer or?
Yeah, I must say what I'm seeing happen is it can take up to four to seven days for it to really optimise and learn and gain traction that you start to see those lower cost results coming through. So yes, I think sometimes you might need to give yourself a little bit longer running the ads to get the results.
But the thing is come February 2020, we're all going to have to use campaign budget optimization, it will become the default and you can't switch it off, so I would encourage everybody, start getting used to it, start playing with it, start testing it as I've done. Find what works and what doesn't work for you and what you might need to adjust to get the best results and how long it might take. Really get a feel for it and it will stand you in good stead.
Yeah, thank you because I haven't… a lot of these things I just think no you're just trying to make me spend more money, so I just ignored it so yeah I appreciate that. Okay, final one, dynamic creative, so I've seen this come up a few times when I'm going, so when I build my ads I tend to go right here's my picture, here's my text, if I want to split test, I'll split test different images, different texts that sort of thing. What are they trying to do with dynamic creative? What is it?
Yeah, that is such a good question. I have a bit of a love hate relationship with dynamic creative. On the one hand, in terms of testing lots of different variations of your ads it's amazing because what you do is there's a little switch ad set level that says I want to try dynamic creative that's all you do on the ad set and then you go to your ad and you can upload, I think it's up to five versions of the copy, you can upload lots of images, you can test even different headlines, you can test different call to action buttons.
Now if you were to sit and work out all the different variations, copy one with image one or image two and headline three, you could be talking hundreds of different permutations. To create those yourself and upload them into individual ads in Facebook would just be horrendous but with dynamic creative all you need to do is upload the five copy, see what your five headlines are and then Facebook will mix and match all of those and serve them out as ads in the newsfeed so your audiences are seeing all these different ads and Facebook is testing them for you. Seeing which ones are working best and then you can get that data.
So you can look at and say okay I can get a breakdown of which text is giving me the most leads, which image is getting the best response and most leads and break it down whichever way you want to, so that's brilliant from that perspective. What I don't like about it is as an advertiser, as an ad manager is I don't have a level of control over the ads so I might know which copy is performing best and I might know which image is performing best, but I've got no way of saying right that image with that copy is what I now want to scale because it doesn't exist as a stand alone ad.
Oh okay, so you can't just pick that one and send it on more?
Yeah, or you can do-
Or you can recreate-
Exactly, let's say image one is looking like the best and copy two, I could take those and put them together in a new ad and you would think that that's my best performing ad, but it might not be because the combinations of the ads, if you looked at them it might be a completely different combination actually was the overall best performing.
Yeah, that's right.
You're looking at the individual elements what will perform best but the overall combination might be something completely different.
Yeah, that's interesting isn't it and I suppose it's great if you have lots of ad sets and you don't know which of them to use then dynamic ads could be great but I think, I don't know from your experience but I would say my experience often when people are starting off on ads they are literally working with one ad set, they're working with one ad, one image, you know and obviously the idea is you try and test it and you encourage a bit more out of them than in reality that's probably what it's coming down to, to begin with. What do you think?
Yeah, I think so and people are starting you're absolutely right, they probably are just one image, one thing and that's fine. I think you've got to start somewhere if that ad doesn't work and people aren't reacting to it then you've got to bring in another. So I suppose dynamic creative, what that's going to do is for that one budget is have lots of different variations and see which is maybe working best. Which is great data for your next campaign, so I think there are definitley times when it's good to use it, it's just I particularly find it frustrating when I want to scale and I really want to control the ads it becomes a little bit more difficult.
Yeah, no that's awesome. Liz thank you so, so much. I am such a fan of ads and I could just talk about this all day. I geek out, there are so many other cool things they can do and also even things like, I had someone come to me once and say we want to do an ad and I was like where's the ad going to go and they like oh anywhere and it's like you've got that entirely incorrect. It just can't be like that. That is as much as effect as the ad itself.
So again seeing it a the whole funnel for me is just brilliant and I love it. I love love love this stuff. Liz thank you so very much. I'll obviously link up to everything in the show notes so these guys can come and find you and they'll know where to get all your stuff but I really appreciate you being on.
Oh, it's been an absolute pleasure Teresa, it's always good to talk to you. Thank you.
And you, thanks Liz.
I really enjoyed that episode and do you know what she taught me lots of things and I do face the cads so it's always good to have refreshers of these things and look at what they're doing right now and what the platforms doing right now and the changes that they're making and to pick up some of those tips from someone like Liz who literally all day, every day does Facebook ads and not just Facebook ads on a small scale but on a huge scale, so she gave some great tips there, I really, really enjoyed talking to her so if you are thinking of starting Facebook ads like I said do go check out the academy as there is a course in there and it opens again on the 24th.
I will not take up anymore of your valuable time. Have a wonderful day and I will see you next week.
