Episode 161 Transcript

Heather Porter (00:03.244)

Welcome back. We're on episode 161. Well, hello, hustle rebels. You're back. And I wanted to do another quick little rapid fire Q and a sort of session around marketing in this one, because I get this question all the time. Should I be using meta ads in my business? Meaning Facebook and or Instagram ads?

 

Do you want to know what I say to people? Well, if you're interested in what I say, or if you should be doing this in your business, the answer is not a simple yes or no. It completely depends on where you are in your business, what your goals are.

 

how prepared you are to make the most out of these platforms. I was talking to a business owner the other day and he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do meta ads. And I'm like, okay, so here's why I don't think it's going to work straight away for your business. He's like, what? But I've heard everywhere that it's so easy and you just put like an image out there. I'm like, no, it's not. And he's in software as well. So he's trying to sell software.

 

no, it is not that simple. I wish it was. It's not. It's a journey. So it does depend. It can absolutely work amazing.

 

But I want to break it down for you if you have that question. So they're incredibly powerful when they do work because they offer absolutely massive reach. There's billions of users on Facebook and Instagram and your potential audience is absolutely vast as well. Like there's only some people in market right now that know about you and maybe want to do business with you. But there's so many others that aren't yet even sure that you exist. There's advanced targeting you can really hone in on specific demographics,

 

Heather Porter (01:52.609)

and behaviors that people have. It's very cost effective for testing. You can start with a very small budget to see what's going to work before you keep tweaking and testing and measuring to get it to be better for you. The thing is though is just because you can run them doesn't mean that you should. So here's when to say yes to meta ads. First of all you need to have a really good offer that converts.

 

Now that's something that you're promoting basically, right? Meta is a discovery platform. People are not necessarily gonna like scroll with the intent to buy anything. Mostly they don't unless they're shopping around on Instagram. But most people are not there shopping around for something to buy or take action with. So your offer or what you're promoting needs to be really, really, really compelling. Like a free trial, limited time deal, a really high value freebie like a lead magnet,

 

a guide, a checklist, an audit, something like that. An entry level package like a starter package, something again that kind of feeds back to that free trial try before you buy.

 

And there needs to be a deadline or a reason to take action now versus later. According to a really prominent sort of authority website out there, WordStream, ads with a very clear value proposition convert five times higher than vague or generic promotions. This is always what I do with my clients. So when they come to me, oftentimes it is because meta ads don't work. So I will go through a process

 

and see if it will work. And oftentimes it is just changing that offer, that initial thing that we're promoting, and that can make the world of difference. So I know a bad offer and a good offer when I see one, essentially, and I'll be able to go, yeah, it'll work for you, but it's the offer that's the problem.

 

Heather Porter (03:52.749)

The second thing to do when you want to say yes to Meta ads outside of having a really good offer is if you're going to use some of the AI tools. So there's a whole area in Meta called Advantage Plus. I actually recently went around training for Meta on the Advantage Plus tools because they literally are that important to success in your ads. So Meta's Advantage Plus is sort of it's like AI machine learning area. And it's there to help you find your best performing targeting or audio

 

your placements, your creatives, all in real time, really, really, really quick.

 

as it can get you the best results. So essentially, if you're manually selecting everything and hoping for the best result and going really granular with your targeting, which we used to do, it's not going to be working much in the same way anymore on Meta. Instead, you want to provide suggestions to Meta, like the type of person that you might be trying to target. And then I would say you like give it a bucket of assets. So you're like, here's five videos and here's four images and here's some

 

headlines and here's some captions. Here you go Metta, do combos of them, get me the best results. So you're essentially having to let Metta's AI do the heavy lifting rather than you, which can be a challenge for some people because they got to be a little bit more hands off.

 

The other reason why you should say yes to meta ads is because you're playing the long game in your business and marketing. If you're only after quick wins, meta ads can disappoint you and disappoint you quite quickly. They work especially well for part of like a long-term awareness strategy, building visibility and trust over time because ads on social media are a visible medium. So it's a way to communicate with people through video, through

 

Heather Porter (05:45.153)

images on who you are and how you help them. So it does take time to build trust. Eventually that can lead to conversion with more ads specifically targeting the people that are aware of your brand. So it's sort of like you get people warmed up and then you show them conversion ads essentially.

 

So as mentioned before, social media is what we call like a discovery platform in marketing. And so this means that your ads may find people at any step in the customer journey from awareness to conversion. And that also means that a lot of people and most people are not going to be ready to act right now. They're not going to be ready to convert. They might be in that awareness phase, kind of aware of a problem that they have or desire that they want. And they're just not going to convert straight away. So what would you do here with your ads?

 

You want to use them to share behind the scenes content, education, stories, case studies about your customers, things that build trust about your business and how you help people. You start sending traffic to your website or you encourage direct messages to get people to take that first initial step with your brand. Then as your brand grows and you get more exposure, you promote specific offers. You kind of rotate through with specific deals that you have from resources to limited time deals and

 

and others, know, you essentially from there then retarget your really warm audiences with additional offers. So the people that are like essentially through your funnel, they've seen your ads about education and awareness and value and fun and interesting content. They've started to see your offers. They've seen case studies. And then over time you keep rotating through different offers just to those people, just to you like really warm audience. Eventually, some are gonna start to take action with you.

 

That's the best way to think about it, right? So it's a long-term game. Also, the other thing is, when do you clear steer? When do you clear steer? When do you steer clear of meta ads? So here's when they might not be the best option for you. Number one, you do not have a good landing page.

 

Heather Porter (07:53.135)

or like a good funnel, a good flow to send people to. Sending people to generic homepage or a page that's just not matching your ads message is a recipe for wasted ad spend. Number two, you're not tracking conversions properly. So if you don't actually have proper tracking through your data set slash pixel, sort of your code on your website that talks back to Meta, if you don't have this tracking turned on properly, you have no idea what's working. And if you don't know, Meta also doesn't know.

 

even sure if its ads are performing properly for you. The next thing is if you're not clear on your audience this is a waste of your time as well. So you got to be clear you got to have been selling something you have to have a good idea of what's working who you're targeting who you're talking to because then that's how you set up targeting your audiences in ads.

 

And next is you're hoping for overnight results. As I said before, they're not going to always happen for some lucky people, maybe, but it does take time. They're not a magic bullet. No, nothing in businesses, right? They require testing, tweaking and patience. Next thing is if you don't have a good marketing funnel or sales process. So pass that landing page. What happens? I cannot tell you guys sadly how many times I talk to clients and I go, okay, do you have a good sales team? Do you have a good sales process behind you?

 

ready to take these leads?" And they're like, yeah, yeah, we do. And then I'll have a call with them and I'll go, how did those 50 leads go? And then they'll say, I don't know. Like, so hard because you have these warm eyeballs in your business, but the team is not following up or you don't have a process in place to actually sell to them or talk to them or nurture them. So that is just as important as anything else in the process.

 

The next one is you're not prepared to test different creative directions. So again, a lot of people will say like, Heather, I don't want to be on camera, but I already know from training for Metta that the most successful ads and posts are of human faces. So right there, we got a challenge. So the thing is you got to be open-minded, right? So that's, that's really, really, really important. If you're not, then there is a problem on potentially getting the best results. So you need to be prepared to test different creatives, meaning different like visual

 

Heather Porter (10:09.68)

and images and even copy and text because what you like might not respond or resonate to other people right and I know that by the way for a fact we all respond to different things and we tend to talk in the way that we want to be spoken to. The next is I'm gonna give you a three-step formula okay so we've at this point our conversation we've spoken around you know when you should use ads when maybe you shouldn't like

 

all the different things, not having a good Lenny page, not being clear on your offer, all of that sort of stuff. But if you're ready to jump into meta ads, there is a bit of a formula that's three steps that actually does work that I want to leave you with. So if you're thinking, yeah, this could work. Maybe I'm in it for the long haul. Maybe I'm willing to test and measure some different things. Number one, start with video content because it is such a visual platform. Videos tend to perform the best. And the key is that you want to get people to stop scrolling to watch your videos so that

 

first three seconds of your video is going to be really, really important. Plus you guys, you can build an audience of people that are watching those videos. So when you're out there doing your awareness ads and you're warming up people to your brand and what you offer, you can then target people if they're watching those videos. Really, really powerful. So what can you do to warm people up to your brand in that video? Behind the scenes storytelling, what you're working on in your business. Number two, short educational clips like demos or just how tos or did you knows.

 

And also testimonials or case studies can work really really well. Once people are familiar with you then what you can do is you can move on and these types of videos are going to start to work. You want to have more user generated content, testimonials, you want to show information about specific offers that you have. So keep that in mind, right? So ultimately it's more about them and then you can start to make it more about you. Break the pattern of the scroll like I said,

 

first three seconds are really really important speak directly to a pain point that the audience has be really well paced and interesting to watch with good edits edit in music if you want have text overlays designed for sound off so people can watch without sound and

 

Heather Porter (12:25.068)

Normally under 60 seconds tends to work best for ads. Okay, so that's the first thing for the three step formula. Start with really good content, then from there send them to a really good landing page. A landing page is just simply a page on your website that you send people to from your ad. It should speak really clearly to the offer, it should match the message of your ad, it should be like a continuation of the conversation. It should have testimonials, benefits and next steps that somebody can take as well. Remember to be mobile.

 

optimized. At least 95 % or at least 90 % of people that come to your landing page from social media are going to be on their phone. So needs to be mobile optimized. And lastly, nail the thank you page. So once somebody comes through that initial landing page and takes action, this is one of the most overlooked parts of a funnel. This is not just about a polite gesture. You guys, it's a golden opportunity. It's where people land after they submit the form and do the thing on the first

 

step and it's where they are the warmest. So use it as a cross sell, an upsell, invite them to book a call, share a bonus video or a guide, encourage them to follow you on social media etc. Okay so quick story to just kind of wrap it all up. Now a friend of mine runs friend slash ex-client as well she runs a large wellness center

 

And she heard that meta ads were like the fastest way to get leads. So she boosted a few posts and threw together an ad. And then she's like, doesn't work. I've heard it before a lot. I said, crickets, no signups, no inquiries. We relaunched her campaign using the formula that I talked about, a winning offer, good landing page. We promoted a really great limited time offer.

 

and then candid videos, combination, education, behind the scenes, user generated content. We used the advantage plus settings, threw the bucket of assets together, did some suggested targeting ideas for Meta to use with their AI. We tested and measured every step of the way, improved the landing page, and within three months, she went from no leads to 65 ideal paying clients.

 

Heather Porter (14:44.942)

out of the 76 leads that came in from the ads. 65 ideal paying clients out of 76 leads. So there's a high conversion right there. So should you lead, should you use meta ads in your business? Or maybe you should go back to them if you've not used them in a while. Hmm. If you have a clear offer, a solid funnel.

 

and patience, long-term play you guys, then yes, it is an amazing tool. It's such an amazing tool. It really is to have in your arsenal of marketing, not just your main tool, but one of many. So remember this, if you're not quite there yet, focus on your foundations, audience targeting offer, really hone that in. And once you get that, you are probably going to be a good candidate for ads.

 

Thank you so much for tuning in.

 

I like jumping in from time to time and just sharing these like little marketing tutorials because I get asked this question so much, should I use meta ads or meta ads don't work? And I thought I'd just answer how I see it. Yes, they do, but also not for everyone. And you have to have those sort of key steps to make them work for you. Do you guys want help with your ads? Do you want an audit? I'm here for you. So just go ahead and reach out. You can come on over to websitelove.com.au. I have a big contact button.

 

on there.

 

Heather Porter (16:11.746)

book a call, things like that, free audits. a look, book something in if you genuinely want my help. I've been doing this for a very, very long time. Happy to have a look and see if you're the right candidate for ads. I'm definitely not one of those people that goes, yeah, they work for everyone because they don't. You guys, thank you so much for tuning in. I appreciate it. If you know any other business owner that's struggling with their ads or contemplating using this as a channel, please share this episode with them. It would mean a lot to me. And thanks, you guys, as always for tuning in. I'll speak to you really soon.

 

Thanks