The Ultimate Facebook Ad Strategy for Your eCommerce Business

so
welcome to the ecommerce podcast with matt edmondson a show that brings you regular interviews tips and tools for
building your business online
[Music] well hello and welcome to the ecommerce
podcast with me your host matt edmondson it's great to be with you because this
week we are looking at the ultimate facebook ad strategy for your ecommerce
business yes we are okay so before we get into this let me just
give you a quick heads up if this is your first time with us a big warm welcome to you welcome to the show i
hope you enjoy it hope you get a lot of value out of it and if you do do the usual thing you know the usual
subscriber and stuff basically what we do here is i get to talk to amazing people from the world of e-commerce i
get to ask them all kinds of questions about what they know and how it's going to help us develop online i try and have the conversation
that you would get to have with them if you sat down and had a cup of coffee in your favorite coffee shop uh we kind of
dig into their story we learned the principles uh that are going to help us grow and adapt online right that's what
we do that's our mo that's why we're here uh so enjoy it let's get into it right so
here's the deal right you're looking to grow your ecommerce business you have heard about facebook ads
but you don't know how they work or what's the best way to use them so today
is your lucky day of course it is it's always the lucky day today uh on this
week's podcast uh we're getting into this whole thing with a beautiful lady called meredith
callaha and we're going to talk about her specific strategy for targeting the ideal audience that leads to more
clients more leads and ultimately more e-commerce sales now meredith helps new
and seasoned business owners find the right people to effectively communicate the value of
their offers and move prospects along their customer journey quickly
which let's face it is one of the key problems that every e-commerce business
faces how do we find the right people how do we find the right audience so meredith helps entrepreneurs like you
like me develop and implement marketing strategies that optimize
profits and meet our customers where they are with social media advertising
conversion copywriting and even things like building out digital products on
platforms like kajabi so if you are in that space if you are building out digital products
meredith is definitely going to be of interest to you so do stay with us without
further ado let's welcome meredith the shaman pushes button meredith how are you doing great to see you hey
Meet Meredith
great matt thanks for having me i'm so glad to be here on everybody's luckiest day
i thought that was great uh writing sadaf bless her she wrote the introduction uh and today is your lucky
day made me smile i thought i'm totally leaving that in there today is your lucky day uh so yeah thanks thanks for
being here it's great now you are we were talking as the whole thing was going off in the background there you're
in miami florida right i'm in miami florida that's not so sunny today so we
had a little weather i think we had a little weather that was affecting our connection a minute ago but yes
i mean usually sunny and tropical names and i mean usually gray and wet
liverpool so yeah you know i think that's the perfect compliment so are you a miami girl have you always
been a resident in miami no we i moved here almost years ago years on new
year's day this upcoming new year's day but i'm originally from dallas texas and
um spent a little time in mississippi as well i went to high school
and college in mississippi um so yes that's my story dallas texas i
know it very well uh big somebody friends in dallas yeah yeah very good friends in dallas i remember the this is
nothing to do with e-commerce but i remember the first time i traveled to dallas uh my friends said to me they
said what do you want to do while you're here i'm like i have to whilst i'm here
go to south fork right yeah i have to go to south fork i have to go see that place because when i was a kid obviously
dallas was big in the s and so i did and i have photographs of me dancing on the lawn at south fork
ranch which is fantastic so you know a childhood dream was fulfilled uh that's that's
was it smaller than you thought it would be or not particularly it was massively smaller than i thought it was going to
be yeah have you said have you been i take it you've been from dallas yeah yeah and you do you go around and tv
makes this thing look like a mansion but it's tiny and you're like oh my goodness
okay yeah especially compared to your in your head what it's going to be like yeah exactly exactly but it's definitely
worth the trip so if you're like me an old dallas fan definitely go check it out and hear the story of south fork ranch
uh it's quite fascinating the journey it's been on anyway we're not here to talk about dallas uh
as interesting as that is um so you you move from dallas via mississippi to
How Meredith got into Facebook Advertising
miami florida so how did you get into the whole facebook advertising thing
um honestly so the facebook advertising i hired a facebook ad ads manager
once and sort of and she did a great job but it was like bells went off like oh i
would be really good at this i am and i would enjoy this just i um
studied at the university of mississippi accounting and what got my cpa and was
um worked for price waterhouse um actually in dallas and in europe i was in
switzerland and london for a little while with pwc and um but i hated that i liked to travel but i
didn't like the uh being an auditor or an accountant really and anyway so i did lots of
different sort of entrepreneurial things after i left pwc and i had gotten quite a bit of practice um on social media um
for a while i was selling um high-end advertising and it came and what came
with that advertising was um sort of influencer type marketing so for six years i um was kind of a paid influencer
um and um yeah when i when i hired a facebook ads manager i thought oh that looks like
more fun and i'd heard someone say that facebook ads are all about the numbers
and it sort of went like ding ding ding i i know how to do numbers so it sounds but honestly it was really that thought
i thought and i went and took a couple certifications and it it has proven to be
super fun and interesting and a place where you i can put use my creative
um skills and and enjoyment and yeah yeah oh fantastic so i i find it
fascinating actually that you came from the accounting background because this is a little known fact about uh about me
uh and i don't think i've ever mentioned this on the show before my degree is in accounting and finance
isn't it yeah yeah it is totally and so i did the same thing i i went through i got my degree in accounting and i left
university and went the last thing i ever want to be in the world now is an accountant i know well you figured it out sooner
than i did i think i which i was painful like seven years but i did get to travel
i guess yeah you died you know there's pros and cons on there and i you know i i figured out quite early i didn't want
to do accounting after doing my my degree and it's amazing how quickly we both then
went i'm going to do something quite entrepreneurial which is the opposite of the whole accounting thing because i
would venture to say most of the accountants i know are not entrepreneurial at all
i think it's quite a different skill set but i don't know if you i mean you must have found the same thing
that my my qualifications in accounting has really helped me get my head around
numbers and so when it comes to business that's been incredibly useful and incredibly
helpful you know you get a feel for them have you found that yeah for sure and i do i think
Do you think in numbers
i think i i think i think i think in numbers and i do think that's helpful um i i remember
always as a kid like that but i think you can creatively think in graphs and numbers too but um i think that it's
helped me just organize my entrepreneurial business and project where i'm going but
also there's not as many um numbers background people i think in the
entrepreneur but at least in my world i went into more creative so it feels like it makes me more unique
too which is yeah i would say so i think it definitely gives you a different edge um because there are plenty of people
who are creative i don't think there are that many people who are necessarily data driven or numbers driven uh in this
particular field so i get why that would give you an edge um yeah so how long have you been doing the facebook stuff
when did that when did you get just over a year after i've been doing the ads i um i sold this since we've got
oh i haven't like um i did i own this franchise sorry it's under my computer
um for five years it's like this high-end magazine where they and that's
what i did this where we we took business owners pictures sorry and um and then we printed this beautiful book
and um and we distributed copies and i did that for about six years start
total i keep growing yeah six years total i put in five books and then um and then in that
they the people that bought into that book annually that's where i was doing the influencer marketing but then i i basically stopped
printing the book told the franchisor um that was a great run and then just went
with left them and started doing the ads just yeah a year ago just uh months so i imagine it's been a heck of a year
for you to choose to do that because so much has changed in the facebook ad
Facebook ad changes
world in the last months yes but i kind of think um so uh
i bet most listeners know but just in case they don't what happened big for facebook was the apple released an
update to their phone which changed the privacy rules right that's what you're referring to and this happened like in
april and i think facebook was sort of like
they spent a billion dollars fighting apple on this and they lost
and i think they weren't quite ready to lose like they weren't quite it's because they um i mean they've had some
great measures in place to counteract the privacy rules that um apple created but it's been what's been interesting is
they keep changing their mind it feels like they weren't really they were in denial and they weren't really ready
even though they are facebook and they should have been ready so yeah so it's been um interesting because we keep having to
they they'll announce one thing and they'll say this is what you definitely definitely need to do to make sure your ads work properly with apple's new
update and then three weeks later they'll say actually you don't have to do that do this and
um but on the flip side of that because i was new i didn't have that
um history of yeah that baggage knowing how it worked in the good old days and i mean
the good old days of eight months ago you know um but but i can see where that was frustrating
for people that had been doing it for three years and then on top of that in when um for people that started
even when did i start in october people that started like in february of
maybe they um their clients got just crazy good
results because people like target and the cruise lines and these huge big business companies
pulled out of advertising even just for a minute i mean i can't give you don't quote me on any of those i'm
pretty sure i heard that they did and so the people that stuck around their ad prices got so good like they were
getting you know webinar signups for cents each and cents each and
and so um yeah so i had to compete with that when i came on like i know she got you
cent leads but i swear i know what i'm doing no but um nobody's uh but yeah so it was um
it was an interesting year to sort of learn with my clients as we went but also i
i wasn't um frustrated with like a past history of yeah
that's a really interesting point i mean one of the reasons i was excited to get you on the show um
was because you were quite new to the whole facebook ads thing um which sounds a bit topsy-turvy you know people might
say why have you not got someone who's got like years advertising yeah i mean we've we've had those kind of guests on the show one of the things
that really interest me about you was you did literally start just lit you know right at the beginning of this
whole upheaval and you came from an entrepreneurial background you spent the last year
Facebook ad strategy
learning and i'm really curious you know in that to sort of dig into some of the
principles then that you've learned because i feel like um the stuff that you've learned quite quickly is probably going to be the most
helpful uh if i'm honest with you to our listeners and so yeah um so wait
if you could go over the last months what are some of the key things that you've learned
um about facebook ad strategy right you're going to talk about yeah because i've learned lots of different things
yeah okay but um right so facebook guy strategy
well the um the thing to remember that's working best is so what what
happens is um apple just to kind of catch people up that don't know exactly but they said
for all of their um their apple apps like facebook and instagram
and all of them now users if you downloaded ios which by now
um i'd say of apple users probably have done this update because it came out in april
and um i heard one number one so so when it came out now
you um basically you have the option to be tracked by one of these apps by facebook
specifically they'll ask you would you like to be tracked or not before we were just all tracked you could figure out
how to turn it off like you had the option but you were just tracked unless you decided to turn it off well now
everybody is just so i heard a number i've it's been a while like probably since the summer since
i've looked at this but um of people were opting not to be tracked once they
jump i imagine it was crazy high yeah yeah yeah so um so really
one rule of thumb if you can think about this way is your ads don't be successful if you just try to keep
um track people on the app on facebook or instagram meaning and so we're going to talk about
like that video view campaign that i mentioned but um so i don't recommend ignoring the pixel
completely but before you guys what made facebook ads so successful is you sign into business manager as a facebook
business owner or your ads manager would sign in and you get a free pixel
to take this pixel and go put it on your website and then anybody that visits your website or
takes any action on your website facebook could track and then we could serve them ads and it would even get
more specific than that not just because they visited your website but if they opted into a certain freebie or if they
put something in their cart but abandoned their cart facebook would have all that information and we could
send a specific ad you know to people that abandoned their cart or people that looked at a certain item but that didn't
um you know that didn't buy it or maybe they did buy it and then you want to send them another item similar to that
um if you're just a listener maybe not an e-commerce seller yet you know that's how you got that perfect
dress that you just would be look great at your aunt sue's wedding um it just
showed up in your instagram feed that's because you maybe bought a similar dress from that website before or for whatever
reason well um so now what really works we can still use that pixel and i certainly address
like put it there um on your website um it uploads your email
account your email addresses to facebook it doesn't work as well anymore because if they if they've opted out of tracking
then it doesn't help you very much but go ahead and do it but um yeah
there's things that we can do we can track people's um movement on facebook and instagram and
they haven't opted out of that they can't opt out out of that so if you can put in measures to
um basically you can track your instagram you know you can show ads to your followers so there's an argument for um
maybe like a lot of um a lot of online marketers will say
don't invest in your instagram followers only ingress in your email list because your email list you own and mark
zuckerberg owns your instagram followers well maybe those instagram followers are more worth um worth your time because you can
target an ad to your instagram followers um where you can't necessarily your email
subscribers yeah this is um this is actually a really interesting point because one of the things that i've
noticed um we were talking with katie recently um okay to katie wright
about this um there has been a
there's there seems to me over the last since the tracking thing uh changes more
people are now investing more into growing their uh instagram followers or their facebook
followers the people that actually connect with them by social media whereas before it was always paid media
we're going to do paid media to a landing page which i mean it was always go find an audience i don't care whether
they follow me or whether they don't i just want them on my website right and i'm going to try and get them to sign up to a freebie of some kind
that strategy seems to have been one of the key things that changed so now people are using
paid media to get people to do something in social media like follow them or comment on a
post or do something on social media is that what you're saying yes uh-huh
okay all right that is a mistake and i do have a little um an ad
campaign trick i guess to help you get more instagram followers you want me to share it real quick oh i
absolutely yes i can just hear you know thousands of people in my head going uh yes but if
you don't met we do so how do we grow our instagram following you know what's the what can we do yeah
How to grow Instagram following
favorite okay so so you know you guys if you're if you're doing this yourself if when you go to
create a campaign and facebook business manager you the first thing you do is you um pick the objective and there is
an objective so you know of get more likes on your business page like that is an objective and facebook business
manager will walk you through um how you set that up you pick that objective but there's not one that says
grow my instagram follow followers so what you can do is is select traffic as
your objective so you're gonna run a traffic campaign to a website and then
um the the website that we're going to send people to is www.instagram.com
backslash your ig profile so my ig profile is meredith
and so we'll send people there and that and you do that at the ad level if anyone's wondering so you put the url
where you want to send the traffic in the ad itself just if for people are wanting to run their own
and then at the ad set level there's three levels you guys campaign level that's first that's where you put the
objective traffic then it asks you for the ad set and at the ad set level um
you can hit automatic placements meaning they'll send your ad wherever or you can hit manual placements what i've done and
has worked well for some of my clients is we we get rid of every placement but
instagram story so we just run the ad to instagram stories and then
just instagram story you could do the feed but i've only done it to stories because this is what we do
um and these my clients they're still have the swipe up i guess now they're switching to that link
there's a yeah instagram's moving to the link button but if you could this would work either way but i have the business
owner um say and if let's just pretend it's me hey my name is meredith callahar and i'd
love for you to come follow me on instagram on my instagram profile i enjoy talking about facebook ads living
in miami and what it's like to be a mom of three teenagers just tell them what you really talk about and then say swipe
up and follow me so you don't miss the latest and greatest ad strategy and it sort of depends on why you want people
to follow you or um or you know the audience that you pick but tom swipe up and follow me and just
um instagram is changing this right now it sounds like they're giving out links link clicks to people with less than
followers but until like today or yesterday only people with followers had the swipe up except for in
ads if you make an instagram story ad you get the swipe up so you say swipe up and follow me and i might even tell them
swipe up um swipe up to see my instagram account and hit follow on my profile so really give
them exact directions what to do yeah it works so i have a local client that's a
dentist and you guys it's hard to run organic social for doctors and dentists
i do not i do not run her organic schedule someone else does it and she actually does a really good job for a
dentist like she's got like followers which is pretty awesome but um we got
followers for her at two dollars a follow and i think a dentist would be here i mean i think you could get it
cheaper than that even if you weren't a dentist um and but
yeah and what's cool what i like about it is they're real people deciding to follow you so they're good followers they're
not like a robot out there getting you followers so yeah so that's the strategy
that's really interesting if you so the strategy to get more instagram followers i like this where you in effect
go onto their instagram feed say hey listen this is what i stand for why not come follow me you know and and
check or click here or whatever you you know the call actions and you mentioned that the dentist got
How much do you need to budget
two dollar follow is that typical i mean if i'm gonna sort of embark on that
campaign and go it'd be really great to get a thousand followers do i need to budget in my head about
bucks to do that or do the results fluctuate depending on industry or
i would think we did that this summer i would think you could count on two dollars or less i like my clients to
count on the high end so they're not too um but to just you know so they're their
hopes aren't too crazy but um yeah a traffic campaign that stays on
so on platform is not very expensive um traffic campaigns in general aren't very
expensive they're usually not that effective like um if i want someone to go to your website and give you their
email address right i would usually not recommend a traffic campaign because facebook is just going to find people
that will click to go to your website they're not going to find people to actually click and give you their email
address but it's cheaper so some people will do the traffic campaign to get people on their website because they just can't stand the idea of paying for
a conversion campaign but but yeah i think it's totally reasonable to assume you could get
two dollars a follow um and you could try we for dr patty that's what we call her it's her last name but
that's what she does i mean she goes by dr patty um we had her one of her hygienists do it
too like hey my name is jenny and i work with dr patty and her instagram's so fun and we had a client do it and we
actually got about the same results for each person um but we were
pleased with that that cause okay and so um i'm gonna
so so part one of your strategy is obviously we're gonna grow our instagram followers yeah
yeah um but why why am i growing my instagram followers i mean you touched on this a little bit earlier but just just remind
us why we're doing this yeah okay so i don't so to one reason to grow your
Why grow your Instagram followers
instagram followers is because then when um we
maybe you are you're so for ecommerce so you you know black friday is coming up and you do want to offer people to a
purchase campaign right that's another conversion campaign you want to get people to your website to buy
um a cute blouse um i like to buy key blouses so that's why i keep using that but um
you we can target all of your instagram followers so we can send to all your
followers um in your we put them as part of your warm audience we can send them an ad um
so yeah for organically you're still gonna have to deal with the logarithm like you've you've paid to get them to follow
you but if you just want to advertise that blouse in your organic feed only
whatever the the we don't know who else who all is going to see that on because of the algorithm
on instagram right but if you pay for a conversion ad and you can run it
to your warm audience you can put your instagram followers in there you can put your facebook
followers in your warm you can account you can upload your email list and your website visitors but
if they've opted out of tracking the website visitors and the um it won't they won't get the ad
necessarily but they'll you're right so i see what you're saying here so we're going to grow our instagram followers or our
facebook followers or both and the reason we're going to do that is because they're then still in the instagram and
facebook platform so we're going to grow our instagram followers and then we are
once we've got that follower we are then going to use a second paid ad you call it a conversion ad to promote
product and service to that person is that correct correct yeah
and um i do have another strategy that will talk about um the video of you campaign but but one more note on that i
mean yeah it's why i like this for growing pain to grow your instagram and
then paying to serve them an ad in between those two ad campaigns you get to nurture those people right and um
with your organic instagram content and that's awesome i mean um i love instagram so
getting to know the business owner for sure might impact if i buy from you or someone else right
so i like that but the second so the second um campaign i idea i have for um current
day doesn't a lot it's cheaper then you can get people into your warm audience for a
lot less but they they're not going to become your instagram follower and you're you won't have that nurturing time but
do you want to talk about that one now the video video view campaign yeah yeah so let me just um
so if you're listening to the show sorry meredith and i had a conversation before the show about these things but i always
talk to i guess about what we're going to talk about on the show and this campaign particularly this idea that you had really intrigued me
The video view strategy
um in terms of using this as a strategy to uh increase conversion via social media
and you it's in my notes you've called it the video view strategy and that's what we're going to talk
about now so strategy number one is to grow your instagram followers this strategy like you say doesn't grow
necessarily your instagram followers um but you can target these people so
explain meredith the the video view strategy the video view strategy helps
us also grow your like it helps us target a warm audience when we're ready
to go for conversions and hopefully get your conversion prices down um because
you know we're targeting people that have heard of you before that's who a warm audience is and so
there um this the video view strategy is to start i would say at least
give yourself six weeks before you're ready to launch the conversion campaign that's probably
as your ads manager i would just want to have plenty of time i don't know if you even need that much time but um
we i want you to run a video view campaign that's what it's called in facebook um that is one
of the objectives that i mentioned before you're going to start a campaign and you're going to um
optimize for video views that's what you pick at the campaign level and i so i
want you to create a video that you think your ideal buyer would be interested in and
we're not really asking them to do any like sometimes my clients can't stand it until we go ahead and work a call to
action in there which is fine but it doesn't have to be that
i mean i guess ideally it's a brand video that a
videographer made with you i mean i would say of my clients don't have
one um i don't have a current one even but there are those that would be awesome like if you had a brand video
that's just told about your business that was very catchy and fun to watch that would be ideal and
but it could be which um it could be you talking about your business especially
if you're like a coach or a court you know selling information products you really could just hold up your iphone
which i've done quite a few times and talk about your business um and
i would keep it um you know what i would actually keep it around seconds
um i don't know that because to run on instagram feed i believe we want it at
um seconds um yeah seconds or less isn't it yeah i still second-guess
myself on the on the ad if it could be longer but no seconds and um yeah so but you know what if you've got an
awesome video and it's longer than seconds then we can just test it on facebook remember we're just
even if you think you're going to sell later on instagram we can still use it for testing purposes on facebook so it
How to make your video longer
can be that it can be a tick tock that i would i if i were if you gave me a tick tock
and y'all can do this yourself i would take it to canva and loop it to make it a little longer than
um i guess or some people have given me a real that's really short and instagram real and i just go
loop it to make it about seconds to seconds um some do this is really
like low budget stuff and then i would i put i just did this for someone actually for dr petty and i put um a logo over
the tick tock logo because i don't want that to show on facebook um yeah so
i guess the point is as basic as it as it has to be but not something like i really want it to
um attract your ideal buyer so maybe if you're if you are if we're talking about cute dresses and blouses again maybe
it's like the latest um dress that you have in your store just talking about how adorable it is i mean that might not
make sense if you're not selling it but just any like what's in trend for this fall or what's a great christmas present
uh for your your mother-in-law you know anything and then so you get the point of what the
video could be it can be anything and then we're gonna run and a video view campaign to
and what what that means is is facebook optimizes for through play so they call
a result is somebody that watched the video for at least seconds
and um most of my clients get this real honestly most of them get
it get a replay for three to four seconds um i mean sorry three to four cents so
it cost them three or four cents for somebody to watch it for seconds all right and then just
to shorten my valley and then what we can do is once we have a thousand people
that have watched your video for seconds we can um and you can imagine i am a
numbers person but i can't do it quite in my head i think over like if you're getting them for three cents a view in
three days i believe about if um what depends on how much you're spending but um i'm gonna go back and get more
complicated i get like fill in a few details but i just i wanted him to see like the point is we find a thousand
people that um watch your video for at least seconds they become part of your warm audience
we go into events manager and create an audience
called a custom audience of video viewers and you call them you know
watch meredith's october video for seconds that it said then when we feet when we in four weeks from now if
we if when we create a conversion campaign to your warm audience we're gonna um deliver that campaign to your
instagram followers your facebook followers and the people that watch this video for seconds and then the next
thing that's really cool is we're going to create a lookalike audience so facebook's going to find
million people million people that have very similar demographics of people that watched your
video for seconds and you guys those look audiences do so well they've always done well and but before we would create
lookalike audiences of your email list or of your website visitors but since we can't anymore this video view and we can
create a look like audience of your instagram followers too but this this um video view lookalike audience they're
doing really well so so so you would then create this look alike
so you've got the video views a thousand people you would then create a look-alike audience um which would be
say three million people and then you would um target
through this video view campaign using traditional now paid
media to those which is going to cost various different costs depending on your industry right
exactly but in effect what you're saying is for the a thousand views of three or four cents each which is to
How to target your audience
dollars you've managed to create a potential audience of three million um [Music]
amazingly targeted people is is what i'm hearing which is
which is insane i mean that's incredibly cheap right and you've had some great success with this i take it
yeah for actually every client i've done we do we do the video view campaign and
we make it go longer so we'll run i usually um often times my clients don't
come to me like six weeks ahead of time but i can usually convince them to run
this for and i want to give you a little more detail we'll run it for seven days we'll run a video view campaign we'll
we'll pick a video and i'll ask them to spend a day so that's we're gonna
spend on testing and what we do is they're they tell me who their ideal
buyer is so i'm just going to use me she's a woman in her s that lives in
the united states maybe but maybe you know she's english-speaking but she might live in what a lot of advertisers
call the big five u.s canada new zealand australia the uk um
whatever you tell me who you think you're ideal by and you don't you might not know exactly you might think you know but you go ahead and lay it out
then using your description and you can do this i i go and find
i use her personality to find to create four different cold
detail targeted audiences meaning so when i go in to ads manager and i'm picking the audience
um let me break it down tomorrow i said we're going to spend a day i'm going gonna run four different ad sets because
that ad sets is where your audience is at five dollars each so four different audiences basically right
those four i'm going to pick different parts of her um personality that you told me about so
one of those like let's say you euro um you target
teachers is a little bit like you target um women that like to shop at neiman's or
something and that and this is one that i had this just um cider if you think
your ica likes um your ideal customer likes self-help that has done really well for me so when i target brene brown
people interested in brene brown and oprah and elizabeth gilbert those cold
audiences those people like to buy things which is interesting but um but if you told me so my ideal client shops
at neiman high-end places and she likes self-help and she likes to work out
actually so run those might be four just three different i just named audiences and then so then what happens is we
start the campaign i start collecting video views and i get my warm audience like we
already talked about which i can create a lookalike from but a third thing it does for me is i'm gonna see which of
Which ad set performs better
those four ad sets perform better sometimes i don't i'd say out of the
if all of my clients forty percent of the time forty percent
they do exactly the same meaning every one of those four different ad sets cost
me about three cents a view all right and i can't necessarily tell a winner but sixty percent of the time this one
like this self-help i see it quite a few times will cost me three cents but this
one cost five this one cost six and this one costs nine and so
then i know which cold so then when i go to do my conversion campaign if we have a hundred and fifty dollars
to spend a day on the conversion campaign i'll do fifty dollars to my warm audience which is the viewers
themselves the instagram followers all that i'll do fifty dollars to the
lookalike and i'll do fifty dollars to that cold self-help group that did really well
and every once in a while if you have that money to compare the look-alike to the to the detailed
cold sometimes especially this year as managers are reporting not just me that they're
the the cold the completely cold like that self-help that's it does better than look alike every once in a while
that wouldn't be my guess if you didn't have if you were trying to limit your budget i'd pick the look like first
um usually they do better but yeah but that's cool that's what so that's that's why i love that video view campaign just
for if i can get someone to spend um you know for a week
i've created a warm audience created a really cool look-alike and been able to test detailed targeting and to see what
works well so um the strategy then if i can put it
this way is yeah if i can simplify it in my head a little bit
you're creating a warm audience and that warm audience could be people who have watched videos or it could be facebook
lights you've talked about both yeah and we're then going to target that warm audience we're going to use that warm
audience to create what facebook calls a look-alike audience so facebook goes and finds people who are very similar to the
ones which you have sent which have connected with you uh you're going to market to those and you're going to
start to understand the demographics and the interests of people that like you and you're going to target those on a cold basis as well
and you're going to test those see which one performs best and probably run with that one um
is there i guess one of the questions in my head meredith is is there a place to
do the video view strategy and then you
market to those people those video view people and possibly the look-alike audience
um to like your instagram page and does that strategy reduce the two
dollars a follow i'm curious to know if you've tried that um
Is there a place to do the video view strategy
or am i ever complicating it no no but it would work really well it would work really well especially um
um yeah i think that that like your look-alike
um andrew warm should be people that would certainly be interested to follow you and they might be more likely to
follow you on instagram if um if they've seen a video first and then and they watched it
yeah and is there if i'm going to say growing my instagram following is there a minimum number i should have before i
start to pay money to grow my instagram following i.e does this work if i've got a brand new instagram account
um and no real followers or is it does it work better if i've got say followers already i'm kind of curious
the only the only reason it would work maybe a little better and i um
is just for authority meaning if you have followers there might be some people that
um believe that you are more of an authority than someone that only has
followers yet but you know you could counteract that with the video that you invite them hey i've got a new account
and this is why i have a new account swipe up but um yeah i think that
um it could be a good place to put your money especially if you are new and want to grow fast and have some
capital to invest in your business i think that um i like
these followers you know meaning um i'm not a totally opposed to robots like i think the robots that are out
there that um one time i used um a robot that liked like i would tell the robot
if anybody hashtags this is when um like miami mom or something like that then
like their post and it would like thousands of and then people those people would come back and sometimes it'd follow but
um but i always felt like it was okay because it was still a real person deciding to come back and follow the
account like they somebody some robot liked their hash but i even like this better because i don't know because they
hear my clients speak they tell them why they should come follow and then they take the time to swipe up and check out
your account so i think it's a good place for a um you know a new person to
put their money but i do think maybe someone with more followers might get
lower costs just from that authority it's weird i mean it's print proven if the post has like likes
people on instagram are more likely to like it just because it has a bunch of likes
social proof isn't it yeah yeah yeah so if you're um if you're going with this strategy of
say the video viewed strategy so i'm i'm investing three or four cents to go get someone to watch my video for seconds
and i'm creating that and you mentioned do that for about a thousand people um once i reach a thousand people do i
stop with that am i happy with my look-alike audience or am i continually doing that continually refining my
Are you happy with your lookalike audience
look-alike audience i like it and if you can work that into your budget i um think keep it going
like i would i would it would just get your look like to be
better and better and in fact um you can always see this but on when
you're in uh ads manager on the like results screen i guess like the the
first screen you come to an ads manager where you see all your campaigns listed out there is
a button on the right i know most people's right side that you can customize the column
customize what you see and you can see video results and it will show you people that have watched um seconds
that's through play but it then it'll show you people that have watched of the video
so yeah if you run it long enough you can get a thousand people that have watched a
hundred percent of your video and they make an even better look-alike right
yeah yeah yeah and the reason i say a thousand is because
that's the minimum i i think it's not the minimum you could create a video view audience of like
people that have watched your video but once you go to create a lookalike i think you have to have a thousand people
to create but um yeah i think um
so at a minimum if you were in a hurry but budget wasn't necessarily a problem i
would start the video view campaign and then as soon as you have a thousand you could start your purchase campaign but i
if i just sign a problem i would just keep the video view campaign going and for most of my campaigns
um i there's another number you can see in the results of your ads that it's called
frequency the number of times someone has seen your ad and i let ads go until usually until
they get to four um and then i might change it so that and honestly
for your conversion ads for e-commerce people like a lot of people go further than four five six seven but for the
video would that be a good rule of thumb just change it at four and if you're especially if you're nationwide or worldwide it takes a while to get to
four so i would imagine if you've got three million in a potential look-alike audience yeah that's million uh video
views yeah what million yeah yeah so they
i i and i really like this as a strategy because it it's such a simple way to start to build good audiences to target
because it means your conversion ads are much cheaper because you've got a much better much warmer audience right and
this is why we're doing it we're building the warm audience to make our conversion ads one more effective and to an awful lot cheaper
and i can see this working for e-commerce sites especially e-commerce sites that are
very brand authentic and you know there's a there's um
a personality driving it you know that kind of there's there's good people strength i can see that working super
Does this work for course creators
well there i could see it does this work well for the course creator i mean you know someone who wants to create like an
online course would they do the exact same strategy yep yes i'm doing that um
yeah in fact i have a course creator right now who's launching um uh
in january probably january how to lose the last pounds and she's running a video now
that is longer than a minute and she her for she her target is millennial women guys like i'm not a millennial but i saw
it but she feels like her audience is on instagram more than facebook but she made a
two and a half minute video that um is giving some tips on
holiday eating that's what it is and it's awesome and so we're running that now and then um
collecting data and then um she's actually gonna run a quiz in between now and then so we're going to
first run her quiz um to try to build her email list to these people that watched her video but
when we're ready to launch the course we'll have increased our email list and we'll also have created these great
video view audiences yeah wow so um so you can use it to create courses
what about some i'm just thinking totally left field here let's say i wanted to grow the podcast audience
right um and i wanted to get more listeners to the podcast would this strategy work for
something like that which is not necessarily a course it's not an e-commerce product it's just content
that we put out there would that work yeah i think so i um i because you are
it's really um you're growing your audience and there are some ads that can help so they
can help increase your podcast listeners um uh but you know we would use the video
view strategy to figure out who to send the ads to to get listeners and i mean the what
could be cool though is the video that you use could be talking about your podcast so um i tell people don't expect to get a
lot of call to actions from this video because it's so crazy how the computer works but
facebook really is only looking for people interested at that moment to watch a video and that's all you're
paying them for you're just paying them the three and the four cents so they don't find a lot of people like jumping
over to go listen to the podcast but it couldn't hurt i mean sometimes we couldn't hurt tell him about a great episode you know maybe you just
tell him about a great episode and then oh you know go find me on where you
where you usually listen to podcasts or yeah and then anybody that watched a video we would know then to serve them
an ad about listening to your podcast so the the video views
um so the instagram follower strategy you were deliberately targeting instagram
stories with the video views where am i placing those videos am i placing them in stores
Where to place video views
just on instagram feeds or facebook feeds sometimes you ask that because most of the time for every other ad
campaign the rule of thumb lately is to do automatic placements because the
thought is that and i'm learning this lesson facebook really does know best usually like because they've got the
computer and there's so many of us think but we really know like our like my my millennial weight loss coach you know
she's like but they're not on they're on instagram but if that's true then that's
great facebook will figure it out because they've got the computer um information from the computer but
um for the video view campaign you guys go to in ads the ad set level
where um check don't uncheck automatic placements and do manual placements and do only
facebook and instagram there is um two other options and
one is um like um oh gosh i usually know but it's there's
two other options one is like these there's some it's like the gaming gaming network that's not
what it's called but it's some weird places which usually i'd want you to put like your conversion ads to just in case
but it screws up the video view campaign meaning people might watch your video over there but you can't count them in
your warm audience later and so yeah so i'd run into facebook and instagram and i
wouldn't try to pick one over the other i just let see what happens and like what happens and what format is the
video is the video landscape is it portrayed is it square that's another good question i'd go square
and i try to um sometimes i get a square and then
um i would maybe reformat it for ig stories if you can so um i like if my clients
just send me a square or they usually don't send me a square they usually like hold up their phone and go way back i tell them to
back up so i can crop it up i do have something they're like here and i can't um but if i can't make it nine by
then i'll just take the square and put it in canva usually and make it a nine
by it does look better if you reformat it before you get to ads manager instead of having ads manager do
it does that make sense yeah yes yeah yeah so do a square video except for the one for instagram stories which is going
to be the portrait long long video isn't it okay that's that's amazing that's amazing do
you when you do video views to stories though do you have a second because there's
like a second cap per story isn't there well i think you get a minute with the ad so
that's another yeah so um so yeah and one thing that you don't have to worry too much about you
guys like if you have a great video that's um longer than a minute or wouldn't work in stores when you load it
up to business manager they're gonna tell you like this isn't gonna work and so which is fine then just run it to the
facebook feed um so yeah so um but that's why if my client's asking me
i tell them let's try to keep it under a minute so we can put it in as many places as possible but yeah
that's great that's really helpful so i have so many questions meredith this
is so many rabbit holes we could go down isn't there which is uh which is lovely
um i understand that the the simplicity
of this when it comes to building the warm audience so we've talked a lot about building the warm audience
um but in terms of marketing then to that audience and you talked about
a conversion at the objective of being conversion are there other objectives that we should look at when it comes to
remarketing to that that audience that we've built not really to be honest um
there it is the most expensive conversion and that's because we're asking facebook to
Most expensive conversion
find people that will leave their platform and go give us something off platform whether it be their email
address which is a lead so if you're wanting to give them a freebie in exchange for their email address you
still do conversion but you optimize for lead or if you want them to give you money to buy something um
honestly it's best to ask facebook exactly you know to optimize for exactly what you
want um that's why conversions are best and the only other reason people use the other
one like traffic or traffic there's other things like brand
awareness and is really because they're cheaper but they just don't work as well so
i can't advise um them i mean if you're trying to like if you're at the top of
your um customer's journey and you're just trying to build brand awareness um you
could run a brand awareness campaign but i don't know um
and and some people like to run and get your question though was after
you get the video view campaign is there any reason to feed those people and so i don't think so um
honestly okay so my uh like i said i've got lots of questions
but this will be my last question i need to end this because otherwise we'll be here hours later
um i'm sitting there listening to this guy this is cool um and maybe you don't know how facebook
manager ads manager works there's plenty of videos on youtube which will tell you how facebook ads manager works right and
so you can take the notes the transcript from today's show you can listen to it over and over again you can watch those
videos on youtube and i think within a couple of hours you'll know enough to be able to do this yourself that would be my
guess but if i'm if i'm sitting there um thinking well this all sounds great i
could do it myself or i could outsource it either way what sort of realistic budget do i have
to have in mind so you mentioned um bucks a day to build the warm audience you're going to spend on that
um i'm gonna start to build this warm audience so that's maybe to
bucks figuring that out but that's just to build the warm audience so then i've got to run some
other ads as well typically what if i've got say less than
is this strategy worth doing um should i
be in my head going actually to really get some interest in data to get some really interesting results
minimally two grand is is where you need to be i don't know meredith this is a yeah
so um i so the short answer is is i'd love to for
people to invest fifteen hundred dollars a month in first the video just
and that comes from about a day so maybe it's a little less than that the first week you were just spending a
day and then the rest of the month a day but that's mainly because with the conversion campaign i mean you've got it
it for e-commerce people if you're selling something then um
you know it costs money so that the a day often gets us um great
leads great like um if we're trying to collect email addresses and it they're
because of ios and all these other reasons it's gotten a little more expensive but a day gives you a good
um the at like should i just say this makes
sense then to get out of the learning phase in ads manager which is always the goal they
want you to have conversions a week and to do that you need enough money to
get people to convert times to give you their email or whatever you've got to have some room to play so that's why
we can usually get there with a day and then you could reduce it if it's costing you less
you could bring the campaign down less and as long as you're um
getting the conversions a week you'll get out of the learning phase but the thing is like with e-commerce was
one thing i love especially being an old numbers person i mean um you know i i have this on my website if someone
wants to read through it at meredithcallahar.com i have a case study and she is um
she does meal delivery where she um sells you know people once a week they pick the different
meals that they want from her and she delivers them and so what we got an eight to one return
but um for every ten dollars she spent it cost her ten dollars to get one customer
to spend bucks so you'd do that all day long wouldn't you you right yeah but you have to kind of
play so yeah so um the short answer is without like going
off on numbers like to figure that out that's we spent about a month and
figured out that then we we kind of we created a machine where if she wanted to increase her revenue she just knew she
had to put um you know increments of ten dollars in to get one more and go so bucks a
month is ideal but if you only have if you only have a month now that if you just want to
increase your instagram followers right and then you could sell to them and instagram organically that's a way
to start right so you could now for that you could spend the
in the month you don't need that's a traffic campaign you don't need that there's the conversion
okay so uh i said that would be my last question i totally lied um
because i've got another one the conversion campaigns that you're doing to your warm audience you've mentioned
this a couple of times now about getting people's email address is is that the conversion campaign you typically run
to your warm audience is to then get them to give your email address or like with the lady that's doing the course
how to lose the last pounds would the conversion campaign actually be by my course would she go straight there or is
there still some onboarding that we need to think about well most course creators that i i work with as um are
not going directly to the course to sell because they're using amy porterfield's
course launch method um just that's how we know each other i'm in a facebook group
with amy porterfield's course creators but amy teaches to sell
courses in a live webinar so what we do is so the the lady that's
losing teaching how to lose your last pounds she's running three or four
master classes some of them call them our webinars we will send a conversion ad
to potential course buyers and but invite them to sign up for a free webinar so
put your name and email in for this free masterclass and that's cheaper than having them go directly to a
course signup page and um pay and also um you know it gives her time to sell
them in that hour that's what amy teaches but um so most of the conversion
campaigns that i do run for course creators are to and some people
send to um to a landing page so we send a conversion campaign to a landing page we
give them free information like a freebie a pdf download they they enter
their name and email like get this pdf download put your name and email here the
then a thank you page pops up and that's where we invite them to the master class that works well too that but um and
that's just another way to nurture people along but yeah so the but for a lot of e-commerce people that are
selling a product for sure you do like we're not getting their email addresses no we're going
straight from facebook ad come by this meal you know like run a video this is why chef nicole was so
fantastic she likes to run triathlons and make meals if that's what
our video view campaign was now go buy her meals you know and like or go buy this sweater yeah yeah that's great
that's great meredith listen uh i i might email you a whole bunch of other
questions at some point but um it's been absolutely fantastic to talk to you thank you so much for your time
um if people want to reach out to you if people want to connect with you maybe even get your help um how do they
do that what's the best way to reach you yeah and i love to answer questions too so i um love instagram so i'm there
quite a bit and it's just at meredith callahar where my name if you're watching
of you watching us my name is there and also on my website which is also meredith.com
you can um book a free discovery call and we can you can tell me all about your business and we can talk about how
facebook ads might work for you or not you know i'll tell you if i don't think it's a good idea yet
that's fantastic fantastic so that's meredithcalher.com or find you
on instagram meredith calendar we will of course put all of the links in the show notes we know some of you
religiously download them and get the show notes and transcript we will put all the links to meredith in
those as well and you can get those at ecommercepodcast.net forward slash they will all be there uh very very soon
if you're watching this live they won't be there yet but they will be there very very soon uh it's been great to chat
with you meredith thank you so much uh for being here i feel like we'll
probably have you on again at some point in the future just to find out what the next really interesting strategy uh is
because i'm sure if there is going to be one you'll figure it out somehow way before the rest of the world so sure
yeah i would love that thank you wasn't meredith fantastic i i don't know
about you i got pages and pages of notes uh interesting notes i might actually try this on the whole podcast thing and
see what actually happens when it comes to podcast promotion i will let you know what the results of that was um but
yeah great wasn't it fantastic so whatever value you got out of this do let us know
and do get in touch with meredith i am sure she would love to hear from you and her website again meredith
callahan.com or like i say head over to ecommercepodcast.net forward slash
which is this this episode number and we will put all the links and stuff to meredith there which is
fabulous so yeah thanks again to meredith and thanks for listening to the show if you've made it this far to the end well done i'm sure you got some
extreme value make sure you stick with us subscribe and all of that good stuff
because we will continually bring you more amazing people just like meredith showing all their value wisdom and
insights in what's working in the world of e-commerce so that's it for now
that's it from me uh thank you so much for joining us bye for now
you've been listening to the e-commerce podcast with matt edmondson join us next time for more interviews
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