Have you ever wondered how all these Ads on Facebook could help your business grow?
In this episode, you will learn about generating high converting client leads with the use of advanced Facebook Ads from Adrienne Richardson. Adrienne has a degree in Public Relations and worked in an advertising agency out in Philadelphia before she decided to start a family.
When she came back, she opened a marketing agency working on everything but centered on none. She then realized that Facebook Ads is the way to go and increased her income to 4,000%.
She discusses how to make Facebook Ads stand out by not making it look like an ad but making it look intriguing and personalized.
Some Topics We Discussed Include:
To learn about Adrienne and how she helps her clients improve lead generation by using advanced Facebook Ads, visit AdrienneRichardson.com.
Adrienne Richardson is a lead generation expert. Her specialty is helping her clients become “Internet famous” and bring in real-world profits through high-converting Facebook ads.
Her clients get more sales calls with qualified leads, registrants for their webinars, and buyers for their products — resulting in millions of dollars of new revenue. Adrienne is a go-to strategist for businesses that want to add more commas and zeros to their profits.
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As a lot of you know and there is a lot of the feedback that I get, one of the biggest opportunities that is out there in the world of advertising and marketing, and one of the most powerful advertising platforms right on the planet has ever known is Facebook.
I have covered Facebook advertising on a few episodes in the past, what is working now, etc. This is such a big topic. There’s such a diverse way of attacking this beast that I invited an amazing Facebook advertising expert on, Adrienne Richardson.
She is going to share some of the lead gen secrets that she has been doing with some of her clients. In fact, she has been working with some of the past guests of the Bacon Wrapped Business show, Russ Ruffino, Kelly Fidel and who knows, maybe a handful of others.
This is her area of expertise is working with consultants, experts, coaches and people who sell intangibles, their advice and they are building their authority in the marketplace, which I guarantee is a lot of the audience of this show.
Her specialty is helping her clients become internet famous and bringing real-world profits through very high-converting Facebook ads. Her clients get more sales calls with qualified leads, registrations to their webinars and buyers for their products. These resulted millions of dollars of new revenue.
She has seen it all, she has done it all and she is the go-to strategist for businesses that want to add more commas and zeroes to their profit. By reading this episode and applying what you learned, you may have that effect as well.
I know that I’m going to be taking a copious amount of notes and try to put into action what Adrienne tells us. Adrienne, thank you for joining us. This is going to be fun.
I’m excited to be here and thank you for having me.
It’s funny as I mention you run the advertising for Russ Ruffino, who was a previous guest in the show and he was talking all about how to build a very nice and large coaching and consulting business, how to get consulting.
It is the third most popular episode on Bacon Wrapped Business already, so we hit a hot button. That is why I’m saying I know there are a lot of people out there.
I have gotten a lot of feedback on that and questions. Particularly, one of my friends had reached out and he was talking about that because he has talked to Russ and he is doing a little bit of the same stuff. He is trying to reverse-engineer that.
I told him I was going to be interviewing you and he was excited. He was like, “This is cool, I cannot wait to hear.” I’m trying to crack this nut.
I know that targeting, who to target was one of his questions and understanding some of the nuances of creating Facebook ads that convert especially for coaches and consultants. Tell me a little bit about your journey to this point.
My degree is in Public Relations. I started out working at an advertising agency in Philadelphia with NASCAR, Subaru, Palmer's Chocolate were some of the clients. When I decided to start a family, I got laid off.
I was upset for a little while, but then I had an idea to start a parenting magazine. My first business I used to own a print magazine that was for parents in South Jersey.
I ran that for about four years and then I sold it. I took a little bit of time off with my family and then decided to start my own marketing agency.
About a few years ago I did that. In my first year of business, I worked with anybody who would pay me. If they needed email marketing, web copy, web design, press releases, anything and everything that people would pay me to do, I would take them on.
About halfway through the year, I started to realize that I was underpriced and that I was also doing a lot of things I hated doing. I was intrigued by Facebook ads. I kept learning more and more about that. I started to cancel certain services that I was offering.
By the end of my first year, I had eliminated every single service in my business except for Facebook ads. Since then for the last few years, I focused solely on that. That is the only service I offer. That is what got me to now.
That is smart. Have you read the book Built to Sell by John Warrillow?
I have not.
It is a great book. It is a semi-fictional account. He is using these stories and analogy of a guy who owns a web design company or web services.
He starts off doing absolutely everything and then he realizes that by specializing, in essence productizing his service in some areas that is easier to do than others.
Being known for something is what gets your foot in the door. Click To TweetNot only did he make so much more money, but he actually built a systemized business that was easier to sell down the road as opposed to doing like what you said in the beginning, “I am a little bit of everything to everybody, I need money.”
My income grew by 4,000% when I switched and specialized.
It is amazing what can happen when you specialize and it is hard. I know that it has been hard for me in the past with some of the consulting client relationships I have had.
When you feel like you have a lot of things you can do and that you are good at, specializing is almost like trying to pick your favorite child and get rid of the other ones.
It ends up being so much better because when you do get known for something, that is what gets your foot in the door. It is that tip of the spear that makes everything else easier.
I’m sure that ones you get a client, although you do not necessarily do those things, there are a lot of things you can give them advice on and help with in other parts of their business.
That is probably what has added tremendously to making me a good Facebook ads person is because I don’t just know how to click the buttons and set it up.
I have got tons of background experience in the marketing and the advertising space. It adds value to what I am already doing.
Let’s dive in to the fun stuff. Everybody knows what Facebook advertising is and they are either using it themselves or gearing up to. If they are not, they go back and tune in to some other shows or go google Facebook advertising.
This is where we do the sizzling hot business advice. I want to dive on in because this is a good topic and it is a timely one.
Let’s talk about, especially around coaches, consultants and people who are selling their services for high ticket. It’s that model being a Facebook ad to either a content, a webinar or something to get somebody to watch the presentation and then enroll in a process. That’s the simplified version.
There are different ways you can skin this cat. Tell me what is working from the standpoint of generating these leads that convert. I do notice that things change all the time. It is a very fluid market, so this is always going to be a good topic for us.
I want to point out two things specifically about the ad. There are so many different ways we could take this conversation. Specifically about the ad, two things, over probably the last few months I have been doing a lot of testing with.
One of them is copy and one of them is the images. I probably spent about $250,000 a month on Facebook ads between all my clients together and that is growing every month. I do a lot of testing.
What I have found as far as when you are setting up the ads, you want your ad to not look like an ad. You want it to look like something you would have posted to your page anyways.
Just like TV commercials and radio commercials, we have become so numbed to marketing like the consumers are so savvy in that way that we tune in out. That can happen on Facebook as well. If people know it is an ad, they tend to ignore it.
That is banner blindness.
The important thing is to make your ads stand out, but not because it looks like an ad but because it looks like something intriguing. With images, I found that if you do not use any copy on your images whatsoever that they will actually get a better result, better response.
If you think about it, if you went on your Facebook page and wrote something and then you added a picture to it, it would not have any text on it.
It would have been something natural like, “I was at this conference and it is so exciting,” and you show a picture of you with a bunch of people at the table. There is no text on that image. Images that have text on them typically screens ad.
It is so funny that you say that. I was in a mastermind and there was another Facebook guy there. This is one of the things he said back then. This was when everybody was doing and putting text on their images.
He was saying, “I tested this, it works better for the same reasons.” In the past few years, you are only the second person who said that. I think that is because you guys are out there testing things.
The only way you figure that out is when you test it. It is funny because I have Facebook open right now for this. I wanted to see what are some of the most recent ads. There is one I’m seeing and it has got a company called Fix Your Funnel, which is a software I use.
They have got a big picture of a tsunami and there is no text on the ad or anything else. Underneath is a simple four-step guide. It makes me want to click on it because it looks like a new story or something like crazy. It does not look like a direct response ad.
Pictures, bright and colorful and they don’t always have to do exactly with who you are, what you sell. For instance, with Russ Ruffino’s ads, he is selling a program to teach people how to sell high-ticket coaching. What is that program going to do for them?
It is going to make them money. What would that money do for them? It will allow them to spend time with their family or go on vacation. I will test images that reflect what they want their life to look like.
We will do pictures of family on a yacht. We will do pictures of family skiing together or playing outside. We will use an ad image that has no text on it, but it reflects and will test positive and negative, not necessarily with Russ, but with a lot of my clients depending on what their offer is.
Client Leads Generation: With Facebook ads, the important thing is to make them stand out, not because it looks like an ad, but because it looks intriguing.
We will test the picture of what they want their life to look like, the result they are looking for, if they had the solution what they could have in life.
For some clients depending on what they’re selling, if they’re selling something that helps people get out of overwhelm or become less stressed, we will test some images where it’s the situation they are in right now.
Let’s say we were promoting something that helps stressed out moms. We’ll have a picture of a mom whose house is a mess and she is falling apart. She looks like she hasn’t showered in a couple of days.
That person is like, “That is me.” We’ll test an image of this positive like a mom who looks relaxed and she is enjoying her family and everything looks great. We’ll test those two images to see which one does better.
I want to encourage people to leave the text off your image, it right away screens ad. A lot of people are still doing it because they see other people doing it.
When it comes to Facebook ads, a lot of people copy what other people are doing. They have no idea if those people are actually getting good results or not. I encourage you to use pictures without text and that are bright and colorful and test both the positive and the negative.
The first thing that comes to my mind is, “How do I get some ideas for these images?” The first thing I would probably do is maybe go to some of these other sites if it has anything to do with my market.
Let’s say it’s Business Insider or something else like Forbes. If I am doing business, I might go to their Facebook page and see what articles they’re posting on their wall.
See what is popular, what are the photos being shared in the articles that they share. That is one of the things I might go to for inspiration. You could tell me, “Brad, that is stupid.”
You can definitely use your competitors for inspiration or people that are in the same market as you, but be careful to not assume that it is working for them. Test your own stuff as well.
Things that work well are either pictures of your audience and what their life looks like. Abstract images do well and even cartoons. I have done a lot of cartoon images with clients and they work well.
For some people, and I have heard both sides of this, they say to use a picture of yourself on your ad and other people say don’t.
The bottom line is if you’re a personal brand, if you are your own brand, you’re a coach and maybe you are the brand, and you’ve got some great professional looking pictures that are bright and colorful, test those against maybe a stock image type of photo and see how they do.
Some people say if your face is not recognizable and you use your face in an ad, it’s not going to work. I have plenty of clients who weren’t very well-known and had amazing pictures and they did very well. I do not like to say something works 100% of the time or does not.
It all depends. That is one of the other things that a lot of folks miss out on is that it might work for one person, but then I tried the exact same thing except that my sales copy is different.
My sales copy might not be as strong as somebody else or the creative or somebody might not like my face versus Russ’ and that makes it not work. It is much of an art as it is a science.
We have a running joke with Russ because every time we have ever used the picture of him in an ad, it is terrible. We are always like, “Oh man.”
His wife is this beautiful blond woman. He is like, “We should use a picture of my wife in the ad,” and see how they do compared to him.
I have also heard it. Marketing is nothing but guessing and testing. By the way, I get Russ’ ads and I have taken notice about they do change a lot, which is really good. I do not get banner blindness. I will see a different photo or a picture and I have paid a lot of attention to what he is doing.
One of the other things I have noticed that you are doing is it seems as though there is more copy inside the ad like in the text part, as opposed to one little wiener. What is your take there on more copy versus less copy in the ad area?
I could tell you months ago, I would have told I was teaching people and with my clients that I was doing their ads. I was telling them that the copy that goes above the image that people read, it means to be short enough that they don’t have to click See More so that it shows the rest of it.
People won’t do that. They’re in a rush, they don’t want to read this long post. You need to keep it short and sweet and they do not need to click to see more.
That is what I used to tell people. I had a client one day write this long post and said, “I want to use this as ad.”
I was like, “This is going to be terrible. We can test it,” I felt like I was telling her, “Okay,” but I know it was going to fail. I tested it and it worked brilliantly. It was a longer copy and she told a mini-story and it worked so well.
From that day forward, every time I would set up an ad for a client, I would do short copy that didn’t need to click more, see more. This was straight into the point. I started testing.
I would do a longer version where I had this strong question or statement that grabs people’s attention. It took them from this point A like their life sucks right now to point B of like what they wish they had.
It’s like, “I am going to share the secrets on how to do this, so click here to either opt in for this freebie or register for this webinar.” I tested it. Every single client I was working with, I would test short copy and long copy.
Marketing is nothing but guessing and testing. Click To TweetI would say about 75% of the time, the long copy wins, even on mobile. The key is that the first three or four lines of text need to be strong, so that people will keep reading. If it’s crap, people aren’t going to read it whether it’s short or long.
Give me an example of that. Let’s say I wanted to run to a coaching program. What might those first lines be like? Is it a real direct or is it more story-based headline grabber?
I will give you two different examples. One is a longer copy that Russ Ruffino is running. I wrote this copy for his ad. For everybody who is reading, you never want to copy, you want to learn from it and model and make it your own.
This ad has been working well for us. I will read this one to you and then I will read one from another client that has a different long copy that is working well.
It says, “Over the last few years, my team and I have worked with more than 250 coaches who were charging too little for their services and not getting anywhere near the number of leads they needed to have to get the income they so badly wanted.”
Right there, we were like, “Does that problem agitate solve type of copywriting where you state the problem and then you keep agitating a little bit and then you tell them that you have the solution?”
You’re reflecting back. If I am reading that and it resonates with me, then you got me.
We go on to say that ones they learned why low prices were actually hurting their business in client results and learn how to start commanding $3,000-plus for their work, their whole world change.
The third paragraph says, “Watch this free webinar while I’ll share our proven four-step system for putting all of your client attraction on 100% autopilot, so you will never have to hunt for clients again.”
We took them from what they wish they had and then like, “I learned I could do this and now I have everything I want.” Those are three paragraphs of copy, which typically in the past, I would only use one paragraph.
Let me give you one other example because this is a completely different style. This is my client, her name is Emily Williams and her business is called I Heart My Life.
I have been working with Emily since she was making $400 a month. Now, she has generated almost $1 million in her business.
Let me read you one of her ads that we have used that works well. She was the first client that I had that wanted to use long copy that I was like, “We will try it,” and it works well.
She says, “I’m Emily Williams, the Founder of I Heart My Life and success coach for extraordinary female entrepreneurs. I always say I’m just a girl from Ohio with big dreams. Sometimes I wonder how I got here.
How was I able to move to London and meet the man of my dreams and create a business of my dreams? For a long time, that success wasn’t my reality. I spent years in a quarter-life crisis trying to figure out what I was meant to do with my life and how to finally be happy.”
She continues to go on talking about how she was in debt and she wanted to change her life. She discovered this way that helped grow her business and then she is sharing with them in her videos how she was able to do this.
How she was able to go from debt in her corporate job to having her own business and living this dream life she has always wanted. It’s long. It’s actually ten paragraphs.
I love that human interest side of that, the story, the struggle because that is one of the things a lot of folks gravitate to, it is the story, especially rags to riches, the hero’s journey.
It is a tremendous way to get somebody’s attention especially when they are on somewhere like Facebook which is social. They are reading about stories anyway, so I like tapping into that emotions.
The first one is more direct-response based, “Here’s the problem, agitate its solution,” and then the other one is, “Let’s come along on my journey because it could be like you.”
She does a good job. The beginning part is she talks about how her life used to be. The people that she is marketing to, that is where they are at in their life, there where she was.
She shows them how she made this change and what it did for her and talks about how her life is now, which is what those people, her potential client wished they had. She says, “I have the solution for you. I am going to show you exactly how I did it.”
She tells this personal story and she is honest. She talks about credit card debt. Her first month in business she made $400. It’s personal, it’s open and that’s her style. She is her own personal brand and so people relate to it.
Out of every single client I have, she has the best conversion rate between the ads and the landing pages. Her landing pages are great as well. Because of the personal side of it and the storytelling, we get phenomenal results from her ads.
I love storytelling. It’s a big passion of mine in marketing. It’s one of the things that I have with some of my clients we had some of the most success with.
Speaking of that, what about using videos? Video ads are obviously prevalent on Facebook. Although people aren’t using the ads as much as they are, static ads I have noticed. Have you had any success, failure there, noticed anything in particular?
From the testing that I have done with video ads, what I found is they’re good for engagement. If you want people liking, commenting, sharing and trying to get a message out there, video ads work brilliantly for that.
Client Leads Generation: If you want people liking, commenting, sharing and trying to get a message out there, video ads work brilliantly for that.
They so far, and I hate to ever say anything is 100%, all of the testing I have done with them, every time they suck for conversions.
They are good for engagement if you want to get people seeing what you are all about and want to talk to your audience, but they convert like crap. They tend to watch the first ten to twenty seconds and they are like, “That was cool,” and they move on. They don’t take action.
One of the guys who runs the ad for my client has done some tests. He noticed the exact same thing but with one other thing that he noticed.
Static ad versus a video ad he said the static ad got a lot higher clickthrough rate, higher in leads and it did get sales.
On the video ad, it got a much lower clickthrough rate, lower leads but the conversion rate was higher of the people who went over and finally said, “I will go over and check this out.”
Once they got to the sales page, they bought more but the amount collected was more with the static ad.
It is like they work a little bit here. They do a good job of making the person feel they know, like and trust you if it is a good video. By the time they take the step and they go, “I’ll go see what you’ve got,” maybe you have already convinced them.
I’ve played around with them myself and noticed the same thing. Great cheap video views, but the number of people who are clicking through are low.
That is why I want to encourage people. If they are going to test video ads, you’ve got to watch your stats all the way from the click on the ad to the sale.
A lot of people look at the end of their funnel and make a decision on whether the ads are working or not. They will get excited, “I’m getting video clicks for a penny.” They think, “This ad is doing great,” but then it is like, “Did it result in any sales?” That is all that matters.
I’ll gladly pay a dollar a click versus a penny a click if it’s going to result in more sales for me. I love testing things and I don’t want to say video ads are never going to convert.
If you’re testing them, make sure you’ve got things set up, so that you can track that data all the way through the funnel. You know for sure what your return on investment is, “I spent this much, I made this much.”
You could test the static ad image and follow that all the way through the funnel. At the end, it does not matter what you paid per lead. It matters what your return on investment was. That’s all that matters.
People are so obsessed with the wrong numbers when it comes to ads. In the end, if you made more than you spent, you won.
I have also heard people using video ads more for retargeting purposes. Once they’ve been into your site, then you do a little more human interest, a quick little video.
Now it makes them feel they like you a bit more. Realizing that they are not going to have as big of an ROI, then it becomes more of a brand in play.
That’s a good idea too. I like that.
I learned something else. I like to be a value too and not just the one who is picking your brain. Let’s jump over to some of the targeting. There are a lot of things that go into making a campaign work.
I’ve always felt like targeting is the number one thing because there is the most variable, there is infinite amount of variables that you can do.
For me, it has always been the most frustrating because I never had the patience to just sit down and chunk through it and be scientifically optimizing it. What’s your process or best recommendation when it comes to people trying to figure out the right target?
First of all, targeting is the number one most important thing when it comes to your ad and it’s the number one thing that most people screw up.
It is important and everybody does a terrible job, not everybody but most people at least in the beginning when they’re first starting out. The important thing to remember about targeting is to be specific as possible.
Let me give you an example. I had a client I was talking to and he wants to reach IT consultants. He put in the interest targeting IT consultant as an interest. You would think, “That’s a great idea. It’s very specific.”
The problem is whatever you put in your interest targeting, anybody who has interacted with any piece of content related to that topic on the internet, you could see that ad.
If I was looking for an IT consultant, I’m going to see your ad even though I’m not an IT consultant, but I’ve engaged through the piece of content or did a search or whatever that had to do with IT consultant. That’s where a lot of people mess up is they don’t realize that.
My Facebook rep told me this and this was enlightening. I only found this and I was like, “I can’t believe it.” I don’t think most people know this.
When you put something in the interest targeting, that anybody who has interacted with anything related to that topic in the last 28 days on the internet, on Facebook, they’re going to be showing that ad.
Job titles work well when you’re trying to reach people in the corporate world. Click To TweetIf I’d like something about marketing and I share it to my personal page, you know my grandma is there and my mom, and that girl I went to high school with, and all these people.
If they are like, “That was cool,” and they happen to click on it even though they are not even a business owner but maybe it looks intriguing, now they are going to see the ad. They’re going to see ads having to do with that content.
I’ve also heard that there is a difference between the interest with a capital letter versus a lower case letter, like if it’s IT consultant or it, especially when it has to do with brands or something else like Starbucks.
This is just what I’ve heard and I have no validation on this. Sometimes you’ll see the word Starbucks with lower case s. The lower case I’ve heard is more exact targeting than the big case. Have you heard anything about this?
I don’t know about that per se. What I can tell you is there maybe Starbucks in there three or four times because there are lots of different pages out there about Starbucks.
Typically, how you’ll know the one that is actually the real Starbucks page is it has the biggest audience size out of all that are listed there. That could be broader targeting.
They’re all related to Starbucks, so it’s not necessarily like picking the smaller one isn’t necessarily going to be better because it’s still Starbucks. It just doesn’t happen to be their main page.
If you wanted to reach IT consultants, the better thing to do would be to put IT consultant as the job title. Rather than as an interest, you can target by job title so you would target anybody on Facebook who has put their job title as IT consultant. That is super specific versus putting it in as a general interest.
I know you’re going to get a lot less obviously, but those less is targeted.
They are going to target the right people. Another big mistake people make is let’s say that they are a coach and they are like, “Everybody loves Tony Robbins, all my clients follow Tony Robbins, I follow Tony Robbins, I’m going to target Tony Robbins in my ads.”
Do you know, and you don’t and neither do I, but let’s think about it, the percentage of people who followed Tony Robbins that are actually business owners is probably 1% to 2%. Of those 1% to 2%, how many of them are coaches?
You’re showing your ad to majority of people who are following Tony Robbins that are realtors or they’re someone who went to his Empowerment thing. Tony Robbins is super broad, and so it would be a bad audience to target if you’re a coach or consultant trying to get clients.
You want to think about targeting the problem not the person. If you’re like, “I want to reach women in this age group. A lot of them loves Oprah, so I’m going to target Oprah.” The problem is not every woman who follows Oprah is interested in what you’re selling.
The better thing to do would be to think of a competitor or an author or a known big-time expert who has the exact audience you want. They sell what you’re trying to sell.
They sell the solution to that problem all your potential clients have, target them because you know that everybody following them has that problem. That’s why they’re following him, versus targeting Oprah because you want to reach women.
That’s one of the little things that I’ve picked up on as well when I started to play around with this. Noticing that there are a lot of authors out there who you can actually target than when you go to the audience insights and like, “I didn’t even think they were that big, but you can target them.”
If they wrote a book on something about IT, you can target the people who liked them too and those are probably IT. What books are they reading? Who are those authors? What products are they buying?
Go to Amazon and see what is the hottest selling products that your market would buy. See if you can target their brand.
That’s what I do. I’ll search Amazon for top books. Let’s say one of my clients is a sales expert and they teach people how to sell. Number one, I’m already going to start targeting people who already teach that.
Like Lisa Sasevich, she teaches people how to sell. I may be targeting people like that already, but then I’ll go on Amazon and I’ll search top authors on selling.
You’re going to look and see they have the ratings or how many reviews has gotten or how many downloads it’s gotten, like the ones that are ranking the highest. I try to target those authors on Facebook. I’ll also do a Google search, so I’ll do top sales experts in whatever industry it is.
People write blogs about this all the time, so there’s Forbes and INC and other people will write articles, so then I’ll go to that page. I’ll see who they said the top people are and then I’ll try to target them on Facebook.
Not everybody is targetable. If their following is too small, then you won’t be able to target them. I always tell my clients, “Do your research, make a list like as long as you possibly can.”
Get 50 to 100 whether it’s authors, experts, competitors, other certain magazines that those people read or certain trade shows that they attend, or the professional organizations they belong to. Make a long list and then go into Facebook and see how many of them you can target.
This is a much more tactical question. When you come down to say, “We’re going to start to build this ad out. I’m a coach, I’m going to start to build this out, I’m going to target people like Lisa Sasevich.”
I’m going to narrow it down by maybe my gender, maybe my age, country, etc. When it comes to the interest targeting specifically, do you start like one ad with one interest?
Do you start to layer them and make them more complex like three or four interests in one ad? Is it all over the road? That’s one of the things that I know in my Mastermind, people have been challenged with.
Client Leads Generation: Facebook does the work for you. You put all the interest together and over time their algorithm is going to continue to optimize that ad for people who are converting.
I know when I sit down, there are so many options. Do you keep it super simple and individual, so you can see what that interest is doing before you start to layer on things?
That’s a controversial topic. There are lots of different opinions on it. I’ll share with you what my opinion is and why that’s my opinion. I do not put one interest in each ad set. I layer multiple on until I have an audience size of 500,000 to one million.
I found that’s one of the sweet spot of DigitalMarketer run by Ryan Deiss, that exact same model they do as well. They make campaigns that have an ad set size of 500,000 to one million.
They’ve done way more testing than I have in the multiple millions of dollars. Even all the testing I’ve done, I have found that the larger audiences work better. Here is why, there are a couple of reasons.
When your audience size is super small, you can only spend a very small amount of money to run to that audience. Let’s say the audience size was 7,000 people, you’re never going to be able to spend more than $15,000 a day on that audience.
There is such a thing as spending more than you need to. Facebook isn’t going to tell you, “You don’t need to spend that much for 7,000 people.” They’re going to take your money and they’ll charge you more per click.
You can overspend for the audience size and especially for those people who are going to want to scale and build up. You need to have a nice, solid sized audience if you want to spend any considerable money.
Number one, I found that an audience size of 500,000 to a million works great, you can pretty much spend anywhere. I found that my max per ads that has that audience size is around $100 a day. If I want to spend more than $100 a day, then I set up another ad set that has 500,000 to one million.
For instance, I have a client that spends $3,000 a day, we’ve got 60 ad sets or so set up. People will say, “How do I know then if it’s Tony Robbins or Oprah that’s getting the conversions if I got them grouped together?” You don’t need to know.
This is something that my Facebook rep told me was that over time as your ad is running, the audience that are getting the most conversions, Facebook pushes your ad out to the audience more. The ones that aren’t getting conversions, they pretty much stop even serving it to.
They do it for you, so you don’t need to separate them out and put $5 a day towards each one and you got all these interests set up. Facebook does the work for you. You put all the interest together and over time their algorithm is going to continue to optimize that ad for people who are converting.
If nobody is converting from Oprah, they’re not going to continue to show your ad to her. You don’t technically know, “Are these conversions coming from Tony or Oprah?” In the end, who cares?
You don’t technically need to know, they’ll do it. What’s beautiful about that is it reduces the amount of crazy complexity work. If I think that all of these ten interests are applicable to my audience, I’m going to put them all in there assuming that I can keep the 500,000 to one million size audience.
I’m going to let Facebook determine which are the best because I don’t have to worry about that. That’s good, I love that. I love keeping things simple.
Here’s one thing I do tweak and a lot of people would do this too. They’ll break it up by age like, “I’m going to put in one ad set 20 or 30-year-olds and the other one 40 to 50-year-olds.”
In the beginning, I put them all together. If my ideal client is between the age of 28 and 50, so I put 28 to 50-year-olds in every single ad set.
After I have been running it for a couple of weeks, there is a button in Facebook that says breakdown and then you can break it down by age and you can see what age got you the conversions.
If you find that 90% of my conversions came from people that are between the ages of 30 and 40, then start there. You then make your ad specific to the 30 to 40.
To try to do that upfront is unnecessary because you’re limiting the audience size. Facebook is going to go out and do all that work for you.
Rather than you assuming that, “25-year-olds wouldn’t convert for me or 65-year-olds wouldn’t convert for me.” I have so many clients that come to me that either say, “Men never buy from me or women never buy from me.” They don’t want to run ads to that audience.
I always tell them, “Let’s run it to both and we will let your audience tell us who converts and who doesn’t.” You can break it down by gender. “If we find that all your conversions are coming from men, that’s fine. We’ll take women out of the targeting.”
Let’s not assume from the beginning. I will say the data doesn’t lie, so let the data tell you. Let your audience tell you what they’re responding to and what they like rather than you trying to decide it for them.
That actually is music to my ears because it is one of the things that keeps me from getting in here and playing with my ads myself more often.
I’m too ADD to think about, “I’ve got ten different interests that I want to target. I’ve got to create ten different campaigns and ad sets and all of these and then watch them like a hawk.” That’s why people pay you money to do this.
You’re like, “This is too much work.”
Primarily, you don’t have to give away any super-secret sauce unless you want to. When it comes to targeting small business owners, have you noticed that certain things are working better?
Facebook allows you to do a lot of different types of targeting from behavioral targeting to job targeting, demographics, income and whatnot.
Just because you can do something, that does not mean you have to do it. Click To TweetSome of that is accurate and some of that is not perfectly accurate, it depends on what people report on. It also is accurate because it ties into big data. Do you go deep on things like buyer behavior and whatnot on those interests?
Sometimes I do but I always put it in a separate campaign, so I won’t mix together. I won’t mix interest, job titles and behaviors all in one ad set.
Even with the whole exclusion targeting, the flex targeting that we can do?
I will to a degree. I like to test them separately. For instance, I’ll do any interests, I’ll do something more broad like digital marketing, people who are interested in digital marketing and then I’ll put narrow audience.
You narrow the audience and it says they have to match this, so maybe digital marketing and small business owner and/or they are IT consultants. IT consultants that are interested in digital marketing.
Let me explain to people. When you put five different interests in the interest area, it’s an “or” situation. They have to follow Tony Robbins, Oprah or whatever. They don’t have to follow all five pages.
When you put those interests and then you click the narrow audience and then let’s say you put the job title of CEO, now it’s an “and” situation. They have to follow Tony Robbins and be a CEO or follow Oprah and be a CEO.
Whenever I’m doing an “and” situation, I like to separate them. If one of my “and” is by job title, but one of my other “and” is by narrowing the audience could be how they spend because you can target people that are above-average spenders if that’s what it says.
I’ll do that separate. I’ll be like, “I want to target people who followed Tony Robbins and they are above average spenders.” I’ll separate those. I won’t put that they’re CEO and an above-average spender all in the same one.
When I’m testing the different narrowing of audiences, I do keep them separate until I know the answer and then I’m like, “This worked better.” I could always test other behaviors later.
What you need to know about the behaviors, forgive me if people in the audience already know this, but I think a lot of people don’t, is that most of that data, Facebook has bought from a third party.
When it says you can target people by income, you don’t put in Facebook, “I make a $100,000 a year.” They don’t know that. They have bought that data from other companies that gather that information about people.
Facebook buys it from them and then they try to match it to people’s Facebook profiles. They’ve only matched a small percentage of that data to people’s Facebook profiles.
If you’re like, “I want to target people who make $100,000 a year or more.” I hate targeting by income because it’s completely unreliable.
Number one, Facebook doesn’t know how much everybody makes. You’re leaving out a huge portion of your audience that does make six figures, but Facebook just doesn’t know it. Number two, people’s income changes all the time. They lose jobs, they retire, whatever.
Some of that behavior targeting is okay to test it, but know that number one, you’re going to pay more for it because Facebook isn’t eating that cost. They’re passing it on to the advertiser.
You’re going to pay more per click and sometimes it’s not reliable. If you’re going to use that and test it, be aware of that.
I’m glad you said because I’ve tried that in the past and had bad results going, “This should work and it’s not working.”
I’ve never gotten good results from targeting by income. Believe me, I have clients like Russ Ruffino and other clients who what they sell is a high-ticket item, it’s not cheap. The average everyday person may not be able to afford it.
Every time, we do no targeting by income whatsoever because every time we have tested it, we’ve gotten terrible results.
That’s good to know. You saved people a bunch of money.
You do not target by income whatsoever.
When it comes to finding those small business owners, what are you seeing where it’s like the job titles and professions as well as the interest and whether it’s publications or other gurus who teach business?
It depends on the industry. If you’re talking about coaches and consultants, the majority of targeting IDU is interest targeting. I don’t target by job title because entrepreneurs have so many different job titles. They’ll put self-employed or they won’t put anything.
I can’t tell you how many people request to join Russ’ free Facebook group and nowhere on their personal private profile does it say that they own a business.
If you’re trying to target people by job title or entrepreneur, not everybody has their job title even listed. We do a lot of interest targeting.
Built to Sell
I rarely use job title. I only use that with some people where that works well with people who are trying to reach more like consultants that work with corporations and they’re trying to reach them.
They’re very much B2B. We say coaches and consultants together but true consultants, they’re way different than a coach. They’re two completely different things.
Job titles works well when you are trying to reach people in the corporate world. For the general entrepreneur who is a coach that is trying to reach their audience on Facebook, we don’t typically do any type of job title targeting. It’s all interest targeting.
It saves a lot of the frustration of thinking, “This is one of the ways I can find them.” At the end of the day, if you dial in your interests and then you dial in your ad copy and it resonates with that market.
You don’t have to be a super laser on some of this if you’ve got everything else working right. If you’re a terrible ad copywriter, hire or get better at targeting, but otherwise I think one helps offset the other.
One of the things is you can actually target people who are Facebook page admins. Most people who are an admin of a business Facebook page, they potentially have a business.
If you are trying to reach business owners, one of the behaviors you can put is you put some interest targeting and then you can put as the narrowing of the audience that they have to be a Facebook page admin.
You just schooled me on. This is brand spanking new. I haven’t even heard anything about this. Where do you find this Facebook page admin? Is it in interests?
You type it in. In the interests, you start typing Facebook page admins and then over to the side, it will say behavior or something like that so you know that it’s a behavior not an interest.
I’ll do general, broader targeting in the interest area then click narrow audience and put Facebook page admins.
Not every business owner in the world has a Facebook page. For me, what I do and what for a lot of us do if we’re helping them do anything that has to do with online marketing, if they don’t have a Facebook page, they’re not our ideal client.
In 2016, if you have a business and you don’t have a Facebook page, it’s like back in the day if you had a business and you weren’t in the yellow pages. If you are in a business, you were in the yellow pages or you were dumb.
In 2016, if you’re a business owner and you don’t have a Facebook page, you don’t have a business. I hate to say that. That sounds too terrible. I hope people realized I’m being sarcastic. The truth is you don’t have a business.
Why would you want to work with people who don’t have a Facebook page if you work with people who are business owners? They are in the Stone Age. Unless that’s what you help people do, then that’s fine. I love narrowing my audience by putting Facebook page admins.
Not every person who owns a Facebook page is a business owner because you could have a business page and you run like a mommy group. That is why you put that interest targeting in there and then narrow the audience.
I just went there while you’re talking and I did that. I went to Facebook page admins. It does say there are 238 million people that are Facebook page admins. That’s a lot.
That’s why you’ve got to still do interest targeting. Don’t go in there and go, “I’m going to show my ad to every Facebook page admin.” You’ve got to use the narrow audience. Let’s say you put Tony Robbins and Oprah, and all these people in interest.
You put the Facebook page admins in that same detail targeting box, then it’s an “or” situation. They followed Tony or they’re Facebook page admin.
You’ve got to put your broader targeting on top then click the narrow audience and then put the Facebook page admins below that. That will shrink your audience size tremendously, but it’s much more specific.
That is sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. I think that is powerful. As opposed to the coaching, consulting, selling services offer, I’m going to ask you a selfish question. My wife and I launched a new coffee company.
We have been starting the process of building, it’s not a coffee shop, this is a direct consumer eCom coffee brand. We’ve got a great marketing angle in our brand.
The brand is called Stiletto Coffee. There is a great backstory, but it is branded specifically for women. You could say, “What makes it a female coffee?”
Nothing except for the branding and my wife’s story behind it is Brazilian and self-made, came here, an immigrant success story and coffee snob herself.
We’ve launched this brand called Stiletto Coffee, StilettoCoffee.com for any of my readers. We are a little disruptive in the market because nobody else is really marketing their coffee towards a demographic, a prospect and a psychographic as well.
This is an eCom product, it’s not a feature benefit, it’s not like, “Drink this coffee and lose ten pounds,” unless it gives you the energy, go exercise.
It’s a branding play and the strategy is so wide. It’s like female coffee drinkers of a certain psychographic. We’re playing around with the targeting on what might work for this.
One of the strategies that we’re employing is going towards some content marketing towards some articles and content that are demographic and our prospect would probably like. Not only retarget them but introduce them to the coffee once they’re on the page.
This is throwing you under the gun. You have no preparation for this, I didn’t tell you about it. I’m curious if anything comes to mind about something challenging as this?
Targeting is the number one most important thing when it comes to ads and it’s the number one thing that most people screw up. Click To TweetI have a couple of ideas, but let me first tell you that I’m not an expert in eCom type of ads. I basically work with people who have services.
That’s why I preface it with that.
Let me say that first, but I have a couple of ideas. Typically, when you run cold traffic right through a page where something is for sale and you’re not a recognized brand, it’s going to flop.
People don’t typically buy like that. It’s not normal behavior on Facebook for people to click on something, never heard of it, never seen it, “I buy.” I would do an up and coming, it has been around for a while but it’s starting to become stronger, which is mixing content and commerce.
That is exactly what I was saying. We’re sending them into a content piece first, something that they might like.
I like the story of your wife, where she came from and what she has now and all of those things. I would do an ad that talks about her story. It gets people wanting to click, they go to the website.
On her website, you need to have a retargeting pixel. You’ve got a pixel that is on every single page on her website. It doesn’t matter what page they go to, and Facebook will remember them for up to six months.
It’s a rolling six months, so it’s six months from today and then tomorrow, it’s six months from tomorrow for anybody who has come there. Take them to the page where they’re going to get to read her story.
Retarget those people with ads specifically about the product but mentioning the story. What’s your wife’s name?
Kenia.
“Remember the story about Kenya and how she did X, Y and Z,” or she can put it in first person. “I told you about this and I’d love for you to try my coffee. Click here for a special discount.”
Especially when you’re retargeting them. I’m so glad you said that because this is exactly on line with what I’m planning out.
Just content where the purpose of that content is to pixel that out of the audience. That’s what I do with the University of California. They’re one of my clients that’s not doing webinars and this and that.
We do 100% content marketing and they want to pixel their audience to retarget them later to sell them something. In six months, we were able to pixel an audience size of three million and they spent $10 a day on ads.
Through content marketing? Do they get viral and they share it and everything else?
Yes. They write a new blog every three days. We set up ads to run traffic to that blog, we pixel it out of them. Every few months, they do a webinar to that pixelled audience to sell them something. They always make 400% to 500% ROI on their ads spent.
That’s a longer, more patient style of marketing versus send someone to a webinar today and tomorrow and they are client. That is one way to do business. The University of California has this longer, bigger model of building relationship and so they are doing content marketing.
You could do that with her. You’re writing intriguing content. I love the idea of her story. Pixel out of people, retarget them, make sure on that retargeting ad. I would actually use a picture of her that was on that page where that was about the story so they recognize.
“I’ve seen that before, I remember her,” and then she is reminding them of a little snippet of the story, but then inviting them to do a free trial or a discount, free shipping or whatever.
They click on that ad and it takes them to a page where they can buy. I would just be pixelling people and then retargeting that.
It’s complete validation of my overall strategy, which is in the very beginning stages of getting rolled out.
I hope my readers can also understand that is why I brought you on this show and ask you of these questions because you understand more than how to push buttons in Facebook. You understand the marketing ecosystem from multiple areas. You used to be in public relations.
One of the things I like about the way you approach this is you come to with a much broader sense. It doesn’t sound like you just read a book on Facebook advertising and decided to be a Facebook advertising expert, which is rampant in this world. “I read the book, now pay me to give you advice.”
We were mentioning retargeting. It is one of the most powerful things in all of advertising ever since the invention of retargeting.
Have you found or do you have any data, let’s say of your coaching, consulting clients, etc., that the majority of the money comes from the initial ad or did it come from retargeting efforts?
Majority of the budget goes into the initial ad that you spend a lot of money to pixel those people. You don’t need as much money to retarget them. It’s always cheaper to retarget people. The higher your clickthrough rate is on your ad, the lower Facebook charges you.
They want you to put up good content that people are engaged with. The more engaged they are with it, Facebook rewards you by charging you less per click.
Client Leads Generation: The higher your clickthrough rate is on your ad, the lower Facebook charges you.
If you’ve got an audience that you’ve pixelled, they know of you, they are warm audience now and you retarget them. They will always be cheaper to reach and they will always convert higher than that cold traffic. Also, it’s a much smaller audience.
Some people like to upload their email list. Let’s say you upload your email list and it’s a small audience. To reach those people is much smaller.
Still big-budget towards pixelling the people, then when you retargeting because it’s a more engaged audience that converts better, you don’t need to spend as much money to get conversions.
Are you finding that the majority of the revenue, maybe you’re tracking this or maybe you’re not, that it comes from the ads that were retargeted, meaning they got introduced to the idea up front but maybe not everybody bought because it’s the first date?
It totally depends on the model. For instance, California, they’re running traffic to pixel and they’re not selling anything for six months.
What about your coaches like Russ or Emily?
For instance with Russ, we spend a lot of money sending traffic to a webinar. We will retarget those people who didn’t book a call with a three-part video series or a PDF download. Maybe that first piece of content didn’t get them to take action.
We do get way more people that convert initially from the initial run them through a webinar, but we don’t want to give up on those people who didn’t take action right then.
We didn’t hit the right pain point, the timing wasn’t right or whatever it is, or they didn’t even watch the webinar because they were busy.
We retarget them with a different type of content. What we found with that is we usually are able to recapture about 10% of them and the conversions are always way cheaper. Let’s say we pay $50 to get a strategy session booked through the original funnel.
When we get a strategy session booked on the retargeting, we’ll pay $12 for it. It’s cheaper but we don’t get more people who convert on the retargeting than the initial targeting, but that’s because of the way the funnel is built.
If somebody comes and just views but doesn’t register, they get one ad back to the webinar, but if they register and don’t buy or attend and then don’t buy, they get another, etc. Have you been diving into that?
We actually don’t do things that complicated.
I love that you said that by the way because that means you can make a lot of money without overthinking it.
There’s nothing wrong with doing that. People who are doing that, wonderful. I learned a lot of great things from Russ.
One of the greatest things that has the biggest impact on me is he is all about keeping things simple. There are a lot of things we do that people tell us to do that are not necessary in order to make money.
He is making $200,000 to $300,000 a month and we don’t do any of that complicated stuff. We basically have a pixel on the webinar registration page and we retarget anybody who hit that page but didn’t register.
Send them back to the webinar.
We send them a different piece of content. That’s the extent of our retargeting. We could say, “You didn’t watch or you watched but you didn’t book a call.” We could do all kind of stuff, but we actually keep it super simple and we don’t do any of that. Obviously, he does just fine.
I love that, especially because I have this natural predilection to make stuff complicated as hell because it’s fun. It’s like I’m tinkering.
We get bored and we want to go like, “What if we did this, this and this?” We built it and then it doesn’t work. If it does work, we have to manage it and then we want to put a gun on our mouth.
It keeps things simple. Just because you can do something, that doesn’t mean you have to do it.
I need to get that tattooed to my forearm.
It’s like what I tell my nine-year-old son, “Just because you think it, doesn’t mean you have to say it.”
What’s the nut that you’re trying to crack in your business right now? I know you mentioned to me that you’re also moving into working with professional services people from attorneys and medical professionals, etc. to help them generate leads using a lot of those strategies.
Are there any other things that you’re trying to do besides maybe you’re trying to grow your business and get more consulting clients, maybe you’re looking for human resources or other skills you’re trying to learn?
This is where we flip the tables and either myself or my audience to get the chance to find out how we can help you.
Data doesn’t lie. Let your audience tell you what they’re responding to and what they like rather than you trying to decide it for them. Click To TweetI’m trying to break out into other industries. The reason for that is I love working with coaches and consultants. I’m the kind of person that once I’ve mastered a skill, it tends to get a little mundane. A lot of entrepreneurs get that way.
Coaches and consultants are my bread and butter, but I need something new, exciting and challenging to do in addition, so I am.
I want to work with professional services that need a consistent flow of leads. Whether that’s an orthodontist that needs a constant flow of new people coming in.
I am looking specifically to work with DUI in bankruptcy attorneys because they have a type of service where they need leads all the time. It’s a very easy replicable type of law that they do and the paralegal does most of the work.
Like family law, they’ve got to deal with so much. The lawyers are very involved. That’s not as easy for the attorney. They’re not asking me to bring them hundreds of leads a month because they couldn’t handle working with that many people that are getting divorced.
DUI, bankruptcy, they can handle hundreds of people at a time. Mold remediation is really good, those types of companies because when storms hit in certain areas, people are always looking for leads for that. I’m trying to break into the professional services.
I’m looking to take on a small handful of them because it isn’t a new kind of arena for me. The ad is the ad, but how you generate the lead is a little different.
I’m looking for people who have an open mind and they want to experiment in that area, they are willing to test and experiment with me. Anybody who is in that industry who wants to work with me and do some testing on that, that’s what I’m looking for.
If they are coaches and consultants and they’re looking for done-for-you, I am still taking on clients in that industry as well. I’m trying to go in the other direction.
Coaches and consultants can still shot money on your pockets and exchange for you putting more money in theirs. I guarantee that there are some people out there who may want to do just that.
My audience, I want to encourage you, I’m going to do this as well, is to put on your thinking cap on who do you know is your family members or friend, if it’s not you, who does have professional services.
Whether you’re an attorney of bankruptcy, DUI, other professional services that may want more business and they want somebody. I’m guessing, Adrienne, that you work nationwide. They don’t have to just be in New Jersey where you’re at right now.
Anywhere in the world because I’m working from my home and I can target anybody on Facebook.
We should charge money for this episode. This was so good.
I had to say this is probably one of the best podcasts as far as information and things we’ve talked about. I’ve given away crazy, ridiculous stuff. It has been awesome sharing that. A lot of people don’t pull that out of me and you did a good job of doing that.
The reason I do this show is for a couple of reasons. I love having conversations with people that I find interesting about topics that I find interesting. It’s a way for me to add value to the market.
I want to give somebody not just another talk show-style interview that goes into the surface level stuff. We’re asking them for their time to read this and whatnot.
I want them to feel as though they have totally ripped us off like, “I shouldn’t be getting this stuff for free.” I actually had people email me and go, “I should have paid for that.” Let me find another way for you to give me money.
I’m so glad you said that. It makes me happy, that means I’m doing my job right. At the end of the day, the folks who have read this, the big benefit is they get to understand that you know what you’re talking about, you’re not faking this, you’re not regurgitating something else.
These are time tested, you’ve got your battle wounds I’m sure that you know what works, what doesn’t. That’s some of the most important things.
Especially at a time where folks are looking to hire people to get things done for them, the smart entrepreneurs, the ones who aren’t just bootstrapping into their parent’s basement.
Finding somebody who knows what they’re doing and who has a proven track record is very important and hard to do.
There are a million stories out there, I know I got them, of hiring people that dropped the ball or they were all talk in the beginning. I like to give people that I know, who are good, time to shine and show that they got these skills. You’ve definitely done that.
Is there anybody else you are looking to meet whether it is professionally, whether it’s to get on another podcast, whether it’s a business celebrity or anything like that?
I or somebody else in the audience may be able to make that intro. If nobody comes off the top of your head, that’s fine. Don’t say Oprah.
I think I covered it in what I’m looking for. I think that your readers if they can send me people in that area, that would be awesome.
How will they do that? How do we get a hold of Adrienne?
Client Leads Generation: Finding somebody who knows what they’re doing and who has a proven track record is very important and hard to do.
You can go to my website, AdrienneRichardson.com or you can email me directly at Info@AdrienneRichardson.com and let me know that either you or someone you know is in that industry.
They need to be open to testing knowing that, “I know Facebook ads inside and out. It’s a new area that I’m venturing out into.” We will do some testing together. They need to definitely be able to follow up on those leads and convert them into sales.
Guys, pay attention to that. If you like this episode, do me a favor and share it on social media. Tag me, maybe you even tag Adrienne in it. Let us know because that’s the way the show grows and that’s how you pay me, is help give us some exposure on this.
If you have any questions of me and you would like to dive into this, if you want to even recommend future guests or yourself, if you got a topic that you think would be amazing or just a business challenge you love to overcome. Send me an email at AskBrad@BaconWrappedBusiness.com.
Let me know you’re out there. Even if you just send an email to say, “Brad, I love the show of Adrienne. I learned a lot. I think you’re awesome and a handsome devil,” go ahead and say that.
Subscribe to the show. Go check out Adrienne. Hire her if this has resonated with you. Adrienne, I appreciate your time on this show. Thanks for being so open and forthcoming with us.
Thank you for having me. It was great.
Thank you.
Adrienne Richardson is a lead generation expert. Her specialty is helping her clients become “Internet famous” and bring in real-world profits through high-converting Facebook ads.
Her clients get more sales calls with qualified leads, registrants for their webinars, and buyers for their products — resulting in millions of dollars of new revenue. Adrienne is a go-to strategist for businesses that want to add more commas and zeros to their profits.