This is part 2 of my chat with Bob so, if you haven’t already, head back to the last episode, episode 34, and listen to that.
When it comes to digital advertising, Google Ads and Facebook Ads are the behemoths. In the social media world, Facebook is the category killer, dwarfing everything else and that means they have a tonne of data on people.
A lot of people find that creepy, some unethical, but we aren’t here to discuss the ethics of what Facebook does. It is what it is, for now, but what it does do is present you with a massive opportunity … if your target market is on Facebook.
Bob Regnerus is the author of the 4th Edition of the Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising. Bob has an uncanny ability to pull a person’s story out of their head and heart and engineer that into highly-responsive ads and creative. Bob has 22 years of experience in Digital Marketing and has served thousands of clients and industry leaders such as Dan Kennedy, Bill Glazer, Ali Brown, and Perry Marshall.
Bob joins the show to discuss what it takes to create a successful Facebook Advertising campaign.
You can learn more at feedstories.com, connect with Bob on LinkedIn, and purchase a copy of the 4th Edition of the Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising here.
Enjoy.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
As part of the service, I have had this episode transcribed. Transcribing, proofing, and editing a podcast episode is A LOT of work. That’s why I use a service called REV who provide professional freelance transcriptionists who are vetted for quality. While they offer a 99% accuracy guarantee, I do not proof-read their work extensively. Instead, I simply copy and paste below and, as such, please note that this is not be a verbatim transcript of the episode and I have trimmed things like the intro, close, and mid-show ad.
Daniel:
What sort of calls-to-action get the best results with Facebook ads?
Bob:
Depends on whether you’re going to keep the traffic on Facebook or send it offsite. So Facebook has introduced a number of placements, Messenger being one, Lead Generation objective another, where they can complete their action inside of the Facebook app. So with those, you’re really moving them towards filling out that form or sending that message. The other call to action is really, you’re capturing their attention and hooking them, and then you’re pushing them offline most likely to a landing page.
I’ve tested a lot of the actions. There are probably a dozen and a half actions on the button itself. Learn more, just seems to be the one that works. There are other actions that are applicable, like subscribe, download now, install app. Those make sense in the context of, but typically what we’re trying to do is we set a hook within the ad and we want them to learn more and that’s going to drive them from Facebook to our landing page where we’re going to continue the conversation.
And so there has to be a really good mesh of message between what we say in the ad and what we continue to say in the landing page. It should be in sync. It should be in harmony with each other. If there’s a break in that messaging or a break in the thought process, they’re going to bounce back really quick.
Daniel:
Bob, you won’t know this, but yesterday I released the next episode, well, I scheduled it in the pipeline. It comes out next Monday, and it talks a lot about landing pages and the type of copy and the continuity of messaging. And you’ve mentioned about three or four things that you will be reinforcing for the listeners, because I’ve said exactly the same thing about landing pages. So it’s great that pardon the pun you’re on the same page.
Now, Bob, I know budget questions are always dependent on goals and average sale amounts, et cetera, but what sort of guidance or context can you give us about budgets and results? Maybe you can give us a bit of a pseudo example without giving away any secrets of businesses that you work with of maybe along the lines of X business that would spend Y could expect roughly Z results.
Bob:
One guideline I like to say is about 20% of your budget is going to be allocated towards retargeting and the rest you’re going to allocate towards cold traffic. So that’s kind of just a mathematical breakdown that you should expect, but then you should also expect a greater return on ad spend for that 20%, right? Because you’re retargeting, it’s bottom of funnel traffic. It’s got to convert way better. So I have this saying, I didn’t invent it, but it just makes sense. Money buys you time. So marketing, it’s a constant test, right? We are putting our message out there, we’re measuring response.
So somebody that has more money to play with, okay, I’ll say, invest, we’re not playing right. It’s a game, but it’s not. If you have more money to invest, you’re buying yourself time and you’re able to hone your message and your offer in faster than competitors. So don’t take it lightly that it makes sense to try to invest as much as you can, to get responses, to get answers. Because if you could hone in on that message and hone in on that offer, it’s going to get to the point where you’re comfortable with your return on ad spend. And that’s the point where you can scale. If you’re forced to use lower budgets, what you’re doing is you’re essentially lengthening out your time in which you can get answers and you are going to miss opportunities.
So I try to work with clients and get them to be as aggressive as they can within a reasonable means of what they have available. Our goal is to at least break even for traffic. So when you spend a dollar, you make a dollar. To do that you need to have the complete funnel. You need to have the retargeting in place with a good sales process, right? So when you spend money, you have an opportunity to make it. Okay? And then when you do cold traffic, you’re most likely not converting that traffic at a profit, but you are, if you have the marketing retargeting function in place.
So we’ve gone to market with clients where they say, “Hey, I can only spend $600 a month, US.” Less than that, you’re probably pushing it because here, it’s $20 a day. So you’re going to be putting $18 into cold traffic, $2 into retargeting. That’s probably the lowest you want to go to get any sort of reasonable measurement for your business. You can start to see much more exciting returns when you get up to $50 a day, $100 a day.
I had a conversation with Dennis Hue a number of weeks ago, and he worked on a client. It was Rosetta Stone. They had a billion dollar a day budget. They could afford, right? They could afford to go there because they had a positive return on investment. They knew their numbers. So I mean, that’s a scope there. I’ve got clients right now, a day older, they’re spending 5,000, 8,500 a day. There’s KPIs that we measure to key performance indicators. The client I’m thinking of is a lead generation company. So they’re trying to generate leads in their space from 15 to $20. And so as long as our ad spend is within that range, we continue to scale up and balance our budget to meet that KPI, $20 or lower.
So you should always be answering the budget question with, how much can I spend, how much time do I want to have, but then what are the key performance indicators? E-commerce business, you should be measuring a return on ad spend in regards to purchases or revenue. If you are generating leads, it always should be towards cost per action or cost per lead. That is going to give you the guideline that you need. I tend to be a little bit conservative coming out of the gate. Some clients prefer to be more aggressive, but if you’re conservative and everything is working, then we start to scale from that point forward.
Daniel:
How long does it typically take for you to work with a client? And as you said, you’re a little bit more conservative out of the gate, and I assume that’s because you want to see what’s happening. You want to adjust how you’re going to go forward. How long is the sample size before you think I need to be adjusting these things?
Bob:
I like to see a couple hundred actions to really make a call on the statistical side. I guess one of the factors for me is whether the offer has been tested or not. So if I’m working with a client that has had an offer, a landing page that has generated traffic before and generated responses, I can be much more aggressive out of the gate with them. With an untested offer, untested landing page, I think you have to err on the side of caution because you don’t have any background stats or any sort of baseline there. So you have to establish a baseline first before you can start making decisions. So sometimes you’re just spending $100, $200 just to see what your baseline is, and then making decisions about what you want to optimize first. You definitely have an advantage if you have an offer that’s been tested in the marketplace before.
Daniel:
I have another listener question. This one comes from Garvin Francis from Florey Massage Therapy. And Garvin asked, just quite simply, “Is it worth spending money to boost posts?”
Bob:
It’s an interesting question, Daniel. Dennis Hue wrote a whole chapter in the book about this, and he’s got a strategy that I think works. I’d encourage that listener to look that up in the Ultimate Guide. I know it’s available in Australia. I tend to do it much less these days than I ever have because I’m focusing more on evergreen type funnels and that type of thing, where I’ve got content that I’ve created, that I’m constantly showing to cold traffic. So I don’t need necessarily to boost posts. Dennis though, has a strategy where he is constantly posting stuff to Facebook and he calls it a dollar a day strategy, and he’s putting money into basically lifestyle type posts. So Dennis will go speaker on the country, he’ll be driving in his car and he’ll just kind of turn the camera on and post things.
I think in that case, it makes sense to boost posts, but you do not want to do a boost post strategy if you’re trying to create an automatic or evergreen type of campaign. It’s two herky-jerky. The only instance that I will encourage people to boost posts is if you are doing what Dennis does, which is I’m building up my persona or my platform, and I need to push content out there that’s going to expire. All right? So I want to get as many eyeballs on it as possible without any expectations for return on investment. Okay? That in that case alone is when I recommend doing boost posts. Otherwise, set up your campaigns in Ad Manager.
Daniel:
With all that in mind, and you’ve given so many great examples so far, Bob, is there a favorite campaign that one of your clients has put in place that really exemplifies a great approach to Facebook advertising that you can share with us?
Bob:
This blueprint is a set. I call it deep funnel marketing. I’ve been working on this since 2013. My favorite is a client, the business has since been sold and shut down, but it was called Bolder Band Headbands. And it was a company started by a husband and wife, JD and Amy Krouse. And I talked to JD and Amy in 2013 and they had this idea. They had a headband that she developed. She sewed it literally at her kitchen table. And what she did was she developed this because, in her words, she had a funny shaped head. She would wear a headband and it would slip off her head and it drove her nuts. She was a CrossFitter. So she basically said, “Hey, there’s got to be a better way.” Right? That’s what invention is born for entrepreneurs, right? There has to be a better way.
So she said that to herself and she went out, built some prototypes and found something that worked. Her friends noticed, started asking for them. She sowed them for her friends. And then both of them are entrepreneurial by nature. And they said, “Hey, if we can sell these to our friends, we can certainly sell them to strangers.” So they were literally one of my first Facebook clients. And we built the entire campaign on her story, which is, “Hi, I’m Amy Krouse. I’m a mother, I’m a CrossFitter. And I created a Bolder Band Headbands because I wanted a headband that wouldn’t slip off my head and would still soak up the sweat.” We built an entire lifestyle business around that little phrase. It was a video we shot on an iPhone. It wasn’t anything special, but it generated, geez, I think it was somewhere around 10 million views, all told, all through Facebook. They essentially built a business off of that.
And what I learned with that is the power of telling a really good story and connecting an audience. The lesson there for people is this is if you have a product, if you have a service, if you have a software product or anything, you have to find out what the story is. You have to figure out how to make yourself unique. And I told Amy this on the first or second call we had. I said, “You’re selling a headband. It’s a commodity product. Anybody can knock it off.” I said, “But what they can’t knock off is your story.” And that’s what Facebook allows us to do as advertisers is we can build a platform and tell a story. It’s what makes us unique. And it’s one of the things that helps you stand out in the newsfeed.
So be very bold about putting yourself out there, putting a face to your company. It absolutely helps you sell, it absolutely helps you establish that brand position, and it helps you sell and make more money. I’ve repeated that a number of times, but that’s the one that kind of started it for me. And it’s a formula I’ve been repeating since 2013.
Daniel:
I love that story. Bob, you’ve given so much great advice and people will be keen to put some of that into practice, but before they run off back onto Facebook and start opening up their wallets or probably their credit cards, what are some of the common mistakes businesses make with their Facebook advertising that you want to let people know about it so that they can avoid?
Bob:
We’ve talked about it, but I’m going to reiterate start your retargeting campaign first. Don’t jump into cold traffic because I haven’t found anyone that has jumped into cold traffic and made money at it. Especially starting from zero. You need to put your retargeting in place so that you have an ability to retarget that traffic and convert paid traffic profitably. I’ve got example after example where you see like a 0.25% return on ad spend. So for every dollar you spend, you’re making 25 cents. You cannot make that up in volume, right? You need to have a retargeting campaign in place so that you can profitably advertise on Facebook. Okay?
The second mistake that I find is that people rush to create ads that say, “Buy my product.” Okay? And people are going to say, “No, I don’t do that.” Well you do, because I see it on my newsfeed all the time. All right? We are in the relationship business. I don’t care if you’re selling a product or a service, or if you see patients or see clients. You are in the relationship business. Facebook is a relational media, all right? Your job is to create relationship and conversation. There’s no other advertising media on the planet like Facebook, where people can see an ad and comment on it and share it and like it, and react negatively to it. I mean, it’s out there for everybody to see. You can’t do that with a television commercial. You can’t do that with a Google Ad, but you can do it on Facebook.
And so part of your job is to connect with real people. You’re not just connecting to a click. You’re not just trying to create a transaction. You’re trying to create a conversation. If you could shift all your advertising to be conversations and connect with real people, you’ll have such a greater chance of being successful on Facebook than if you just see your end users as a transaction. It’s not a game to me of, hey, 100 clicks, 10 sales, there’s my figures. No, those are people behind there. And you are trying to connect the right message to the right audience at the right time. That’s what Facebook allows you to do.
Knowing that really makes you go and spend time on ad creative, spend time on your media, spend time on your landing page. That is going to ultimately decide your success. So don’t be the buy my product now person, because you absolutely will find that Facebook doesn’t work for you. You’re going to complain about the platform. And then you’re going to come to me and ask for answers. And that’s the first thing I’m going to tell you.
Daniel:
Well, I love everything that you said there, Bob. For listeners of the show, regular listeners and anybody that’s known me over the years, you reiterated and underlined a lot of things that I talk about there that, yes, we’re all in the business of making sales, but it’s about how you get there that is important. My definition of marketing, as you said before, I think I heard this from someone else, but I claim it as my own because I can’t find it anywhere else. But I tell people that marketing is about finding people with the need and then getting them to trust you. And it plays into that exact line that you said almost verbatim, that I follow that definition up with marketing is about finding people with the need and getting them to trust you as such your job as a marketer is to get the right information to the right people at the right time. And if you tick all of those boxes, the sales will come.
Now, Bob, so much great advice that you mentioned there. And you’ve mentioned the book a number of times, and I’m guessing it’s full of great advice as well. If people get the book, what can they expect to get out of it? And also, you better let us know where we can get a copy of the book.
Bob:
Yeah. It’s available of course, across the globe at major retailers. So you can get it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, places like that. I set up a resource website, which people might find interesting. It’s called ultimatefb.com. Ultimatefb.com. What I did is there’s a number of guest authors that helped me create this book, Ryan Dice, Jeff Walker, Dennis Hue, Brian Kurtz, names that people probably know and follow. I got on Zoom with them and interviewed them just like you and I are talking right now. And I was able to get some really interesting content out of these guys, stuff that you normally wouldn’t hear. So there’s interviews filled with strategies, interviews filled with entrepreneurial advice and life situations. So head over there, obviously it’ll give you access to the book, how to get the book, but I really love those interviews, really proud of those interviews. So I would love people to kind of look me up over there.
Then of course, if you get on my email list, I’ll tell you all the great ways that I can serve you beyond the book. But I really feel, Daniel, the book is the type of book that is for somebody who’s in Facebook every day, it’s sitting at their desk right next to them, and they’re referring to it on a regular basis. That was my goal is to have a manual that they could follow, but also a book full of strategy that’s going to inspire them for new ideas when they’re stuck. Whether you’re a beginner, intermediate, or advanced, I believe you’re going to get a lot out of this book. Early returns are very positive. You can look at the reviews on Amazon. I’m very, very proud of the reception of this book. And I know it’s going to help a lot of people.
Daniel:
Outstanding. Congratulations. And of course, listeners, I’ll put a link in the show notes to that website that Bob just spoke about so that you can find that easily. But Bob, you also mentioned your main business Feedstories, and I know that you do Facebook advertising, training and coaching. So tell us a little bit more about that. How people can connect with you and maybe keep the conversation going? What can they do? Where can they go?
Bob:
Feedstories, it’s interesting, Daniel, I’ll tell this story real quick. Feedstories is a company that I started with a former employee of mine who became my friend after I laid him off. 2008, 2009 wasn’t too kind to many entrepreneurs. The economy crashed here and I ended up having to close my agency and my business partner right now was one of the people I let go. He’s a brilliant creative person, copywriter. And I was at Facebook headquarters and we had a meeting and I think I mentioned this, they talk a lot about video, video, video, video. I remember going outside on the street and I called him. I said, “Brandon, we’ve got to connect Facebook and video because this is where the platform is heading.”
And so that conversation started Feedstories. We’ve been in business now, four plus years. We help clients with traditional video kind of production, but we focus on video that sells. A lot of videographers know how to shoot great video. We know how to create video that sells. And we developed a process to do it remotely. So as you can imagine, during 2020, we got very busy because it’s basically contactless video production using a technology partner out of New York. We have an app that allows somebody to direct you and create videos. Whether you’re creating FAQ videos, sales videos, testimonials, we’re able to do it with a director that helps make it very easy. It’s very conversational. We love video, as I said, and yeah, you can find out more at feedstories.com, F-E-E-D-stories, plural, .com. We have a lot of examples there, a lot of advice, and we’re developing a course for people as well over there. So, that’s coming out early 2021.
Daniel:
Some great resources and services there. And of course, listeners, again, I’ll put a link to Feedstories in the show notes at marketingbuildup.net. Bob Regnerus, Feedstories founder, and also author of the book, Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising, which is now in its fourth edition. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your expertise and advice and insights into Facebook advertising.
Bob:
Enlightening conversation. Great questions. Thank you for allowing me to share this time with your listeners and hope everyone does well and is healthy going into 2021.