Welcome to episode 388 of Hit the Mic with the Stacey Harris.
I’m sure stoked to talk about Facebook Ads today. The reason I want to talk about Facebook Ads today is because I know with all the algorithm changes, we talked about that last week. It can feel like, “Hey, I need to be spending some money. Investing a little more and getting my audience to see content, but also to engage with the content.”
We’re gonna talk about how I’m using Facebook Ads right now. We’re gonna talk about some good places to start budget wise. I’m really stoked.
If you want to take this conversation to the next level and actually implement it, which is what I sincerely hope you want to do at the end of every episode, Hit the Mic Backstage is the place to be. We have an entire fully updated, as of December, Facebook Ads training. And of course there’s a whole Facebook Marketing training. And there’s a whole Facebook Ads module inside of there. Also, we’ll talk about Boosting a post and the Ads Manager and the Power Editor and Custom Audiences and using a Pixel. All of those good things. And basically the implementation of what we’re gonna talk about today.
So hitthemicbackstage.com is where you wanna be to get that content. But let’s jump into this.
I’m basically gonna talk about the three cycles that my Facebook Ads sort of live in.
Cycle number one is called traffic because we need cold traffic.
A great place to start with this is a dollar a day, five dollars a day, whatever your budget is. I like planning for one or two dollars per day per audience. Then I’ll target a few different audiences. I’m spending more than a dollar a day overall. But I am seeing which audiences are gonna pay off best for me. Then I can put my money behind what’s working best at the time or with a certain piece of messaging or whatever. Cold traffic is first.
When I talk about cold traffic, I’m talking about an audience that’s never heard of me before. A great place to start with this is if you have an existing customer base, a lookalike audience based on them, especially for those of you who are selling memberships or programs, courses. Things like that. Or Masterminds. Anything where you have a larger group of people. It’s tougher when you have three or four one on one clients to build a comparison to those people. You need more than that. I think it’s about 100 email addresses even to build a lookalike audience base on them. You want to make sure you are building that audience based on who’s already buying, who you want in there.
This is something we do with Backstage. I love running lookalike audiences. I will then also run traffic to an audience based on interests, just because I’m always trying to expand and test and see what we can do with different audiences.
But a great place to start, if you’ve got nothing else, is a lookalike audience. Again, that lookalike audience can be based on a customer list, but it can also be based on an email list. Look at who you’ve already got. Build based on them, because you know they like you.
Make sure though that when you’re doing that you are still narrowing the audience. You’re not just gonna build a lookalike audience and then target to all of them. You’re still gonna want to go in and put in your age parameters, gender if you work with a specific gender. If you’re focused on helping men, you want to make sure you are not targeting women in your ads and vice versa.
Also, location can be big. This is really impactful for me. With Hit the Mic Backstage I only really target to people in, I mean we have members all over the world, but I only really target cold traffic to folks in North America, because one of the big benefits is group calls and our Monthly Member Mastermind. When I run ads talking about that kind of thing, I will run it to just the states and maybe Canada.
However, if I’m running an ad based on, we launched the new Instagram guide in January. Come check it out. You can do that anytime. I will run those Ads, still to targeted countries base on my demographics. And I get that information based on my Google analytics, based on my Facebook Insights. I’m still utilizing that location, but I’m maybe targeting a larger audience.
For me, just sort of being super transparent here, that’s the UK. That’s Australia. We’ve got a pretty good size audience in Australia. Sweden. Those tend to be the places because I don’t want to just go global and target the whole world, because often that can end up in some spammish, spammish stuff happening.
But again, even with that lookalike audience, I’m still narrowing it down. Oftentimes I’ll even dig into interests, but most often the priority’s gotta be that basic age demographic stuff. Cool?
Actually, you know what? The other one I really like to do is based on income level, because if you’re selling, for example, a 500 a month Mastermind, you don’t want to necessarily spend your ad dollars targeting people who are taking home 25,000 a year. They’re not likely going to invest in something at that level. Just math, guys. Okay? So be paying attention to those things even with a lookalike audience.
That’s sort of my first place is cold traffic. Traffic that’s never heard of me. And I’m utilizing that traffic and pointing them in the direction of content. I’m not running ads directly to a Backstage sales page. I’m not even running these ads necessarily to an opt-in like the Facebook Ads training or the Launcher podcast training, those free training series I have? I’m not even running cold traffic to those necessarily. I’m talking straight up podcast episodes. I will sometimes run them to webinars and things like that if I’m doing something. But in most cases I would say nine out of ten cases I’m running those to content, just pure content.
But it’s content with a really well-crafted call to action. That call to action is you’ve heard if you’ve ever listened to this show before or if you’ve been listening to this whole episode and didn’t skip ahead, Hit the Mic Backstage. I can often drive people from content right to Backstage, or if you go to the show notes at the bottom of this episode, there’s an opt-in. I’m still driving them to a place where they’re going to have an opportunity to purchase or sign up. But the upfront thing is an incredible amount of value with no ask.
Cool? So that’s Cold Traffic.
Next up, Nurture and Sales.
This is where we start to talk about offering up sales pages, offering up opt-ins, things like that. I do this with mostly a re-targeted audience. Like I said, sometimes we’ll run cold traffic to a webinar opt-in or something like that. But I would say most of the time, I run it with a re-targeting Pixel.
What I’m doing then is I’m re-targeting. Let’s say I’m running an ad for my Facebook Ads. It’s a three or four-day training series. It’s all automated, all through email. It’s totally free to sign up for. I’m sure if you’ve ever been to the website you’ve seen the opt-in. It’s on the homepage. It’s under most of the content. Let’s say I want to run traffic to that. Great. Fantastic. Wonderful.
I’m gonna have a better opportunity to get those sign ups if I re-target people who have visited the site. My cost per conversion is gonna be lower because it’s people who are already familiar with me. I have a larger amount of traffic, people who have already been to the site because I’m investing up front on getting them to the site.
Does that make sense? I’m getting people to the site, cold traffic, never heard of me before to content. If I’m going to then run them re-targeting ads based on Facebook, I’m probably running them to a Facebook post.
For example, this one. It may have been how you heard about this episode if you’re listening to this not day one whenever it came out. Or if maybe this is the first episode you ever heard from me. That may have been how you found this.
Next up we would run a re-targeting ad based on, hey, you were paying attention to Facebook content on the website. Here is your next step. Awesome, right?
The other side of this is Facebook Lives. I can actually run ads based on people who have watched my Facebook lives. If you’ve watched let’s say 25% of a Facebook Live where I’ve talked about Facebook Ads, I’m gonna run a re-targeting ad to that free training.
Now if you watched 100% or maybe even 75% of a Facebook Live I did talking about Facebook Ads, I’m gonna skip the opt-in. I’m gonna run you right to a sales page for Hit the Mic Backstage talking about the fact that there’s a Facebook guide with an entire module about Facebook Ads inside of that program or inside of that membership community.
You see how we’re using the information we already have to make sure we’re positioning ads in front of people who are already open and receptive to that. We’re also sort of hedging our bets with the no trust factor by initially just serving up totally free, no questions asked content and then retargeting them with an ask. I’m able to spend a little less and increase my conversion value with that ask ad, where we have even a free opt-in or a sales page.
That’s how I like to run my ads right now. I’m seeing a lot of success with this right now. It allows me again to sort of spend my money where it’s going to do the most good.
Cool? And I actually run one dollar a day traffic for cold stuff, and then one dollar a day for re-targeting stuff. Sometimes I’ll increase my re-targeting a little bit. If I have a campaign that’s just firing on all cylinders. It’s rocking and rolling. Awesome. I’ll bump it up to five dollars a day, because we’re seeing it work. But I always start with that one, two dollars a day when I’m testing new things.
Retargeting for Engagement
The last thing we do, and this is maybe something you haven’t done before. I like to re-target, and this is something we have tested on and off over the last several months, and we’ve seen a lot of success when we’ve done it. I like to re-target Backstage members and podcast listeners… for engagement.
If you listen to this week’s episode or you watched a Facebook Live on the topic, I’ll re-target you with an engagement driven post. This is something we haven’t done so far in 2018, but we did it a lot in 2017, and we saw a lot of success with.
It’s becoming more important now, and it’s something we’re gonna be rolling out in February, because engagement is more important than ever. Driving traffic to literally just hanging out with me on Facebook is really valuable, because not only is it gonna make my Facebook content perform better organically. My Facebook page content organically doing well is going to help me deliver better ad quality. And it’s going to help me see a lower cost for my ads. It all kind of builds off of each other.
Looking at some re-targeting where I can say, “Here’s just, for the sake of engagement, here is something.” Most often those are plain text posts. Those will actually be visible on the page when I do those. I’ll start rolling some out over the next couple weeks so you can see those. Make sure to like the page if you haven’t liked me over The Stacey Harris. Make sure you do that.
The other side of that is Hit the Mic Backstage. This is something we tested with a client, and I’m kind of obsessed with. We’re gonna do it for Backstage. With Hit the Mic Backstage, I can actually target the users and the members of that community when there’s a new training. I can say, “Hey, don’t forget to check out Backstage. There’s a new training.” Or when we have our Monthly Member Mastermind. “Don’t forget the Monthly Member Mastermind is on February I think it’s the 22nd this month. If you have a question, submit it now.”
I’m able to actually keep my members more engaged, because I’m showing up in front of them in a Facebook Ad. That’s not necessarily a Facebook Ad where I’m gonna see and ROI, and somebody going and buying something. But what I am seeing an ROI in is membership retention, which for me has got a superior value to just getting a new member in.
That’s now supporting that cold traffic and that nurture sales traffic that I invested in, because realistically if I’m spending money to drive traffic to the site, and then I’m spending money to get an opt-in, and then I’m spending money to get the sale, I don’t want them to bounce day two of the membership. I want them to last.
One of the things we’re really, really proud of with Hit the Mic Backstage is that most of our founding members are still members. Yeah. Yeah. We’re almost two and a half years into Backstage, and we have a lot of our founding members still a part of it. Our retention numbers are insane. As we are scaling up this year and getting more and more members inside at Backstage, we want to make sure those retention rates stay intact.
This is one way we’re gonna be doing that is by making sure that we’re targeting our existing member base and saying, “Don’t forget the value you signed up for. Don’t miss this opportunity to get X, Y, Z,” whether that is a new training, whether that is spending time in the Facebook group, whether that’s spending time in the private forum, whether that’s asking a question on the Monthly Member Mastermind or getting some Hot Seat time in the Monthly Member Mastermind where you actually hop on camera with me and we talk. Whatever that thing is, we’re making sure that they’re not forgetting any part of that value by driving a retargeting ad to them as well. Okay?
All right. Kind of a long one, so I’m gonna cut it off there. I know I threw a ton at you.
If you have questions, be sure to join us Backstage. That is the best place for us to work through this kind of stuff for you. These are great conversations for us to have during our Monthly Member Mastermind. Head over to hitthemicbackstage.com and join us today. I will see you there. I will see you next week.
Stay tuned for some Facebook Lives coming up this week. We’ve got some cool stuff on the calendar. I’m really excited.
If you have any questions for me, like I said, head over to Backstage and ask them there.
I will see you Backstage. Bye-bye.
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