#175: Foundation of Successful Facebook Ads — My Interview on Photogs Unite! Podcast

On the show today I want to share with you an interview that I did on a podcast called Photogs Unite! This is a podcast that teaches the business side of the photography and helps professionals do what they do best – be behind the camera.

The host of the show is a guy by the name of Mike Lloyd, and the reason that I chose this specific conversation to share with you here is that it was really good (if I do say so myself!) and Mike is such a great interviewer.

We cover a lot of things that are considered foundational principles (conversions, objectives, re-targeting strategies and more), but they are essential for anyone wanting to be successful marketing a business on Facebook.

As I talk about often, a lot of this hinges on how well you really understand your target audience. It’s about having those conversations with your ideal customer, listening to what he or she says, and then using that information in your Facebook ads.

This is another episode that can really benefit you, regardless of the industry you’re in. You also don’t need to have a business that operates only locally to gain value from what Mike and I talk about today.

On the Show Today You’ll Learn:

  • The mindset you need to take when starting to run Facebook ads and how Mike approaches Facebook marketing for his business
  • What you should (and shouldn’t) be doing when it comes to Facebook advertising on a limited budget
  • Why to use the conversion objective instead of one for just traffic
  • Ways to use free content to position yourself as an authority – and amplify you’re advertising
  • The reasons that sending leads to your main website, instead of a dedicated sales page, might not be such a bad idea – despite what traditional marketing principles say!

Coming up in Episode 176, one of my students will be joining me to take us through the steps she used to create a high-converting challenge funnel. Tammy Cannon set up her automated funnel without spending a lot of money and saw amazing results from it – to the tune of a 60% conversion rate on her opt-in page! She’ll be breaking her strategy next time on The Art of Paid Traffic.

Want to win a free 30-minute strategy session with me?

To enter all you have to do is give me your feedback on the podcast. Specifically what I’m looking for is what topics you’d like to hear, guests you want to see on AOPT, style of the show and the frequency/length of each episode you’d like. Message me on Facebook by going to RickMulready.com/Messenger and I’ll pick one winner at random at the end of the month.

The Accelerator Group Coaching Program

I’m super pumped to introduce and invite you to my brand new exclusive 12-month group coaching program — the “Accelerator” — to help you finally take your business to the next level.

I’ve been getting a ton of requests for more direct business building mentorship and coaching from me, so I’m excited to announce this new program!

I’m living proof that when you surround yourself with bright, driven, like-minded entrepreneurs, you create an opportunity for enormous growth.

And I want the same for you.

The exclusive Accelerator 12-month group coaching program is based on the framework of High-Level Coaching, Community, and Accountability.

Links & Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Click here to learn more about the Accelerator Group Coaching Program

Click here to visit the Photogs Unite! Podcast

Click here for Mike’s 5 Tips for Taking Better Photos of Your Kids

Episode #167: The Million Dollar Facebook Ads Tweak with Jarrod Bentley & Ethan Sigmon

Episode #145: [Case Study] How a Local Golf Course Uses Facebook Ads to Slice Their Marketing Budget by 10s of Thousands of Dollars

Episode #140: Facebook Ads Strategy for e-Commerce & Physical Products with Steve Chou

Click here to visit MyWifeQuitHerJob.com

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Transcription of Today’s Episode:

[00:00:06] This is the show where I bring you the best tips tactics and strategies for using paid traffic to grow your business on autopilot. You’ll also hear what’s working and not working right now from a top minds in online marketing so that you can get more leads and sales every day without having to empty your wallet in the process. All right let’s jump into.

[00:00:28] All right. All right. All right what’s up everyone. Rick Moretti here and you are listening to the Arto patriot podcast. How’s it going my friends. Really appreciate you for give me your time today. This is episode number 175 and on the show today I wanted to share with you an interview that I did on a podcast called photogs unite. And this is a podcast for photographers that teaches the business side of being a photographer so they can focus on doing what they do best being behind the camera and the host of the show is a guy with him a mike Loide. And the reason I chose this specific interview to share with you here on AOP t is I remember getting off this interview thinking Man that was a really good interview. If I do say so myself Mike is or is a great interviewer and we cover a lot of the sort of foundational principles of using Facebook ads to grow your business. We really dive into the basics and what you need to be doing from a foundational perspective to have successful Facebook ads to be growing your business. And another reason why I wanted to share this with you here is that regardless of the business that you’re in you don’t need to be a photographer or you know that type of localized business to get a lot out of this conversation. So regardless of what business here and you’re going to get a ton out of this conversation that I have here with Mike so without further ado let’s jump into it and head over to the photogs unite podcast with Mike Loyde.

[00:01:51] Rick Mulready welcome to the party. Hey Mike thanks for having me on I really appreciate it. It’s good to be here. Absolutely. So Rick is a seasoned veteran with his own podcast the art of page traffic. That will be cued up in the show notes. You all should listen to that.

[00:02:06] I can’t say enough good things about it. And while I am a member of one of his courses. We’re going to get all kinds of actionable information for all the photogs out there who are looking to build your business so find more clients without having to.

[00:02:22] Cold call because we want to make our. We don’t want to be walking into random buildings and calling strangers that probably don’t want to hear from us or so we believe. So Rick I want to clear up.

[00:02:35] A rumor if you will. I don’t know it’s something that I’ve heard that Facebook ads that use started these things run in and you get them going and then people just start showing up your phones ringing. You turn away business and you don’t have to do any work. Can we start falling from the sky and into your bank account right. Rectally from Facebook. Yes. I wish that would happen.

[00:02:59] I would love for that to happen. And some of my favorite e-mails that I get from people are like well I want Facebook ads to work I want my business to grow but I really don’t want to do anything I like. I want this to happen in the next three days. And I literally get those e-mails and it’s. Like look at the wrong person for an answer for that sort of thing. Yeah man this stuff takes work you know. And I mean that from a perspective of you’ve got to go into it with the mindset of this is going to take some time to figure out and I need to be willing to test different things that this is not going to be an overnight success. Now with that said you can see your results very quickly in a matter of days. But you know it really varies from person to person how quickly you see results you know and how much budget what kind of budget you’re willing to put in everything like that and the other cool thing about it is that you don’t need to spend a lot of money in order to figure out if like hey is this going to work for me or not. Or is this offer I should rephrase that is this offer that I’m making resonating with my audience right. It’s about testing different things to see what works. So yeah it’s not an overnight success you got to be willing to be patient and put the work into it.

[00:04:06] And that was probably the toughest thing for me when I started doing these which is why I decided to just buy your program and. Speed up that process instead of me wasting money figuring things out on my own because I was like running out of patience I’d run an ad for a week and if I didn’t book anybody like Well that was garbage.

[00:04:23] But I didn’t know what to look for. I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t know any of that stuff. And despite all the knowledge I had put together all the education that I’d done on my own. It was I still didn’t really understand the process and I know this isn’t just a this isn’t a commercial for your course but it made it really easy like break down all the components. So we’re going to touch on lots of little things today. This is going to be one folks you’re probably going to want to listen to a couple of times.

[00:04:48] Can I just make one add one comment to what you just said Mike. Yeah that’s relevant to like the overnight success so just literally a few hours ago I interviewed. Some listeners of my podcast and they had seen some massive success and we’ve been chatting over a past couple of months I said you know what. Love to get you on the show to talk about what you’re doing. And you know in regard to this whole patients thing. They said that they were running. This guy was running Facebook ads and he was coming from a TV background so TV advertising background. And so he would know literally within the first day. If this wasn’t working it’s not working it’s not going to work. And so he’d pull it down whereas he was taking that into Facebook land. And if within 24 hours his ad wasn’t working he would take it down. And so one of the things that he learned on the show was like you know what you gotta give it at least three days. Once you start your ad to get into you know Facebook’s algorithm not to get too technical Southbury off the Hopper here. But with that one tweak so he stopped taking his ads down after the first 24 hours he got patient. And the hardest thing is is to let it run you know let it run a few days. And then he started to see results. It is hard to snowball from there. And he told me today he said I’m not making this up.

[00:06:05] Literally that one thing that I changed the fact I was patient and would wait an extra two days instead of one day has made me millions of dollars. I mean that just blows my mind like that one little thing like talking about patients and this is not an overnight thing. Like. Give it a few days and granted this is one of those sort of nuances as you’re running ads that you learn. Give it a few days. Be patient. And then that’s when things start to pay off.

[00:06:31] Exactly. And it’s tough when you’re in a really tight budget because you think OK I’m three days in I don’t have a single lead. Nothing seems to be happening but I’m still spending money and you’re like when you like cut the cord or when do I make adjustments. But yeah yeah you got it just like let it ride for a few days because it’s like you’re giving a bunch of data. To Facebook and you’re like hey show this to all of these people and it’s like cool give me a second to figure out how the hell am I to do this. And you got to give it time to figure out how it’s going to do it then it’ll start to do it. So I feel like there’s two different classifications of ads that we could be running as photographers. One of them is branding just to tell people who we are and then direct response which is like hey here’s my thing. Respond by reading her hiring made doing some sort of action. Can you think of a third one. I might be overlooking is this how we should be approaching it. Or I know I’m totally asking a lot of questions at the same time is direct response also branding.

[00:07:32] Yeah for sure. I mean because when people are seeing if you’re running a direct response campaign different types of ads and so forth you are still getting that exposure. People are still seeing the ad regardless of whether they’re actually taking the action that you want them to take. They’re still seeing it right. So you are getting that you know sort of secondary branding benefit if you will. You know I would say those are the two big things. And then from within that that’s where you can get into the different ad types that you can be doing like video for example or. Carousel ads which is just a simple ad unit that has multiple images or videos within it. So as a photographer. You could have. You know 5 6 7 8 images if you will. Within that one ad unit showcasing your work for example. Or you could have. Multiple videos of testimonials of your happy clients that you’ve worked with and stuff like that. So within the branding and the Diyar you can get into the different types of things that you can do and strategies and so forth to showcase your work. And to get them to take action. But I think as a photographer yet the two primary objectives are not I don’t mean objectives from Facebook ads perspective. That’s a different terminology but objectives of your campaign are going to be more branding and you know getting that response.

[00:08:46] Absolutely. And Brandon is one of those slippery slopes like literally everything you do in your business is part of your brand. The colors you choose the way you word things who you talk to how you talk to them and what you tell them. Yeah. So yeah everything you do is brand name. So I mean I personally don’t see the same value in just running you know like a big likes campaign to your Facebook page. Because when you run a direct response ad like hey we’re running many sessions sign up to get this much money off. Like that’s an example of a direct response. Ad yep you’re going to get all those residual likes and comments on your page just from running that correct.

[00:09:26] If you have a smaller budget.

[00:09:28] 100 percent agree.

[00:09:29] You know I’m not a big fan you know because most people who are listening to the show or in my audience are programs or whatever when I’m talking to generally don’t have large budgets some people certainly do. But for the people who don’t have large budgets exactly like what you just said like I would not be spending that budget on like campaigns to get more fans of my page. I have a large budget I might take a small percentage of that and to start building those Facebook fans on the page because those fans are often among the most inexpensive to reach and to engage with right on our ads because their Facebook sees them well they’re your fans on you know on Facebook. And so we’re going to reward you with a lower cost. But again just like you just said you are always going to get those residual quote unquote likes. When you’re running a branding campaign or a Diyar conversion based campaign. People are always in a click on that lake. Maybe they don’t take the conversion. You know the action that you want them to take from a conversion perspective but they are going to do. They are going to see your ad. So you’re getting that branding like you talked about before and a lot of them are going to also like your page.

[00:10:34] Absolutely. OK. So I just want to clear a couple vocab words for the week. We’ll with you because it’s about to get filthy in here. So a conversion in Facebook land is when you define an action and then somebody does the action. So you’re like OK I want you to put your name and email address and I’m going to email you a coupon for a photo shoot. Right. So if they actually put their name and email and then hit submit to get the coupon that is a conversion and it could be different things they could book directly through you know a sales page like for ninety nine dollars sign up for a shoot and they could just put their credit card number and Ambae right there that can be your conversion literally any action. What else do we just talk about objectives.

[00:11:27] So objectives like I used two different ways. There are I used it from a perspective of like what’s the overall goal of the campaign. What do you want to accomplish. But so that’s obviously that’s what one definition of objective. But with Facebook ads specifically when you’re setting up your campaigns the first thing that you do. So Facebook ads and again not to get too technical but there’s three different sort of layers if you will within a Facebook campaign there’s the campaign.

[00:11:53] Then there’s the ad set. And then there’s the ad and the ad lives in the ad set and the ads and the ads that live in the campaign.

[00:12:00] The Russian stocking dolls. Exactly exactly.

[00:12:04] And at the campaign level the first thing that you do when you set it up is I mean besides name it is you choose what Facebook calls an objective. And so like you just mentioned Mike’s a one objective might be conversions. So yes we do want someone to purchase from us. We’re sending people from our ad directly to purchase. Do you call it a sitting like how do you like. What do you call it we call it.

[00:12:25] There’s different kinds of photography and they all have different names like I call it a session.

[00:12:30] Some friends will call it a sitting if you do wedding to what end. Yeah whatever you’re selling say you could sell. Exactly.

[00:12:38] So you could do conversions for that. If you’re giving away a discount or a coupon or whatever and just like you just described that would be a conversion if let’s just say that all you want to do is I don’t know showcase your photo gallery on your website. So you could do traffic as an objective meaning like. All I really care about is getting people from my ad over to look at whatever page I’m sending them to. And so you could do that. So in the campaign speak if you will. Objective is what you want Facebook to set your campaign up to do. And you’re telling Facebook OK Facebook I want more of this I want more conversions or I want more traffic to this. You know this page over here.

[00:13:20] Exactly. OK so let’s say it looks like it’s going to be Schieber for us to run traffic to our you know purchase a shoot page. Why should we still not run traffic. Why should we do the conversion objective.

[00:13:36] Good question. So if you’re going to run a Facebook ad campaign and the goal is to sell sessions or whatever it is that you’re selling. Well my guess is in the photography world this is you know it’s not a you know forty nine dollar purchase like this is could be several hundred dollars maybe several thousand dollars something like that it might in the ballpark there depending obviously what you’re selling.

[00:13:58] Yes. And for any of Otago’s out there is still doing forty million shoes. Please e-mail me and we can get you on one of my coaching plans because you should be adding zeros to that. All right carry on.

[00:14:09] Yes. So if you or I should say when you are selling those more expensive packages or sessions that you’re doing you know we have to remember that Facebook is not like Google where Facebook is more of a discovery type of platform. Like people aren’t on there to shop. And so they’re on there to share with their friends and families and watch cat videos and stuff like that. So if we are you know our job as advertisers is to be very targeted. With our advertising while providing a good user experience that catches the attention of our target audience. So when we do that generally you know someone’s not usually going to click on our ad and come over and spend three thousand dollars on a photography session or. Package or something like that. So in that sense we still want to get people over there to look at what we have to offer. Maybe it’s an album of our previous work or something like that. In that case yes our goal is to get conversions yes we want people to buy. But and I don’t want to get too technical here. But when we do conversions we have to use the Facebook Pixel and the pixel goes on after the conversion happens again I don’t want get too technical here. But it goes on after somebody makes a purchase it would go on that page that somebody lands on says Hey thank you. You’ve just purchased x y z.

[00:15:24] Okay cool. So photogs the Facebook Pixel is a little snippet of code that you insert onto a Web page and it tells Facebook everyone who’s been onto that Web page and it logs it. So if you are trying to run an ad and get people to go to your Web page a. And when they purchase they go to thank you page B it will log everyone who went from a to b or everyone who stopped at a. And we can talk about that in a bit. But it’s just like a marker on the page that tells Facebook who’s been where.

[00:16:00] That way you know whether or not they’ve achieved the conversion.

[00:16:03] Yes. Very well said. And Facebook uses that information. So once people land on that page that pixel that piece of code there that we’ve placed on their Facebook that’s actually reporting back to Facebook. All the people who are converting. And so the idea of it is Facebook is actually. Taking that information. And getting smarter it’s trying to learn the people who are converting who are buying from you so that it can find more people like that. In the audience and whoever you’re targeting. And so. If that pixel that we’ve placed isn’t getting a lot of if a lot of people aren’t visiting that page where the conversion is happening. Facebook doesn’t like that because it sees that as not a very good user experience right because you’ve set your camp up.

[00:16:51] To get more of those conversions and you have to remember anything we do on Facebook from an advertising perspective we have to remember and come at it from the perspective of how we’re adding value to Facebook users. How are we bettering the user experience. As advertisers. And so if we set up a campaign and we’re telling Facebook hey we want purchases we want people to buy these things. And whenever that’s not happening very much Facebook doesn’t like that necessarily. Right. And so the campaign is not going to do well. So circling back to your original question like why might we in this case want to use traffic as the objective because if we’re following the same thing here meaning sending and sending people from your ad over to the product page of whatever you’re selling now you’re saying all right if traffic is my objective all I’m telling Facebook is I want people in my target audience to click on my ad and go over to the page. I’m not necessarily worrying necessarily about them buying. Yes of course I want them to buy but I’m not telling Facebook that that’s what is most important here.

[00:18:01] That makes sense. Yes. Yes. So if it’s an expensive product and people aren’t just going to click the ad and suddenly drop five hundred thousand dollars you will slowly pay more and more money as Facebook realizes that people are doing the thing you’re asking them because it wants to punish you for giving them a bad experience. So if you just run traffic and all you want to do is show as many people as you can that that could be a cheaper better option. But you’re also less likely to get people who will opt in right because it it evaluates which Facebook users click things which ones take actions which one was two videos and then whatever your objective is it will prioritize the ad to the people that generally do those things or other ads.

[00:18:49] Exactly because Facebook has so much data about its users it knows all the actions that we all take. So you might be thinking well how does Facebook know like whether someone is more likely to click than convert. Well it tracks all of the actions that its users take. You know it’s almost two billion people it knows a lot about its users so that’s it takes all that information and mixes it up if you will into making it available for us advertisers. You know and kind of part two to that Mike in Iowa. Again I don’t want to get too technical and down the road. But the other strategy that you can use with what we were just talking about if like if we’re just sending traffic where all we want is people to click on our ad come over to our landing page to look at what we’re offering. Well we can then use that same Facebook Pixel that we are talking about before and build a retargeting audience of people who are visiting that page so that they’re not purchasing right. So then we can turn around and retargeting essentially is when you go on to Amazon you look at a book or a product whatever it is. I don’t know you’re looking at an iron to buy and you don’t buy it and then you’re surfing the net later that day and you see an Amazon ad for that same iron well that’s retargeting. You can do that on Facebook. And so when you visit that page that you’ve sent people to and they didn’t opt in or they didn’t purchase from you.

[00:20:09] You can turn around and retarget them with another maybe another offered maybe it’s a discount maybe it’s just something joined your email list or whatever it might be to get them further along your sales funnel your sales strategy.

[00:20:22] Yes. OK. Let’s talk about some practical applications for.

[00:20:28] Our listeners one of the campaigns I’m running right now which I’m still working through. So I wrote a blog post last year. Last December some evergreen content on like 5 tips to take better photos of your kids. And then I’ve been running a traffic campaign to this blog post and I’m targeting mothers who are involved with family activities within a certain radius of my home or my studio location. Right. So those are my target clients because I’m looking to book Family Portraits this time of year. We’re in October of 2017 and I want to show this to women who are two mothers who want better photos of their kids. I feel like this is a good disqualifier. So then I get several hundred people clicking on the ad reading my blog post. Then I run a retargeting campaign offering a special on family portraits for this fall season. That is a pretty practical way to reach target. That way I’m delivering value first and then inviting them to come back. Absolutely because again going back to what we said before Facebook wants us advertisers to.

[00:21:43] Enhance the user experience provide value first and that’s exactly what you’re doing. You know most people are when they see an ad they are like their guard goes immediately up because it’s an advertisement right. Well all you’re doing is showing them Hey I have free content over here for you. You don’t have to give me your e-mail address you don’t have to do anything other than click on the ad and go and read this content. What was the article again.

[00:22:09] Five Tips to take better photos of your kids. So it’s not even asking me to do it. It’s hosted on my Web page. But it’s like hey here’s some ways you can take better photos. Yep. Do your own thing.

[00:22:21] This is positioning you as the go to as the expert. The more that you can do that the more that you can be provide helpful information.

[00:22:30] When someone needs a photographer. Who are they going to come to. They’re going to come to the person who’s position myself as the go to expert. You could even you know there’s a local business student who of mine who has been on the podcast before she’s not in photography but this example is very relevant. She owns a golf course and so she knows that the golf course is like a big one of those big things that has like mini golf and like a wedding venue and stuff like that for the mini golf during the summer months. She knows that her target audience is moms with kids very similar to what you’re talking about Mike is she runs Facebook ads too that are attracting her ideal audience but aren’t necessarily about mini golf like so for example she’ll run an ad like she’ll put together a PDA for example. That is the top five ways to save money on your next birthday party for your kid or something like that you know. So it’s not about. And then from there it leads into a discount for the mini golf. But her initial offer is has nothing to do with her primary business that she’s actually marketing. It’s more she’s speaking to her ideal audience.

[00:23:38] So what you’re doing here. Yes you’re speaking about photography. But you know it’s not like you’re not offering something to your ideal audience right off the bat you’re giving them free value that’s relevant to them and going to attract your ideal audience and then you know again. Again it’s all in the positioning of you as the expert then it positions you then you have their attention then you can follow up with them you know with offers like you’re talking about now. Absolutely. And.

[00:24:04] One of the great things about taking an approach like this is that they might not even wait for me to make an offer they could read this thing and try it out and be like wow this is way tougher than I thought. I’m just going to give that guy call he seems to know what he’s doing actually yeah I don’t have to spend the money on the retargeting but this applies to all different kinds of photography not just family portraits so if you do weddings weddings. But I do engagements and so I teamed up with like 20 different wedding vendors from around here and you know California and the Bay Area from San Francisco to Oakland down to me in Silicon Valley and I got like a florist a makeup artist hairstylist a bridal salon and I’m like What are five tips for someone whose shoes mean your type of vendor like not why do they choose you. But like five things that someone should look out for when choosing a venue or choosing a caterer. And I put together this whole guide from some of the top vendors in my region. And then I just run traffic to that for newly engaged couples to get people to see it. And then again retarget offering something with an engagement session you could do it with pets. You could do it with anything corporate headshots.

[00:25:16] I love it. I’m so glad you brought that up because I was going to use another example of another guest on the show where he and his wife sell handkerchiefs as he has found that his primary audience his buying audience is in the wedding industry and the wedding. You know they’re getting married or their wedding planners or whatever. So yes. Does he run Facebook ads for like directly to sale. Yes he does. But his best success comes from exactly what you’re talking about Mike is where he’s he’s created content that is relevant to people in the wedding industry and then off of that he goes into offering the handkerchief exactly what you’re saying here if you’re a wedding photographer how could you be providing value to brides to be who are in this hectic time of planning and like water like how could you provide value and help them in this whole process while positioning yourself as the go to wedding photographer right.

[00:26:10] You don’t even have to say that you’re the go to just the fact that you’re giving them this value. Guess is going to tell them that automatically and just so the the guy some handkerchiefs he does the my wife quit her job. Yes that’s right. Yeah yeah yeah. Yeah. He makes a lot of money selling handkerchiefs. He’s a smart dude. Yeah absolutely. Absolutely. But he did it for the same reason that we’re all doing this because you know he had a brand new family. He’s like I don’t want to be stuck in corporate America. His wife didn’t want to go back to her office job and they like militar maternity leave as long as they could to figure out how to make money online. And now they’re doing it and it’s no different for us photographers. Figure out how to communicate with your target audience and then give them something of value and you’ll start booking more clients. I mean it’s a very simplified but. Right. Right right. That’s essentially it.

[00:27:05] Again it’s not happening overnight. There’s work that goes into it. You know you had for example you had to write that article. Right. And you had to then start getting traffic to it. And then there’s the targeting. And this is not happening overnight but it’s this process of adding value. Understanding your target audience and that’s key and we haven’t even mentioned like we’ve talked about you know reaching our ideal target audience but a lot of people that many many people I talked to one of the biggest questions I asked them is like how well do you understand your target audience. Most people say oh yeah I understand if I’m saying like on a scale of 1 to 10 they’ll say oh like six seven eight somewhere in there. My challenge to everybody listening is you can always understand your target customer better. The more that you can be speaking to your ideal customer and learning more about them as people like what are they interested in. Which would help you target your ads or create content for them or whatever it might be please have those conversations even if they’re past customers that you’re like. Yeah I just loved working with them you know like pick up the phone and say Hey can I chat with you for five minutes.

[00:28:15] And you know for me and my business I don’t know why it took me so long but it took me about a year and a half before I did this and I hopped on Skype for like 15 minutes with four or five of my quote unquote ideal customers and just asked them a series of questions and I get off those calls and I was like why did it take me so long to do that. Because. Not only did I learn about more about them and why they bought from me and all this other stuff and learn about their challenges. But everyone always says what do I write for ad copy. I’m not a copywriter. I don’t know what to write. Well I took language that my ideal customers are using and I use that exact language in my ads. Just listen to your customers and use what they’re saying in your ads and it makes it so much simpler.

[00:29:02] This is what I do on day one. To all of my coaching clients. Who do you want to photograph like. Who are they where do they shop. How many children they have. If they do where do they work. Where do they do for fun. Where have they been on vacation. Do they even take vacations like break down as much information as you can. See. I mean we don’t know what to offer or how to say it if we don’t know who we’re talking to. And I feel like that has to be the very absolute first thing. Yeah. And everything else is just a shot in the dark. You might as well just start randomly slapping the keyboard because the words won’t make sense to anyone else.

[00:29:40] Unfortunate to make a lot of people don’t want to do that work right. They think they understand or they’re like oh yeah I want to reach women between this age range and they have three kids. OK cool. But to your point. What are they interested in. What are they. Where do they shop. What are their like. What do they do like all this stuff. That is what really one of the first things that separates you from people who are not succeeding in advertising their marketing their business especially on Facebook is that right there is if you’re willing to put in a little bit of that work and understand more of your heart customer man that makes that just sets you up for so much more success rate from the beginning.

[00:30:16] And it is as easy as you said just pick up the phone and call some of your past clients if you have them.

[00:30:21] Another exercise that I like to prescribe is like go on Yelp and find people with similar businesses to yours. It doesn’t even have to be in your area dependent on what it is you do. I mean if. Everything you photographed for example has the golden gate bridge or a new york skyline in it you know probably Wichita is not your best place to look but read what people are saying that they really like and what they really don’t like about other photographers. And if you find some of the common things like photos took forever or we didn’t look natural or we didn’t know what to wear then. And all of your ad copy and then these are obviously things you have to be able to do. But you know what to learn now it’s like OK put together a guide on a what should you wear at your photo shoot and learn how to build rapport with people quickly. And I have an awesome podcast episode coming up soon.

[00:31:14] I don’t want to give it away but it’s going awesome and Edwards and we’re going to talk about that and just learn what they want so you can give them that and be good at it and then avoid all the things that people say they don’t want. And obviously there are outliers but you’ll definitely see patterns.

[00:31:28] What’s your take on that or is that too generalized.

[00:31:31] Not at all. I love that going on to yelp and looking at those things you know because you know. Another strategy that you could look at if you obviously if you know what you’re knishes and you know exactly who you want to be targeting but yet you don’t really know against that language and what they’re interested in know it that type of stuff. Join Facebook groups that have your exact customer in there look at the words.

[00:31:53] I mean it’s an amazing what’s the word I’m looking for where we were a focus group focus group. Yes amazing focus group online totally free. You can join these groups see what people are talking about and again use that do that research of what you’re talking about in addition to looking at what other photographers are offering and what people are saying about that. I mean again it’s this research. Mike as you know that a lot of people don’t want to do. But it doesn’t have to take a lot of time. And this is what really sound like a broken record but man this is the stuff that really set separates people who are successful in marketing their business and people who are not.

[00:32:30] Yeah I’m glad we keep touching on that because it needs to be driven home. All right. So I think we get like 10 minutes left to this chat. So can we sort of quickly run through one mock ad set up kind of from start to finish and this is one popular tactic in our industry is to do a model call because we don’t just put up a blast on Facebook to our friends saying hey free shoots for whoever wants them because one probably no one is going to take that because it screams of desperation but also that’s not how you need to position herself as a professional photographer that is trying to make a career out of this.

[00:33:13] So the model call I think is the way to go here and it’s essentially where you make an ad some sort of post stain that says this is the kind of shoot that I’m doing whether it’s you know outdoor families or you’re doing Buddu or you’re doing maternity sessions with a spring time theme something whatever be maybe I’m casting five models. You get a complimentary shoot in exchange for something and it could be you know or just I want to build a portfolio and you can work out details later. But that’s the basis of the shoot. So let’s run through an example of that.

[00:33:52] So where would you start. Yeah I mean well first of all it goes back to you again. So we understand. I always have. Step number one is understand your goal. Like what are you trying to achieve with your campaign. So the campaign here is we’re trying to get these models lined up so I can get these. You don’t get these shoots lined up and scheduled. Ok cool. So how is that going to happen. And what I like to do is work backwards from that goal. So if we know that our goal is to get these scheduled. Ok cool how are people going to schedule with us. Are we going to provide you know a landing page with a link to. I don’t know our calendar or are we going to have a page to fill out a form you know making sure that we understand that first and foremost because that starts to put our strategy together. Right. It’s almost like a little checklist to know the different things I need to have in place in order for this campaign to work. So Mike what would you do as far as like would you have a form that they fill out or an application. Or how would you do that. Yeah

[00:34:49] I would have a form and this is one thing that I have underlined on my sheet here to talk about when we’re running ads. You’re not sending people to your home page. You might as well just throw the money in the toilet and watch it disappear because no one’s going to click on your home page. Like him. I wonder how I can hire this person that is never going to happen. So we’re going to send them to a forum page that doesn’t have any other navigation on it so you can throw a gallery up there a video maybe of what does it like to work with you a behind the scenes thing or a video testimonial you can have photos and other value adding content on there. But don’t make it be a regular page of your website where they can click away to other pages and get distracted. Keep this landing page for the sole purpose of them giving you their contact information so you can reach out to them.

[00:35:43] So I’m actually going to take a different a little bit of a different approach on that. Oh yeah. Brett and I actually so Facebook has changed a lot over the past. I mean a lot over the past couple of years but especially over the past. Year or so. And for some businesses I actually don’t mind that they send traffic to a page on their site with the navigation bar there and that with the ability to navigate away.

[00:36:12] It goes against every you know traditional advertising you know thought process we’re like no no no we want them on this page. We want them to take this action for like especially for photographers. It adds credibility to the experience. When someone lands on the site such that if they’re on your page is say to fill out a form or to fill it. You know this little a few fields to get to book this stuff or if someone’s looking to get more information about you that if they see like about Mike or you know other recent work or something like that that they can click over there to review you know other stuff. It’s just giving them again this goes back to Facebook and providing a good user experience because we do have to remember that Facebook is looking at another layer deep so that not only are they looking at your ad but they are looking at where are you sending those people. And this could be a whole other episode conversation about ad policy and so forth won’t get into all that. But you know that has to abide by policy as well your landing page in this case here. I mean look I’m not saying don’t do just a landing page like lead pages or something like that. I’m not saying that I’m saying if you want to put a page on your Web site and it does have the navigation there I wouldn’t be afraid of doing that. I would certainly test that out to do.

[00:37:28] But the important thing here is what I think what we’re getting at is you’ve got to make sure that you understand where you’re sending people from your ad to get them to take the action that you want them to take. So again we’re working backwards from OK we want these five people to book sessions with us. We’re going to send them to a landing page where they can fill out this form to get on our calendar. So cool. Now we look we take a step previous to that is like OK how do we get people to that page. Well there’s our Facebook ad right. So we want people to click on or add to that landing page and then they’re booking in with us. You know as one of the sessions. Ok cool we have that down. Now we look at the how are we going to present that offer so would you call it a model a model call model call. OK cool. So you know how are you going to describe that. I don’t know if I’m ahead I’m looking. We’re looking for five people. You could do far better than I could. Some sort of copy there.

[00:38:21] It’s totally different based on who you’re talking to. Right. Because when you’re advertising to high school seniors for example different language than if you’re looking to do five you know CEO headshots very different verbiage. All right so we’re looking for five models for our senior portrait session this spring. We have a new studio or we have a new style or a new theme we’re looking to explore a youth fill in the blank whatever it’s going to be. And then you know the first five who sign up or fill out the application will meet up and talk about putting together the perfect photo shoot. It includes you know this many images whatever else additional prints for sale.

[00:39:02] Whatever you want to offer however you want to word it and pro photographers know we make our money off back and sales so the session fee is usually just a disqualifier because we don’t want people showing up for free stuff but we make all the money off the prints so you can offer a free session in this case taking applications which is really just getting their name and email or phone number and then meet with them to book the shoot.

[00:39:27] Yeah. And I think I mean I love that. And I think that everyone always wants to know like well longer copy or shorter copy what should I do. There’s always there’s never one. No exact way to do it. I would test out in this case here though where people are going to need to like they’re signing up basically to come spend some time with you. I think a little bit longer copy might be born at because you know you’re getting people more comfortable with you you’re introducing yourself to these people in your area that you want to that you want to reach out to. In light of that are with that I should say I think a video ad would do really well here. If you don’t have other forms of you know other past photos that you could showcase for them let’s say you’re just starting out. I think you know I’m holding up my phone right now just getting in front of your iPhone or Android device and getting you know just shooting some quick video basically describing exactly what you just said Mike.

[00:40:20] Not only does that. What I love about that especially as a photographer is you’ve got to feel comfortable you know with the photographer. I recently had a photo shoot about a month or so ago. I had been referred to him by a great photographer who is a good friend of mine and she referred me to this guy. I had never met him before. And it’s always you know that awkwardness at first when you start. But the first thing we did for the first 30 minutes as we sat down and had coffee and I was like Are we going to or is you are going to get some photos done or what. But it was that you know it was that time where we like get comfortable each other because then that obviously shows up in the pictures.

[00:40:54] And I think if you do a video again very simple we’re not talking like higher production crew or anything just get in front of your phone and start talking. That lends itself to somebody being comfortable with you already. Right from the get go because they can learn like they see your mannerisms they see your personality and are like I can totally connect with. MIKE Yeah I’m going to sign up for this. I think keeping it basic and you don’t have to reinvent. You know what to say. Everything you just said Mike would go in your ad copy. You could also see the exact same thing in her video.

[00:41:24] Because not really I’d copy they might read it and then watch three seconds of the video and be like I get this dude’s vibe. I’m going to call him. Exactly. And if they listen to them both and they’ve gone through all of that content it’s because they like it and agree with it. So that’s great do yep.

[00:41:39] So once we’ve established that then it really comes down to OK understanding. Going back to the target audience who are we going to reach with this. Who do we want to reach with this and just being clear. That and Facebook has you know one of the best things about Facebook as it is we get so targeted with our ads. I mean even if we just want to reach moms with kids between certain age range in our area here boom we go. We can do that.

[00:42:06] So we have certain number of credit cards who drive an SUV to take their kids to soccer practice shop at Whole Foods and love Lulu Lemon. I mean you can get really specific.

[00:42:17] Absolutely. So just really understanding that target audience that you want to reach and then setting your ads up to reach those people.

[00:42:25] Yes. One of the things that I do is when I make one base AD for example I’ll make like six different copies of it and I’ll do different headlines and then I’ll make like three copies of each of those and use three different photos so that one ad is now 18. But it only took me like an extra ten minutes to put all that stuff together and then all get to that probably on the next step. But you have to try multiple things because you’re likely not going to get it right in the first try. Because we’re photographers not digital marketers but we’re learning. So yes you’ll figure out what works and what doesn’t work and it’s going to be different every single time you do it. So it may work one year and next year gets you nothing.

[00:43:06] I mean one year later. I mean it could work two months ago and might not work right now or the other way around it maybe didn’t work two months ago. But now it’s working really well. The platform just changes so frequently.

[00:43:20] And that’s again why you have to be patient. Why we covered that a bunch of times. OK so now we’ve got the ad built. We have the web page we’re going to send them to you. They’ve checked out our content. Now we have two options They can either opt in or they could click away.

[00:43:35] Exactly. Yep. So we want to make sure that we have like a thank you page after they after they give us their information. So whatever that page is they land on they come to the page they give us their name email and phone number and they click submit. And then that kicks them to one more pages. Awesome. I’ll follow up with you within 24 hours or whatever that page might be. That’s where the pixel goes that’s where you’re tracking the conversion if you will. And so if they don’t you know convert or they don’t submit that information. You can retarget them. Right. So we have our pixel on that we’ll call it the forum page and we have it on the thank you page so we can set up an ad where we’re targeting people who land on that forum page but didn’t make it to the thank you Page. We have to remember that just because somebody lands on our forum page but doesn’t you know opt in doesn’t take that action. We want them to take. Doesn’t mean you know they’re not interested or they don’t like you.

[00:44:33] Yeah maybe the phone rang. Exactly yeah. Their kid knocked the glass of wine onto their computer for a billion different things. Right.

[00:44:40] So that’s why we use retargeting to move them further along our sales funnel to get them to take the next action. Maybe they did land on the page like you know what. I don’t want to do this and that’s cool. But I would say you know I don’t put a percentage on it but a big percentage of what exactly how you just described it Mike is that something else happened the kid was crying the phone rang. Somebody came to the door whatever it might be and then OK cool that’s fine. Now we get to use retargeting to reach those people who made it to that page but didn’t take that next step. Yeah.

[00:45:13] Absolutely. And then you know what if they go to that retargeting ad which. You’re not supposed to say hey I saw you went to my page and you didn’t opt in. Because that creates super creepy bad experience because we like how do you know I did that. I’ve seen there’s like digital marketer ran a thing where it was like hey did life get in the way. And then. They brought you back to that. But I think that’s like as borderline as you can get. So you could just offer something else and be like hey we have a couple spots left on our model call the last few to sign up get this added bonus or we only have seven days left until we’re cutting this thing off. So don’t miss out. You have to create some sort of incentive. I mean this should be in your original ad anyway. But you can either add value to like a certain limited number or you can put a deadline on it. You need to give them a reason to act right this second and not let any more time go by.

[00:46:09] Yes exactly. And you know you bring up a good point there as far as like. Just be careful on what you’re writing in the ad copy like that you can’t increase that you can’t up that creepy factor used to be able to do that you used to be. I had one of my original students it back in 2014 for the first year he was running ads that said hey something the effect of Hey saw that you checked out such and such on his site. Here is a 20 percent coupon or something like that. And like he was giving the code right there in the ad and he was killing it. Now you can’t do that because it goes back to the user experience Facebook sees that as you know creepy and not a good user experience so just be careful with that like you mentioned Mike and make it more like. All right you know what here’s a different kind of offer we’re going to put this in front of you again.

[00:46:53] And it’s different for it’s companies like Amazon. Those are what dynamic product ads yet where you looked at the iron. And now suddenly the iron is in your News Feed and you’re like What are the odds they paid the same iron to advertise. Right. But we kind of expect that. Yeah but they don’t expect they expect you to not do that as a photographer. So you got to play by their rules and Facebook can change the rules at any given moment.

[00:47:18] Another reason you should listen to the art of paid traffic because it’s like my favorite thing you do because I don’t want to go in and read those updates and you read them to me. It’s so wonderful. Yeah absolutely. Of course. So yeah the last thing I’m going to do is go read that. So it’s great that you do. But they get change the rules at any moment. And then if you violate that they’re like OK we’re pulling your ad account. You’re like whoa that’s my business. Now what do I do. So you’ve got to play by their rules or they’ll kick you out.

[00:47:46] Yeah I mean it is one of those things that unfortunately you do need to keep track of the policies because they do change. You know I have some people are like wait I looked at it six months ago and I’m good. You know I’m like No no.

[00:47:59] You need to be looking to be aware of what’s going on on a pretty much monthly basis. Because Facebook does change and as an advertiser you are expected to understand what you can and can’t do on the platform and they will certainly let you know if you don’t.

[00:48:14] It’s not Facebook’s job to notify you what’s changed. It’s your job as an advertiser to do the research. Yes exactly. It’s one of the not fun things that we do. But once you start making money you can outsources to your V.A. and make that part of their monthly check list and then you still don’t have to do it. Everyone wins. Yeah. All right. Well we could probably talk for like three or four more days straight on this. This is awesome. Thank you so much a little drop in all these knowledge Bob’s out. It’s been a lot of fun man.

[00:48:44] All right. Hope you get a lot out of this one. Bike Lloyd over on the photogs night podcast. Now before we wrap up today only you know about an opportunity to get more hands on help with business building mentorship and coaching from me. This is something that people have been asking me about for a long time now and I’ve created a new 12 month group coaching program which is called the accelerator and this is to help you more quickly take your business to the next level. And I’ve based it on a framework around three key elements high level coaching community and accountability. And I started working with all entrepreneurs because basically I’m living proof that when you surround yourself with bright driven like minded people and you get coaching along with that you create opportunity for big time growth. That’s what has allowed me to grow my business so quickly over the last four years and I want the same thing for you. So when you enroll in the accelerator program you’re to get a 12 month personalized game plan for achieving whatever your goals are for you and your business. You’re going to get monthly group coaching training and hot seat strategy calls. We do two calls per month. You get a coach as part of the program. You get to live private retreats here in San Diego a VIP experience and a bonus day at one of my FBA live events here in San Diego.

[00:50:05] You can get a personalized funnel critiques Facebook ad critiques copy reviews launch strategy reviews on a monthly basis a private Facebook group to get daily help support and community and a whole lot more. Really excited about this program. If you think that coaching support and accountability is something that could help you fast track the success of your business. I would invite you to check out my new accelerator program and book a strategy call with me which you can do over at Rick Mulready dot com forward slash accelerator. Again it’s Rick Mulready dot com for its Lasch accelerator. Well my friends that is all for the show today thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. Coming up in Episode number 176 one of my students her name is Tammy Kannon and she’s going to be joining me on the show to take us through five simple steps to a High Converting challenge. Final she set this automated funnel up didn’t have to spend a whole lot of money and saw amazing results from it.

[00:51:05] In fact she got 60 percent conversion rate on her opt in page which was which is amazing and she didn’t break it down for us. Coming up in the next episode. So until then keep testing your paid traffic to find out what works for you and your business. And then new more of what’s working and I’ll see you in the next episode.

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