🗒️ Overview
- How we plan and build a funnel
- How we angle and target our ads
- How much money you should spend on ads
A special thanks to our sponsors for this episode, Digital PR Agency Search Intelligence.
Let’s face it. Google is probably never going to be the same easy traffic source it has always been. You won’t be able to solely rely on Google traffic to run an online business anymore, if that’s what you’re used to.
So the question a lot of people are now asking is: What now?
While nothing is a 1:1 replacement to Google search, in this week’s episode, Mark and Gael talk about ONE of the things they’re doing to diversify away from Google traffic: Meta ads.
They’ll show you exactly how they plan and build a funnel, how they angle their ads, how they target them, how much money you should spend, and a ton more practical details so you can take action. They’ll also talk about why they think it’s one of the safest ways to go for traffic and a bunch of other high level debates for those of you who are still on the fence.
Changing Social Media & Diversifying Traffic Sources
Social media platforms are constantly changing, and they’re evolving to give more reach to engaging content, regardless of the number of followers.
It’s now more important than ever to have your own product, and to diversify traffic sources so you’re not relying solely on one platform. You need to be open to different channels, while still utilizing the power of SEO.
The Power of Facebook Ads
Facebook ads are becoming increasing profitable and scalable, particularly in sending traffic directly to sales pages to purchase products.
Platforms like Facebook collect data and use highly sophisticated ad targeting, which allows for much better results. Mark and Gael recommend using organic traffic and customer data to optimize Facebook ad campaigns and reduce costs.
While Facebook pages are currently working well due to the reach of engaging content, Mark and Gael don’t grow Facebook pages themselves, but rather focus on sending traffic directly to sales pages.
Maximizing Profitability with Facebook Ads
There are two main types of campaigns: cold traffic and warm traffic / retargeting campaigns.
Cold traffic campaigns target people who are not familiar with the product or business. Mark and Gael discuss the advantages of using lookalike audiences and expanding the targeting pool through tools like Advantage Lookalike Audiences and Advantage+ Audience.
Warm traffic, or retargeting campaigns, target people who have engaged with the business on previous platforms or visited the website. These campaigns can be highly profitable as they target people who are already familiar with the product.
Mark and Gael provide strategies for creating effective creatives for Facebook ads, whether they are static images or videos. They emphasize the importance of creatives in ad optimization and suggest using tools like Canva to create attractive and engaging ads.
The Power of Video & Static Image Ads
Videos are the most profitable type of ad, with a higher return on ad spend (ROAS) compared to static images. Mark and Gael discuss the format and tactics used in creating a standard video creative for ads, such as starting with a hook, using the PAS (Problem, Agitate, Solution) framework for storytelling, and including credentials or qualifications to build trust.
They suggest using concepts such as statistics ads, “us versus them” ads, and “before versus after” ads. They also provide examples of effective static image ads, including before and after, features and benefits, and hyper casual or native post-like visuals.
Video Ads & the Importance of Sales Pages
It’s essential to create an irresistible offer and sales page when selling products or courses.
Books such as “$100 Million Offers” by Alex Hormozi and the trilogy by Russell Brunson can help you learn how to create great offers and sales pages. Mark and Gael provide comprehensive insights into the creation of an effective sales page, emphasizing the importance of each section.
It’s important to focus on the value provided by the product rather than the production quality of the videos. But creating videos for courses and products has never been easier with smartphones and simple tools like Loom.
The goal of video ads is to get people to click and visit the sales page, where the actual selling is done.
Anatomy of a Sales Page
The Hero section
- a compelling headline
- bullet points highlighting what’s inside the product
- an illustrative image
- a call-to-action button leading to the pricing section
The Problem section
- highlights the problems the target audience is facing
- highlights the consequences of not solving those problems
- gives a journey to the solution, either from your own perspective or from someone else’s
- introduces the product as a convenient solution to the problem
The Features & Benefits section
- focuses on the benefits the product brings
- includes testimonials and social proof to build trust and credibility
The Pricing section
- clearly outlines the cost and value of the product
- urgency and scarcity tactics can be used to create a sense of FOMO
Transcript
Hey everyone, welcome to the Authority Hacker podcast.
If you’re new to the show, my name is Gael Breton, and I am with my co-founder, Mark, and we’ve been building online businesses for the past 14 years at this point. We’ve built sites that we’ve sold, we’ve built agencies, we’ve built all of that. If you’re interested in that, don’t forget to subscribe. You can listen to this podcast on all the podcast platforms and on youtube.com/authorityhacker, and you can find all the links in the show notes if you want.
How’s it going, Mark?
It’s going good, Gael. It’s going very good. I’m excited to talk about something a little bit different, but-
Different than the Google updates?
Something a little important,
nonetheless, for business owners.
That’s Facebook ads.
Yeah, it’s like, look, we need
to talk about this in the context
of what’s happening right now.
A lot of people who are listening to us
have relied heavily on Google traffic
because we’ve talked a lot
about it because we’ve used it.
Not just heavily, have
relied exclusively on Google.
Entirely.
100%, yeah.
And it’s like, Google traffic is harder
to come by with the recent updates.
Let’s just say that.
Check my podcast with Lily, right?
I have done last week.
We’ve talked about two weeks ago.
We talked a lot about the changes.
The thing is, it’s probably a good time
for people to explore new options right
now and think about different things.
We wanted to take some time to talk about
something we do, which is Facebook ads.
I said in a pre-intro, since 2021,
I think we spent a quarter million pounds,
so a little bit over $313,000 when I something like this
on Facebook as a publisher.
I know if you’re a big ecom,
it’s some money, but it’s not that crazy.
But for someone who doesn’t run an ecom
store, it’s quite a bit already.
We’ve learned a few things doing that.
The point of this podcast is to share the
things we’ve learned while putting them
into the context of this new reality.
A lot of people that are building websites
are being put in right now, which is
trying to find solutions and ways
to live with less Google traffic.
It’s one of the things that I’ve
Actually, Facebook are getting
a little bit of popularity right now,
but in a different way than we use it.
It’s people basically buying likes
to Facebook pages
so that they can then have some followers,
they post some stuff,
and then they put some links It’s usually
in the comments these days,
because if you put a link on the Facebook
page post, it actually
gets very little reach.
The goal is to get traffic back
to your site and people still monetize
with essentially ads, affiliates,
extra, but mostly ads because it’s hard
to get buying intent from Facebook pages.
It’s a little bit more click-basedy,
a bit less long content than SEO content.
The topics are a little bit more
around trending topics rather
than evergreen keywords, etc.
But it’s very much the same old formula as
people used to do with Google, basically,
producing some content,
slapping some ads on it,
trying to make money from it,
which I personally think if
things are changing, it’s probably a good
time to rethink that formula as well.
It’s not even so much that
it’s It’s always been a good time
to rethink the formula.
It’s always been a good time
to rethink that formula.
Exactly.
But for these people who’ve
just been doing that.
Yeah, exactly.
But that’s the crux of the issue.
For the last 10 years, the optimal,
optimal play was to push past that
and to build your own products and
create a true following, build a brand.
All the stuff people tell you
to do but never really
explain particularly well how to.
It’s always been a great idea to do that.
And the people making the most money
online have all done that.
But you could make enough money.
People were happy enough just essentially
publishing SEO content, getting traffic,
and getting by with that.
I think that’s why a lot of people stopped
there because it was low effort, right?
Yeah, low effort.
You didn’t have to put yourself forward.
It was pretty scalable.
You’d have other people
do all of the work.
Think of content creation, link building.
You didn’t have to lift
your finger yourself.
You could just sit on the beach sipping
mai ties and life was good, right?
Until it wasn’t.
Until things slowly,
slowly started to change.
And it suddenly became a situation.
We’re suddenly in a situation where
actually, if you want to do really well,
then you have to start doing those
uncomfortable, awkward things and building
something more than just a thin content
site that can be replicated
by anyone else with an a AI tool.
Yeah.
My vision of the market right now
is it’s like two plus in front
of people that they’re going
to have to pick if they want to do well.
One side is stay a content creator.
But if you’re going to be
a content creator, I’m not just
talking about blogging.
Blogging alone, if you are a small site,
it’s quite difficult to generate traffic
to it at this point if you just do that.
But if you are on YouTube, if you’re
on Instagram, if you do short form
videos, if you run a newsletter,
this thing, and you can essentially
get brands to sponsor you.
It’s not just putting MediaVine
as on your site or whatever.
It’s making deals with brands like
this podcast is sponsored, for example.
Doing things like that, you can go
the route of being a content creator,
not necessarily having a product,
and that’s your company.
It’s just you create content
and you slap someone else’s company
on it, you get paid for it.
And that’s through affiliates
or through sponsorship deals.
The second way is to essentially be a real
business is to actually sell something.
Then a lot of avenues for traffic
open up as you sell something.
That’s really going to be the main topic
of today’s podcast is the business route
where you create a product
and you sell something.
Things like Facebook has open up,
things like Google has open up, things
like recruiting affiliates that
have an email list, for example, open up.
Traffic salts itself out by changing
your business model rather than
running after new traffic sources without
changing what’s on your site, basically.
I really think most people
who want to do well, at least
medium to long term, are going
to have to pick one of these two paths.
Am I a content creator?
Then I need to invest in these other
platforms, be on social media, show
my face, have a newsletter, this thing.
Or am I your business?
In which case, what’s your product?
Is it a good product?
Do people want it and like it?
If you become a business,
it will potentially long term,
I think, solve your Google problem.
Yeah, that’s the thing.
Because people write businesses.
Not only the business model type
situation, but things
like branded search.
When people start searching
for your business name, then
that’s a positive signal.
And a lot of people are saying
that that’s protecting a lot of people
from getting hit by updates.
It’s almost like the less you do
certain parts of SEO and the more
you focus on the other bit, the more
your SEO is indirectly helped by that.
I mean, look at us, right?
It’s like we’re not a huge company.
We did not collapse
from the Google updates.
We lost a little bit of traffic here
and there, new sneakers, etc.
I think we’re minus 10,
15% right now, something like this
compared to before it started.
I was like, It’s not too bad.
If you check outside
the H5 is pretty much flat.
It’s mostly lost to Snibets, really.
I think it’s because we have products,
basically, and because there’s brand
search associated with that, et cetera.
I don’t think…
It’s like there are blogs
that create content maybe close enough
to the content we have on our site that
have completely collapsed at this point.
Fingers crossed, it doesn’t
happen before I publish the podcast.
I’m not saying that.
But I’m saying it’s like,
our example, I think, backs this up.
It’s actually something that
we’ve told people to do for a long time.
If you actually go check
our get started phase on Authority
Hacker, you have stage one, stage
two, stage three authority sites.
The absolute side part
of it is really just stage one.
It’s really get started.
A lot of people decided to stick to it
because essentially it made them
more money than jumping on
stage two and three very often.
It’s not that it made them more money.
It’s just that it was easier and it was
easier to repeatedly do it and scale it
without getting too involved yourself.
Yeah, I guess.
It was less…
You retained more freedom.
Can we say that?
It’s like doing that in a way.
But the trade-off is you
traded that for instability.
You rely on one platform and you
rely on also one or two types of content.
These things have been shaken
off a lot lately with the updates,
and so we do that.
But stage 2 has always been build
an audience and sell them affiliate
high paying offer, basically.
Stage 3 was have your own product
and do very much what we’re going
to talk about today.
It’s like the model still holds,
but probably things come a lot sooner now
in terms of having your own product, etc.
We have a several members
that have done Now, right?
I mean, Kevin, I think gardening
is probably one of the best examples.
He’s like the Jamie Oliver
of gardening at this point.
I predicted it and it’s happening,
so I’m pretty happy for him.
But check him out.
We have a podcast with him.
He got an eight-figure investment.
His company is skyrocketing.
He started with SEO.
He got big from social media because SEO
bought his time back and he launched
a product monetizing this audience.
Now, he has a really successful e-com
and multiple companies, We have a friend
who had the same with a VPN.
I feel inside, he used to rank very well
for VPN keywords, and he decided
to launch his own VPN company and 10X the
money he made from doing that, basically.
We have done I had also many times
and many, many years ago.
If you remember Health and Mission
a long time ago, we have case studies
on taking blog posts that rank for I feel
queries, launching our own versions of
the product using Facebook ads as well.
I think we talked about
Facebook ads back then.
It’s changed a since then.
It’s a lot easier.
So we will update that in this podcast.
And like 10xing the revenue from the
blog traffic because we own the author
and we were selling the product.
We did a blog post on Authority Hacker
about building that funnel.
It was basically overnight
made $2,500 a month.
From one blog post there.
Yeah.
The product we made was just basically all
of the blog posts put together with a few
words, packaged up in an e-book.
It was really nothing special.
It was pretty poor, actually,
by our standards now.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be happy
to sell that right now, to be honest.
Basically, I think the situation flipped
at this point where it’s easier to build
a business part than to generate lots of
traffic because getting traffic is more
challenging now from search, basically.
The thing as well is it’s not
just search that has changed.
It’s like there’s also other opportunities
that have opened up.
Personally, I’m quite hyped up by the way
social media works right now
compared to how it used to work.
Maybe four, five years ago, the reach
your content would get was very, very
dependent on how many followers you have.
If you have no followers,
you jump on the platform.
It doesn’t matter how
good your content is.
Very few people would see.
Nowadays, because TikTok did so
well, every social platform has evolved
to the point where you can post content.
If it gets engagement, they will
distribute it well beyond your following.
And so it’s quite easy to get…
That’s why Facebook pages are working
for a lot of people right now,
because essentially when a post does well,
Facebook just It just keeps pushing it
because it drives engagement for them,
it creates more ad impressions for them,
and therefore they do that.
Just on that, some people
think that MrBeast gets a lot of views
because he has a lot of subscribers.
It doesn’t matter.
But it’s actually the other way around.
He has a lot of subscribers because each
video is really good, it gets pushed, and
then people subscribe because of that.
But if he were to start a brand new
account and make the same videos, I’m not
saying he would do as well, but
it would get really big really quickly.
Yeah, Yeah.
It’s nice because there’s a lot less
wait time between you starting and you
performing to the level of the quality of
your content, basically, on social media.
You had a good word for this.
You called it the TikTok-ification
of social media.
I think that’s a good way to describe it.
It was ever since TikTok, released
the short form video content,
the flick-through way, and you could just
go from first video, get tens of millions
of views if it was a good video.
Other platforms, they’ve changed, they’ve
adapted, and that’s how a lot of places,
a lot of them are working these days.
I mean, on Twitter or LinkedIn,
when I make a good post,
I get more reach than people that make bad
posts with 200,000 followers, even though
I don’t have this amount of followers.
It’s nice.
You feel rewarded for
making good organic content.
The third thing that has changed, I think,
in the environment that is going to be
completely related to what we’re going to
What we’re going to talk about today is
ad platforms have become incredibly good
at finding customers for you.
Customers.
I mean, you can do it for email
subscribers, but it’s so good.
You shouldn’t even buy that, basically.
You should literally
push offers right away.
I have a theory that I was talking
about with my digiti the other day,
actually, where my theory was like,
we track our value per lead, right?
I was looking at our value per lead from a
CEO, even though we were getting the same
traffic, same amount of opt-ins, etc.
The value per lead has consistently
decreased from SEO in the last two years.
I think it’s like some pages.
It’s one page I was looking
at that was getting lots of traffic.
It went from $1.
91 per lead to $1.
27 or something like that.
It’s a pretty significant percentage,
especially because we’re talking
over thousands of email subscribers.
It’s pretty relevant statistically.
My guess is that these platforms
are so good at finding the customers
at this point that they can tell who’s
going to convert and not convert based
on your usage behaviour of the platform.
When you’re someone that’s likely
to convert, they’re more likely
to show more ads to you.
I can imagine Google shows five ads
to someone who is for the organic
results, to someone who’s likely
to buy a service and shows one
or two ads or no ads to someone
who’s not likely to buy a service.
As a result,
if you rely on organic traffic traffic
to get your traffic,
essentially the value of that traffic,
even though the traffic may be the same,
is actually decreasing because the ad
platform has sucked up all the people that
were going to convert to ads, basically.
I think that’s what we see on the ad side.
On the ad side, our value per visitor
is increasing massively because
these platforms are getting so good.
And the SEO side, it’s a slope decreasing.
I don’t know if it’s because
the results are worse as well.
Maybe there’s a lack of relevance, but
my theory is that ad platforms are just
getting capturing the right people.
And just to be clear here, we’re not
saying abandon SEO, just do ads instead.
It’s still money, right?
It’s very valuable.
And as we’ll talk about later,
having a lot of SEO traffic
can actually really help your ads.
When you do things like retargeting,
it’s very, very powerful.
But it’s more the notion that you have
to be open to having not just one traffic
source and having different channels.
And the way to do that profitably
and effectively in the long run,
we believe, is running
your own product, your own offer.
It’s like SEO was so good
before, you could rely just on it.
Like I said, five years ago, it was fine.
Now, it’s like levelled
off with other platforms.
The other platforms have gone up a bit, so
there’s more opportunities on this end.
And then SEO has gone down a bit.
It’s still one of the best traffic
sources, but there’s so many other
opportunities, and it got a bit harder.
To put this into perspective as to why and
how social media platforms are so good
at telling what you would buy or not.
Do you remember, Gael,
the Cambridge Analytica scandal?
It was a big data breach.
For the elections, right?
For 2016, in elections, I believe it was.
They stole or they harvested
a bunch of data from these Facebook
apps, and they were able to tell
to a 90 something % accuracy
how you were going to vote based on
six pages you like on Facebook, just six.
So if they knew six things,
they could tell very accurately
how you’re going to vote.
Now, fast forward to today
and think how much data they
have because of this short form video.
Every time you watch a reel go through two
or three times, or you pause
at a section, or you flick quickly to
the next one, it doesn’t influence you.
They’re collecting data on that.
Even the slide pause, you scroll
and you stop for a second before
you scroll to the next one and you go.
They actually use It’s great.
I can see it.
This is how they show you content
that you’ve never subscribed to,
never liked the page.
They just know what you’re interested in.
Even if you’re not really that aware
yourself that you’re interested in it,
but you just find yourself
watching more and more of it.
If you found that happening to you,
that’s because these platforms
have so much data.
And of course, they’re going to use that
to try and sell you stuff because their
product, you are their product, and they
make their money through through ads.
So that’s why it’s so powerful.
They make their money through people
like us, giving them money
to find customers, basically.
And that’s what we’re
going to talk about now.
Let’s jump onto the main topic.
We spend over $100,
000 per year on Facebook ads.
It’s growing.
That number is growing rapidly because
the targeting has improved and we’ve been
able to make cold traffic ads which are
a lot more scalable, profitable recently.
Yeah, quite a few times.
We’ve done quite okay.
So we don’t grow Facebook pages.
We send traffic directly to a sales page
to buy something, basically.
That’s the difference.
My point of view on Facebook pages is it
seems to be working very well right now.
I see a lot of good case studies, but it
makes me very nervous as well because I
see a lot of fake AI images being shared
on them and potentially fake news
around the election period
that is coming up very soon.
They are going to be shared through these
pages, and I would be very surprised
if Facebook did not nuke the reach
of Facebook pages, at least around the
election period, because of that risk.
We made a video of this on
the Authority Hacker News channel
about the rise of AI images and how
older people are being fooled on here.
It’s a bit of a problem.
It’s a real problem.
But for you, dear viewer,
the real problem is overreliance
on one platform, especially something
like Facebook for organic…
Yeah, for groups, for pages.
People have spent lots and lots of money
getting likes to their pages before
to promote stuff to their audience.
And then Facebook is just
like, well, we’re not going to
show your content to your audience
unless you buy an ad directly to it.
So they’ve done this before.
I think coming from the background we do,
playing a lot of video games, you see
the developers will change the meta and
everything changes and you have to adapt.
Change the meta, good point.
We’re used to that.
But a lot of people aren’t.
And if you build your business
solely and exclusively on one
of these these platforms, it
can hurt if something changes overnight.
People will make the argument,
Oh, but your ad stuff is the same.
Not exactly, because we get the money
back right away, basically.
So it’s like when people
buy something, that’s it.
We made a profit.
We don’t have to build an asset and then
count on it to reach people for a certain
amount of time to get the money back.
The accounts show positive
ROR, yes, most of the time.
And the second is that our incentives and
Meta, Facebook’s incentives, are aligned.
They want us to do well,
so we spend more money.
They’re going to defend our ability
to run ads profitably on their platform
for as long as possible.
It’s not going to last forever, forever.
In 100 years, I’m sure it’ll all
be very different, but they’ve got
your back more than they
do with sending you free traffic.
I think it’s one of the best defence
against AI as well.
It’s like these platforms are going
to try to protect their main earner,
which is the ad platform.
If you learn how to make these app
platforms work for you, in essence, you
count on them to fight for you against
big changes coming to the industry
as information flows differently
on the internet, basically.
I’m excited for paid traffic for that
as well because it’s something that I
think is very complementary to SEO and is
more stable because your incentives
are aligned with these platforms.
Okay, let’s talk about what we do exactly.
Actually, we got started with ads
by going a real-life mastermind
that we have with several friends.
They almost all run Facebook ads
to offer in that mastermind.
We were the odd ones.
We’re the SEO guys of that group
of nobody else doing SEO.
A lot of them picked up a lot
of stuff from us, but we also
picked up a lot of stuff from them.
One example of such a site
that was in this mastermind
is iPhonephotography School.
Com.
You can go check them out.
They run incredible ads.
They have incredible courses
on how to take photos with your iPhone.
To give you an an example of
a company that does that well,
that is a cool angle.
And it’s not just online
marketing like we do, etc.
Actually, we were the only online
marketing people in that mastermind.
There were people who did
all sorts of things in there.
Let’s talk about how we structure that.
How do you make it work?
And since Mark runs most of it,
I’m going to let you talk and I’m just
going to try to challenge you, basically.
Sure.
Okay, so I think we should start
by talking about the offer, the thing
you’re selling, your product,
because You can’t sell anything
in this way, especially when it comes to
digital products or courses.
You need to be quite specific
in how you’re doing this.
So first and foremost,
and we talk about this a lot when it comes
to product creation, product ideas,
is the idea that in every niche there are
going to be things which are exciting
and interesting to your audience that
they’re ready to spend money quickly on.
And there are going to be those topics
which are, let’s say, people
are not going to get out of for them.
They’re not that motivated for us.
It would be the case that if we sell
something to do with link building, to
do with AI, people are very interested.
They want to hear more.
If we come out and say, Hey, guys, we’re
releasing a Google Analytics 4 course.
We’ll sell a few, but it’s not
going to be that interesting.
So make sure that whatever it is you
are selling and producing
is in the sector of your industry
that’s appealing and and interesting.
One way to know that is to
go on the subreddit for your topic
and see what people are asking
about again and again and again.
Usually, that’s how I
would know what is happening.
Like whatever community, subreddit
or Facebook groups or whatever you want.
A couple of ways we did this
in the beginning was we had a lot
of traffic through SEO.
This is going back to the health emission
days, which is a site we used
to run many, many, many years ago.
And we saw what people were opting
into our email list, and we saw
what offers, what affiliate offers people
were really buying because we had all the
conversion data from the platforms there.
And so we focused in our efforts
on what was doing well there
to create our own product in that space.
It’s like a free way to test out
or to validate different topic ideas.
Yeah, we collect emails, promote an essay,
multiple essay, see which ones make sales
and make something in the Right
down the alley, you sell directly,
you get 100% of the money, basically.
You can still do that today pretty easily.
In 2024, if you’re doing a course,
it pretty much has to be video, right?
That’s the expectation these days.
And a lot of people get put off by that
because they’ve never made a video.
They’re not a YouTuber.
They’re like an old school marketer.
Maybe they have an email list, a blog.
They’re familiar with that.
But the leaped video is not actually as as
big as you might be be thinking, right?
The technological barriers there
are as low as they’ve ever been.
The iPhone these days is amazing
at recording video, actually better
than a lot of cameras
from four or five years ago.
The microphone on your MacBook Pro
these days is really not that far
off a professional studio microphone.
So if you’re if you’re worried
about the correct studio set up
and all that, it doesn’t need to
be great to get started with.
You can do it with just your phone
software like Loom even and a decent mic
of some sort would be my recommendations.
And you can do it if you’re not
an 80 speaker as well, because I know
a lot of people are like, Oh,
I’m not a native speaker, et cetera.
I’ve done it.
I’m literally the nation
that’s like, I’m from the nation
that speaks the least English as well.
So it’s like, you can figure that out.
And People have that same question.
If they’re creating written
content, they’re like, Oh, I’m not
a native English speaker.
Things like accents and stuff
come out a lot more in video.
So people are like, Oh, where?
But you’re the perfect
example of that, Gael.
You don’t give a shit, really.
As long as you have something cool
to say, the methodology and
the production quality and all that,
it’s nice to have, but it doesn’t matter
as long as the thing you’re providing,
the value you’re providing is good.
Hosting courses has never
been so easy as well.
There’s so many platforms
that now let you host this.
You don’t need much tech.
I remember what you did our first number
areas, et cetera, you had to sell
some crazy custom WordPress
and access rights, multiple tools
that work with each other in a break.
Now you can use tools like Circle,
thinky-thick, teachable, et cetera.
They all have plans around 50 bucks
to get started, basically.
They’re really great support as well.
If you’re not tech savvy, they will
walk you through and handle I hold you
through everything, really.
Basically, what we’re saying is
the technology is not a barrier
in the same way that it used to be.
I want to talk about books as well.
I think if you want to learn
how to put a good offer together,
we can’t really break it down, etc.
But I really liked $100 million
also by Alex Hormozy.
I think it’s very good.
I don’t like his second book.
I’m not a big Hormozy fan for everything,
but I think the first book was very good.
I think Russell Brunson,
his trilogy, like Dotcom Secrets,
Expert Secrets, and Traffic Secrets,
are all also very good into getting you
into the mind of, how do I
put an offer together that converts well?
Perfect webinar.
I’ve made lots of money
with that training, for example.
Very, very good.
His stuff’s Most of it is in the book.
You don’t need to buy expensive trainings.
We’re talking like 10 bucks,
10 bucks ebooks.
So yeah, it’s like that shouldn’t
stop you if you’re not sure
exactly how to do that.
But we’re going to talk
about the sales page a little bit.
The thing is, in terms of how you present
the value, it’s like we like to put…
Basically, you can’t just
give a course and nothing else.
You need to put a course
together, but then you need
to have bonuses and modules.
So usually, bonuses will be templates.
There will be There will be cheat sheets,
there will be checklists,
there will be things like that so
that people feel like they’re getting
a big package together,
so they’re getting a course,
but they’re also getting that extra
template, that extra interview,
that extra checklist, etc.
Quite often people are more excited about
the bonuses and the stuff you put next
to the course than what you put together.
The idea is to assign a monetary value
to each of these items.
Essentially, it should be worth
a lot more than you’re charging for.
You put a monetary value in terms
of why it’s worth to a business
or to someone that you help.
If they actually implement that
and they actually get the results.
Then if it’s good enough, people
are going to be pretty impressed.
Now, in terms of building sales
pages, a lot of people think you
need some special software or whatever
to build sales pages, et cetera.
I’ve built multiple seven-figure
sales pages just on WordPress
with Generate Press and generate blocks.
That’s the stack we actually
recommend in the courses as well.
So nothing to change here.
You don’t need anything else.
You You have everything.
It’s all about just
structuring it the right way.
There’s actually an event.
If you’re a Platino member, I’m actually
making an event, like on screen event on
how to be at sales pages in a few weeks.
But I’ll give you the main sections that
you actually should be having on your
sales page that pretty much always works.
First one is the Hero section.
The headline is always
the same formula for me.
It’s like how to solve X problem
even if main objection.
How to lose weight even if
you have a sweet tooth.
How to be the best paintball player
even if you just have one leg.
Whatever.
Something like this.
Obviously, not if you have one leg,
but what would be the main objection
people would say if they’re not good
at paintball?
Even if you don’t aim
very well or even if…
It’s like the headline always works.
Just pick that.
It’s the best way to start.
After that, you can A/B
test if you want to do something else.
You need to have that.
Usually, we use bullets to give
a quick idea of what’s inside.
We put an image on the right
that essentially shows what the product
is or illustrates something
around the idea of that.
We put a call to action button
that tends to scroll down
to the pricing section That’s what
we’re going to talk about in a second.
Then we have the problem section.
People tend to, when they build sales
pages, directly sell, they directly
put the product in front of you.
It works for software.
I think for software,
you can condense that.
But when you’re selling info products,
it tends to be better to take some time
to expose the problems people are having.
Let’s say in this case of the weight loss,
for example, I’d be like, Okay, well,
maybe you’ve tried 60 diets in your whole
life and you You’ve regained the weight
you’ve lost every time and you felt
miserable when you were taking diets.
Then you just find reasons
why people do that.
You didn’t have a structured plan,
you didn’t have a follow-up, you didn’t
have a community to support you,
you didn’t have all of that, etc.
You Highlight why people may have felt/
why the problem is such an issue
for people and what the consequences
are going to be if they don’t solve it.
Then you share your journey to solution.
Usually when you sell a product,
you have solved the problem yourself.
You tend to share your journey
to solution or the journey of someone
that you’ve helped to solution.
Sandra had the same problem.
She had tried the keto diet,
the paleo diet, etc.
She couldn’t make it work.
She looked the same 10 years later.
By implementing a very simple
intermittent fasting schedule
where she was only fasting for 12 hours
a day, here’s the result before, after.
For example, that would be like
a journey to solution.
Then I would introduce the product.
I’d be like, Okay, if you’re
on the same result as Sandra,
we’ve put everything together into
one convenient package that you can get.
I would just have a pack shop.
That’s what it’s called
in advertising, basically, some image
that represents what you’re going
to get together with a list of everything
that’s included inside without details.
Then we have a section
on features and benefits.
The thing that people tend to have
is they tell you, Oh, there’s 20 videos.
But 20 videos is not very appealing.
I don’t want to watch 20 videos.
I just want to lose weight.
It’s like, If I could lose weight without
watching 20 videos, that’d be better, no?
It’s more about what these videos
bring in terms of benefits.
You put the benefit as the main
The headline would be like,
Get results quickly.
Our programme is only 20 videos
and like, complete those programme
that require you to spend so much time
studying the material, etc.
The benefit is faster results
because you have less time studying,
more time doing something else.
Another feature, benefits rather,
would be like maybe social proof.
You can be using something
like, Oh, hundreds of people
have had results already.
Like your turn now,
for example, some scientists.
It’s all about
finding the features of what you have
with what you’re selling and putting
essentially the benefit as the main
headline to catch people and then lead
into the feature on how you achieve
that benefit when you explain that.
That’s how- It’s like some It’s
a little bit the reverse
of writing a product review, almost.
Yeah, it’s the opposite.
You catch people with what they get,
and then if they’re interested
in the benefit, then they will read
the section below, basically.
I tend to make these
things quite as cannibal.
I tend to have a layout where it’s It’s
a two-column section where there’s
a paragraph on one side and an image
that represents the benefit on the other
side, and I just alternate them.
It’s like text is here, image
is here, then text is on the right,
and then image is on the left, etc.
It breaks down visually as well.
People just pick the headlines
they want to read and read that because
people rarely read entire sales pages.
It’s very long.
Then after that,
I do a section on what’s inside.
It’s like a proper breakdown,
like a table of content type thing
with what’s inside each module,
what’s inside each thing, etc.
That’s where I also include the bonuses.
The bonuses are highlighted in a
different colour or something like this.
People understand that
they’re outside of the course.
Then we have the pricing section.
The pricing section, actually,
I borrowed that from Russell Bronson.
I basically make what we call a stack
where I highlight every single item
that is included.
20 videos, cheat sheets, templates,
community, calls, whatever you put
in there with the a monetary value
in front of each item so that I can
add it up to a big number, basically.
Then cross that number and say,
Well, you only pay this much.
This is discounted
by this much, basically.
That gives people the impression
that they’re getting
a That’s a good deal doing that.
Following the pricing right
after, we always put the guarantee.
So guarantee is usually 30 day
money back guarantee or 60 day money back
guarantee, whatever you’re offering,
just to reassure people.
They know the price now and you want to
tell them, Look, it’s going to be fine.
And we just throw testimonials and then
they say, Q and assign a call to action.
That’s pretty much
my default structure for the sales page.
I would throw some stuff in other sections
sometimes, but yeah, I’ve made lots
of money doing The thing I say
about a sales page is you can 80/20 it.
So a lot of people think,
Oh, it has to be this perfect thing.
And they look at companies
that have been doing it for 10 years
and how polished some of their material
is and they go, Oh, I can never
create something like that.
But don’t look at that.
Look Go back and look at what those
company sales pages used to look like.
Our ones when we first
started out, they weren’t great.
They were very bare bones,
but they communicated…
I had pictures of Game of Thrones on them.
They communicated the core
things, and that is what matters.
And I know if you’re watching
this podcast, you think, why did we
get in the Facebook ad stuff?
Well, we’re already there because
this stuff is what makes the difference
in Facebook ads these days
versus things like the targeting,
which we’ll get onto in just a sec.
Because Facebook ads are so easy.
It’s all about where you
send people, actually.
I think we should probably
have said that before.
Before we get into the targeting,
I do want to talk about price points
and funnel structure and set up,
because that’s also very important.
I want to talk about
what’s working now in 2024.
There is this concept of
impulse buy territory, which can
be somewhere between 30 and $200.
It tends to be higher for a B2B
product, lower for a B2C product.
I think, if you want to learn
how to cook a steak, you’re probably not
going to just on a whim drop 200 bucks.
But if you’re going to learn how
to invest and make money, you see it as
an investment, then that could be higher.
Or if you want to do something
for your business, then again.
Real estate as well, for example,
let’s have a between two.
For sure.
And the Impulse Buy territory
price, we’re talking about
the amount of money people spend.
And the amount of How many people
spend and the first price that people
see are two different things.
Think about it when you’re taking
a flight, you might go to
a sky scanner or Google flights.
You search in where you want to go
and you see all the pricing.
You go, that’s the cheapest one.
You go through.
However, by the time you add in the seat
you want, the priority boarding,
which you have to do now in Europe,
if you want to take a larger carry on,
they’ve tied that together.
All these types of extra things
that they throw at you, the insurance,
the fast track, the extra bags,
they probably charge you for
kid seats and things like that now.
I don’t know.
But the amount of money
they’re potentially getting out of you
is higher than the first price you saw.
And the same thing happens, or the same
thing should happen with your funnel.
So that’s why we’ll have order bumps
and upsells as part of this.
If you don’t know what an order bump
is, it’s a product that you
can opt in for when you’re checking
out for another product.
So if you go and a course on how to invest
in real estate,
when you get through to the cart,
just as you’re about to put your credit
card details in or your PayPal,
there’ll be a little box that says, Oh,
would you also like
to join this live seminar?
And we’ll teach you how to invest in
this other type of product or whatever.
And literally, that’s all it is,
a sentence or two in a tick box.
And the idea is that you can
get about 30 to 40 % of people
ticking that box and increasing
the average order value of your product.
It’s a lot more than you think.
A lot of people take it.
Why is it important to do this?
Because the higher you can increase
your average order value, the more
you can spend to acquire a customer.
So you’re It’s easier
to run profitable ads.
So we want to have an impulse buy
product which has the potential
to make us more money at the same time.
And that’s why when we get
into doing upsells, this can really
be where people make their profit.
This is the profit maximiser.
There’s different ways to do it.
You can have an immediate upsell
to something a little bit
more-What’s an upsell?
Explain to people.
Some people might not know.
If you don’t know what an upsell is,
after you have entered your card details,
you clicked purchase, you think,
Okay, let me check out my product.
There’ll be a video or a page where
they’re like, oh, here’s everything,
your order is on its way to you.
But we just want to give you this one time
special offer where you can get a It’s
a much bigger product, usually for
often a discounted price or with extra
bonuses or there’s some scarcity based
thing to make it appealing
to buy at that point in time.
Again, the idea here is that a percentage
of people will click that button and will
take the extra things you have to sell.
And it can really increase
the average order value when you do that.
Some people do it right
at the point of purchase.
It’s also possible able
to do it afterwards.
So maybe after people have been
through your course or after
a certain amount of time.
A couple of days, yeah.
Or even a lot of people
now calling up people.
They have sales teams that…
Don’t scare people off.
Yeah.
I know when I don’t even want to say that.
People are like, Oh, I don’t want to…
I used to be with you now,
I have to call people.
I don’t want to call people.
I know.
But I’m just saying people are doing it.
And it’s not like a cold sales thing.
It’s more like a warm
sales customer success.
If you’re familiar with that term,
we’re trying to help people
get the most out of their product.
And then, casually mention
that you have this other thing as well
that they might be interested in.
And again, certain percentage
of people are going to go for that.
So all of this is about making money and
about increasing the average order value
while still having a product that you can
sell front-end that appears to be in that
impulse buy territory window.
I want to say this stuff
is the most important.
Putting this offer together
with the other banks, the upsells,
etc, it’s 90% of the work.
Everything else is easy
if you do a good job here.
It sounds boring because
it’s more business stuff.
You’re not clicking.
Actually, you have to come up
with something a little bit more
intangible, but that’s really
how the big winners are going to be made.
Then once you’ve done that,
the actual ads are pretty easy.
There’s two or three elements to ads
that we’re going to talk about.
The first is ad targeting.
And what we talked about earlier
about Facebook getting so good
at knowing who’s going to purchase
your product, it’s gotten to the point
where you don’t really need to
do much at all in the way of targeting.
Three, four years So you used to have to
say, I want people from these countries
who like this and who have this interest
and really specify a lot of things
about someone before Facebook
would be able to find you good buyers.
Now, a lot of people are doing campaigns
where it’s just target everybody
on Facebook and optimise for
the goal of a conversion.
For cold traffic, you can also
do lookalike, which is where you
feed Facebook data about who’s purchasing
your product, and then it will try and
find people who lookalike those people.
So back in the day, it was people
who used to like similar things.
But now Facebook is
much more sophisticated.
So it just knows people who are behave
the same way as these people
because they interacted with
various elements across platform.
Which is scary, actually.
Platform.
Yeah, it’s crazy what they know about you.
We won’t go down that route.
But there’s also this concept
of advantage lookalike.
Which a lot of people do these days,
which is not just people who look alike,
not just people who look similar to the
people who are purchasing your product,
but one step beyond that as well.
So this really increases
the potential size cold traffic campaign
while allowing you to still find people
who are likely to buy your product.
So we use a lot of that at the moment.
There’s another stage beyond that,
which is called Advantage Plus Audience,
which takes that one rung further.
And it’s really going very broad.
We’re not there yet.
That’s more when you
get past a certain scale.
But yeah, the days of fine targeting
and tweaking are gone, really,
on Facebook for cold traffic.
If you do that, it’s a bad idea.
It’s better to give Facebook a
larger audience and let them do the crazy
AI stuff they do with finding the right
people and trying to outsmart the system.
I started like that.
I was trying to be like, There’s no way.
I know better.
I know my audience, I know
my product, I know all of that.
They don’t know.
I was trying to micro-target everything,
and I would rarely get profitable.
When you let it go and you just…
You need to have some conversion beta,
though, otherwise it’s a bit difficult.
I think early on, it might be a bit
more expensive to get conversions, but
once it gets rolling, because Facebook
gets some wins, basically, by identifying
who is buying it, then that’s great.
That’s where your organic traffic
is extremely valuable because
You have your Facebook pixel
on your thank you page when people buy.
That’s how people identify who bought.
They don’t just do it
based on Facebook ads traffic.
They do it based on all your traffic,
which means if you have an email list,
if you have organic traffic that buys,
if you You’re feeding that data
to Facebook
that then learns from it and finds more
people on Facebook through their ads
to make more sales for you.
It reduces the cost of your ads.
It increases the potential number
of people that you can sell to
significantly.
It makes starting easier
because the hardest part is getting
your first few conversions.
It might cost quite a bit
to get started if you do it
with Facebook ads, but if you’re able
to generate that through organic
channels, then this synergy is is killer.
That’s why you can even beat pure
paid marketers if you mix posts
because you feed data that they don’t
have to Facebook that cost them
a lot of money if they want
to acquire it through ad channels.
That’s the power of doing both,
of being both a creator in a business.
And speaking of using your existing
audience, your organic traffic,
to feed data into it, the second type
of campaign you should be doing is a warm
traffic campaign or retargeting campaign.
And this is typically a smaller
budget, something between like a third
and half of what you spend
on cold, obviously, depending on
where you’re at in the scale.
But this is essentially anyone who’s
visited your site in the last six months
or so, which obviously if you
got a lot of organic traffic,
you can target all of these people.
Anyone who’s engaged with you on Facebook
or Instagram, you can upload lead lists.
So you can take your active campaign
or whatever email platform
you’re using, literally upload the list
of emails directly into Facebook,
create an audience for it.
Some tools, active campaign lets you
create dynamic custom audiences.
So whenever someone gets to
a certain part of your email sequence,
it could be simply opting in.
It will automatically add them
into that custom audience.
And you can retarget these people
with very, very cheap Facebook ads.
The warm targeting, the warm traffic
retargeting ads are essentially
It’s essentially free money
if you’re selling anything, really,
because these are the warmest types
of people who already know you.
They’re familiar with your product.
They’re probably close to buying already.
And these ad campaigns are really just
pushing them over the edge.
Similarly, if you’re running
a cold campaign, that is also
building up your warm audience.
Because think about it,
people engage with that.
They’re engaging with you on Facebook.
If they click on your sales
page, they’re on your site.
They’re now in your warm campaign.
And your warm campaign can really hit them
harder because the amount of people
in that audience can be much lower.
And okay, the budget’s lower,
but those people are seeing
the ads more often than they likely are.
It’s not just if they
click to your site, though.
It’s like if you run video
ads, you can retarget people
who watch a certain percentage.
You can see people who watch more than 50%
of the video, for example, they’re
in my retargeting campaign, and they’re
going to see your ads a lot more often.
It’s like a self-selection process
of people who skip your video,
they don’t get retargeted,
you don’t invest a lot in them.
People who show interest
by watching your videos, they end up
in your essentially more aggressive
ad campaigns because they’re closer
to conversions and you monetize
your call traffic better, basically.
It’s so profitable to do retargeting
that There are micro businesses
that basically exist.
They go around and they find companies
who are not doing retargeting,
and then they just offer them
to set up a simple retargeting campaign.
And 100% of the time,
you can make money out of it,
basically, because the cost per sale,
cost per lead, cost per whatever action
you’re trying to get is so low
because you’re essentially providing
the audience to Facebook and saying, Hey,
I know exactly who’s
here and who you should advertise to.
When someone comes to me with business
advice, that’s the number one thing
I tell them to do.
It’s not SEO, it’s not any of that.
It’s like, set up your
retargeting on Google.
It’s literally free money.
There’s no simpler way of saying that,
but if you’re not doing that and you have
something to sell, you should do it.
If you have organic traffic,
it’s where you should start as well
because you can retarget people
who went on your site, et cetera.
You don’t need to do anything.
Also, it’s a really good synergizing thing
to do with posting a lot on Facebook
and Instagram because anyone who engages
with your organic content enters your
retargeting campaign if you want as well.
If you’re an active Instagrammer,
if you post stories, or if you post
on Facebook pages and you do what a lot
of people are doing in the industry right
now, and you can sell a product.
It’s like a winner because you can post
content, you can get that extra organic
reach because platforms are essentially
pushing your content past your followers.
People who engage, you can say,
Okay, now show them my offer.
What is really good is you don’t need
clicks to site for your organic posts.
You don’t care.
People don’t need to click anywhere.
It’s very easy to get lots of reach
because platforms tend to reduce
the reach of posts with links.
You don’t have to worry
about that anymore.
You just get reach, get people engaged
that are in your market, and you let your
retargeting has do all the conversion and
making money for you while your organic
page is just here to engage people.
It’s so much cleaner as a system rather
than trying to drive traffic
from the organic posts, actually.
Yeah.
And just in terms of budgets then.
So you should start something
around $100 to $200 per day, as I said,
about two-thirds cold, one-third warm.
Can you start with less?
You can, but if you’re going in this fresh
with no data or very little data,
it takes a couple of weeks of that
for Facebook to really learn exactly who
to send because it’s going to test
a bunch of stuff automatically.
It’s algorithms going to be figuring out.
It’s very normal in the first few days
that you have a lot of conversions
and no conversions and then
a lot of conversions.
Then it just takes a bit of time.
I would argue that if you have
organic traffic and you can drive some
conversions with your email list, etc,
you could start with less, especially if
you just start with retargeting and warm.
Absolutely.
For the longest time, we basically only
did warm traffic Facebook
ads, and they’ve always
been profitable, wildly profitable.
If you can feed that data to Facebook,
to Meta, then it’s going to make it,
when it comes to targeting cold traffic,
that much easier because you can start
doing lookalike audiences from day one.
It’ll start there.
You’ll know who’s going to convert, and
then it also go in concentric circles.
I’m thinking the Facebook page guys,
the people who are doing that already.
Let’s say they’re posting regularly,
they’re getting engagement.
They could run a warm campaign
to these people to a product.
Probably $20 to $40 a day
is probably good enough to get started.
Oh, easily.
Yeah, it depends on the price points
of all the products and things like that.
But the thing is,
once you start making money with this,
you suddenly have not an infinite money
machine, but a machine where you put
in one dollar and you get out two or
three, then you’re very quickly going
to keep feeding more money into that.
And of course, you’re going
to reach limits with that.
It doesn’t infinitely scale.
It doesn’t.
But in the beginning, it’s not like SEO,
where you have to wait six months, a year
before you start making
any money back from it.
This can happen in a day or two.
So the cycle is a lot shorter there.
Yeah.
One thing which affected Facebook ads
really badly a few years back.
You probably read about this,
but iOS 14 came out and they had this-14.
5, no?
14.
5?
I can’t remember.
I wasn’t using iOS at the time,
but they had this enhanced privacy.
Apple called it privacy.
I think it was like an anti-Facebook
campaign that they were doing.
Very much so.
Probably a little bit of both.
But essentially, if you have iOS,
use Facebook app, you’ve probably seen
that pop up come up at the start that
says, Oh, do you want to allow Facebook
to track you across everything you do?
And the option is, Ask app not
to track, or like, Yes,
allow it to track everything
I do and see everything I’m doing.
It’s not quite that, but they make it more
appealing to click, not, don’t track.
So obviously, most people
clicked, don’t track.
And overnight, Facebook lost a lot of
its ability to know who you were relative
to, for example, were you the same person
that was in that warm audience?
Because there’s a lot
of blockages of the data there
and the targeting became really bad.
A lot of people stopped running
Facebook ads for a while while
they’re trying to figure that out.
That problem, while it hasn’t entirely
gone away, it’s gone a lot better.
So Facebook have something called
the Conversions API,
which I don’t know exactly how this works,
but there’s some connexion between your
your website and Facebook,
and it’s passing
some semi-anonymized data back in a way
that allows Facebook to track
who’s converting on your site
and who’s visiting your site better,
as far as I understand.
In practical termsSounds like magic.
It is.
It’s literally like Facebook is a bit
of a black box with some of this stuff.
I’m sure there’ll be people
that will be better able
to explain how this works than me.
But all you need to know is
that it largely solves the tracking
issues, let’s say 80%, to the point
where it all works again.
I think they’ve also done a better job
at just targeting the right people
with us, which offset that issue as well
of them tracking less well.
For sure.
And for cold traffic,
they’re so good at that.
This relates often to warm traffic.
So what happens for a lot of our customers
who have already bought HPro,
HPro Platinum, is they’ll see an ad
for one of our other products, which
is included in the bundle, so to speak.
And they’re like,
why are you advertising that?
That was included.
Well, it’s not.
It’s because you either don’t
use the same email on Facebook as
you did when you sign up for our product
or you have some privacy stuff.
Yeah, you clicked all these things.
So that is the effect
of saying no to that.
So don’t say no.
That’s fine.
I said no to that myself.
Okay.
Okay.
There’s a good actually.
Let’s talk about creatives.
Let’s talk about creatives.
Because this is really
where the ad game is.
What’s a creative?
A creative is an ad.
So it’s a static ad.
It’s the text.
It’s a video.
Very important these days.
It’s the content of your ad.
And that is really the only thing
you can do on Facebook to optimise well.
Because, again, a couple of years ago,
you would do all the targeting settings
and that made a big difference.
Now everyone has more or less
the same targeting settings.
And so it’s all in the
creative these days.
The good news is that creatives
are not actually that difficult
to create, especially given tools
like Canva, if you want to do static
creatives, even doing video creatives
these days, it’s pretty straightforward.
I’d say it’s easier to do that than
it is to do a YouTube video or a podcast.
I agree.
I’ll break down a standard video creative
And this is the format that we’ve used.
When we were researching for this,
I looked at hundreds of other companies
and tried to take the best bits
of what everyone was doing
and take some insights there.
So it all starts with a hook.
The purpose of this is
really stop the scroll.
A lot of people are doomscrolling
through Facebook, Instagram, whatever.
And you need to have some pattern
interrupt where you’re just stopping that
and people are I’m paying attention.
What’s something different here.
Something as simple as like
waving your arms around can work a lot.
So that’s why you see a lot of ads
start with like rapid movement or even
something completely unrelated to the ad.
Like a guy just going around the room
on a hoverboard, you’re like, wait, what?
There’s some very mundane
things these days.
A guy driving his car and the camera
is just over there just looking like,
oh, are you into email marketing?
It’s like, why is this guy in his car
talking about email marketing?
That is probably the most important part
of the entire ad because it gets people
to actually watch your ad.
So what people will do is they
will create multiple different hooks
for the same ad and the rest of the ad
will be the same and they’ll just
test out different hooks.
And you’ll quickly see
what works and what doesn’t.
And Facebook will allocate
the spending itself.
You don’t even have to control it.
It’ll just do it automatically.
After that, what we do is a pass problem,
agitate solution framework.
And this is it can simply be like
a sentence or two for the entire
thing, or a sentence for a problem,
a sentence to agitate it,
and a sentence for the solution.
Can you give an example?
Okay, So let’s go the example
of I’m trying to cook a steak, right?
The problem is it’s difficult.
And if you don’t know what you’re doing,
you end up with it being burnt
on the outside or raw on the inside.
You’re wasting a lot of money.
You’ve got that hot date
and you’re You’re trying to impress them.
And you’re embarrassed or,
yeah, you spend a lot of money
on a really nice piece of meat.
A man should know how to cook a steak.
Exactly.
So that’s the problem.
You’re also agitating it.
As you say, you do all
that in the same sentence.
And then you introduce a solution
until you see this seven-step framework
that anyone can do, even
if you’ve never lifted a pan
or cooked anything in your life before.
So that’s alluded According to the fact
that there’s a solution, and people
will also be interested and say,
Oh, I want to hear more about this.
What is the solution?
How is it going to work?
How much is it?
What’s it going to do for me?
Then we have this pattern interrupt again.
So before we provide them with that
result, we tell them about who we are.
So what are our credentials?
And this is very important
for cold traffic because you’re
affirming why someone can trust you.
So that can be the experience
you have, any qualifications,
accolades, social proof.
And again, with video, it’s really good
because you can show if you’ve
done presentations or you’re on YouTube
and you have videos there,
you can show clips from that.
Anything that shows that you
can be trusted, even just a little bit,
will help in this situation.
Then next part of it is going
to be expected results.
So what will this product specifically
do for you, the end user, the customer?
And here we start, similar to how you
do with your sales pages, Gail, we start
to touch on the features and benefits
relationship a little bit here.
Just for context, our videos
are somewhere between a minute
and a minute and a half in total.
So this is super condensed, and you really
only need to say one or two key things
in each point that I’m saying here.
Next, there’ll be a what’s inside section.
And again, it’s usually one sentence.
So a complete solution to cook a steak,
including a full timeline for every meat,
all the templates, all the cheat sheets
for what to buy in the butcher.
Aphrodisiac’s spices for your date.
Yeah, all these types of things.
But keep it short, keep it sweet,
because you’re not actually trying to
make people buy just from the ad.
You’re trying to get them through
your sales page, and then your sales page
is what actually sells them.
So you’re just trying to get the click.
Did you tease?
Did you say, and three more things
or something like this?
I feel like teasing could work as well.
We can try it.
We haven’t so far.
We usually keep it short, and then
we’ll have some promise or guarantee.
So I’m a big fan of reducing the risk
of people, especially when you’re doing
cold traffic ads, reducing the risk
that if it’s not everything
that they ever imagine and everything
that you promise, then they have an out.
So some refund, guarantee, or promise
that this is going to work for them
or the money back or something like that
will just dramatically improve results,
even if you get a few people who buy it,
get the results and just refund anyway.
It’s a cost of doing business.
Then you have your call to action,
which is get people to click.
Check on the link.
You want to finish off
by directing people to do that.
Do you like point down or something?
Do you Do you adjust it?
No, because when you’re doing creatives
on Facebook, you have this dynamic
creative, is it called, option,
which is selected by default.
So Facebook’s AI will cut and chop all
of your video, audio, imagery into loads
and loads of different formats
across all its platforms.
And it’s pretty good actually,
knowing how to do that.
Sometimes it gets a bit wonky,
but those, they’ll typically
turn those off quite quickly.
So if you’re pointing down, but then
the video is cut or it’s a different
layout, then it might be above you or.
I don’t say just, I’d say,
Click the link next to this video
or click the link to get started.
Importantly, with your creative,
don’t mention pricing because pricing
is something you quite often test when
you’re running Facebook ads, when you’re
running any info product, actually.
And it’s It’s really hard when you’ve hard
coded the pricing into your video,
you have to go and re-record it
again, then it looks a bit disjointed.
It’s annoying, yeah.
It’s just annoying.
So I wouldn’t mention it there.
It’s also another reason people will click
on the link to see what the pricing is.
And even if they’re not ready to buy
at the moment, that then puts them back
into your retargeting audience,
which is cheaper
to advertise to those same people.
So again, another benefit
of getting people to click on your ad.
Okay, so the reason we start with video
is because it’s the most profitable type
of ad you can run.
Typically, your return on ad spend
is about double for a video
than it is to a static image.
That’s not always the case, but typically,
that’s been our experience.
So I would always, always recommend
starting there because you’re going
to find out very quickly whether
the product you’re offering, the offer
is going to work with video.
It’s obviously easier to do image ads
because you don’t have to sit in front
of a camera and do this stuff.
But that means that it gets
a little bit more commoditized.
Everyone else.
There’s a lot of people doing it.
Can do it as well.
Everyone else has a Canva or a Midjourney
account these days, and they can create
pretty compelling-looking static ads
without too much effort.
I think it’s a common thing
in online marketing, right?
The easier it is to do, the more
competitive it gets, the less it works.
Exactly.
You need to be willing to to places
where people are uncomfortable
if you want to get the best benefits.
Absolutely.
And a single video that does well
can take a couple of hours to
do the script and film it and edit it.
But then that could literally make you
millions of dollars from one video.
It’s crazy.
In terms of the types of static images,
though, that work, a few concepts.
It’s like before and after.
So what were our steak example?
A steak before this course
and a steak after this course.
And a few features of each thing.
That’s quite appealing.
Features and benefits.
So a picture of the steak
and pointing little arrows with what
the benefit is, what the feature
of your course that’s going to help them
to achieve a different result.
Something that works really well right now
for some reason is Post-it notes.
So literally, it’s just a top-down view of
a desk with Often with a few just really
odd objects that shouldn’t be there.
And then just a Post-it note in the middle
with something written on there.
Nothing dodgier, anything.
Just like, Wait, why is there a, like,
cell phone next to this, I don’t know,
Ghostbusters merchandise
or something like that.
You know what I see a lot these days?
I see Apple Notes screenshot ads.
This, I guess, is the same principle.
I walk so far.
These are all like a I don’t
know what the phrase is for it,
but it’s hyper casual ads, almost,
where it doesn’t feel like an ad,
but it’s just like, Oh, what’s that?
It’s like native content.
It looks like an organic
post, and that’s how people want.
If you think about TV commercials,
even now, but especially from the ’90s,
if anyone else is as old as us.
I haven’t seen any.
Yeah, but it’s very overproduced
and a a little bit cheesy.
And people are just…
They put up a front
whenever they see that.
So a lot of things that work really well
on Facebook are when you’re getting under
the radar a little bit with your ads.
People don’t realise it’s
an ad until They’re already there.
And then you have that reaction like, Oh,
this is actually quite good for an ad.
I should pay attention to it.
Statistics ads work really well.
Us versus Them ads
and before versus after.
I mentioned that one already
in terms of in terms of creative,
but honestly, just throw random ideas
that look very different from each other.
Forget about trying to have them all
your brand colours or anything like that.
Almost like the more different
they can be from each other, the better.
We’ll put some of the ones
that we’ve been using recently
up on the screen as B-roll for the show.
So you see that if you’re watching
over on YouTube.
But yeah, that’s it.
That’s our Facebook Ads formula,
and it’s been working really,
really well for us recently.
Yeah, people have been asking,
Oh, what are you guys doing now?
Google is changing, et cetera.
That’s one of our big
points of focus, really.
I really like the idea of aligning
our incentives with the big platforms
with all these big AI changes.
It’s like they might replace some free
content with AI because they can and they
make more money or whatever,
but they will not replace advertisers.
The idea of shaping your business around
the same incentives as these platforms,
I think it’s a really great factor of Yes,
it requires a little bit of money to get
started and it requires some setup because
setting up an offer is not something
you’re going to do in two hours.
But it’s probably something that will
pay dividends for the people who pick
that route over just trying to pigeon the
exact same stuff they used to be doing
into a different platform, which I see
a lot of people are doing right now.
I’ll be honest, I’m a little bit concerned
of what’s going to happen to these people
when these platforms make big changes.
It’s like, while it’s okay right now,
and I know Facebook pages
are quite well right now, etc.
See you in a year and a half
and let’s see where we’re at
and we’ll see if I was right or wrong.
But my gut feeling, especially because
it happened in 2013 already, is that it’s
a dangerous game to play, especially
as people go towards smaller platforms
like Pinterest as well, for example,
which just don’t have that much traffic.
If your site is not an amazing
experience, it’s going to be easier
as a negative to the platform, basically.
That’s pretty much it.
If you have any questions,
feel free to drop them on
the comment section on YouTube.
Usually, we don’t spend a lot
of time on the comment section,
but I think for this episode, we should.
Here’s the deal.
48 hours after the episode is out, we just
spend an hour going through the comments.
If you guys have any questions,
we’ll go and answer them there.
We’ll be happy to tell
you more about that.
If you want us to talk more about
funnels, products, etc, let us know.
We know people want to hear about new
solutions, and we’re going to share
what we do and how we do it, basically.
This is really just scratching
the surface of this whole space.
It goes much broader and much deeper
than this.
Yeah, this was really a basic,
a level one episode.
We can go deeper on a lot
of these things, even the sales page.
I could do all episode on that.
Yeah, thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed it, don’t forget to
subscribe and review the podcast as well
because we’re looking for reviews.
We’ll see you again in
two weeks for another episode.
Bye, bye.
Bye.
