Facebook & Instagram Ad Expert, Shelby Fowler. She shares how to set up ads, what metrics to look at, when to start ads, what's important for your sales and landing pages, conversions, and if you should do ads at all.

When I say the words, Facebook or Instagram ads, what comes to your mind? Are you already rolling your eyes? Do you have immediate anxiety?

In today’s episode, I have Facebook & Instagram Ad Expert, Shelby Fowler. She shares how to set up ads, what metrics to look at, when to start ads, what’s important for your sales and landing pages, conversions, and if you should do ads at all.

In today's episode, I have Facebook & Instagram Ad Expert, Shelby Fowler. She shares how to set up ads, what metrics to look at, when to start ads, what's important for your sales and landing pages, conversions, and if you should do ads at all.

Full Transcription at the bottom of this blog post.

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Full Transcription:

Hey, welcome back everyone. I hope you are ready for some major female power because Shelby Fowler is in the house. She has a Facebook and Instagram ads expert. So if you’ve ever wondered if you should do ads or how to do them or what not to do with ads, then stick around for today’s a show. Hi, Shelby. Welcome.

Hi, thank you. Thank you for having me.

I’m excited to have you, because I’ll tell you what Facebook ads and Instagram ads are definitely not my expertise and I’m going to be honest. I actually avoid them. So before we jump into like the nitty gritty of, you know, mistakes and how to set up a good framework, give us a bit of a background. Why is Facebook and Instagram ads, your expertise?

I love that. So I started my agency a few years ago and we were kind of doing all of the things we were offering like web design and we were offering social media management and ads. And I found that I really enjoyed working with clients and being able to see the return on investment quickly. Um, that was like super fulfilling to me. So as I grew my agency, I realized I didn’t really want to do all the other stuff. So I really simplified my business, um, a little over a year ago. And I’ve been just, we’ve been only doing Facebook and Instagram ads since. And so it’s something that I become like borderline obsessive, but I think you have to be a little bit obsessive if you’re going to get really good at it, because things change so much and there’s all these little tricks and tips and secrets. So I’ve just really leaned into, you know, learning all the things about it

And isn’t that so cool as we go through our businesses, we really find what you said earlier, what fulfills you? And I was kind of in that same spot last year, where I was kind of doing all the things, teaching Instagram, I was on Facebook and then I was in photography and I had a membership and I was trying to do something else. And I realized that that membership was not fulfilling to me anymore. So I actually shut it down and pivoted. And that’s when things actually really happened. Cause you say you, you almost come obsessed with it, but that’s when you really niche down and you figure out like your super power, right?

Absolutely. I think it’s super normal. And I definitely, I tell new entrepreneurs all the time, like don’t niche down just yet, like explore your options because what you think you want to do may not be what actually fulfills you. And so sometimes you just have to get in there and get your hands dirty and figure it out.

That’s so true. Cause we were chatting before I hit the record button and you commented on my back wall with the Mickey mouse decals. And you know, for those who are listening, you guys might not even know that I started this journey of Jesus over five years ago. And I started, I thought I was going to be like a Disney world blogger. So you’re right. You have to explore what excites you, how you’re creative and figure out in the end, what really is going to fulfill you and how you’re going to impact your audience as you know, the best way that you can. Now I know we’re going to jump into, of course Facebook ads, Instagram ads. And I think people either have like this negative thought process about it because they look at it as a, it’s going to charge me money. I have to write this super long ad. It has to be out there for so long. So can you give us maybe your top five mistakes that people are probably making when they run ads?

Yeah, that’s a great, great, great question. So number one is not spending enough, right? It’s not going to be useful for you to just like throw random amounts of money at it and be like here, cross our fingers and hope it works out. That’s not how it works. You need to have a strategy in place and you need to reverse engineer your success. So look at average metrics for what you’re wanting to do. So for instance, if you are like a course creator or a coach and your live launching and or maybe you are running a webinar and you want people registered for that, there are metrics on that. Like on average, for instance, you get, it’s going to be six to $10 per registration. So if you can kind of dial back and do the math and figure out how many people do you on there to convert at whatever percentage to get the goal you want, then you, then you can figure out what your ad spend is going to be.

But I see a lot of people and that would go with any type of ad that you’re doing. But I see a lot of people just kind of like throw money and then cross their fingers. And that is not going to work for you. So that’s number one, two is picking the wrong ad objective. Oh. So when you go to create an ad, you have all these options of what kind of ad you should choose. And that gets overwhelming for a lot of people. If you don’t, if you’ve never run ads before. And so most people I say are going to run conversion campaigns. So, um, when in doubt conversion campaigns are probably what you’re going to want to run and what that does. It sends your ads and it optimizes your ads for somebody to take an action. Whether that’s registering for your webinar, whether that’s purchasing from you, they’re actually taking an action and that’s what you are going to, that’s why you’re running ads, right?

Um, and it’s also going to push your ads towards people who are more likely to, to do something, right. They’re not people that just click on stuff and click out. So that’s um, the second thing is picking the right ad objective third is not knowing your metrics. So goes back to what I said at number one, which is that you need to have a strategy in place before you run out. So you need to know your kind of a ballpark of an estimate of where, you know what you’re going to be spending, what results you can expect. And then you need to watch those things. You need to watch your metrics and see like, are we getting a lot of clicks on your ads, but maybe your landing page isn’t converting really well or your, your registration page. Isn’t converting really well. Then we have a problem, right?

Then it’s not the ads. It’s your, it’s your landing page. And maybe you need to hire a copywriter. Maybe you need to hire a designer to fix it. So, or maybe you can go in and tweak it yourself, but you need to kind of look at that and read your metrics. And that in itself can be, again, we’re talking about overwhelm and that can be definitely overwhelming if you don’t know how to read them correctly, if you’re new. And so definitely, you know, make sure that you, if you’re going to run your own ads, that you get this support and that you get the training, that gives you confidence in that. So don’t just like, try it out and cross your fingers because I don’t think that’s going to be super useful and it will be frustrating for you. So get some support, I guess that could be number four, right?

Is like getting that support system. Right. And there’s a lot of different courses out there. There’s a lot of different YouTube videos and all kinds of free information out there. And you know, definitely look at YouTube. There’s a lot of stuff there that’s outdated though. So be careful, um, find somebody that you trust that can walk you through the process. And if you can find somebody who will give you the ongoing support that a course may not provide, that could be very beneficial to you, especially as you’re learning. And then number five, uh, this is a big mistake. I’m going to say this, especially now because of new iOS updates. So this is the hot thing right now in advertising is that face, I’m sorry, your Apple devices are, they have this update coming up. Some of you already have it and it’s called the iOS 14 update.

And what it’s going to do Apple is like, you know what? These apps are just taking all your information and then they’re selling it to advertisers like me. And then I, you know, and then we can advertise to you. Um, and they’re like, we want to honor our users’ privacy more. So what it’s doing is it once your phone updates or maybe your iPad or whatever, once you open an app for the first time you pop up, comes up and it allows you to pick whether or not you want the app to track you to get your data. And so right now we’re able to get like Facebook has all of our data, but if you don’t, um, if you choose not to let it track you, then if I run ads, I’m not able to see if you click on my ad. If you go to my landing page, I don’t get that data so interesting.

There’s a lot of new stuff happening with advertising in that way. And being able to track things correctly because there’s a lot of moving parts right now. So my fifth thing for you is a big mistake. People are making is they’re not verifying their domain inside of business manager. And it sounds complicated maybe, but it’s really not. You can go to just Google, Facebook, um, domain verification and an article pop up from Facebook and it walks you through the process. It’ll take you like 15 minutes to do, and that will set your account up, um, to make sure that you can track properly, that you can still run ads, your account won’t get shut down. So there’s quite a bit of little things that we’re, we’re learning that we have to set up with our, with our client’s ad accounts and that we have our members inside of our coaching program. Um, we’re helping them set theirs up because of all the changes. So just make sure that you’re keeping updated on all of that stuff when you want to run ads.

And I think the biggest point that came across as I was listening to the five mistakes is don’t create like, don’t wake up one morning and decide, you know what? I’m going to run an ad on my course today because in the end you’re just going to lose money. So what you’re saying is you really need to reverse engineer the process. What is your ultimate goal? Do your homework, know your objective. So that was a lot of great, great information, a question that came up that I was thinking who should run ads. And I know that’s a very kind of a loaded or a vague question, but there’s this idea floating around, should you run ads or should you try to sell or grow your business organically? What is your take on that? Like when should you really do ads?

So I like to tell people the ads don’t fix a broken sales problem. So if you are not getting sales in your business, running ads, isn’t going to help. Ads are going to amplify what is already happening in your business. So if you have a profitable business, you’re selling stuff you’re growing. And you’re like, okay, now it’s time to really scale this thing. Like there’s only so much time I have to be posting all the time. There’s only so much time. I have to be messaging people all the time and getting new customers in. I know my product or my service or my programs are selling like hotcakes over here, right? People like I’m, I’m getting great testimonials. I’m getting great feedback, but I need to scale this. That’s when you run ads. So when, or maybe like, we have a lot of clients who are selling, they sell organically a lot.

Right? And I, you, it’s not a ads are going to, um, make it so you don’t have to do any organic marketing ever again. That’s not how it works. Right? You need to still be doing organic marketing, but it’s going to amplify what you already have going on. So I, we have clients that, for instance, they’ve sold a program, they’re a coach and they sell programs, um, all the time organically on Instagram, especially. And they’re like, okay, we want this to be more passive. So we are physically going in and like, you know, asking people to join and we’re getting like a hundred people a month or whatever, but like, let’s make this more passive or maybe they’re doing it live and they want to make it evergreen. So they want it to continuously be going in the background so people can sign up, go through it and they don’t have to be present for the training. Um, that’s when like ads are really going to help you automate this process, right. And again, they don’t fix a broken sales problem. So if you have a sales problem, then go get some help with sales. But if you already have a profitable, profitable business and you’re like, Shelby, I just need this to get going. Like I it’s going, and I need it to like, I’m, I’m ready for it to start like scaling quickly. Um, and you have the infrastructure ready for that. Then that’s when ads are going to really help you.

I’m so glad I asked that question cause I’m sure it clarified a lot for our listeners because I’m sure they’re wondering, do I do ads or not? I’m so glad you said, once you are profitable, once you are all already organically selling and your selling process is really good, then you can use ads to amplify and scale. I love that. If, if anyone gets anything out of this episode, I think it’s really going to be that. Now, do you have a framework for successful Facebook or Instagram ads?

There’s some components here that are really going to help with your success. Okay. One of them is having a landing page wherever you’re sending people needs to be tight. It needs to be good. All right. So your copy needs to be good. Your design needs to be good. Let me give you an example. We had a client recently who she hired a fabulous copywriter, spent lots of money to get her landing page. It’s actually, it was a sales page for her offer, um, written up and it was great. Copy. Okay. We’re getting, we’re running ads. We’re getting a lot of clicks on the ads, but we’re still not getting conversions. And so I asked like, what’s going on? Where’s the bottleneck here? And so when I looked at it, I was like trying to think, and I was like, you know what it is? I think it might be that there was she like in the order form, when they go into complete their order, she was asking for their mailing address and their phone number.

And I was like, maybe if you take those off, your conversion rate will be better because people are like, well, that’s kind of invasive. I don’t want to give that info away. Right. So if you make it a little bit more simple to check out, then your conversion rates could be higher. And then I looked at it and I said, and here’s the thing. Your buttons on your page are all this like orange color, a very pretty color. It was in her branding. And I said, how, wherever psychology says that actually like greens and blues are going to perform better on any buttons on your page. Like, if you want people to click on the button to do something or buy or register or whatever, like a green or a blue button performs better. So she changed those overnight. And we had like four sales in a couple hours.

That’s amazing. So landing page is one of them. Right. And that has like nothing to do with the ads. But you want to look at the whole process that whole customer’s journey, like where, how is their process looking? Okay. And go through that. So landing page, the second is your ad creative. Okay. So this breaks down into, when I say ad creative, I mean your ad copy and your ad graphics or video. Okay. So your ad copy needs to be speaking to your ideal client or customer. And sometimes when we’re doing our targeting, when we pick who we want to see, the ads it’s can be kind of broad. So this is where in the ad copy in that written portion of your ad. This is when we call out those people that you want to work with. So when they see your ad, be like, Oh, that’s for me, here’s a problem.

I see a lot of people making a mistake that they make is that they don’t mention pain points. And they’re like, I don’t want to, you know, I don’t really want to like reiterate their pain points. I just want to go into like what their life could look like if they clicked or like all the benefits and all the positivity, Hey, listen, we all have problems. And the journey that your, your prospect needs to take when they click on your ad. And this is for people that are not running e-commerce ads. If you’re running ads to like an e-commerce store, it’s going to be different. You don’t even have to really write that great of ad copy. It can be like two lines. It’s like, don’t overthink it. But for those of you that have online businesses like your, that are coaches course, creators, consultants, things like that.

Service providers, listen, this is for you. You need to have a hook in which you’re drawing people. And that’s like the first one or two sentences of your ad copy. And then you need to address where they are right now. How are they feeling? What does their life look like? What does their business look like? You know, meet them where they are. And so a lot of people miss that, you want to meet them where they are, and then you can tell them how their life could be better. Right? So your ad copy and then your graphics, a lot of people don’t realize that your graphic or video is the first thing people see. So it has to be eye catching. It has to be scroll stopping, right? As you’re scrolling through social media, you want someone to go, Oh wait, what was that? So bright colors using like circular motions and like fluid motions in your design are going to help with creating that like pattern interrupt for them, everything on your computer.

Think about it as like square or rectangle or on your phone. Like your apps are kind of in that shape. Everything is in that shape. When you go on Facebook or Instagram ad or Instagram, everything is square. Your posts are square. Everything is square rectangle. So how do you create a pattern interrupt? That’s going to catch someone’s eye it’s by like having more fluid shapes or circular shapes in your graphics. That’s going to help people’s I go, what is that? Right? It’s different than everything else I’m saying. So keep that in mind. Bright colors do really well. I’m not telling you to like have lime green is your color and your ads, if like your brand colors are like Navy blue and gold, but try to, um, think about ways that you can make it look interesting and make it look a little bit more bold and not like everything else.

So landing page ad creative, you had, do you have next targeting? Okay. So you want to make sure that the right people are seeing your ad, that you’re picking the right targeting, picketing, picking the right audiences for your ads. So my biggest tip here is to kind of do some brainstorming before you run out. So think about what other business pages would my ideal client or customer be following. What other public figures would they be following on Instagram or Facebook and start to make a list. You can use a tool called Facebook audience insights, and you can kind of play around with that. And it’ll give you, um, like for instance, you can put in people that like Tony Robbins that are women ages 25 to 35, and then it’ll show you it’ll pull up the data that Facebook has on all those people. And it’ll show you other Facebook pages that they also like.

So you can kind of start to brainstorm there and make a list, um, with that. So targeting is a big one. If the right people aren’t seeing your ads, then you’re not going to get clicks. Right. So I had an ad this morning for dentures. I’m 29. I’m not quite ready for dentures yet. I had an ad on my timeline and I screenshot it and I was like laughing. And I was like, gosh, I mean, they’re wasting money. They really should be targeting people that are a little bit older. I’m not 29, right. Because there might be some 29-year old’s that need them, but that’s going to be the rare case. Right. So

That’s an extremely bad diet if they need dentures.

Yeah. I got another ad recently that was for people wanting to start an HVAC company. And I was like, why am I getting this? Why is this on my feet? This is not what I’m trying to do. I’ve never, I don’t even, I’m not even really sure what that even stands for HVAC. Why am I getting this on my feet? Right. So make sure that you’re targeting the right people. I think we’ve all gotten ads that were like, why am I getting it?

Yeah. I was going to say, that’s making me think as now I scroll Facebook. There’s so many times where I’m like, why on earth? Am I seeing this?

Yeah. I’m like, God, what did I, what did I search for? What did I say out loud? Um, okay. So that’s the other thing. And then if you really want to, you have your ad copy, you have your ad graphics, you have your landing page set up, you have your targeting set up and make sure that you’re going through like, even age ranges, right? Like of, of who would be a best fit for you as a client or customer. And also remember that if you, here’s what we always recommend with targeting. If you go under 25, like people, like let’s say you started, you’re targeting like 18 and plus just 18 plus whoever. Remember that kids that are just out of high school, they’re in college. They don’t have a lot of money. Okay. So if your product or program cost money that requires a larger investment, then you may not want to target that demographic.

So I would bump it up to maybe 25 plus or 30 plus. Right. And then the same goes for if it’s too broad, like if it’s 65 plus remember like, who is your ideal client? And don’t get freaked out about this. Like, it’s okay to have an age range, like usually 25 to 55. That’s a popular one. Right. Because it’s not people you’re not dealing with people that have struggled with using online platform. They’re not used to that really. And you’re not dealing with people that don’t have money either. So you’re kind of like in that little gap right there. Um, and also keep in mind, we had a client call yesterday and she was like, so I feel bad saying this, but we’re getting some leads that I feel aren’t as qualities that I would like them to be like, can we change up targeting?

And we looked at it and we’re like, absolutely. So what we did was we made it. So we were targeting the same people, but we put an exclusion on there that they had to have graduated college, or they had to have been a frequent flyer or traveler, or they had to have lived in the top, like 50% of income brackets in the country or whatever that way now it’s like, we’re still targeting the same kind of interests, but now they are a little bit more higher level person. So they have a little bit more money. Maybe they travel a little bit more, you know, they’re more college educated. So you have a little bit better of a pool for her offer to choose from. So you can get pretty detailed with that and go down a rabbit hole for sure.

Cause that’s all in like the target, uh, audience, right. Yeah. Can go on there and do all the exceptions. Okay. Wow. Yep. You can do so much with it. So the other thing is your pixel and events. You want to make sure that your pixel is set up correctly on your website and make sure your domain is verified. And also you can set up events so that when people like click on a button on your website, on your landing page, it tracks it. You can set it up. So that button is tracked as complete registration or something. So when people click it, it’ll show you inside of ads manager, you had 10 complete registrations people, 10 people clicked on that button basically. So make sure that those are set up before you run ads. So those are some good tips without like completely overwhelming everybody

I know, right. Well, I was just going to say, Holy smokes, this was like so much information, but it was good information. Very, very valuable because I know I can guarantee some listeners are going to want to learn how to run, not only ads, but we want to run successful ads that we’re not losing money. Right. We’re actually investing it in. It’s getting converted. We’re going to get that, you know, return on investment. So I know that I’m going to have a lot of women who are going to definitely want to connect with you. So where can we find you on social?

You can find me on Instagram, @lifewithshelby. That’s my username. Um, you can find me. My website is fempiremedia.com and you can kind of play around on there. I have a free Facebook group. If you find me on Facebook, um, it’s like on my personal profile, you can find me as well. Um, and I’m also launching a podcast very soon here. So you can search that. It’ll be Irresistible Facebook Ads with Shelby Fowler. So you can search that for more free info. And I have tons of free content on my website as well. We have blog posts going up weekly, um, with free Facebook training.

Very cool and congrats on your upcoming podcast. I will, uh, make sure that all your stuff is in the show notes. So our listeners can go grab your information, but this was an awesome conversation. And thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for having me.

 

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