#134: Facebook and IG Ads For eCommerce Sellers

Norman Ferrar  0:01  

Hey everyone, it’s Norman Farrar, aka the beard guy here and welcome to another lunch with norm, the rise of the micro brands.

Norman Ferrar  0:19  

I’m excited to get started with this interview. Today we have Michelle Bridger. She’s the CEO of inkwell, and we’re going to be talking about using Facebook and Instagram ads to better your Amazon account. So before we get into that, where are you, Kelsey?Hello, how are you sir?

Kelsey  0:40  

Hello, Well,I’m doing fantastic. enjoying a nice little thunderstorm here. 

Norman Ferrar  0:46  

Either Michelle, you or me, one of us is going to be cut out, like the power is gone. So Michelle might be interviewing you, you might be interviewing Michelle. Anyways, I might be interviewing you as a guest. I have no idea. But I guarantee one of us is probably going to have a power surge. And that’s part

Kelsey1:06  

That’s very fun. But anyways, if you’re watching right now, please smash those like buttons. We do have a fantastic prize today. We actually have a freebie as well. Freebie for everyone. So everyone’s gonna lucked out on this one today. So stick around for more information about that. Welcome everyone. And yeah, just to let everyone know, the software that we are using right now is  kind of like an error for Facebook, where it’ll cut out sometimes on some people. So if you’re there to use the software. We’re on a budget so but if we do cut out during any time, it’s only a Facebook problem, apparently. So if you can go to the YouTube channel, just to let everyone know. It hasn’t happened to us yet. But just want to let everyone know that if we do cut it out it’s not us cutting you guys out.

Norman Ferrar 2:01  

But yeah, very good. That’s covering your butt kills. All right, so just a quick shout out. I already see that. dk Kim is on Tony’s on rad. Hey, if a Tia How’s it going, Dr. Koz. Welcome. And today, we do have an incredible giveaway and a freebie. So we’ll get into that in a second. But if you have any questions, throw it over in the comments section. And we will try to get to every question before we end the podcast. So sit back, relax, grab that cup of coffee and enjoy the podcast. Welcome, Michelle. Hey, I’m so glad to be here. Norm. Yeah, first time on the podcast. I’ll be gentle. Why don’t we tell everybody just a little bit about yourself and exactly what you do. Yeah,

Michelle Bridger 2:52  

I will. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I’m Michelle Bridger. My company is Michelle Bridger consulting you had mentioned it was inkwell press, which I didn’t have pulled that but that was a client, a long term client of mine, which we had massive success for. So that’s a fun story in and of itself.

Norman Ferrar  3:10  

Excuse me. So Kelsey screwed up. I just want to put that on the record that Kelsey messed up badly. I’m sorry, Michelle, on. I’m apologizing on Kelsey.

Michelle Bridger 3:24  

No worries, well, not sure how it happened. But I just want to just make sure that was clear. They’re an amazing company, too. So I brought in over $27 million in revenue from my clients. They’re in the e commerce space. They’re also in the infopreneur space where they’re experts. And they’re doing courses and webinars and things like that. So and sometimes they’re even doing though they have an e commerce product like info crested and they’re also doing courses and consulting and things like that. So we represented both sides of that brand. And that was really had great success with that. So really, what I do is make dreams come true. So clients come to me and they have big goals and big dreams. And Facebook is the amazing vehicle they’re advertising, Facebook, Instagram ads can really rapidly grow a business like nothing else, because you can so pinpoint the audience because your your people your target market is on there and just what an amazing platform it is. I’ll be at challenging sometimes. Well often, it is still the go to platform and really remarkable things happen. So work with some really big names in the industry like Julie stoyan Alison J. Prince Rick more ready Jenna Kutcher, and just so many others, some some of them are on MBAs, but when grande is in, excuse me, RNA reset RNA reset their product is re mag binding a whole bunch of names there, but their product is Remagen. RNA reset is in a magnificent company is one big e commerce company that we provide ads for so really have had a lot of fun in this space, have been doing it for nine years, and just had remarkable growth and helped remarkable brands that are really committed to impact.

Norman Ferrar  5:27  

Are you specifically targeting Facebook and Instagram?

Michelle Bridger 5:32  

We always run on Facebook and Instagram, unless there’s some circumstance, like the video we have is too long. But it is by far best practice to always run on Facebook and Instagram together. You don’t run them in isolation, not just choosing Instagram or choosing Facebook. It’s that in the platform and ads manager you’re choosing to run on both of those.

Norman Ferrar  5:53  

Right? But you’re specifically on those two. It’s not that you’re not on Google, you’re not on Pinterest, you’re you’re targeting those two, you’re, you’ve got a specific niche. That’s great. Why don’t we talk a little bit about the fantastic prize today. And also the freebie that you’re offering?

Michelle Bridger 6:14  

Yeah, absolutely. So cover the freebie first, and that is the Facebook core assessment. So and whenever I say Facebook, just know that it’s Instagram too. But the Facebook core assessment, this is an error. This is a free gift. It’s a it’s a PDF, where you can assess the ads that you’re running. Or if you’re going to be starting, you can look at the areas that you should have, for example, your top of funnel, middle of funnel, your retargeting, and see what pieces do I need to have in place? And they’ll help you to see if you’re running ads, where do I need to shore up? What are my holes? Where Where can I strengthen my ads for more revenue and more profit? Very good. Okay, and the drumroll? What’s that? Yeah, so I do a lot of consulting. Brands hire me to take a look at their ads, and see how they can be improved. And so as the big prize, I’m going to do a 45 minute consulting call with someone would be best if they’re already running ads. But if you’re not, and you’re just getting started, that’s what actually that’s probably perfect too, so that you get started on the right foot. But either way, I’ll do a 45 minute consulting call to talk about your strategy. Take a look at your ads, if you’re running ads. And we’ll talk about ways to strengthen those ads to improve them for more sales and more profit. We’ll talk about that. Normally, I charge in the range of 750 to 15 $100 for that, and it’s my free gift.

Norman Ferrar  7:46  

All right, so a minimum $700 prize today, which is great plus a freebie. All right. All you need to do is to do hashtag we’ll have Kelsey, most of you know that already. But any brand new listener hashtag, we’ll have Kelsey, if you take two people, you’ll also get an entry an extra entry into it. So it’s a fantastic have a really great prize, I think you think you might know Facebook until you talk to an expert. It’s like a white belt, knowing how to punch and he’s talking to a black belt. It’s it’s, you know, I think anybody that enters we’ll get some real value out of this. So let’s dig into the topic today. I love it. I’ve I’ve heard both sides of the story. I’ve heard people that have been on Amazon or been in eecom, or just general business and say that Facebook does not work just doesn’t work. It’s too It’s overpriced. They can’t compete. It they, you know, their their price point might be a bit low, their margins might be off. What do you have to say to those people that have put money like real money, I know people that have put 510 15 $20,000 into Facebook and got nothing. Mm hmm.

Michelle Bridger  9:00  

You know, it, it’s not an easy platform to use, it’s not an easy platform to get results on. You have to have enough margin to be able to be profitable. So if you’re coming in with a really low margin product, if you have earrings that are $12, or a scarf that’s 10 or you’re really, really going to come and hang out, you’re really going to have a challenge to be profitable. It’s it’s so important to know your lifetime value and your average order value so that you can see how much can I pay to bring in a client and then it takes not just testing in the beginning, but relentless, relentless, ongoing testing to bring down that, that that cost per acquisition. So you know, I don’t It may not be the perfect fit for every brand. But I’ve often seen where companies will come to me businesses will come to me, and they haven’t been successful with one or two other Facebook advertising agencies, and we just dig in really deep. And it’s not instantaneous often, but we digging very deep with looking at the whole funnel all the way across. And we’re able to turn that around to make it profitable. In fact, I can think of one brand in particular, they came to us, they had been working with two other agencies, they said, the first one, you really cared about our brand, and then did everything they could, but they just did not have the knowledge base to turn it or to bring us in sales. The second one, she said they had the very large agency, they had the know how to do it. But they didn’t care. They just, they just she knew she was not important to them. They didn’t have the bandwidth for her. And she ended up leaving them she came with us and she was astonished at and that was her words astonished. Like, we just can’t get over how you have dug in so deep to our numbers, understood the entire funnel, and then dug in so deep to the messaging. And that’s where I think part of the biggest thing is I see people fail, like the technical pieces can be in place. But it’s the messaging, where you really have to understand your avatar and be able to speak to them and have that message all the way across. So to the naysayers, I would say, you know, you know, I would talk to more people, maybe get a concert, you know, get a consultant in there to take a look at your funnel, and especially your messaging to see if maybe it was just, you know, it just wasn’t the right time you didn’t have the right agency, or it needed a different approach. And stream yard is doing its thing.

Kelsey  12:13  

So we are still streaming on the other ones, but the Facebook group just cut out. So okay, I’m not sure. So, um, I have no idea what Michelle was saying. So Michelle, you might have to exit the stream and come back in, you’re frozen right now. But just bear with us, everyone will be back shortly. Okay.

Norman Ferrar  12:39  

And while Michelle’s doing that, I can give you some experience. And when Michelle comes back to I’m going to get her to focus more more on the individual who’s trying to do this on their own. So that, you know, maybe a few action steps that you can take. Also, I’d be interested in knowing the price point. So you know, if I want to sell my soap $10 bar soap on Facebook doesn’t make sense. Or if I want to sell a $50 price, what what is that sweet number. And if any of you have got any comments about Facebook, advertising on Facebook, really sweet results, success stories that you’ve had any horrible fetal position nightmares that you’ve had put it there questions about Facebook ads, now’s the time to to throw them in there. Michelle is an incredible expert on this. There’s lots of people in the space, but you’ve got her live. And she is one of these people that will definitely share. So does anybody while we’re waiting for Michelle to come back on again, there are thunderstorms going on in Toronto, where Michelle is at where I’m at. So I knew somebody was going to cut out today. All right. Yes, exactly Dr. Cause, and that’s what I’ll try to do, I’ll get these actionable items. Now remember, when you do go over for this free PDF, it kind of goes through your, your, your Facebook ads, so what you’re looking for and how to improve them. So that’s one thing that we’ll be able to do. And Kelsey is going to be able to post that throughout a few times throughout this podcast. All right, who’s got something we could talk about anything while we’re waiting for Michelle to come back on? Any questions? Tony, what is your toning? What

Kelsey  14:32  

is your experience? What is your experience with Facebook and Instagram ads so far? Is this something that you’ve done in the past? Do you feel like you’ve mastered already? Or is this something that you have not you know nothing about? And you’re just looking to get any kind of knowledge, or is it something that you’ve done it before and it hasn’t worked for you? Let us know. And it looks like Michelle is back We’ll just need to see if it’s loading. Yep, just a second, we’ll see. But um, Simon asked, do you advise we do a whole range of Facebook, Instagram activity, as well as ads such as organic posts and influencers.

Norman Ferrar  15:13  

Alright, I’d like to leave it for Michelle. But quickly, this is just part of a blitz, right, we talk about Blitz campaigns, and we want to make sure that you know that you can do as long as you know how to do it. And this is where you can go out and take a very, like a course just like an Amazon course, get some advice, try to dip your toe in. And again, we talked about dipping your toe in or your foot or both feet into something right? Well, that’s the same thing here. If you want to do this yourself and learn, by all means, if you want to save a few dollars, what I found, when you’re working with any type of ads, I know that we go out and we’ll just find an expert. So we don’t know somebody about we just did this to better work with LinkedIn, what did we do, we went and hired a consultant or somebody that we paid money to, it was a little bit bigger dollar, but now we’re doing a much better job. And that’s, you know, what I, I look at that, like, I will hire an expert for anything, whether that’s our Facebook ads, or will Facebook Instagram ads, or if it’s I haven’t got really into it. But the Pinterest ads, we still got to look at that and Pinterest short scales. But like I said, we weren’t doing a good job with Twitter, we weren’t doing a good job with LinkedIn. And we’re gonna be and this is for product, like our brands. And now we’re looking into that. So anyways, that’s a long winded way of saying gab, Blitz it.

Kelsey  16:48  

Also, I want to mention for the wheel of Kelsey, we want to limit this to just one person entering as themselves. So I know some people that are using multiple YouTube channels or Facebook usernames, if you can just stick to one name for one person. That’s the only it’s only fair. We just want everyone else. Yep. And so you can still take two people, that’ll get you a bonus entry, but just try and hold back from using any extra accounts that you have

Norman Ferrar  17:22  

on here. What is there another question? or comment? Anything before I go into the fetal position?

Kelsey  17:30  

Fine. So Dr. Cause please ask integrations from Shopify to Facebook, I noticed there’s an integration and I would love to know, that is a good option. Yep. So Simon is asking or saying he spent a gazillion pounds on Facebook and return a big fat zero. Hmm. So I think a lot of people are kind of running it, you know, Simon,

Norman Ferrar  17:51  

that’s, you know, I’ve heard both right. Like, I know, I’m one of the brands that I’m involved with it. It doesn’t sell well. on Amazon, it sells it sells, okay. But this is an eight figure brand. And most of it is done through Facebook. Now it’s $160 a pop. So there’s lots of margin in there. But it it like it’s built. And also. So Michelle’s back on, but I’ll just say that I’ve been involved with and seen a few companies that one had a 19 to $23 product. And it went from zero to $19 million in about two, two and a half years, all 100% through Shopify and Facebook ads. The second one, this is a brand that I’m involved with, is that $150 $160 product. And again, everything was built from Shopify, onto Facebook, and just driving the funnel back. And it’s grown, I don’t know, in about, again, two and a half years to a $50 million company. So over three years, all through Facebook and going through some other retail outside of Amazon. So it’s you know, it’s definitely possible and it’s money in your pocket. So Michelle, your back and back. Okay, so we did have a couple of questions. One of them that I’m interested in, is what kind of I sell soap. I sell 10 to $14. So and I can’t make it on Facebook. It’s just too low of a price point. I’ve got great margins in it. But my cost of acquisition just doesn’t make it on Facebook. I can’t get it to turn a profit for me. So I realize that but I do know that if I had a higher priced item that I could like it’s just took too much. You’re not going to sell you know, candy bars on on Facebook. Is there a price point? Is there an optimal price point that you should Be at the car return?

Michelle Bridger 20:03  

That’s a good question. Because a little bit more complex one, because you have to look at the upsells. And the upsells are so important. So, if you’re selling, if you’re selling soap, we’ll just use soap, then in terms of the upsell, is there something that 1020 30% of the people will just be like, it’s just a no brainer. An example of that was that gal had was selling the recipe, like a seasonal recipes, and you got everything, you got the all of the ingredients, all the shopping list, you got the this all these brand new recipes, great pictures, the whole thing. And then her upsell, while it wasn’t great, it was pans that, you know, like, I wouldn’t have thought that that was a great upsell. But, you know, it made such a difference in her profitability, in fact, really turned the corner for her being profitable. And so that makes all the difference what your upsell was. So I think that’s the key, I don’t know, like, exact number, but I, in my experience, looking at $25. and above, it’s like, you know, we’re probably going to be able to make that ago, as long as there are deep discounts. In addition, like they’re trying to get people to come in, and it’s $25, but we’ll give you 25% off your purchase, then you start to run into trouble again,

Norman Ferrar  21:36  

you really I hate saying this, but you got to know your numbers, you want to you want to break even for soap. I don’t know how you feel about this, but I will spend, let’s go beyond. So let’s say it’s a recurring product, shampoo and conditioner, I don’t know pet food, whatever it is, at a $25 price point, I’m willing to take that hit, I’ll spend 25 to get somebody to buy my product, if it’s recurring. So once the people get it, they understand and they, they they have that user experience, right? Then I know that they’ll be coming back for more, and I can hook them I can hook them with any insert. But what what do you feel about that it like, that’s just my way of doing it, there’s a million ways of doing it. But for recurring product, I’ll spend up to the cost of the soap or the the cost of the product.

Michelle Bridger  22:32  

You know, that’s, that’s where you you’re exactly right, you have to know your numbers. So what is your average order value and the lifetime value of a client because if you can get them or a customer, you can get them coming in, and even lose slightly. But your average order value is way above that, let’s say your average order value, or your lifetime value is $75. Because they’ll just keep buying and buying, then it’s well worth it to just, you know be at breakeven or slightly below because you know, based on knowing your numbers, that you can that they’ll keep buying and buying and buying for quite a bit of time. And one of this the brands that I’m selling for in Shopify, they have rich, their data shows that they have a 77% return rate. And so if people apply they become raving customers, literally we get the most amazing testimonials in ADS. And so we those that social proof is king. And so we don’t we don’t want to change the links or change the ads, we just want those ads to run because people will say this is how it changed my life. And those customers become raving fans. And so that’s so important. But knowing your numbers is king, as you said,

Norman Ferrar  23:55  

we’ve got a couple questions that I kind of went through, we’ll get to them in a second. One of the comments, and I I really like this. So we’re talking on the agency side. And I believe in hiring experts. We do it all the time. If I don’t know something Kelsey doesn’t know something, we’ll hire an expert. But for those people who are trying to do it on their own, and to understand Facebook ads, can we talk about I’m selling on Amazon, I’m selling on Shopify, what are some action steps that I can take, so I don’t make these huge mistakes.

Michelle Bridgar  24:31  

If they’ve been selling enough that they have are getting sales backs that are already getting sales back, it’s so important to really look at that data and really deep delve in deep to understand your customer. So for one of the brands that we target, they are women who are over 45 and they’re starting well you just over 45 things just to start to, you know, like you just start to like you notice how Things I guess is a way to say it, like, you become more health aware, because this thing started to break down. So anyway, this is a supplement brand. And we know that it is women in this age range, we know that they have these interests, they’re following these people, we know them. And so our ad isn’t talking to everyone, it’s talking to those people. So it’s really important that you understand who your target market is. And, really, if you can do once they purchase, if you can do a survey, whatever you can do to reach out to them, to interview them, talk to them, get to know them, understand their language, use that language in ad copy, that’s going to give you the leg up. So understanding your target market is number one. And then number two is making sure that same language is all the way across your funnel. So if you understand that, um, let’s, let’s say that you were a weight loss brand not promoting that, because that’s so hard on Facebook, but let’s say the, instead of saying, Oh, I just want to lose five pounds, that was, dang it, I want to get back in those skinny jeans. And that’s the language that your target market would be using or is using, then you want to use that not just in your ad copy, but make sure that it’s on all the way across to your to your sales page, your landing page or initiate Checkout, whatever, wherever it needs to be, make sure it is client language, and that will give you such a leg up in terms of conversions, they’ll make such a big difference. And so knowing your target market, and then really having a copywriter help you with the copy or really working hard to have the copy, compelling, concurrent and clear all the way across in the funnel is going to give you such a leg up. And then make sure that when you are save up for Facebook ads, because if you just start to take dip your toe in and say well, I’m just gonna just like spend $25 and see how I do, it’s not going to give you data fast enough back or back fast enough, it’s not going to give you data that fast enough so that you can really tell it’s the image the copy, it’s what’s working, it’s going to be too slow. And so save up for Facebook ads until you could maybe spend around, you know, at least $100 a day, maybe more. And it’s going to be dependent on your product, and how much it’s going to you guess it’s going to cost to bring in a product of sale, but but save up so that you really have enough to bring in potentially a couple sales a day as you start to get Facebook able to optimize, and you’re able to get enough data back to be able to change what needs to be changed.

Norman Ferrar  27:51  

You know, I’ve I’ve had some conversations about this. So people that have tested, and they see that, okay, this split testing, and like you said, they don’t can tell Congratulations, there’s a cup, that’s a cup. So anyways, um, the, the split test, they get the results, they see that the ones doing better than the other, and then they throw it all down. So they you know, it’s it’s okay, here’s $25. But now here’s $200 a day or $300 a day, and it goes horribly wrong for them. So is it better to slowly or not slowly, but if you’re if you’re doing 25, maybe go 50, you then go 50 to 100 instead of going, Oh, this is working out. And like you say constantly split test, but you want to you just don’t want to go from nothing to 100 is that what you’ve seen?

Michelle Bridger  28:57  

I would say that you need to be willing to spend at least 100 per day, let’s say your product is $25. So in order to bring in a sale, it’s going to cost you, you know, if we’re going to do breakeven, it’s going to cost you $25 to do to do one sale, if you were only spending $25 a day and getting that optimized, you’re just not going to make any progress forward. So if I’m understanding your question correctly, like is $25 good to start with, I would say you know save up for it and make sure that you’re spending a minimum $100 per day so you have the metrics you know your click through rate, you know how which images performing the best which which which and then there’s so many questions but be able to read the data with more more ad spend.

Norman Ferrar 29:48  

Okay, so just, we’ll stop here for just a quick second. just reminding people that we do have a really great price today, which is going to be a 45 minute console with Michelle that’s valued at 750 to 15 $100. And if you want to enter it, it’s just hashtag, we’ll have Kelsey, and you could tag it tag to people and get an extra entry. And also, if you like what you’re hearing today, I know we had a couple glitches today. But you can always smash those like buttons, invite some friends into Listen, we’ve got a great topic today. And we’re gonna head over to some of the questions right now. And then we’ll get back into it. So, Kelsey, let’s go back to the initial questions. I do. Oh, I have one thing to ask. This used to be a trick that I knew two and a half years ago. Facebook ads, Facebook loves Facebook. So we would drive the Facebook ad over to the Facebook post, and then take the Facebook post and point it over to whatever funnel we were using. is is that does that still apply today?

Michelle Bridger  30:55  

Yes, we I’ve used that in the past I have not currently using that. But so when we when we’ve done it, my channel as of about nine months ago, and it worked well, like right at this this week. This time, we are not doing that. But I do the you’re taking the social proof when you do that. And I do think that it’s it’s really important to do that. So any way that you can can stay with that social proof. You have the social proof on that post. Any way that you can keep that social proof and keep that going. I wouldn’t 100% agree with that. Yes. Perfect. All right now for the questions.

Kelsey  31:36  

Okay, so from Dr. Cause, please ask about the integration from Facebook, Shopify to Facebook, I noticed there’s an integration and would love to know if that if that is a good option.

Michelle Bridger  31:50  

Like here’s where like, like, if I can blush blush, because I always leave that part up to my team. So yes, you can integrate it. There’s something about where it can be buggy. And so here like, I’m sorry, like, Doctor, cause it looks like I’m going to I would reach out to Shopify and talk to them because they have such amazing support. But But yes, I’m sorry that I get like, we’re we have clients on Shopify, but I don’t believe that we’re using that integration. So but I’m going to ask my team right after this and check into that. So to find out the answer to that, can you post it in our group? Michelle? Oh, I’d be so happy to do that. Yes, fantastic.

Kelsey  32:37  

Perfect. Okay, then, Simon, do you advise we do a whole range of Facebook and Instagram activity, as well as ads such as organic posts and influencers?

Michelle Bridger  32:51  

So your or get you posting organically is so important. It’s important that you’re posting on Facebook and Instagram, because Facebook is read is reading how active you are in posts, by posting on your business page to see are you just a spammy business that is just fly by night, and you don’t even really have a page. No one’s really interested in what you’re doing. And they’re using that information in all of this back end that they have. So it is important that you are posting organically it and then as you post organically, then people will be more likely to interact with your ads and you’re able to retarget people who are active organically in your funnel, those people who are liking sharing comments, saving your ads, you can retarget those people. So I’m rereading the comment. do you advise a whole range of Facebook Instagram activity? Yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, you need to play the game. And then yes, do the organic posts and influencers that’s part of that activity. That’s part of getting the buzz going around you. It’s really important. So for one brand, we did 2.5 million in five months. And we’re so busy on the Facebook Instagram ad, and you know, doing our thing working so closely daily, with this brain communicating back and forth, they’re making these changes. were collaborating just really on a daily basis for this really rapid growth. And we could tell when they slow down their organic posting, when they weren’t posting as many videos when they were like getting hired over there because it was tougher for us to bring in sales because of the retargeting and how they are interconnected.

Kelsey  34:48  

Okay, great. We kind of touched on this a little bit but from signing up for a startup with no audience, can Facebook ads work for a lower price point 20 to $25 and one time Notice

Michelle Bridger  35:03  

how you’re gonna want an upsell on that. So you’re going to want to look at what you can do for an upsell that just makes a natural. You know, what else would it be like a no brainer, like, Oh, I can, you know, I can do that or, you know something. So, in order to do that lower price point, always look at what you can do. Shopify has great, you know, it’s easy to add on and upsell, so with different things that Shopify has going on. So just look at a way to do that and come up with a product that Oh, like, that’s a no brainer, of course, like someone will just hit that little button, and I’ll you know, add that $10 item to it or something like that. Can you do it as a startup? Yes, lots of brands have, but it’s not an easy road. It’s not an easy road to go from nothing to mass or success on with Facebook ads, just because you have to have that you want some organic going, you want. You need testimonials, which is so huge. So I think, let me just count on that for a minute. Every time we do Facebook ads, we’re always, always, always always doing testimonials. We’re using them in the ad copy. We have them on the sales page, the initiate checkout page. Always, always, always, always, always, we’re using testimonials. So if you’re startup brand, that’s what you want right away is to get those testimonials. And then you want to have them all over your funnel, because people are going to believe your testimonials over anything that you say. So that i think that’s that’s one of the big things about being a startup is look for that and then utilize them utilize them utilize them.

Norman Ferrar  36:49  

You know, we’ve talked about video on on the podcast before and using video. It’s more engaging. But you’re just talking about testimonials. Rob burns over at video telepathy. He does this marketplace review video where he’ll go out for about a half hour or half a day or a full day, he takes the shot then he kind of cuts it all up. And it’s fantastic. I think he did it for snow, which Ruby has been on who’s that was her brand and she built built it up to nine figures. And I know that he did some of this work, it was absolutely marvelous because they could put it into groups, they could put it into their social, they could put it into their advertising. And people saw how people reacted to this really cool product. And anyways, that’s it’s worth the money if you can go and get some video reviews done like that. Or just ask people for testimonials. On app Sumo. They’re, I forget, I think it’s called video appeal or something. But it’s, um, it’s an instant video review. So you send it out to your client, they are customer, they see it and they can easily create a video which would be posted to whatever social platform that you want it. So that’s just another app that you can take a look at. But I’m so I’m taking over this whole thing and I shouldn’t I should leave it to you. But my question is if you’re going to be using first of all should you be using video in your on Facebook?

Michelle Bridger  38:28  

Yes, always, always always. We’re always running video and we’re always running image because we don’t know which is going to convert better. And you know surprising as much as we know video is so important it’s sometimes they image that does better than the video. Let me just camp on video for just a second. Like Yes, we want video of people talking about how great the product is like you need to buy this coffee cup. It’s so wonderful. But that’s that’s really important. But also you can just get creative like for Black Friday with one of the supplement brands is we made the bottles dance, you know just like like this like pretend this is a little supplement bottle. What I’m trying to put it in the camera here. So and if the bottles Just Dance they they just did a little jig $700,000 was attributed to that that video $700,000 now the yet we ran the images, we ran this we run that it was that video that just killed it. It was so fun to see the little dancing videos, and it was just probably a six to 10 second video and killer. So just get creative people that grabs the eye is the motion. Now that wasn’t about a testimonial video and so that talked about the importance of that but I just want to just camp on how important motion is in an ad and grabbing people’s attention.

Norman Ferrar  40:01  

Just recently, I’ve had two people talk to me about Facebook suspensions. And one of them anyways was a CBD product. The other one was a supplement product. The I forget the reason, but I think it was because of lifestyle, you have to follow the guidelines or you can have severe penalties. So where can people find the guideline? Let’s say they have a supplement? Where can they find? Or where do they work? Can they find out how to do this properly without breaking Facebook’s terms? Because Facebook, I know I’ve had a community suspended for over a year and a half now. And I can’t get that account back, I can’t get the profile account back that I used for that. So it’s impossible, it has been impossible. But what are your thoughts on that?

Michelle Bridger  40:55  

It is a very valid concern. So what you just need to do is have the URL memorize, but it’s just go just google Facebook advertising policies, and it will come right up for you. And then just read through very carefully, line by line by line they do try and make it is on one hand, they make it as clear as possible as they can. On the other hand, they’re very cloaked on what they will say, because they do not want people to scam the system. So they just are very, they’re very transparent on one side, and then there’s a whole lot of non transparency so that people don’t scan the system. Now you knew every single thing, right, you can be completely on the up and up and still lose your ad account. It’s extremely common. So and often you you won’t get it back. Some occasionally we will get it back. But we can just often you don’t. So you always want to have a backup at business manager, you should be running in business manager, which is business.facebook.com. Very easy to set that up very, very easy. So you want to be using business manager. And then you want to actually set up a second business manager to be able to have a backup on that. And then you want to have two admins, to just yourself and then someone else you really trust your spouse, whatever it is that you want to have two admins in case you’re hacked. And so those are some things around that in terms of getting an ad account restored. It’s really at the mercy of Facebook, you can try as much as you’d like. And but you know, after a while, it’s often the answer is no. So just play by the rules, CBD in the US is not allowed. It is not allowed you. So I had a client with they became a client, but at the time that they on their fanpage. So even if you are not running ads for CBD, do not have anything to do with them on your Instagram or Facebook page, because I’ll give you an example and autism brand was autism. Well, I won’t say they’re their company name, but they’re they as an affiliate there. You know, people are saying this is a great product. I don’t think that they were an affiliate for it. But people were saying, hey, you should know you have this problem. Your kid is having this problem, you should use CBD it works so well. And even just a mention of it on their fan page. Got them. They lost their fan page for a while they lost her advertising account, they couldn’t get it back. And then they brought him back in and I said you have to completely go through every post or last year for me to take this on. And you have to remove every single reference to CBD or you will continue to lose your ad accounts. I

Norman Ferrar 44:01  

had no idea about that. Very serious thought about advertising. I never thought about the post because CBD is very controversial when it comes to advertising. You know there. And it’s a I know people use like full spectrum. They use all these other words to kind of go around the system. They don’t realize how severe it is. And I’ll tell you what happened. It this affected one of my clients. So a person when an agency went on their profile, so the guy who owned the business, his profile was taken down. His pages that he had in his business were taken down suspended. This person had nothing to do with this company for over a year. And they suspended her account because she was linked to that account a year ago. It’s still suspended now. And that’s over a year ago.

Michelle Bridger  45:06  

No,

Norman Ferrar  45:07  

it’s it. It’s kind of like Amazon, there’s so big. And it could be a simple explanation. But you’ve got to have some form of risk evaluation. And I, I don’t know what that is, when it comes to that, like you, it’d be nice to have. Okay, here’s my plan of action to put it in. But it seems to fall on deaf ears. So let’s say, I wasn’t planning to get in on this. But let’s say that you do have a problem. And you get that email that your account is now suspended for life. What are what’s the step that you can do? I’m not sure if you can answer that.

Michelle Bridger  45:50  

Well, I’ve had that I’ve that not, that hasn’t happened to me. But some client, but I have over the years had a handful of clients lose their ad accounts. And it’s it’s just, it’s, it’s really, you know, it’s tough, it’s tough, because it’s your unit, yeah, but you’re just you come to a dead stop. And when you are advertising, that you can’t just come to like, it’s brutal for a business to just come to a dead stop. So you know, of course, you know, we, we talked to our reps, we we send the emails, we talk to chat, like we’re just like all over on top of it, to do everything we can. But at the end of the day, even talking to mark Moran, there just isn’t that much that they can do. Now, what is so important is the preventative. And that is that you have you are in business manager, you have two business, you have two of them, you have that you set up an extra ad account, that you share the pics though you have your main account account. That way, if you are running ads, you need to share that pixel over to the other ad account can occasionally run ads over that other account, in case you lose Miss in the case, the first one that you’re running ads in is shut down. And then we’re also making sure that the other one is good to go has all the information. So we’re being very proactive in my agency to be set up in case something does happen because things do happen. And we want to just be like, darn, let’s go, Heather, our account is ready to go. We’re moving. We don’t stop. We just keep on with it. So make sure you have that insurance set up.

Norman Ferrar  47:46  

Okay, very good. It’s I I’ve never thought about this. But is there insurance that you can get on something because it could be a huge, huge loss of income? Is there insurance that you could buy for something like that?

Michelle Bridger  48:00  

No, I just used that word like I know, but I know I not that I know. But it’s boy shirts. Well, there you go. There’s our next business venture for you. And I like there we go any insurance to protect this from the Facebook algorithm. But no, they’re not I’m aware of. All right, Kelsey.

Kelsey  48:21  

Okay, so we do still have quite a few questions, but from Nick’s stuff, does she use deep linking to make sure the Amazon link is an open in the crappy Facebook browser? Or do you direct them to a landing page

Michelle Bridger  48:35  

landing page. So Facebook is so particular about their landing pages, their bots do read the page that you’re linking to. So whether it’s a sales page, a landing page checkout page, Facebook bots do read that they’re reading that had they’re reading your their your image, they’re reading your page, and so and they’re reading your link, and so even this weekend, my agency, some of our brands, our Facebook is flagging the link? Well, it’s the link that we’ve been running for years, like some of these brands I’ve been running for years, and and it is flagging it as a wrong URL. So you want to just have a landing page of very good quality link, and go with that.

Kelsey  49:21  

Okay, great. Let’s see from Simon. So how long is the piece of string question? But for a budget of $100 to $200 per day? How long does it take to reach a breakeven in profit? What total budget Do we need to burn before payback?

Norman Ferrar  49:38  

Wow, that is a piece of string question. I’m not familiar with this piece of string. How long is a piece of string when I get a question that I can’t answer is a piece of string.

Michelle Bridger  49:52  

Got it? Okay. For budget of 100 to $200 per day. How long does it take to break to each breakeven and profit? Do you know That is that’s just not possible to answer because there’s so many important factors in that. So if you were running winner, okay, so let’s say we’re running an e commerce product. And we just started, I’ve run 100 $200 worth of it, I’m looking at how many impressions does it have, I’m looking at how many people are clicking on the link. So that’s the link, click through rate. But I’m also looking at my click through rate all because I want there to be about three times more in the click through rate all versus the link click through, because that tells me people are hunting around or clicking around. And they’re clicking to read more. And then they’re clicking on the link. So I’m watching how they’re going through the funnel, I’m watching, are they adding it to cart initiate checkout. And so even if I don’t have purchases, but I’m seeing the trajectory that I want in the funnel that their new people are moving through, then I’m like, I don’t have purchases yet. But we’re headed in the right direction, we’re going to spend more budget, but if my link click through rate is less than point five, unlike pull out wrong audience, wrong messaging, where they do not care about this. And so I’m wanting my link click to rate to be a minimum of about 1%, I can still be profitable, maybe at a point eight, but if we’re at point 3.5, I know like, didn’t hit the target market there, the messaging is off, something’s wrong. And so I’m reading my numbers all the way through to and then to see whether I’m on the right trajectory. If our numbers aren’t good, then we’re gonna back up and go, okay, you know, different whether it’s different ad copy, different image, for sure, different targeting. And then we look at the numbers again, and so all of this test testing has happening very, very quickly. So that we can be profitable, so can give you an exact number on that. But there’s so much more numbers that you’re looking at than just purchases when you’re first starting out.

Kelsey  52:17  

Okay, great, I think, yeah, that’s great. Okay, from red, we get many likes for our video from Facebook, you can reach them back and give some discount to purchase our products. How can we do this? Um,

Michelle Bridger  52:39  

personally, I would want a stronger indication that they were really interested in your product and worth your time, all that time management to do that, then just that they liked your video, because your video could be entertaining. Because maybe it’s an automatic toothbrush, like, oh, something really silly was done in the video, but that doesn’t mean that they want an automated toothbrush. So I would look for a stronger indicator like that they commented, or, or, or or something. But I think you need stronger purchasing indicators than spending the, the incredible amount of time to be able to reach out to those that liked it. I would definitely you can, since they’re liking your video, that is something that you can retarget and, and retarget those people who are showing action on your ad, remember you can retarget those who share comment, save, show, you know interact with with your brand in that way. And so I would definitely be retargeting them. So and talking to them specifically like, you know, rather than just showing them another ad showing them a more specific ad like, Hey, here’s 25% off for you know, I think like it sounds kind of like silly to say like for showing interest. Or for you know, you didn’t quite, you know, we showed, you know, you showed up on the initiate checkout page. Coming up with a good example. I think I’ve been talking too long, but you know, make it the copy as specific as possible. But that’s what I would do we we wouldn’t do that in my agency. What do you think about advertising on Facebook Messenger? I like it. I’ve had success with it. I think that it’s I think that it’s a good idea. So yes, any way that you can talk as directly to your customers as possible. It’s a good idea.

Norman Ferrar  54:45  

Okay, and and just one second. What about WhatsApp? So Facebook has bought WhatsApp? What’s the opportunities there to advertise?

Michelle Bridger  54:58  

That’s a good question. Currently, we are not doing Anything with WhatsApp, but we’ve talked about it as my agency. And so it’s something that I’m looking into, but we’re not currently over there. We’re just doing the Facebook Instagram ads. And then there there are other you know that the other placements that are there, I got it. Okay.

Kelsey 55:19  

I just wanted to add on to Brad’s point. This is kind of more like organic and long term thing. But if you do get likes, on your videos, on your ads, there’s a way to click on the like button and see who’s liked it, and you can invite them to the page. And so then they, you have the chance of them coming to their page and being part of your community, then you can slowly build out but it’s not really selling any products to them. But it’s a way to kind of capture them a little bit, but try to build engagement. Yeah, so a little more long term solution. But Okay, next question from Dr. Cause for Instagram, do you recommend we get a professional account? Does it help?

Michelle Bridger 55:57  

I don’t know that it helps. But yes, I would I that, again, that just gives indicators to Facebook, that you are a business that yours registered as a business that you’re serious. So those indicators are really important to facebook, facebook takes note of them.

Kelsey  56:14  

Okay. And Dolan, if I have a link on my Instagram to my Shopify homepage, on the session by refer reports, would visitor come up as direct? Or would it come? Would it go to social column?

Michelle Bridger  56:29  

You see? I believe it is direct. But I’ll I don’t know the answer to that. I believe it is direct. So that’s a good question, but I don’t know.

Kelsey  56:45  

Okay. And we’ll do that. I think this is the last one for next stuff. Does Michelle target engagement or something on the ad before targeting conversions?

Michelle Bridger  56:57  

And I think what you’re asking is we do we do the objective for engagement, is that they can actually use the campaign objective engagement, marriage 3d one more time does Michele target engagement or something on the ad before conversions. So we don’t normally do use the objective of engagement. So let me talk just about that for just a minute. And that when you’re creating an ad, you’re choosing what objective you want. So an engagement objective would say Facebook, go find people who will like, comment, and share. And Facebook does just that. You say Facebook, go find people who are likely to purchase Facebook will go to just that, and or Facebook, go find people who will be a lead for me, and they’ll go to our Facebook, go find people who will like my fanpage. Don’t do that. But they’ll do that, too. So they really understand us better than we wish that they did. But they really know us. And so we don’t do the objective right now, currently, my agency of engagement, there may be the rare case that we’ll do it if we quickly want to build social proof on let’s say, we, for some particular thing, we wanted to quickly have a lot of social proof, like shares comments, and then run it for conversions. But right now, in our ads, we’re not doing we’re not using the objective of engagement. It’s just not necessary. When we’re running the ads, we’re just being very specific in our messaging and our targeting, the way that we’re doing our ads, it’s just has not been necessary to gain that social proof in that way. And it just isn’t something that we’ve needed to put the budget towards. Also, if you are doing gaining the social proof in that way, Facebook is gonna go out and find people who don’t necessarily move through a funnel, but are likers or their shares or their commenters, but that doesn’t mean they’re buyers. And so you’re bringing people into your world that that are may not be your buyers and you want to be very specific and careful that as you’re running your ads, you’re really drawing in your target market which is buyers, you want buyers and so that’s one of the reasons why I don’t run engagement is because I’m bringing people into those what we would be retargeting and they’re not necessarily my target market. They’re likers but that’s I want buyers

Norman Ferrar  59:47  

of you, or do you set up campaigns for people selling on Amazon?

Michelle Bridger  59:53  

We don’t. Years ago I worked with a very large supplement brand on Amazon, and we work with him, they hit some special software and things like that. So the answer is no, I do I don’t, I’m not doing that.

Norman Ferrar  1:00:08  

Okay, but you’re, you’re targeting more ecommerce, correct? Yes. Okay. And by the way, guys, Facebook, there goes my dog, Facebook is can be a very Facebook and Instagram can be very successful targeting Amazon accounts. So just to let you know that it’s not just for eecom I was just wondering if Michelle targeted Amazon at all.

Kelsey 1:00:38  

Okay, and then we have one final question for Dr. Cause. I made the mistake and started in my Facebook as a personal account, do you know how to switch to a business?

Michelle Bridger 1:00:48  

Um, if Okay, so I’m assuming then you don’t have business manager. So the first thing you do is go to business.facebook.com. And then it’ll quickly and very easily walk you through the steps to set up a business manager account. Once you have your business manager account, then what you’ll do is you’ll bring into that second container, you bring in your business page. And then you can create a new ad account. And then you’ll start to run on that. I try to remember if you can bring in I haven’t worked with that situation for a while. You probably can’t bring in your you probably can’t bring in your your personal account, but you can start a new business ad account. Okay. And I’m going to plug in my computer. don’t want to lose you all again.

Norman Ferrar  1:01:50  

I have questions. I have a couple of questions. Before we go to the we’ll have Kelsey. All right. Are there any particular niches or? I guess the question is? What products should go to fete? were best on Facebook, or Instagram or the equal? Can you use just both platforms for everything. We use both platforms for everything. Okay, so there’s not a particular Okay, so for sell better on Instagram, Guardian shares will be both and you know, something else aren’t just strictly on Facebook,

Michelle Bridger  1:02:29  

we tend to think of Instagram as a younger crowd. And that, you know, brands will do better on that. But that Omni presence is what we’re wanting. Okay, we’re running lots of signals back from Facebook. So we’re running on both Facebook and Instagram. And most of our sales traditionally Come on the Facebook set side. But we do have sales on the Instagram side. But we want to be omnipresent. I want to know that when they’re on Instagram, they’re seeing my ads when they’re on Facebook, they’re seeing my ads. And that makes it powerful. And it builds authority. And that’s why we run on both brands.

Norman Ferrar  1:03:08  

Very good. I’ve got one last question. I mean, there’s so much that we could talk about, you know that we’ve got to have you back. But last question. Probably the most important is what is the biggest mistake people do when setting up their Facebook ad account.

Michelle Bridger  1:03:31  

When setting up their Facebook, do you mean their ads or like setting it up like actually know what let’s do

Norman Ferrar  1:03:37  

both. Let’s do setting up the business account and then setting up an ad

Michelle Bridger  1:03:44  

setting up their Facebook ad account. Right now at this time. There is an we don’t have time for this, like this is a messy subject. But the iOS 14 update that’s just started this week, you have to have certain parameters set up or Facebook just simply will just turn off your ads, or they won’t perform right now starting right now there’s just an awful lot of knowledge base that you have to have, in addition to just throwing up an ad. And so the biggest mistake right now is not being right on top of this iOS 14 update and knowing what’s happening and how it’s going to change your ads because it will. So right now at this time this week, that is the biggest mistake that you can make. And so just be really well informed and stay really well informed. Because even this week, some big changes happened in ads manager about how how the data reads out and things like that. So in terms of myth, your ads in general, the biggest thing that I see is that ads are not clear or compelling or congruent. And so those seem like so big Sick like, Well, of course my ads gonna be clear. But I do an awful lot of consulting with businesses where they’re like, are just ads are just converting come in and you know, they hire me for an hour, two hours or half day or whatever to come in and really do a deep dive on their ads. And it’s like, not really understanding what this product is, what do you guys sell. And so there’s very fine. Sometimes it’s like a really obvious and sometimes it’s a very nuance, smaller nuance about really speaking to you not really speaking to your specific target market. But just moping anyone buys rather than speaking to a particular person, and you want to be talking to this particular person. So make sure that your ads are clear, compelling and congruent. And that’s, you know, a whole nother topic. But that’s something I do a deep dive on. And what we are just rigorous on in my agency, and what really sets us apart is that we’re just all about the messaging because Sure, we can have everything technically running fine, and still not have the numbers. Unless the messaging is so clear to call out to the pain points of benefits, everything about the product or service, whatever it is. And that’s where we really dive deep into the messaging to make sure that it is crystal clear. And it just takes a lot of rigorous testing to get that right and stay on top of it.

Kelsey  1:06:29  

Great. Perfect. Okay, so that was the last question, Kelsey, why don’t we go over to the wheel? Okay, here we go. Kelsey is famous. Okay, so we have Oh, can you not see it? Oh, just a second. share my screen. There we go. Okay, so we got our we’ll have Kelsey here. We’re gonna shuffle the names up. Oh, this is for the 45 minute consultation and 321. Who is it gonna be so fun? Who got it? Right? on the line. Wow. Okay,

Norman Ferrar  1:07:33  

so that’ll be that’s a great price. Plus, we’ve got the end Calcio put the link in there for how to claim your free PDF. And that’s good for anybody who’s listening. And if you’re listening on podcasts, you just check it out on the show notes. Okay. So Michelle, thank you so much for coming on today and telling us a little bit about Facebook ads, we’ll have to have you on the go a little bit further, a little bit deeper. Maybe we can talk about writing compelling content for your ads next time. But thank you for coming on. And how can people get ahold of you?

Michelle Bridger  1:08:09  

Yeah, so my website is Michelle Bridger calm. So Michelle bridger.com. You can take a look at a case study on there, you can take a look at the success stories that we’ve had. You can also reach out to me and email Michelle at Michelle bridger.com. And we’ll chat about your Facebook ads.

Norman Ferrar  1:08:30  

Fantastic. Alright, so Kelsey, you just need to have rat rats already one, probably 1000 times. Anyways, yeah, it is rigged, and Kelsey is accepting money from rad. So anyways, so just send over 2k at lunch, lunch with norm and rad. Kelsey is set up. Okay, everybody. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed today’s content. That’s it for today’s podcast. We’ve got our special guest on Friday. Returning team time. Yep. Mr. King. So Kevin King is going to be on and if you have any questions at all. Usually before Kevin comes on, there’s a bunch of questions. So if you’re posting it in in the YouTube channel or in Facebook or in LinkedIn, just let us know. We’ll gather them all up and we’ll throw questions at Kevin. I always like backing him into the corner. But anyways, it’s always a blast having him on he’s on Friday. And that’s it anything else Kells?

Kelsey  1:09:33  

No, I think we covered everything. Yeah, sorry for the technical glitches today but um, that’s something we can’t help with weather and the software that we use it’s cutting out so yeah, so you

Norman Ferrar  1:09:46  

should you shouldn’t divide or guess with generators. Kelson? That’s right. All right, and smash those like buttons and what else goes and subscribe to the YouTube channel.

Norman Ferrar  1:09:58  

There you go. All right, I got to do it. All right, everybody. So tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at noon central or Eastern Standard Time. And we really appreciate you being as engaged as you are being part of our community. Just we couldn’t be here without you. So thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai