Facebook Ads Strategy for Beginners with Michelle Fernandez

Want to know how to use Facebook ads in your business? Whether you are at the beginning or trying to scale, stay tuned. What's up, coach? I'm Beverly Simpson. I'm the owner of PT Profit Formula, and today we're going to be talking all about Facebook ads strategy in a powerful way. Whether you are starting at the beginning and maybe only you have a $10 budget, or we are trying to ramp up and start scale. So if you like this video, go ahead, hit like, if you haven't already, hit subscribe and tap that bell to be notified when the next latest and greatest video comes out. Now, listen, if you're brand new to Facebook, guys, and it feels like, oh, my gosh, this is so overwhelming, I can't do it. Or you're trying to adjust to the new iOS policies, or you're feeling scared or nervous to spend thousands of dollars and not make any back. Well, I brought expert Michelle Fernandez to the podcast and we recorded it, and we're to roll that interview today. So without further ado, let's go ahead and roll that interview. Michelle, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. How are you doing?

Good. Good. I'm so excited for today. Thanks for having me.

Oh, my gosh, are you kidding? You are going to people's minds. I am so excited to have you on the show. Honestly, it is a pleasure and a privilege. So for those of you who are listening and you don't know who this amazing human being is, just share with us a little bit about who you are, who you serve and how you got there.

Yeah. So I am Michelle Fernandez, and I am all about helping people basically grow their business right through paid traffic, specifically Facebook advertising. And I help coaches and course creators and really online experts just get visible and scale their business. And I also help them because a lot of times people think, oh, I'm like, my ad is going to do all the work. But what happens is sometimes, or as I say, the job or the role of the ad is to get the lead. But really your funnel is your best salesperson. So sometimes you have all your metrics that gets that lead, but when they land on that page, it's like, womp, womp, and then they go away. So what I feel is my sweet spot is I really look at everything, find those gaps, and figure out how you can fill the gaps to get a higher conversion, both on your ads as well as your sales, because ultimately, that's what you're really looking for.

Okay, awesome. And I'm so excited to dive In I can't wait. We're going to just talk all things Facebook ads because I know that there are so many misconceptions about how to use them and also just people get steered into the wrong spot. So I'd love for you, if you wouldn't mind just sharing with us a little bit about the pros and cons of using the boost button.

Oh my gosh. Is there, is there a pro? I am, I am not totally sure about that. No. So a lot of people see it and here's what happens that you even get this notification from Facebook, right? And if, if you don't, if you're not familiar with this and don't know what I'm talking about, sometimes you scroll through and it'll have like this little blue button and it'll sometimes suggest like, boost this for you to get more exposure on that particular post. So the reason why Facebook suggests this is because they've now identified that that post is getting about 95% more engagement than any other post on your page.

Right.

So it puts it right underneath to catch your attention so you can continue with that engagement and grow. But here's the thing. When you see it, don't press it. Don't get tempted. However, here are a couple of reasons why I say this. Number one, it's like buying a pair of sneakers and then you're like, yes. And then you go to put them on and you're like, oh, the laces are missing. It's like you can still use them, but it's not going to get you very far.

Right?

And then the other reason that I am not a fan of this is because Facebook is identifying that post is getting better engagement. However, it doesn't know your overall marketing strategy. So just because you post like a clever meme or something like that, that may not be in alignment with what you're trying to do, right? So I always suggest, let's just say it is something that you're like, this isn't, you know, in alignment with what I'm doing. Go to Ads Manager to actually promote the post. Do not do it in. I think it's called like ad Center. Now don't do there. Take the time to go over because it gives you a few bells and whistles that the ad center doesn't. Because if you're going to be spending your hard earned marketing dollars, you want it to make sure you can optimize it. So definitely take the time to go do it in Ads Manager.

And also too, I mean, we are like Are there any pros for me? There's a pro for Mark Zuckerberg. You're essentially doing when you hit that boost button is you're signaling to Facebook and Instagram, which is the same Facebook that you know. Oh, this is an amateur.

Mm.

Right. And you, if you're running a business and using Facebook advertising, you are not an amateur.

That's right.

So, yeah, I know, but everyone wants to hit that boost button, and then I love it. My clients think I can't tell that they've hit the boost button. Right. I can see. I'm in ads manager. I know that you hit the boost button.

Exactly. It's like I'm watching you.

Okay. So I also, you know, I'm curious. You know, you talked about the marketing strategy, and so something that comes up, and it came up for me too, is when is a good idea to use Facebook advertising? Where in your business should you be using the Facebook advertising is part of your marketing strategy. And. Yeah, we'll start there.

Okay.

So when you should. So.

Hmm.

Okay. So I kind of look at this in a couple ways. I always think you should be running some sort of ad campaign. And the reason being is because organic marketing can only get you so far.

Right.

In order for you to have consistent, predictable income in your business, you need a steady flow of new leads coming in. So the only way that you can do that is by reaching people who you have no idea who they are and they don't know who you are, and bring them into your ecosystem.

Right.

Get them to know who you are, what you're about, who you serve, and let them decide if they want to go on that journey with you.

Right.

So when you're talking about at what stage of your business should you do this? I look at it a couple of different ways. If you're just starting out and you have no following, this could be a good way for you to kind of build your following, build your list, possibly. So then you can acquire that as an asset where you own, and then you can later nurture them and target them without having to pay marketing dollars. But you're taking that time where they become a warm market. And you can also build your audience to target later. So those are also really good things. And there are ways that you can do it where you might be saying, oh, but I'm just starting out, and I don't really have a budget for that. And it's kind of like, okay, how can we get scrappy? What can we eliminate? Whether it be from a business expense or Even if it's just, I know you probably hear it all the time, like maybe I don't go to Starbucks today and just do a very low cost advertising campaign that will still start doing the job. And I'm talking about maybe $5 a day. You could probably even do something a little less expensive. But even just with a low, small budget, I guess.

Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about that? Like if you were to expand, expand on, you know, what are the types of campaigns, like if I was someone that's brand new and I don't have that great of a following and I'm trying to push out what to reach some people, to bring them into my ecosystem. What are the types of campaigns that you would recommend doing?

I would do the least expensive are a video view, which I really love these because video is king and people warm up to you much faster. So it's a, it's a, it's a better tool for you to use to qualify your audience faster because someone is going to see you, hear you and decide again if they want to go on that journey with you. You can also meaning, oh, I'm. Oh, who's this Beverly chick? Oh yeah. Nah, I'm not really getting her or oh my God, I love her.

Right.

It's just a quick thing and that's okay because not everybody has to like you and that's exactly what you want. Then you can also measure how long they're staying with you and watching through your video because the longer they watch, the more qualified they are.

Right.

So that's also something really good if you already are blogging or having a podcast or something like that. Traffic campaigns are also inexpensive that you can run and you're actually sending them off the Facebook website to like a blog, podcast or something where then they can consume more, usually free content, free from you to again build that know like and trust and really kind of move them towards becoming your raving fans. So those are the two that I normally do. The other third one, that's also, I would say more cost effective and effective in your strategy as a post engagement. So it's like a one step up, a video view where it's like that Facebook is actually looking for people who are going to like comment or share. So you could still do like a combo of a video where you're asking them to take an action like hey, let me know what you think about this below.

Right.

And then from there from those comments, you can start building your relationship organically with them as well.

Okay. So I Have two follow up questions. Okay. For anyone. And this is a little bit of an advanced question. So if you're new to Facebook guys and you're like, what is she talking about? Then I'm going to go ahead and recommend that you go to your computer right now and open up Ads Manager so you can see what we're talking about. Because she's talking about like, when you go into Ads Manager, you're going to get prompted to create campaign and you're going to get a whole bunch of options to create campaigns. So we talked about traffic, we talked about video views. And then as you kind of go through the process to set up the ad, you're going to get prompted to, you know, should you attach a button when you're doing like a video views ad or an engagement ad? Like, is there strategy around using a button or not?

Yes. I thought you were gonna go on. And then I'm like, that's a question. Yes, absolutely. Because think about it, if you just give out this great information and then they're like, omg, I need to work further with them. Now you're just kind of leaving them hanging. Always put it there as an option for them to take you up on your thing, whether it be for a lead magnet or a low ticket offer. Something that you always, I don't care what you're doing. Want to give somebody the opportunity to work further with you.

Right.

To dive into more of your stuff. Definitely. And then it's funny because somebody was just asking me the other day, they're like, oh, well, I'm not getting that many clicks. And I'm like, but you got somebody to sign up. And Facebook was not looking for people to actually give their email in exchange for the value. So they loved your video so much and that you got a few leads from it when that wasn't even the objective that you were even shooting for. So for sure you should have a button on everything.

Okay, I love that. And you know, when you go on, you know, so you talked about those three, those three traffic. So you, when you go into Ads Manager, you'll also get prompted to do like brand awareness or like reach. Are those ever valuable campaigns?

I would say no to the brand awareness because you can use the video view or post engagement as a brand awareness because it's just getting your name out there. But no, I would not use that reach, possibly depending on what you're doing. And I use reach to, let's say, retarget someone who has, let's say, landed on a page or opted in as like a reminder to join my webinar reminder. You signed up for my bootcamp or they were in the bootcamp or something. And then now you want to remind them doors are open. So depending on the size of your audience, it's less expensive to do a reach campaign. And what reach means is simply that it's gonna. You can set it however you want. So let's say I say everybody who landed on the thank you page, I want them to now see this ad two times every day. So then that way your ad is coming up in front of them, and it's a less expensive way than if you did a conversions ads, which is you're looking to convert them to a sale. So it's just a little less expensive and more effective when you have a smaller audience.

Oh, that's interesting. Can you do the same thing with the traffic ad or is that only with the reach ad?

You can do that with a traffic ad, you just can't measure how many times a day they see it. So, you know, like, sometimes when you're looking at, you're like, I don't want my frequency to get, like, up to three or four. Like, when you're doing the reach, it's like you want to get them the ad in front of them as many times as you can in a shorter period of time.

Okay, I love that. That's powerful. Okay. I'm like, oh, I'm over here taking notes for my ad strategy. And then, you know, I love that. So now the, you know, the thing is, is you'll often hear a lot of Facebook ads. People will say, like, oh, don't, you know, you don't need to do Facebook ads if you're just starting because you don't know if the back end is gonna work. And that is true, and I'm a huge component of that. But at the same time, there is an element of wanting to use these types of ads so that you can just test your message.

Yes.

See if it's resonating. So there is a benefit to having these types of ads running. For me, I just set a budget that I know that, like, if I don't make this back, that's okay. That's my Facebook ads budget.

Correct. Or like, if you are even starting off, and this is. Sometimes it's hard to wrap your head around it. But I think once you understand, you'll see the value of it is that when you're doing these video views or something like that, you are not going to see an immediate return on your investment. Because the whole idea is to be building this group of people or this audience of people who get to know who you are, what you're about, who you serve, all that good stuff, stuff that then you can later come back and target them at, let's say, a conversion campaign, which is more expensive. However, since they're a warm audience now, you're going to be paying less cost per lead or cost per purchase than you would somebody straight from a cold audience. So there is a method to the madness of just trying to do whatever you can do to get everybody into your ecosystem.

I love that. Now, how do you measure the performance? You know, because you did mention that you don't really get an roi. It might seem like you don't get an ROI on the top of your ads. How do you measure the performance of whether or not the content is resonating or if the audience targeting is right? Like, how do you determine as a business owner whether or not they're working? And I'm using working in quotes. Like, how do you decide that? And then what are some of the, you know, the measurements that you kind of look at and then go and figure out?

Okay, so this is also a little bit higher conversation, but let me see if I could do it. And then you asked me to go deeper if I didn't explain it correctly. Okay. Or clear enough. So if we're talking, let's say video views, you would go and look at what I was saying. So let's say when you look at, you'll see there's like a results column. And then that is what you're optimizing it for. So it'll say through place, but the through plays are like 15 seconds.

Okay.

So when you go, you can sort from your columns and you want to pick, I think it's called video performance. And then that'll expand it and it'll show you. Okay, of these 3,000 people who watch through place, how many of those 3,000 watched 25% of your video? 50%, 75%. And then that way you can evaluate, okay, how. How long do people go to the end? And then from there you can see, okay, let's say people start dropping off at even the 25% mark. You can look at that and say, okay, what did I say in my video at these certain points? And what might I change to create more curiosity or to get them to stay through the end?

Right.

Or, okay, I'm seeing people are jumping off. How can I put my call to action more towards the Beginning and then of course, repeat it towards the end so at least they will hear your action that you want them to take, whether it be to click on the link or comment or whatever you want to do. When you're looking at anything that has messaging, like whether it be a traffic or conversion campaign, you also want to be looking obviously at the results that you're getting, like how many people are actually opting in. One of the things I always look at is your landing page conversion. So I look at your link clicks and your results and then I divide those two and that'll give me a percentage, then that'll tell me of the people who are clicking on the ad who are actually opting in. And then if it's anything below, I usually go 30, but let's just say 25 to 30%. Then you know, it's the landing page that needs some changing because people are clicking but they're not signing up. So that's also a good determination to figure out is it the ad or is it the landing page. And then the other thing that I really look at, the CTR link click through rate, because what's that going to tell me if my messaging is not resonating with the audience? So if it's anything of cold audience, if it's anything below 1%, then we need to work on your messaging because it's not strong enough or compelling enough to get them to click.

I love that. And warm audience. You usually too.

Yes.

Two, so, so now you know, for me too, I get into the habit of this, you know, is. Is asking myself, like, all right, well, I want to create the right ad. What's the best ad?

Right?

And I know in theory that's like, it's just not true, but it exists because the truth is that everything works right in your experience. Right now I'm curious two questions. Number one, what are you seeing performing the best in terms of conversion rates, consumption? Like, is it short form? Is it long form? What is long form? And then the second thing is how do you keep up with the trends? Like, how do you notice the shifts?

Okay, so what works? It's funny because one of my clients, she's always like so and so says, and I'm like, okay, but I'm glad that she is keeping up. So whether, when we're. Let's talk about that first. So whether it's in your, in certain groups or your coaching groups, if maybe it's even from your coach, you might even go like social media examiner, like, they're always up to date with what's going on. Even, like Facebook itself will tell you what's performing well for their people. However, I always say it depends on you and your audience. So this client was like, so and so says video is not working. And I'm like, really? Because all your videos get way more engagement or like the performance, like totally outweighs any static or GIFs or anything like that.

Right.

But I have another client that I'm like, her videos do not do so well.

Right.

So it's just, I think it has to do with your audience of people. Like, if you have somebody that is targeting like new moms, are they going to have time to sit there and watch a video when they got this brand new baby?

Right.

They might need something quicker that's going to catch their attention and be like, yes, I need this to solve my problem right now. I don't want to sit there and watch anything. Just give me what I have. So you really just have to stay in tune with what's going on. Always give yourself in every ad set. You should at least have four ads underneath. And testing all the different creatives. You know, do a video, do a carousel, do a gif, do something just to kind of see what is going on, what is your audience resonating with. I've even tried, I do experiment with this a lot. I do the dynamic creative. So I don't know if you've ever tried those campaigns, but when you're setting up, there's a little box that says Dynamic Ad Creative, or dca, whatever DCA stands for. It's dynamic creative something. And then what you can do with there is you like throw in, I think it's like up to 10 different videos. Like I said, videos, GIFs, static images, whatever you want. And then you can also test different messaging, different headlines, the whole shebang. And then you're giving Facebook. Okay, let's mix and match for specific people. So a lot of times I might, especially when I'm first getting started and I don't know this audience. I'll test it all out. And then when you're looking at the ads, you can do a breakdown where you're like, okay, let me break down the text. Which one was the winner? Oh, it was long form copy number one.

Right.

And then, okay, which creative performed the best, who opted in based on the video or the gif? And then I might do a new campaign and then I'll put that gif, would that ad copy together and see how that performs, because those are my winners, right? The best performance. Does that help?

It does. It does. And I'm gonna just, I'm gonna just summarize real quick and then I'm gonna ask you another question. So when she's talking about ad set, she's talking about the audience like the second. Well, in your ads manager, who's this being served to? And then when she starts talking about the ad creatives, that's the third level in the ads manager. And it'll say ad, and it will show you that it's attached to the ad set.

Yes.

Oh, my follow up questions on that. I have two. Okay. Is cbo. So for those of you who've never heard of this, okay, this is called campaign budget optimization, where you literally turn on this little toggle that says, facebook, please optimize my budget and serve the majority of my budget to the ad and ad set. That's, that's doing and performing the best.

Right.

So would you turn the CBO on?

Right.

Turn it on with your ad set and for creative and use the dynamic test.

Yes. So I usually use CBO all the time. And however, with a caveat, when I'm first starting, I always do at the ad set level. Not only is it your audience, but it's also your budget. So if you're doing cbo, you cannot do your budget at the ad set level. Right. It turns that part off. However, you can do ad set limits. So what I normally do is depending, let's say just to round out numbers, I'll say, okay, I'm going to do $100 a day for my total budget for the total campaign, and I'm going to have four different ad sets. So four different audiences that I'm going to be targeting. I will set an ad set limits on each of those audiences for 10 or $15 a day. Because at the beginning I really want to know which audience is performing the best. And if I don't do that, then as soon as Facebook catches one audience, they'll throw all the budget to that one audience. And then you kind of don't really know if the other audiences really had a fair chance.

Right.

So doing the ad set limits really gives everybody the chance that you're looking for to see, okay, yeah, all the same money went here. And then Facebook will throw the rest of it to the, to the best performing audience. And then you could go back and you can remove those ad set limits if you want and then just let Facebook do its thing. But that's how you can tell if the audiences are really performing.

Oh, that's smart. I never even thought about that. Love that. I will ask you budget budgets next, but I don't want to, I don't want to go off this one yet because I do have a thing. Because I've noticed that when I did do the dynamic creative, it made my reach harder. Like my reach got more expensive, meaning that it like my CPN cost went from like $10 to $100. Meaning it $100 to reach a thousand people or a million people.

Right.

So if, okay, so you may not want to keep this on all the time. You may want to just do it to test it just enough. Depending on your budget would be how long you would keep it up for you to then to determine which ones to keep.

Right.

So even if it's like a week or five days or depending on your budget, like I said anywhere, I would say between three and seven days, then I would turn it off and then do a new campaign with the best performing ones.

I love that.

Okay.

I love that. Great. So now can you share with us a little bit about. Can you share with us a little bit about determining your budget?

Yes. This is a question I get asked all the time, right. Because I think people think there's like this magic number, what are all the influencers spending? And sometimes if you actually hear that number, you might just fall off your chair.

Right.

And I do always say it really just depends on how much you have allocated in your marketing budget.

Right.

And then once you have made that, um, you've determined what your marketing budget is, whatever it is. This is how I break it down. When we're talking about brand awareness, not literally a brand awareness campaign objective, but like those video views, things like that. I usually go anywhere, like maybe 10 to 20% of your budget there. Okay. So in this part of your budget is where you're putting out the value based content to really get to people to know who you are, what you're about, even staying top of mind for the audiences that you build up.

Right.

So you want to create the content that gets people to decide if they want to go on the journey with you as their guide or amplify the content that you find is most engaging, whether it be like Facebook lives, recorded videos, your podcasts and blogs. Then in the next part of, let's say your budget pie, you want to look at conversion. So this is where you're actually either getting a lead or getting a buyer if it's a low ticket offer. Okay. And I would spend about 30 to 60% of your budget in this area. Okay. So these are people that you're looking to build your list with. A lead magnet, your webinar boot camps. Then the last part of your budget is smart retargeting. So anywhere between 10 and 20% of your budget would go in here. And this is the stage where your audience is super hot.

Right.

They know who you are. They already know your offer. And you're putting the ads in front of them to get them back into your funnel. Right. So it even goes back to what I said earlier. No matter how much your budget is, it's easy to do it once you have these percentages. And you know you're going to get more results or more people into your funnel than you would if you did it organically.

I love this. So now I'm going to just be honest and fully transparent because that's what I do here in this podcast. But I have resisted using retargeting ads a lot. So, you know, when it comes to. And the reason why, and I'm sure a lot of you might feel this way, is that, you know, let's just say we put a budget like $500, or maybe we do $1,000 and go crazy. Right. And there's this feeling of like, but why do I want to break it up and spend 200 on retargeting when I could just use that and get more leads.

Agreed.

And I resist. I resist trying to divide my budget. And I'm like, no, no, let's just put the whole budget into conversions because then they're gonna stay and love me. So go to your people to, you know, kind of shift their thinking around that.

I do. And I see your point. And I have done no retargeting sometimes because I do agree with you. And I think it all depends at the stage of your business and how many people you actually have in that audience. So I never want to say an audience is too small. That's not what I'm saying. Because we worked hard to get these people right.

Yeah.

However, what's for something to really work, because I've done retargeting campaigns, and I'm like, no real results. It was just getting in front of them. So you almost have to come with the mindset of. That's why I recommend the reach. And you can do a super cheap budget. Like, you can do a total budget of 20 bucks if you're only going to run it for two days.

Right.

And you put. I usually put in those ads. So there's a lot of ads in this ad set, like I'll do like open cart. This is what you're going to get. Or as a reminder or I do definitely testimonials. I do. Objection busters. I usually do three like Time, money. Can I do this right? And I just put a whole bunch. So it's not too obnoxious that they see the exact same ad over and over, but it's a reminder. And this is one of those things that maybe won't pay off now, but the next time you launch. Because remember, people always don't buy the first time they see you anyway.

Right.

But if that's something that's uncomfortable, remember if you did conversions now you own the asset. So now you have them and you can nurture them through your email sequence.

Right?

Yeah. So true. And so good too. And also it's just a reminder too. I always, I always go back when people are like, I don't want to bug people, but I'm obsessed with Hallmark channel. I swear they have like the same three commercials for an interest right. Of same episode when calls the heart. I mean we would live for those commercials because they just told you I never watched the show, I just watched the commercials. Right. They have so many touch points for this one episode and they just keep doing it.

Right, Right.

Which is essentially what we're doing with our retargeting.

Exactly.

Yeah. When you. It's so funny. It's so true.

It is.

When you are retargeting your, your warm audience, do you use, you know, do you. Okay, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna back up that question for a second because the things we talked about was conversion ads. So that's when we're optimizing for, you know, we want them to, we're saying to Facebook, go find me the people that are going to convert, whether they become a buyer convert or they're a convert to go in your opt in. How do you determine which one to use for a retargeting ad?

Well, it depends on what you're retargeting for. So I usually use based on the audience sizes that. Because these people, there's like a part of where I learned retargeting their audience size were huge. And by huge, I mean hundreds of thousands of people. So if you're, I don't want to say you're normal, but if you're like a decent size six figure type of business.

Right.

Or coming into your six figures, you're not going to have an audience that size. So even to just even not use the Conversions objective because you will pay a little bit more or you have to do like $20 a day to get the sale. Because here's the thing. When you're talking about your cost per purchase, if you have, even if you have a $250 offer or 997 offer, your lead might just cost you 20 bucks. So if you're running $20 a day, you might get a lead for like a cost per purchase, like a sale for the $20. And people might say, oh my gosh, $20 per purchase. Well your, your thing is $250, right? So when you're looking at that, sometimes I'm like, well was it worth the 200 to pay, you know, the 20 bucks for the $200? You still just made a lot of money, right? So that's why I always go with the reach because I think that's the best thing just to get you out there. You obviously have the button to buy and then you would send them to the sales page.

Right.

If you're doing some sort of retargeting to remind them to get on the webinar or remind them to get into your boot camp, then I would do something super cheap and you would just put the link to the Facebook group or wherever, something like that for them to make sure they show up there.

Oh, okay, I like that. That's good. Now when you're doing a reach though, how do you, how do you, how can you tell or measure if the, whether or not the person came through the ad?

Because when you're doing your audience, you're targeting either your list, which I would highly suggest you do now especially with the iOS, or you're. When you create that custom audience with that URL, then you're only going to be targeting that audience. You're not going to target like everybody interest based or all your warm people. It would be only who visit a specific page.

I see, I see. So you, but you wouldn't be able to know if they came through the ad or like your email.

Oh, you mean when the purchase. Exactly. Because remember on the reach it, you can if you put custom call ins to show the purchase. So it's kind of like that's why I say do it very small. And then you're like, okay, I'm going to put the whole budget and whatever sales and leads I get, I go off of that.

Got it, got it, got it.

Yeah.

When I was learning it, they were like, okay, so we just threw $5,000 and we just ran whatever to the Reach and whatever came in, came in. We didn't even know. And we just said we were good with putting this out there. And in my mind, where I'm having to database, like, I'm sure yours is going in. I'm like, tracking. I'm like, how do I know that $5,000 got me something? I see where you're coming from.

Yeah. Well, and this is why I also tell people that it's not about either. Or is that paid advertising and organic efforts work synergistically together. If you already know that an audience person needs eight touch points before making a decision, then they're going to get your email in the morning and then they're going to get reserved with an ad and a reminder to go, oh, yeah, I wanted that. So there's. The idea is not to keep them in these little bucket of containers. The idea is to bring them into your system.

Yes. I'm glad that you said that, because that is so crucial. So let's be open for something maybe a little different or what you have. So what if when you had them opt in, you also got their phone number? Yes. You might send a text message. That might cost you 4 cents a text message. But that's way cheaper than what you're running on the ads.

Right.

So now this is another way that you're paying. Yes. Because you have to pay your data, whatever. But you have them on your list. You're still getting them with their device.

Right.

That they're having their hands at all times if they don't check their email. So there's other ways that you can also nurture them organically. Because you're right. The whole idea of the ads is to bring them into your, you know, your ecosystem. And you own that asset now, so use it to the fullest.

I love that. Okay, so now I want to talk a little bit, if you wouldn't mind. Can we go deeper on how we start to build our audiences to, like, our cold audiences? Like, how do you recommend us to go and find our ad sets and how big should they be? I feel like that's something that keeps changing.

Mm.

Lately I've been doing when I'm testing, I do anywhere between 2 and 5 million people in the audience because it's a little small enough for me to determine. Because if you go too large while you're testing, then it's hard to tell, well, wait, which audiences in here are really working, if that makes sense. So I do a little bit smaller. And then once again, I've done stuff then I kind of lump them all together and go to maybe 10 to 15, 20 million.

Right.

Because I know that their audiences are working. And then if it ever gets out of whack again, then I might go down to smaller and retest some audiences.

Right.

To go in there together. Um, and that's the other reason why I do multiple ad sets within the campaign. So I can see where. Where's the audience overlap, you know, are these all people? Because I see a lot of people do one campaign, one ad set, one ad, and then they do the next campaign. But it's all the same thing. So then I'm like, number one, you're taking your budget and you're spreading it out. You can be testing it all together.

Right.

I'm laughing because she just described me. That's exactly.

Drives me crazy a little bit because I see and I'm like, oh, my gosh, you could have taken that whole 50 bucks or a hundred bucks and really tested it all together.

Right.

I totally forgot the other thing you asked me.

Sorry. It was my fault. I was laughing. I was like.

I was like that. Just thinker.

No, we were talking about. We were talking about like, how big your audience is.

Yeah.

And how you find, like, how you go and pick it. Like, I know that we can do look alikes of social medias and like those kinds. But like, when you're, you know, trying to go to cold. Cold, especially if you're new. I've got a lot of people that are new. Or I've got some people, like physical therapists, where it's not as easy as, you know, when they're, you know, as like the demographics, because all different kinds of people will have knee pain or shoulder pain.

Right.

Okay, so two. Two schools of thoughts on here. Number one, sometimes I go, well, first, where do you find your audience? So I really go, well with my customers. I have like this whole questionnaire, like, where, like everything. What tools are they using? Like, what shows they're watching, what books they're reading, like, who are they following? And then you always to see, like, outside the box. So, like, exercise is a big thing.

Right.

Because remember, when you're doing ads, it's all like, you're basically competing in this buying market. So if you go after this, if everybody's targeting the same Weight watchers, right. You're going to pay a higher cost per lead because everybody's competing for the. That audience's attention. Well, what if you did something outside Weight Watchers? Like, what else would a person trying to lose weight Do? Well, maybe they would buy workout clothes or sneakers or whatever.

Right.

Maybe they would be reading certain recipe books. So who's writing those books? So those are the kinds of things that you want to kind of think just kind of complementary to some of those other things and see what kind of audiences you can find right now. And specifically of what you just said, sometimes you have to go broad with your targeting, but very narrow on your messaging. So it's like, you know, these people are shopping at Whole Foods or they're, I don't know, doing whatever. But then in your messaging, you're speaking to the person in your niche, you're speaking to their particular problem and how you can offer this solution, you're speaking to the transformation or the result that they are looking for.

Right.

So does that help with that?

Totally helps with that. And I love that breakdown that you gave us about like 2 to 5 million when you're testing.

Right.

Because it's interesting. You know, I had. Because I hear. And you hear, you know, you want to have. And Facebook will prompt you, you know, when they prompted me to combine your ad sets because we want to have a bigger audience. But then it's hard to see. So like, I had lumped my look alikes from my videos, my social media and my email all in one, but I actually ended up pulling it apart so that I could see was doing better at first. And then to see like, okay, so this one's not doing better.

Mm, right.

And then being able to look and assess that. And this is a huge reason, by the way, friends. And I know I've said it a million times, but I'm gonna say it again. Do not get a bot. If you have a bot and you have mannequins and in your Instagram, it's gonna hurt your paid advertising on the back end. Yes, your followers. Because then Facebook is gonna go like, all right, let me go try and find a whole bunch of more mannequins. And it ends up killing you when you could instead spend that money on doing a video views ad.

Correct? Right, correct. And on this subject, you're going to notice obnoxiously, there's a box that says detailed targeting expansion, something like along those lines. And Facebook will automatically check this box because again, they're trying to reach more people. Always uncheck it. Even if you uncheck it and you go to publish, before you hit the publish button, make sure it's not checked. Because what happens, you'll see. You'll see like, okay, I have an audience of 3 million people. And then all sudden, you'll look up and it'll say, 28 million people. And then you're like, wait, what happened? That's because they're automatically checking the box. Just make sure it's unchecking, because then you'll get a real, true sense of who's in your audience and if they resonate with you, for sure.

And so along those lines, like, when you go to make those lookalike audiences, what's the difference between the 1%, 2%, 3%, 4% and so on?

Okay, so the cool, the lower the number is, the closer they are to whatever you're creating the lookalike. So if it's 1%, they're closer to looking like your page engage audience or your video view audience or your list. The further you get, like 5, 6%, now they look less like them. That makes sense. But there was a time where I was doing 6% look alikes and I was killing it. But now it's going back, so you'll see how the trends go. So now it's going back, especially with this iOS update, it's going back closer because you want to get it as close as possible.

Yeah, this iOS update is pain. Can you share us with us a little bit? You know, how can we Prepare for the iOS update? And we can't really talk. It's too long and deep of a conversation to talk about it in terms of conversions and measurements, so. And not super advanced. I'll tell you exactly where to go to find Michelle so that you can go ask her for people at the beginning or new. You know, everybody panics whenever there's something to change. They're like, Facebook ads are dead. Facebook groups are dead. Everybody panics every time there's a change. Okay, we're just going through some growing pain right now. So how best can we prepare for this iOS change?

Okay, so number one, you need to verify your domain, meaning the domain must be owned by you. So if you have your funnels or your landing pages with like click Funnels and it says Michelle fernandez.clickfunnels.com that is not a domain I own that is owned by ClickFunnels. So you will need to get some sort of domain on your own that could be sent to your landing page. So you want to verify that. So the whole idea of the iOS update is that Apple wants to make sure that wherever their users are clicking on that, they know it's secure and all that good stuff. So Facebook is doing its part and telling its Users, hey, we have verified all these domains. We have verified all these links and everything that we're sending you to. So you should feel comfortable clicking on this now. Some businesses, they're asking them to verify their business. This is not happening to everyone. I had to do it. A couple of my clients did not. So you might have to send in your articles of incorporation or whatever. They want to make sure you're a real business. Sometimes they ask you for your driver's license and they need to verify you're a real person and not a bot or not some, I don't know, somebody working out of their basement doing who knows what.

Right.

Another thing that they asked you to do is the two factor authentication, which you should have set up anyway. Just saying. And the last thing I would ask you to do is. You'll notice, I think it's on your business settings. I think it's safety center. You want to have a backup user. This should be your spouse, somebody in your company that you totally trust. Because if for some reason you get shut down, then somebody can still access your account. So you should definitely have that set up.

Oh, that's new. I didn't know that. Thank you. Oh, my gosh. I love the podcast. The podcast just makes it harder. I just love it so much. Okay, so that was really. That was really good. But, you know, I'm also just curious. You know, I know we're kind of in the new stage, you know, in terms of people opting out, because that's the other thing with the iOS, is that they have the option to opt out, which would mean that it's going to mess up your reporting. Like, for example, I have a client right now that Facebook says $17 a lead, but it's not $17 a lead, it's a $30.

Right.

So many people have opted out of reporting, correct?

Yes. So what they have. You do. And I'm. I get it, but I don't get it. So with the event. So event is a conversion event. So what is the event that is happening on that particular landing page? So are they viewing it? Is it a purchase? Is it a lead? You know, are they. Maybe they're initiating checkout. Like they're on your checkout page, but they haven't bought yet. So they give you eight events to use per each domain, and you don't have to use them all. Because if you're like, I never, I don't know, do something. I don't know what. One of the things that you could pick, but I would suggest you put them all and then they have you prioritize them. And the reason they do this is because supposedly if somebody opts out, it's still going to fire something like a few days later and it'll go off your highest priority. So if you have the highest priority as a lead, if that person opts out and they fire it off, supposedly it's going to come back as a lead. Now, I agree with you and I'm not understanding this because again, the other day, like today, we're in the middle of a launch with someone and she's got, I don't know, a couple hundred leads and on Facebook it says seven. Oh my gosh. So the cool thing is, which I was doing before anyway, because I never trust. I'm not that trusting. So I always want to check wherever your funnel is at, wherever you're getting these leads or purchases. And every day you should be tracking and monitoring, okay, what is Kajabi say versus what is Facebook say? And then what I do to calculate my cost per lead is just say, okay, kajabi says I have a hundred leads. Facebook says, I spent 100 bucks. So it's costing me this.

Right?

So that's the way I do it. So it's just a little extra step for you. But either way, as a business owner, you should really know exactly what's coming in and what's going out. So it's better for us to keep track of.

My gosh, this was just so mind blowing. So the thing is with Facebook ads that those of you are listening to this and you're like, this is so overwhelming. Overwhelming, right? I just going to go ahead and tell you that you have a science brain and your brain is built for this. Right. The only reason why we can talk about this is because we've been in the trenches and we've gone in there and we've tested and guessed and, and we've messed around with it, right? So you're going to see, as you go into your ads managers, you're going to see that. You're just, you're going to learn it's pretty and it's easy. It's easy. I just. That was great. I was like, oh, my gosh. But if you're new, it's not going to feel easy. But get the hang of it. You'll feel how easy it can be.

Yes.

It's going to require you to get in there and, and be okay with being new. Get in there and start, you know, tinkering around.

Right.

Just being patient, like Give. Give yourself the grace to be patient, to learn this, knowing that what. What you can get from it and saying, okay, I know I'm not going to pick this up. And who knows? Maybe you will pick it up. Just go in with the open mind. Because a lot of people just turn it on and they don't even move forward because they're like, what? All these columns. Be open to learning.

Yeah. And I'm just gonna say this too, because I think one of the mistakes that people get into is like, I'm just gonna hire this out or I'm not gonna do it, or they think it's too hard. But it's really important as you go to delegate, because I think delegating and hiring is really important. But if you don't know some of these fundamentals that. That we're going over, you won't be able to assess the performance of your ads manager.

Yep.

You could end up losing more money. So it's important to have an ads manager delegated out. But know, be able to know what.

You'Re looking at 100%. I have heard horror stories. Like, I. I honestly wonder, like, how people sleep at night when I hear some of these things that the ads managers are doing because the people don't know enough. Or when they decide to share, they're like, oh, now it's too late.

Right.

So if you decide to go that route, you should definitely have an understanding or be all up in the business, like, hey, what are you doing? Can I see the ad copy? Can. Can you share with me the metrics? Like, really have the conversation with them, and if for whatever reason they don't want to share with you, then that's obviously a red flag and you really want to partner with someone who cares about your business just as much as you do. Like, you want them to be an extension of your team, knowing with all their heart and soul and all their efforts, they're really working in your favor and they don't miss a launch date or something like that. Because I'm like, wait, what? How did they miss your whole launch? Or, you know, so those are very important things.

Oh, so awesome. And I want to be very respectful of your time. So for of you who are like, okay, I need help, where can I send them?

Yeah, you can actually, you can find me on my podcast, the Traffic and conversion show. Some of that might just be putting some seeds if you're not ready. And you can always send me a dm. I'm on Instagram at the Michelle Fernandez. And you can always send me a DM there.

Okay, Amazing. And of course, we're going to link that all up in the show notes. So thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I really appreciate it.

This was such a great conversation. I'm so glad you were like, no script. We're just gonna. I'm gonna ask you all the questions I've been wanting to ask. This was awesome. And I'm always here for whatever you need me for.

Love it. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for hanging out with us today. If you like this video, please be sure to leave a comment in the comment section below. Let us know your biggest takeaway, what questions you have, and if you haven't already hit subscribe and tap that bell to be notified when the next latest and greatest video comes out. I'll catch you on the next video.

State or something like that. Because I'm like, wait, what? How did they miss your whole launch? Or, you know, so those are very important things.

Oh, so awesome. And I want to be very respectful of your time. So for of you who are like, okay, I need help. Where can I send them?

Yeah, you can actually, you can find me on my podcast, the Traffic and Conversion show. Some of that might just be putting some seeds if you're not ready. And you can always send me a dm. I'm on Instagram at the Michelle Fernandez and you can always send me a DM there.

Okay. Amazing. And of course, we're going to link that all up in the show notes, so thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I really appreciate it.

This was such a great conversation. I'm so glad you were like, no script. We're just going to. I'm going to ask you all the questions I've been wanting to ask. This was awesome. And I'm always here for whatever you need me for.

Love it. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for hanging out with us today. If you like this video, please be sure to leave a comment in the comment section below. Let us know your biggest comment takeaway, what questions you have, and if you haven't already, hit subscribe and tap that bell to be notified when the next latest and greatest video comes out. I'll catch you on the next video.