In this episode of the Marketing Muscle Up Podcast, host Richard Toutounji interviews Facebook advertising coach Ev Chapman to uncover tactics that work specifically for regional markets in Australia and New Zealand. They define "regional" as any location outside the major metropolitan hubs (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane) and explain why strategies designed for dense urban or international audiences often fail in low‑density areas. The core advice centers on building a "blanket audience" using only age, gender, and a broader geographic radius, aiming for a minimum audience size of 50,000 and ideally up to 150,000 before adding interests. They caution against heavy interest stacking, which can shrink already small audiences. Creative rotation is emphasized, with a particular focus on video content: boosting videos (not static images) both gathers a reusable audience and builds brand equity. They also recommend expanding the targeting radius slightly (e.g., 5 km instead of 2–3 km) to capture outliers who are willing to travel farther in regional settings. Throughout, they highlight the massive, under‑served opportunity for local businesses in regional areas, noting less competition and the potential to dominate the local ad space. The episode concludes with actionable next steps for listeners and a call to share the podcast.
Chapters
Welcome back to the Marketing Muscle Up Podcast Show. I'm Richard Ternji, and really excited for today because if you're in a regional area that is not a capital city, maybe in Australia or New Zealand, and you're trying to run Facebook ads or paid advertising, and you're looking at other people, maybe some YouTube videos or some Facebook gurus that may have an accent, and they're located not in a regional area, maybe they're in the US, maybe they're in Canada, Maybe they're focusing on CBD locations, but if you're in an area that is regional, you can't listen to what that strategy is because it's a totally different strategy for regional areas. Welcome to today's episode of the Marketing Muscle Up podcast show. And today I thought I'm going to get this information off one of our Facebook coaches as well, Ev Chapman. You know her very well. Welcome, Ev.
Hi, I'm excited.
Yeah, totally. And I think everybody is also excited too because there's a lot of people in regional areas and Facebook's one of those things that people are saying, you know, it's just not kicking anymore. It's not what it used to be and fair enough, but this still has some good merits on Facebook and it still works. But I want to like specifically talk about regional areas and advertising, Ev.
Yep.
And, you know, how we can best get our results regional-wise.
Yep.
What do you classify as regional anyway? Like, what is regional?
It's a really good question because to be honest, like, if you were anywhere outside of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, I would classify you as a regional area. Not that I'm saying that other cities are not they're not like cities or anything, but it's about density, right? Yeah. So, and I think you said it in the intro, is that like, yeah, like a lot of the things that you hear about Facebook apply to countries, cities, places with large densities. So anything that's coming out of the US, it's actually really hard to apply in an Australian setting and New Zealand because we're a much smaller population.
Makes total sense. So what do we do? Is it worth running Facebook in a regional area? What's the strategy here?
So I would say, here's the thing to know is that like if somebody, if a guru ever comes up to you and tells you you need to either have like a million people in your audience, that is wrong. And then also if they're telling you like a lot of the strategies that you hear, will be strategies that work on either a national or an international level. So you'll hear things like stacking interests. So like put 100 different interests in. Yes. But the problem with that is that you have a small audience to start with. So if you start stacking interests, you're going to actually like bring that audience way too far down. And so what I suggest, and I just did a coaching call last week with one of our girls in Mildura. And I said, okay, let's just put in, and I call it the blanket audience, right? So you go whatever their radius is. And in a regional area, it may be a little bit larger. Like I live in a really dense area in Sydney. So like you wouldn't go more than about like 2 or 3 Ks. Whereas in a regional area, people drive a bit further. So you can kind of have a larger radius. And then you want to put like your demographics, like male, female, age. That's it, right? That gets you your maximum audience size. So if you just—
Sorry, age and regional area.
Age, gender, and the area that they're in. That's your max audience size. Okay. So if your audience size and in a regional area, this could very well be the case. If your maximum audience size to advertise to on Facebook is 50,000, then if you start adding interests in, you're, you're basically limiting that audience even more. So my suggestion is never to go lower than 50K.
Yeah, just don't get those interests too heavy. Just, just, just do the basics.
And sometimes you're not going to even hit the interests. So sometimes you're just going to go blanket. If you're already at that lower end of 50K, I would say don't do that. Just go blanket audience and let Facebook find your people. But then if you're in a bit more of a dense area, maybe you're in more of a kind of, you know, one of these larger regional areas, you might have, let's say, you have anything up to 150K or even further than that. That's when you can start to hit some interests and bring your audience down. So you kind of have this Anything between $50K and $150K.
Totally. And so the same applies we spoke about last week. Is it still, we still got to focus on the creatives, Ev? Is that the big thing still in regional?
Yeah, absolutely. So, and it actually applies even more. Like we have been doing this like in terms of like changing up creatives and stuff like that. Like I think, you know, years, like maybe like 3 years ago, we working with a client, I think in Ballarat, and we were doing exactly that. Like, so actually regional areas, we're seeing that happen earlier than what we're seeing in city areas where kind of audiences are starting to run out and you have to replace creatives and feed the algorithm really.
Feed the machine. Feed the machine. That's super helpful. So $50,000. If you're at that, don't touch it too much. Keep it, keep it blanket, keep it broad if you are doing Facebook. Okay. And what about things like, you know, everybody asks, what about boosting? Does that still work for regional?
Yeah. So the only time I ever hit the boost button is if I have a video. That's my blanket rule on that one. So, and the reason for that is that anytime you boost a video, or you put a video in a Facebook campaign, Facebook is collecting all of those people into an audience that you can reuse. So if you've just got a plain image with text, I would never hit the boost button ever. Not even in a city area. Even if Facebook shows up in your newsfeed saying this post is doing better than 95% of your others, you should boost it. Just don't believe Facebook when they say that.
Don't believe Facebook.
Yeah. You know, if you were tempted by the blue button, because all that's doing is just giving you vanity views and likes. Like you can't do anything with those people after. Whereas if you boost a video, you're at least collecting those people into an audience that you can use in the future. You're building brand equity. And, you know, boosting videos is such a great strategy for a local business, whether you're in regional or whether you're in a city area. Because what is happening is like even more than like if you were doing like an— if you're some kind of like national campaign or if you're an online trainer, because the density of people seeing that video is so good. So they're likely standing at their local supermarket looking at your video on Facebook and then, you know, looking up and your studio's right there. And, you know, and so it's where it's taking and kind of combining the digital with the offline. And it actually works, yes, so much better than if you had kind of a larger audience or a larger area to To advertise to.
So good. Very interesting. I think that's some super valuable information, especially if you're in a regional area. And yeah, regional areas definitely do travel more. It's a natural progression, right?
Yeah, I find that. And, you know, I always, even in the city areas, I still encourage people to put their radius a little bit bigger. Like, because you always get outliers, right? So you always get those odd few who are willing to drive that little bit further or—
Yeah.
Cross that bridge or, you know, whatever it is in a city area. And so, you know, if you're thinking, oh no, I'm just going to stick to my kind of 3K, I would extend it out to the 5 and just give those outliers a chance to To come in.
Give them a chance. I moved to a regional area recently and—
Yeah.
I was prepared to drive—
Yeah.
17 minutes, but then it was like, um— 17 minutes. I'm not sure. But—
Driving to the other— Like, for me, I feel like in the city, that's like so far.
Yeah, 17 minutes is a long way. If you go from Sydney CBD, 17 minutes will take you If there's no traffic, you could get Eastern Distributor, that will take you to North Sydney. You know what I mean?
Absolutely.
Across the bridge. Yeah. That will cross the road, it crosses the bridge. So it is a different level. And the thing I love about regional too, depending on the region, I can tell you right now that I know the region that I'm at is that there's very little people advertising except the big boys. And there's a lot of Gaps. There's a lot of space, there's a lot of opportunity. Um, so if you are an independent studio listening to this, the opportunity is massive.
It is.
Um, it really, really is. And every area is a little bit different, yes. However, um, you know, less com— less kind of people understanding if, again, if they haven't been plugged in, if they haven't done that education, if they haven't learned if they haven't realized there's competition, now there is massive opportunities for regional. And we love working with regional areas. We love— I love working with regional areas. It's just the opportunities plus.
Oh, it's massive. Like, I mean, you know, just the— yeah, I think just the wide open space in regional area. Like, you know, just to know that there's like, you know, when you're in a dense city area, it's like there is literally a studio on every corner that you're competing with. Where Whereas there is less of that. I know it feels like there's a lot of competition and that's going to be everywhere. But there certainly is, if you can get ahead of the pack, if you can educate yourself in marketing, you are so far ahead.
100%. That's firsthand. We see it all the time. If you are in a regional area and you're thinking, oh, I've got someone up the road. No, you've got one. If you're in a dense area, you've got 20. So regional guys, you got a massive opportunity. Looking forward to connecting with you guys. You are regional, reach out, say hello. And yeah, and make it happen. Make it happen. All right. This has been good. Want to keep it fast. Keep the pace up. Get to your Facebook now. Take the action. Get it going. Looking forward to some other episodes. We've got some— I've actually got some really cool guests coming up, which is super exciting so that you'll listen out for those ones there too. And like always, if you've enjoyed this episode, leave us a review if you're listening to Apple. I don't know if you can leave a review on Spotify, Ev, can you?
No, I don't think so.
No, I don't think you can. But Spotify is a great platform to listen to. With Spotify, I always, I always just, I'm always sending like a screenshot or like a link to somebody. I send screenshots to people that like, I just like screenshot it and I go, watch, listen to this. So if you are that kind of person, old school text message, that works well too. Just do that or just share the content across your social media. Thank you so much, Ev, for your insights on regional. It's good to know that. And I know you're, you're talking to a lot of regional clients in your coaching, Facebook coaching strategy. So it's good to hear that firsthand, not recycled information.
That's it.
Awesome, guys. I'll catch you next time on the Marketing Muscle Up podcast show. Bye for now.
