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The HaBO Village Podcast

A Smarter Way to Advertise on Facebook [Podcast]

Episode 49: In this episode, Michael and Kathryn give an overview of Facebook Advertising and discuss why it's such a powerful marketing tool for your business. If you've been told that you need to advertise on Facebook, but have never had a clear picture of what that means, then give this podcast episode a listen.

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In This Episode You Will Learn:

  • The definition of interruptive marketing and why it's still an effective form of advertising today.

  • Why using frequency in advertising and growing the awareness of your business is critical.

  • The multi-step process of Facebook advertising that helps move customers through the Buyer's Journey.

  • Why competency in Facebook advertising matters for growing your Passion and Provision company.

 

"This is why Facebook is amazing. You can structure your ads in a sequence that allows you to increase the probability that people are going to buy."

– Michael Redman

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Michael:        Hello, and welcome to HaBO Village. I'm Michael Redman ...


Kathryn:
      And I'm Kathryn Redman.


Michael:
      We're really glad you're here today. Thank you so much for tuning in. Today, we're going to talk about Facebook Ads, ads in general a little bit, but we're going to talk about Facebook Ads, and we thought we'd just do an update. I just got off a phone call yesterday with some new prospects for Half a Bubble Out Marketing. For those of you who don't know, Kathryn and I have owned a marketing and business consulting firm for a little over 16 years now.


Kathryn:
      Mm-hmm (affirmative), couple of days.


Michael:
      Long time, couple of days, couple of days. We're quite well [chiffed, inaudible 00:00:33] with that, very proud of that. The fact that we made it through year five was amazing. Then we made it through year 10, which again blew statistics away. I was jumping up and down when we turned 10.


Kathryn:
      In the middle of all that was The Great Recession, so-


Michael:
      Then we went through The Great Recession-


Kathryn:
      Surviving that was a good gift.


Michael:
      Which technically was a depression. I don't understand why these people think that they can just call it The Great Recession and that's what it is, although, okay, I want to give props to The Great Recession/depression issue, because ... Y'all have to know that my grandfather's 98 years old, and yes, he's still alive. Grandma passed away last May, and she was 97. They were married 75 years, just about two months shy, a month shy, of 76 years.

                          Grandma and Grandpa actually lived through The Great Depression, and my grandmother is basically like, “This is not a depression. Anybody who says it's a depression” ... Because I asked her one day, I said, “Grandma, what do you think? Everybody ... There's people saying, technically, this is a depression we just went through, with all the statistics.” She's like, “You know what?”


Kathryn:
      "Were you lining up for food?"


Michael:
      There were very few people-


Kathryn:
      “Could you get gas? I don't think this is the depression.” That's what she said.


Michael:
      Yeah, absolutely, right? That whole process was there, so that was points towards was it a recession or was it a depression? All that to say, “We've been at this 16 years. We've really enjoyed it. We've survived it. We're having fun today, huh?”


Kathryn:
      I'm shaking my head, because I feel like you contradicted yourself.


Michael:
      Did I?


Kathryn:
      You said it wasn't the, it was, it was ... I don't even know what you said.


Michael:
      Do people care?


Kathryn:
      No.


Michael:
      Probably not.


Kathryn:
      Can we talk about Facebook?


Michael:
      Let's talk about Facebook.


Kathryn:
      Okay, because they care about that. Sheesh!


Michael:
      All right, we're glad you're here today, and we're going to talk about ads, because I just think it's real important. I got a phone call yesterday, and I talked to two really intelligent men, who'd been around the block a few times, when it comes to business, and the company they work for, but are in leadership with, is doing Internet service in rural areas. They're doing great stuff. They're staying up with technology. Even one of them actually worked within Silicon Valley for quite a while.

                          These people were really smart, intelligent, and they called us, saying, “We want to do Facebook Ads.” That is one of the things we do with a lot of our clients. Usually, our clients come on, and we do a holistic package, and then we add in Facebook for that.

                          That said, what I've found, and I find often, is that folks who have not done regular advertising on Facebook, and these two gentleman hadn't yet ... This was a new thing. They're thinking, “Hey, we need to reach these people. We know a little bit about Facebook. We've read some stuff about Facebook. We've heard.” They were talking about it, and so I got on the call.

                          I said, “Hey, why do you want to do Facebook? What are your goals?” They had a couple, but for the most part, they weren't quite sure what they were going to do with Facebook. They'd just heard it was really good. They'd heard they could do some things.

                          In the conversation, I got to educate them and update them on what Facebook is good for, and what Facebook is not good for, because, quite frankly, if you haven't been involved in it, the media hype, what people think about it and how they talk about it, is actually a little behind the curve.


Kathryn:
      Imagine that.


Michael:
      Imagine that.


Kathryn:
      Imagine.


Michael:
      Facebook is a really powerful tool. Right now, I really like Facebook advertising, Google advertising, and YouTube advertising, for paid advertising. I think that LinkedIn advertising is probably going to be a really good thing, although I just don't have enough data on it, so I can't speak to that.


Kathryn:
      Probably more if you're B2B than B2C, though.


Michael:
      LinkedIn?


Kathryn:
      Mm-hmm (affirmative).


Michael:
      Well, I would say LinkedIn is definitely a B2B market. People are saying that you cannot do B2B on Facebook, and we just don't find that to be true. That's not true at all, because when you look at the stats, it's amazing how many people are on Facebook. For us, a lot of folks that we would say, maybe they're not on Facebook because they're in their 50s or 60s or 70s, in some cases, with some companies, the reality is a huge chunk of those folks have been migrating over for the last five years, and they show up, and they have accounts. They may not be on all the time, but they're probably on once a month minimum, and they're checking with their kids. They're checking with grandkids. They want to see the pictures.


Kathryn:
      "Babies, I want to see the babies."


Michael:
      We've got one client, who swore he wasn't going to get on, swore he wasn't going to get on, doesn't have the time, everything else. Then his son, who's in the Army, he lived on the other side of the country. He started thinking about it more. He had kids. He really started thinking about it. They moved to Italy, and are stationed in Italy. He absolutely now is on Facebook, watching and looking, just to see the pictures. When they're there, they're also in front of an ad. It just happens.

                          Facebook is a really powerful tool, LinkedIn. Pinterest is also a place that people are buying, as we're talking about online ads, but the three big ones — Google, Facebook, YouTube — are really great places. There's a couple of things you need to know about these things, if you're going to be informed.

                          I'm not going to teach you today how to make Facebook ads or anything else, but I do want to give you a high-level perspective on them, so that you're up to date, as of July 2018, because this will age a little bit, but you'll have a basic concept, so that you can have a better understanding, maybe be more informed at a cocktail party, or if you're a leader making decisions, trying to decide what's the best place to invest your money right now, maybe today will help, okay? Sound good, Kathryn?


Kathryn:
      Sounds good to me.


Michael:
      All right, so first of all, Kathryn-


Kathryn:
      He'll do most of the talking today. I'll just ask questions along the way.


Michael:
      What do you think the biggest concern is we see with folks looking at Facebook Ads?


Kathryn:
      I think they assume that they can make direct sales from Facebook. I think that's the first thing. "I put an ad on Facebook. I'm going to drive direct sales." Because of the way that Facebook functions, it's a little bit like television, in the sense that suddenly you're dealing with interruptive ads. People are not there looking for your ad. They didn't get on Facebook going, "Good grief! I just really need to buy X-Y-Z service or product."


Michael:
      Yeah.


Kathryn:
      Right? The assumption that you can drive a direct sale, straight from Facebook, especially if the audience doesn't know who you are, is flawed.


Michael:
      Let's talk about that real quick, because that's a really important point, the issue between direct sales and nondirect sales. What do I mean by nondirect sales? I mean that you need multiple touchpoints from somebody, and you're not going to get a sale just from one comment, one ad, or something like that.

                          Now, here's what happens is ... Kathryn has mentioned the difference between interruptive marketing and inferred, about non-interruptive marketing. Non-interruptive marketing is something like Google AdWords, where somebody goes on, and they are already ... They've already come through. “I have a problem. I think I should solve the problem. I'm looking for a solution to the problem,” and they've gone online to search and Google. That makes perfect sense to all of us. We've all done it.

                          Interruptive marketing is, “I'm not searching for it, but you're trying to talk to me about your solution, which may mean you're trying to educate me about the problem. You may tell me that I have a situation or a problem. You may be telling me that ... Because I already know I have a problem, you might be giving me an opportunity or a solution, or you might be telling me about your company, but you're interrupting me in the middle of everything.” That's what radio and TV has been since its inception.


Kathryn:
      Right.


Michael:
      You're listening to a program, and all of a sudden, we're going to break now for a commercial break. “We'll be right back after the commercial break. Thank you very much.”


Kathryn:
      That's if you're on talk radio. If you're just in music radio, then you're just getting commercials.


Michael:
      You're just getting ... Nobody's telling you.


Kathryn:
      Nobody's [borning/warning, inaudible 00:09:03] you. They just happen.


Michael:
      They just slam right into your ears.


Kathryn:
      Yep.


Michael:
      Okay. Just so everybody knows, interruptive marketing has had an amazing amount of power and significance, if you don't think so, and actually it still works.


Kathryn:
      Yeah, we're really big fans of radio, for example, so-


Michael:
      I like TV.


Kathryn:
      We can talk about that a different day.


Michael:
      What happens is the reason it works is not because of the medium, as much as the psychology and the neurology that's going on in the brain, and how our brains are put together. When you are trying to interrupt people, multiple frequencies are important, because you're also trying to get in front of them, so that when they have a need, you're top of mind. Getting top of mind in somebody takes a lot more repetition, frequency.

                           We look at three times, three frequencies a week, three impressions a week, 52 weeks a year. That may seem like a lot, but it really does cost a lot to do these type of things. Okay, that's interruptive.

                          Facebook is interruptive, because Facebook is not a search engine. Nobody goes to Facebook and types in a title ... very, very, very few people, a subject, and starts looking for it. Maybe they type in a subject, and then they look for a channel or a page that they can look at and subscribe, like looking for a group that does keto diets, and so I'm looking for that. You might search for something like that, or I'm looking for a site that teaches people how to have membership sites. These are things that you might be looking for. For the most part, what you're going to get is you're going to get a single list of channels in Facebook that you can go look at.

                          Now, Google is a search tool and YouTube is a search engine, and so they're actually going to show you those kinds of things, so that's great. When you're thinking about looking for people who are looking, direct sales happen faster. It really can.


Kathryn:
      What good is Facebook then?


Michael:
      Facebook is good-


Kathryn:
      Just interrupting people, just showing a video among a hundred videos, what's the point?


Michael:
      Well, one of the things is it does allow us to have frequency.


Kathryn:
      It's an awareness opportunity?


Michael:
      Well it is, it depends ... Okay, great point. It's an awareness tool, yes, but it's also a ... You can move down the buyer's journey in it, because what we do is, with Facebook, you want to think about multiple steps. Direct sales, one ad, look here, come to my website, and hopefully they buy. Statistically speaking, that's really bad.

                           We call those people cold traffic. They've never been to your website before. They've never engaged with your business before, your brand before, and all of a sudden, click, over. That actually worked for quite a while on Facebook, and the rumors that still perpetuate is Facebook's great for that. You can do that. You just need one ad, and it's going to be amazing. It just doesn't. It does a little bit, but it's quickly, quickly, quickly becoming a very small percentage of success. A lot of those folks are having to work harder. Now, even the folks that are called direct marketers, who try and get things fast, they're realizing that you have to have multiple touchpoints, and they're creating what's called a funnel. When you're thinking about this, folks, I want you to go ... Facebook's good, but you have to figure out a couple of things, and you're going to have multiple ads, and you're going to have to do some testing.

                           Then, eventually, what you're going to do is you're going to say, “Okay, if I touch you” ... For example, I show you a video that's just a feel good video about our company and our values. This is why we got into the business. I started Half a Bubble Out, because I was looking for a place that I could use my gifts, talents, and skills, and I could make the decisions. I could really impact how I work with companies, and have the freedom of owning our own company and making decisions that I thought were going to be best. I also was hoping that there were financial ... There was going to be some financial freedom that came along with it.


Kathryn:
      There has, there has been occasionally.


Michael:
      That took a few years. That did not happen in the first five years for us. That said, that's what I'm thinking about doing. That was why I got into it. We found that. We found a company that allowed us to have the financial freedom, the relational freedom, and decision-making freedom to do a whole lot more with our life and make a greater impact. It just fit who we were. I can tell that story in a minute, show that video, and just engage people, like, “Hey, here's this company, and look at what they did.”

                           It's similar to what companies are doing when they talk about their extracurricular work with nonprofits or anything like that. So-and-so did this. Sometimes those videos are PR, because they've really messed up their brand, like an oil spill, and now they're starting to show commercials about how people have done these amazing oil cleanups and all these great things they're doing in the Gulf, but that's just not common. That's not what I'm talking about.

                           What I'm talking about is really that whole concept of they haven't heard about you. This is probably going to be one of their first or second or third contacts with you, and they're hearing and feeling about something warm and fuzzy. The reason you do this ... Most people are going to say, “This is dumb. It doesn't do anything to drive sales.” That's not true. What it's doing is warming them up. It's the same as somebody walking into your store, and you actually are polite to them, and you say, “Hi, how are you? Is there anything I can help you with?” You just let them look around a little bit. You don't try and say, right off the bat, “Hi, I have something for sale. Would you like to buy it? Here it is. It'll work for you,” without them feeling like they've warmed up to you or anything, or they know anything about you.

                          If we do that first video, and then they watch it, and they go away, what Facebook does, and this is the most powerful part, is Facebook allows you to retarget. Now, it's more common with everybody else now. YouTube does it, and Google can do it, but Facebook ... It's super powerful over there. That means that I can set up a trigger and measure if somebody comes to my website, or if somebody looks at my ad, or if somebody watches my video.

                          Let's say I do a one-minute video, and somebody watches it for 10 seconds, I can trigger it and say, “Wow! Somebody paid attention for 10 seconds or 20 seconds or 30 seconds,” and I could even measure percentages, 10%, 50%, 90%. When I see they've engaged a little bit with it, they're aware of us, we're not strangers anymore. You say, all the time, “Oh, yeah, I think I've heard of those before,” or, “Yeah, I just saw that company the other day, for the first time. Oh, I noticed that new business downtown, when I drove through downtown. There's a new sign out.” It's that kind of awareness.

                          Then, I can send a second ad that talks a little bit more about what we do. In Half a Bubble Out, our marketing company, we do marketing and business consulting. We HaBO Village, we're starting a membership site this year that helps folks, at a lower price point, get more business education and training, so that they can build a Passion and Provision company. It's all about the fundamentals of building a Passion and Provision company, with more profit and joy. I'm going to talk about what that looks like, and how that works, but that would be a second ad. The first one is talking about the problems and talking about the things we do, and who we are, the more about who we are as people and the things we enjoy in life.

                           Okay, I can actually send that second ad only to the people who've watched a certain percentage of my video, who've looked at my ad, who've been to my website. I get to choose. Now I have control over the guiding of these people, as if you were in the store, and they were ... You had a storefront, and they walked in, and you could help them feel comfortable and find the information they want, that you got to guide them around, without them feeling like you're hovering over their shoulder.

                            Now, there are ways to use this technology and abuse this technology, and you can ... If you abuse this technology, you actually can push people away, but statistically speaking, what we're finding is that even the people who are using it to excess are still having a fair amount of success. People who are using it wisely, that's just amazing. That's changing things.

                            If I think about it, not in a two-step process, this is what we believe and why we got here, a little bit about us; this is what we do, second video; and then the third video could be, “I'm offering you a product or a service. Are you interested in this?” I can figure out trigger points. When somebody keeps coming back and paying attention, they're showing interest.

                            If somebody watches 50% of my human interest ad video, and then they actually get shown an ad of what we do, and they look at the ad and maybe click on something to go look at something else in my link out of my ad, where they watch 50% of my video on what we do, then ... or how we do it, in that if we're talking about the business itself, and they're more interested in that topic, then the next thing is, “Here's what we can do for you. Would you be interested in talking to somebody if the price point's [on, inaudible 00:18:59]? Would you be interested in this product if the price point is real low?” It might be a product or service.

                            I just bought, on Amazon the other day, a lemon squeezer. I could've gone down to the store and bought it, but it was easier to go on Amazon. It's one of those presses that you cut the lemon in half, or the lime, throw it in there and squeeze, and all the juice comes out and the seeds don't, right?

                            I started ... I looked. I went back a couple of times, and then, all of a sudden, Amazon knew that I was looking for it, and they started showing me ads of different brands. Then I was being offered stuff. Then I found one that looked good, and the ratings were good, and the price was right, and I purchased it. There was a multi-step process just in something like that. I need to do this, thinking about it, blah, blah, blah. Your Facebook ... Facebook has the ability to do this thing that we call the buyer's journey, we've talked about in other podcasts, to really warm people up.

                            That's really, quite frankly, one of the most amazing things about it, is just that idea that you can use an ad structure. You could structure your ads, in multiple ads in a sequence that allows you to increase the probability that they're going to buy. We call it increasing the conversion rate.

                            We're finding that when you put ads in sequence, and you use tools like retargeting in Facebook ... In Facebook you're allowed to use videos, too, so you use videos, and you use realistic pictures, and you engage with the customer that way, then people self-select. All of sudden, you start with trying to be aware to a bunch of people, and a certain percentage of people watch your first video, and then you funnel them down, and you go, “Hey, these people showed some interest.” Then you show them another ad, and if they engage in that ad, a percentage of those people say, “Hey, I'm interested.” Now, you're finding the people that are basically in essence, by their behavior, raising their hand and saying, “I want to be educated more. I want to know more. I'm more interested.”

                            If you just hold off on offering the product or service, then you're going to be in better shape, and you can really ... Then you can start to measure, what was the cost I spent on all those ads, total, to acquire a lead so that your salespeople can talk to them, or acquire a sale. I'm telling you what, folks. Facebook, right now, is really good at that, but you need to understand these major factors. It's interruptive marketing, which means it takes more time, because people are not ready to buy at that moment.

                            When you use retargeting, they are ready to buy, and/or when you use retargeting, they're closer to the buying process. You just need to know that, when you're using Facebook, you can do these types of things, interruptive marketing. Use a series of ads that guides them through the buyer's journey. Then, from there, it becomes a really viable tool.

                            Back to the story of our prospects that called us, they were like, “We want to geo-target,” which means we want to show ads only to people who live in a certain area, because we are periodically opening up services to new towns, basically in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. When they do that, they're like, “Hey, we think we can do this, and we can get ads, and we can do this, or we can geo-target,” and you can with Facebook. When you do that, then all of a sudden, you go, “All right, that's great, but you need to understand the rest of this stuff, too, because we don't just create one ad, send it to the geo-target area, and everything's great.” That really is a high-level, but kind of in-depth view of what it looks like.


Kathryn:
      Both high level and in-depth, amazing!


Michael:
      Good point, but it is a broad brush. It's just what I would have in a conversation if you were a new prospect, just so you could make good, intelligent decisions. Right now, I want you all to be able to thrive. If you're going to run a Passion and Provision company, you have got to make sure that every area of your business is tuned up to a minimum competency, including your marketing, and using your marketing, and using tools like Facebook, or AdWords at Google, or YouTube.

                          Leverage is incredibly powerful. It costs you some money, but it saves you time. When it's done right, it is cost effective. It cancels out. That's why so many people use it. That's why we use it, as an agency, for our clients. You just need to continue doing it. You finesse it and work it, because it's not just flip a switch. It's too sophisticated anymore to just flip a switch.


Kathryn:
      No, or everybody would be doing it.


Michael:
      Ah, a lot of people are giving money ... There's people that say, “Get this.” There's people who say, “I'm supporting Facebook,” “My nonprofit,” even though they have a for-profit company, because they're so bad. When they're bad at the ads, you lose money. You've just got to be careful with that, because when you do these direct sales, you can lose a lot of money.

                          You don't want to do that. You don't want to act in fear, and make decisions in fear. You want to be informed. That's what today's about, really, is just to give you that idea. You can really do well. We've seen lots of good success ourselves and are mentors in this area, in the Facebook Ads, and stuff like that. Some of them are killing it on a regular basis. There's a lot of potential for it. Just know you're not going to get 300% or 400% return on investment in Facebook Ads. Those days are mostly over, unless you pay somebody a lot of money to help you with that. That's above our pay grade.


Kathryn:
      Yeah.


Michael:
      All right, well, Facebook Ads ... All that make sense, Kathryn?


Kathryn:
      Totally makes sense. That is why I was just quiet the whole time, just nodding and smiling. Yep, yep, you go. You go.


Michael:
      You do an awesome job of that. All right, so folks, we just really want to thank you. Appreciate you coming. This is an update today on ads in Facebook, so you make better decisions. We regularly are here talking about how to help you, as leaders of small businesses, build Passion and Provision companies with more joy and more profit.

                           We love doing that, but we also love it when you guys communicate. We love it if you come to our website at halfabubbleout.com. Click on podcasts, HaBO Village, and leave some notes on the show page or just communicate. If you ever need any help at all with your company, please come fill out a form. Just go to the website, and you can find our phone number and give us a call. We would love to talk to you about your business, and your desires and dreams and seeing if we can help. For HaBO Village, I'm Michael Redman ...


Kathryn:
      And I'm Kathryn Redman.


Michael:
      Have a great day.