EPISODE 172 Getting Started With Facebook Ads: The List ...Podcast+-+Epis… · 3 Rick: I’m in...

1

EPISODE 172

Getting Started With Facebook Ads:The List-Building Series

SEE THE SHOW NOTES AT: www.amyporterfield.com/172

AMY PORTERFIELD: Well hey there, welcome back to another episode of the Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I’m your host, Amy Porterfield, and today we’ve got our old friend coming back to give us some Facebook wisdom.

I always love when he’s on the show. Rick Mulready, welcome.

Rick: So good to be back on the show. How are you?

Amy: I’m fantastic. How are you?

Rick: I’m doing good. I have a quick, little funny story for you.

Amy: Oh, tell me!

Rick: At the time of recording this I just wrapped up some webinar trainings for Facebook ads for local businesses. During the Q&A portion of one of them some guy pops on and asks, “What’s your affiliation with Amy Porterfield?”

Amy: Your affiliation, huh?

Rick: I was like, my affiliation? What kind of question is that?

Amy: What do you think he thought when he asked that question?

Rick: I have no idea. I was like, “Well, first of all there is no affiliation.”

EPISODE 172: GETTING STARTED WITH FACEBOOK ADS: THE LIST-BUILDING SERIESwww.amyporterfield.com/172

http://www.amyporterfield.com/172


http://rickmulready.com

http://rickmulready.com



2

Amy: We kind of look like we might be in business together though.

Rick: Maybe. I don’t know if he was just trying to get clarity around that or what.

Amy: What you should have said is, “She is my work wife,” and that’s how it is. We do so much together on the podcast and we’re always together and talking about each other through getting coffee together and talking about work.

I could see where he makes the mistake. But that’s kind of a funny word, “What’s your affiliation?” You should have said, “I’m her assistant.” I would have liked that.

Rick: I’m sure you would have. I thought it was funny and was like, “There’s no affiliation. We are very, very good friends.” But I had to share that with you.

Amy: Too funny. Well, I’m glad that we are affiliated, at least for you to be a regularly guest on the podcast because today we have what I am calling a golden post. You laugh at the name…

Rick: What’s a golden post?

Amy: Here’s the deal. I needed to come up with a name for when my students or I create a post that answers a question you get asked all the time. It’s a golden post because it’s one of those posts that really works for you in the sense that you can always talk about it.

When you get interviewed you can say, “I did a post about that,” or when you’re at a networking event the topic always comes up so you say, “I did a post about that. Go check it out at www…” To me everyone needs a few golden posts that they can go back to again and again.

Listen, it might not be the best name but I have been kicking around names for weeks so we just went with it. It’s official now because I taught it inside of List-Builder’s Lab 2.0 so it now lives in there.

Rick: It lives. A quick back story. Amy texted me one day and I won’t say the ideas we’ve been throwing around.

Amy: I’m going to say one of them because I still think it’s good.EPISODE 172: GETTING STARTED WITH FACEBOOK ADS: THE LIST-BUILDING SERIESwww.amyporterfield.com/172



3

Rick: I’m in the Portland airport on my way to Montana to go fly fishing and Amy texts me and says, “What do you think about this name?” I was like, “That is the worst name ever. No!”

Amy: The backstory is that Rick and I have been talking about this type of post for our students. We want our students to create these so we’ve been talking about names forever. He now doesn’t talk to me about it because I’ve sent him so many names that he’s like, “Get over it! I don’t know what we’re going to call it.”

Rick: Move on.

Amy: Move on. But I thought “hustler post” was a great idea. It means you are hustling and getting it done. This is what your students want. He said it sounded pornographic. He didn’t like it and told me not to use it.

Rick: I was like, where are we going with this? You now know your students and listeners are going to say they love it and they are going to use “hustler post.”

Amy: Right. It should have been called the hustler post but Rick said he didn’t like it so I moved on.

Rick: I vetoed it.

Amy: We’re going with the golden post.

Rick: This is a golden episode.

Amy: Golden episode, exactly. And, it is actually part two. Let me break it down for you. We are going to dive into getting started with Facebook ads but it’s going to be the list-building series. It’s going to be two parts and it’s primarily for anybody who’s been talking about doing ads forever.

You might have even dabbled with it but maybe got a little bit burned. You can’t really technically say, “I’ve ran Facebook ads consistently,” so it’s for those just getting started. You know it’s a big undertaking.




4

We’re going to break it down from start to finish. Because there’s so much to cover with getting started with Facebook ads we thought we would do a two parter. But we are just going to do the whole episode right now and then Rick and I will decide where we’re going to cut it up.

I want it to be digestible and I don’t want to overwhelm all of you. Same with Rick. So we will figure out where the two parter fits in here but I think this will be a great episode for anyone finally wanting to get started. What do you think?

Rick: I love it. We started talking about this just yesterday actually as far as what we’re going to cover. Then I was all excited about it and I think it’s a great idea.

Amy: Me too. What’s really fun about these episodes I do with Rick is we always get on the phone for at least a half hour before. Yesterday we talked and talked about all of you, who you are, what you need, where you’re at in your business, and how we can really support you in that place.

We want to start the conversation at the right point so we really think this episode’s going to be valuable for so many of our listeners. What do you say we don’t make them wait any longer and we dive in?

Rick: Let’s do it.

Amy: We’re going to start at the top. We have organized this by first starting with your ad strategy, specifically as it relates to list building. Before Rick gets going, because he usually talks more than I do because he is the expert here (hence why I bring him on), here are a few assumptions we are going to make.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to fit perfectly in this mold but we wanted to make sure we were talking to the right audience with this episode. We’re going to assume you are in your first year or maybe moving into your second year of business.

You are making some money but not in the way you really want to make money. You’re probably a coach, consultant, trainer, some kind of teacher, or a service-based business. You’re doing more one-on-one than you would like or you are making money in a way you would really like to shift to an online training course and maybe use webinars or video marketing to sell your course.




5

Maybe you want to do a mastermind or more of a group coaching kind of thing and you want to move away from the one-on-one. You know you must build your list. You subscribe to my motto that the energy of your business is directly tied to the strength of your email list.

You know you need to always be list building but you’ve struggled with that. Your list is kind of small and you’re frustrated with the lack of rapid pace with the growth of your list and you’d like a larger list because you eventually want to promote. That’s why we’re going to put a focus on list building with Facebook ads.

Did I miss anything Rick, before you dive in?

Rick: No. You covered it. I’m glad we went through the assumptions just to kind of set the playing field here on what we’re going to be talking about.

Amy: Yes. Again, if you don’t fit perfectly into that mold but want to learn about Facebook ads, definitely stay with us here. Rick, start us off with the strategy.

Rick: This is sort of a first step in building our beginning with Facebook ads and getting started. This is a step that, unfortunately, a lot of people don’t want to take. They don’t want to spend the time on developing their strategy.

I don’t mean to sound like this is some grand thing you have to map out from start to finish as far as 50 different steps or anything like that. But, before you start getting any ads up or start jumping into the Power Editor to set anything up you’ve got to set up what your strategy is. I like to call this the game plan that you are creating.

Frankly, as I mentioned, this is the work most people don’t want to do because it takes time. They just want to get in there, set stuff up, and get going. That’s great. I applaud taking action. But, if you start your effort without a strategy in place you’re setting yourself up to fail.

A quick story I like to tell is that I talk to so many people and ask them why they are doing Facebook ads. I am glad they are doing them but what is the why? Why are you doing them?

They tell me they hear their friends are doing them and they are getting some results so the figure they had better start.




6

That’s okay, kudos for doing that. But that is not the reason to do them. You have to have a strategy in place. Definitely, take the time to sit down. I am a very visual person, personally, so I like to map things out on a white board or on a piece of paper in my notebook.

When we’re talking about the strategy, what I mean is, what are the steps we are going to set up to take somebody on Facebook who probably doesn’t know who we are, give value to them, and get them onto our email list.

We want to build that relationship with them and then eventually make a sale. It’s mapping that strategy out before we even get into what the ad is going to look like, what type of ad I am going to use, and who I am going to target in setting stuff up like that.

Once you know what your strategy is everything else becomes much easier as far as who you want to attract, how you are going to attract them, and that helps me with what my offer is going to be. That then leads into know the type of audience I want to attract and that leads into targeting and so on.

You’ve got to spend the time to be really clear about what your strategy is going to be. I like to use the exercise of working backwards from my end goal. What I mean by that, let’s just say our end goal is to have somebody become a paying customer.

Great. What ware all the steps that need to happen in your business in order for that to take place?

Amy: This is good. Let’s pretend their angle is to sell their online training program. They don’t have it created yet and they aren’t even ready to sell it. But they know who they are marketing to and they know approximately what the topic of their course is going to be.

They have enough information but they aren’t anywhere close to being ready to sell. If they’ve got that information, what happens? What does it look like to work backwards?

Rick: I’m so glad you bring that up, Amy. Having that kind of clarity makes it a little bit easier to start with working backwards. Eventually, yes, I want to sell my course. But it’s not ready yet. I haven’t created it yet. I haven’t done a webinar or anything like that.




7

In that case you just want to set yourself up to succeed so that you can build your email list and attract the type of people you want to serve and will eventually, hopefully buy your program. It cuts out the end part of our sales funnel, the strategy, because we aren’t even selling anything yet.

In my mind, I would know that my end goal is to build a relationship with my ideal audience. I am giving them value via email and maybe retargeting them with Facebook ads with additional value. I look at my end goal here in that case as the relationship-building part. I’m adding value.

Now I want to add people to my email list so I can give value to them and I have to figure out how I do that. The end goal here is to get people on my email list. Then the previous step is how to get people onto my email list. They have to go to a landing page, for example, like LeadPages.

We both use LeadPages in our businesses and we know we have to have LeadPages connected to our email CRM (ConvertKit or MailChimp or whatever we are using). Then we know we have to get people to a landing page so they can opt in and get our freebie.

How do we get people to our landing page? We are working backwards and are looking at all of the steps. The first step in all of this is the Facebook ad because this is what we’re using to attract our ideal audience so they can click on the ad, go to the landing page, look at what we’re offering, and make the decision whether they want to opt in or not.

Once they do opt in, hopefully, we can track their conversion and they are added to our email list and we can start building the relationship with them via email.

Amy: I like it. Nice way to break it down.

Rick: Thank you. We can go in a lot of different directions on this but, from a very much basic getting started, that’s how I would look at your strategy. We can also look at it like, and I know you like to teach as well, I haven’t created a course yet, but maybe I want to do a webinar and presell that course before even creating the course.

Amy: Good point. I teach the whole pre-sell strategy inside of Courses That Convert and I also interview you in that bonus because you did a whole pre-sell strategy. This is for my students of Courses That Convert, you are saying that you could use this type of getting started with




8

Facebook ads for a presell where you’re running ads to a webinar or some kind of freebie that will get them into that pre-sell funnel so that you can presell your course before you’ve actually created it.

Rick: Absolutely. This now becomes your strategy. We are basically just adding on a little bit to the strategy we just talked about. Now we need to get people onto a webinar that we’re going to do. We haven’t created the course yet but we’re going to presell into this course you are going to create on the webinar.

Now my end goal is to get people into a founder’s group or beta group where you are only going to take 30 people into the course. The end goal is to get people to sign up for the course.

What is the vehicle how you are going to do that? You will do that on a webinar. Now you know that your end goal is to get people to fill out the order form, give you their credit card for the amount you are charging for the beta group or founders group of your course, and then it’s the webinar.

We have to get the webinar together. We are sending people from the webinar to the order from to purchase. How do we get people to the webinar? They register. So, we need a landing page. Again, we’re working backwards to come up with our strategy.

I also like this exercise of working backwards because (and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this) it gives us a checklist of things we need to make sure we have in place.

Amy: Yes.

Rick: In this example we know we need to have a webinar. Cool. Check. We need to have the slides done. We need to have an order form or someway to take money whether it’s SamCart or whatever that is. We then need to have an email CRM so that we can send people emails to remind them the webinar is coming up on Thursday at 10 a.m.

We also need to have a registration page. It’s a checklist of the things we need to have because that’s a big source of confusion and from the questions you get from your students I know you can attest to this too. They get it but they get lost in the technical side.




9

God knows I am not a techy person. Ask my team. I’m not a technical person. But when you can break it down like that and have a checklist of things. You need a landing page. Great. You’ve got LeadPages. You can go in and grab a template and have it done really quickly.

This whole working backwards strategy not only gives you the strategy of what you’re going to do but it also gives you a checklist of what you need to accomplish.

Amy: I love a checklist. Always. Let me ask you a few quick questions. Let me paint a picture for you and you can talk to me about the best way to approach this.

I’m going to use the example again that I’m not ready to sell anything just yet. I’m actually not even going to presell. What I want to do is grow my list to get my first thousand subscribers. I want to eventually sell an online training program to them but right now I have a really awesome blueprint.

I’m not going to get into the niche because that part’s not important. But I have a really great blueprint and I know my audience is going to find it valuable. It’s easy to digest. There are some quick wins in there so my audience can get some quick wins and think it’s so good they will wonder what else I have. They will say, “I can’t wait to dive in more.”

It’s a perfect lead magnet. Would a blueprint PDF like this work with a Facebook ad strategy or are you thinking there is another type of lead magnet that is better for list building?

Rick: There is no better. I always kind of give people a hard time. During my Q&As they ask me a question and always want to know what’s the “best”. They ask if this is THE way to do it. They will roll their eyes and say that I am going to say it’s just about testing because it is. You just have to test it.

I do like the blueprint idea but you had a few key words in there that really jumped out for me and it’s what really makes the difference. You and I talk about this a lot when it comes to having a lead magnet or freebie giveaway or something like that.

It’s got to be quickly actionable. I was talking to somebody on Messenger the other day and they said they had a 30-page eBook guide for their niche. I started trying to get some more information about it but it was too long.




10

I know that if I see something I will download it and if I know it’s that long I will never get through it. I will never consume it.

Amy: So true.

Rick: But if you give someone a blueprint that is quick wins and very actionable in just a matter of minutes then we are talking. If you can give somebody who is your ideal audience a quick win then you’ve hooked them.

I don’t mean that in a scammy kind of way. They now see you as a person that can provide them value and help them in their business right now. They will keep going back to you for more information.

I like the idea of the blueprint. I would actually test it two different ways. I would test it going from Facebook ads directly to the offer of the blueprint. The other strategy, I know you talk a lot about it, have a golden piece of content on your site (article, video, or whatever it might be) and basically send people from your ad to that piece of content and then having your blueprint basically be within that content for them to download or on the sidebar.

What you are doing there is building a retargeting audience of people who are coming to that post or video. For those people who don’t actually opt in to your blueprint at that point you can turn around and retarget them with the blueprint offer.

Amy: I’m so glad you said that. A lot of students in my courses will do something called the Fill-Up Formula. It is a formula I created to help them start growing their email list before they are ready to do their webinar.

I teach it just like that, create a golden post and put a content upgrade in it so that people can opt in. They will say, “Amy, I’m running ads to the post but I’m not getting enough signups.”

I think the value of that whole strategy is in the retargeting. You can go back and retarget all of those people that went to the post. You can then send them directly to the freebie you created inside of that post.

Rick: Yes, exactly.




11

Amy: There is a lot you can do with that. Let’s just pretend, for the sake of moving forward, that I’ve got a blueprint, I’m going to experiment with it, I’m going to set up a Facebook ad, drive traffic to an opt-in page where people can download my blueprint, and then once they opt in they hit my thank-you page where I am going to be strategic.

This has nothing to do with the Facebook ad but I’m going to be strategic and I’m going to encourage them to listen to one of my podcast episodes now that they have opted in (or check out a video I’ve created).

I am going to continue the conversation with them. Then, of course, I will email them the freebie. In the freebie I can start the relationship with them.

Rick: Yep. Exactly.

Amy: Alright. That’s basically what we’re talking about here. Before we move on, it’s not just about the ad to the landing page to opting in and sending out the confirmation email that you just signed up for the freebie.

Rick is saying that you’ve got to start with that end game because if you don’t know where you eventually want to lead the new audience (aka have them become customers of yours) and if you have no concept of what that might look like and what you might sell you are wasting your money growing an email list. Would you agree, Rick?

Rick: Yeah. Exactly. I got this question on one of the Q&As of one of my webinars this week. They asked if it was smart to use Facebook ads to grow an email list if you haven’t yet created a program that you want to do.

It was a case where the person was going to create a program but they didn’t know when. But they did know they wanted to sell the program. This is exactly what you’re talking about here, Amy, as far as asking whether you should grow your email list and whether you should be spending money on Facebook ads to grow your email list when you don’t have something to sell right now.

As long as you know that you are going to have something to sell, maybe it’s however far down the road, that’s part of your plan. You are going to grow your email list because you eventually want to sell XYZ and you are going to use building your email list to grow your list




12

and build a relationship and then offer value so that when you do have something that is who you can offer it to.

Amy: Just imagine if you grow your email list right now and you’re nurturing your audience. You are reaching out to them every single week. It may be through a short-term nurture sequence that you create or it may be your weekly emails to your podcast or to your blog post or whatever it might be. I encourage you to do even more in terms of asking them questions, engaging with them, and building that relationship.

I promise you because I have lived this, when you do that and are actually read to launch anything it is a whole different ballgame when you have an audience via email that has been paying attention and they are engaged with you.

The first time I launched was to a list of 600 people that I rarely emailed. They really had no idea who I was or what I was about even though they were on my email list. I launched to crickets. I remember it like it was yesterday.

It doesn’t matter the size of your list if you’re not keeping them engaged. If you do a really good job of targeting who signs up for this blueprint you will see a huge uptake in sales when you are ready to promote because you have the right people on your list.

That leads us seamlessly, I didn’t even mean to do that, into our next section of this getting started with Facebook ads list-building series. It leads us right into targeting. Do you think it’s a good time to jump there?

Rick: Absolutely. I do want to jump back really fast to the blueprint you mentioned. I realize that a lot of people have a hard time coming up with what that lead magnet or freebie should be. In this case we are talking about a blueprint.

We made the assumption in the very beginning that these hypothetical people we are talking about are coaches and consultants. That’s awesome because you can have direct conversations with your clients and customers and you can learn about what it is they need. What are they struggling with that you can help them solve?

That’s where you come up with your lead magnet topics. Because you’re having those conversations you get to talk to them and hear from them. One of the best things I ever did,




13

and I remember it took me a year and a half into my business. I hopped on Skype with five of my “ideal customers”.

I just talked to them for 15 minutes. I learned so much and I got off of those calls and couldn’t believe it took me a year and a half to do that. Not only did I have insight into what they were struggling with and why they were buying from me but they also gave me the language I could use in my ad copy, on my landing pages, in my emails.

These are my ideal customers so I’m just using the information they gave me in how I could help them in everything I’m doing, especially with those lead magnets we are sending our ads to.

Amy: I think this is so overlooked because it’s a little awkward and uncomfortable for some people to get on those Skype calls and ask those questions but every single one of my peers has said exactly what you said in the sense that they wonder why they didn’t do it sooner. They say it is such an a-ha moment when they finally do it.

I remember a gal in one of my programs, her name is Michelle Evans, I remember when she got on the call with me and walked me through her experience with one of my programs. It busted open all of these ideas I wasn’t even thinking about.

I’m not one to like to get on the phone and talk to customers because I get a little bit nervous but I’m so glad I finally sat down and did that with Michelle and a few others. But it’s always that moment we think about, “I remember when I finally did that,” and what a difference it made.

Rick: If you have 500 people on your email list that is a small enough list to be working through to try to have conversations with them. You don’t have to be on the phone for an hour. It can literally be a five-minute conversation with people.

People want to be heard. You are hearing from them. You are hearing how you can serve them and maybe you’re able to quickly help them while you’re on the phone. That is invaluable and it is just one of those things that a lot of people don’t want to take the time to do but yet can literally change your business very quickly.

Amy: Completely.




14

Rick: Targeting.

Amy: Let’s switch gears into targeting. Remember, we’ve talked about targeting on the show before. I will actually link to one of my favorite episodes Rick and I did about getting started with targeting (Episode #148). But we want to put it in the context here in terms of the scenario we’ve painted for you but there is also so much you can do with targeting.

Rick’s going to talk about where to start and how not to bite off more than you can chew but get really strategic with it from the get go.

Rick: We’re going to keep it very, very basic when it comes to targeting.

Amy: But still strategic.

Rick: Still strategic, yes. As you mentioned, there are all kinds of ways to target your ideal audience on Facebook. I want to start with the very basics but I have talked to people at Facebook recently about what they really want you to be doing from a targeting standpoint.

They see how their users should be using the targeting and I will talk about that briefly here in just a second. But if we’re talking about just getting started with your targeting but yet being very strategic about it, we are assuming we have a small email list of 500 people or less.

We’re not necessarily, at that point, going to be using custom audiences. We’re not uploading our email list at that point and we’re not creating any lookalike audiences. We’re also assuming we’re not getting a whole lot of traffic to our website.

That’s fine, we’ve got to start somewhere. We can start by targeting those cold audiences, if you will, on Facebook in the detailed targeting section. This is the stereotypical type of targeting that most people think of when they think of Facebook ads.

I want to target people who have an interest in such and such Facebook page. This really comes down to knowing who your target audience is. For those of you who are working as a coach or consultant and you have clients, really be detailed in trying to understand who those people are (obviously demographic, age, where they live, and that sort of thing).






15

You also want to know what they are interested in. Who are they following online? Who are your competitors in this space?

This is stepping back from the super basic a little bit but one thing I do want to mention is making sure that when you’re thinking about your target audience, I like to compile a list. I will open Evernote and start making a list of all of the target audiences I think are relevant to my target customer.

When I’m doing that one thing I definitely want to be including is what brands or what types of places my target customer shops. As an example, if I’m in the yoga niche and am trying to reach women between the age of 25 and 50 who are interested in yoga I can target that. But don’t forget to take a step back and think about what brands they are interested in as well.

I probably really want to try to target Lulu Lemon, for example, or Lorna Jane or brands that people doing yoga are likely wearing. They are popular with the yoga niche. They are probably also maybe shopping at Whole Foods and that sort of thing. You have to take a step back and think about it from a holistic standpoint.

When you’re just starting and you start brainstorming the different interests that you think are relevant to your niche…Do you say “neesh” or “nitch”?

Amy: I’ve started to say “neesh”. I think it’s fancier.

Rick: It is fancier. I had people from Europe on…I say Europe because there were a variety of people giving me a hard time about it. They were from London. They thought it was funny how I said “that” word.

Amy: They were making fun of you.

Rick: They were making fun of me, basically. Yeah. As you are listing out the different interests that are relevant to your niche then you are starting to compile a list of what you think is most relevant to your niche. That includes other people in your niche who are similar to you and who are your competitors.




16

What are those brands, as I mentioned, where are they shopping and that sort of thing? I will say that audience insights is a great tool. I would say that it went through a period over the past couple of months of it giving complete crap information.

It went from really good. You could go into audience insights, the free tool within ads manager, and you could type in “Amy Porterfield” and it will give me a list of similar Facebook pages to you. It was really, really good for a long time and then for a few months I don’t know what happened.

The results were completely irrelevant. I think it was a big bug. I have checked it a few times recently and the results have gotten much better again.

Amy: Oh thank goodness.

Rick: That’s a good thing. I get all excited and my voice cracks.

Amy: You’re like a little boy.

Rick: Yes I am. I love talking about this. So I would be using audience insights to compile my list. Just to start out with targeting I would start right at the top of my list. I would say that I feel “this” interest right here or “this” demographic or “this” behavior is most related to who I want to reach with my ad.

I’m going to start right there. I’m going to get one ad set up with one target. I’m going to start off with $10 a day and that’s it. Again, you are just starting off with one target. We’re keeping this extremely basic. Do you want to keep it as basic as that?

Amy: What were you thinking? Where were you going?

Rick: Well because then you can add more ad sets. You can add additional target audiences in there depending on how much you want to spend. I’m just thinking that we want to get started with $10 a day and I want to do one target audience.

Amy: I like that.




17

Rick: I will say that the algorithm with Facebook ads has really been changing a lot lately. It’s gotten a lot better. It’s gotten a lot smarter.

Amy: It’s become a smarty pants.

Rick: It has become a smarty pants. So the larger the audience you can get in there, if you can be in there with at least 500,000 to 2 million range on your audience size per ad set, you are giving the algorithm more data to work with.

In that case, if you find an interest that you think is a really good interest and you can target them because it is very relevant to your industry but it is only 100,000 people then you might want to consider moving next on your list of the target audiences you’ve brainstormed and put that in there also to see what that does to your audience size.

Maybe that will jump it up to 400,000. Try to get it into that range. Now, what has always been the case and I do think they will move to fixing this at some point, you won’t have any insight into metrics. I know we are going to talk about metrics later on.

When you group interests together within one ad set you won’t have insight into which of those interests is performing the best for you. But the reason we might want to do that is to increase the audience size to give the algorithm a little bit more data to work with. The potential audience reach is a little bit larger.

That’s how I would approach it.

Amy: Forgive me for this because you might have said it. I’m really paying attention so I can’t believe I missed it if I did, but did you already talk about (this is a question that comes up a lot) what should the audience size be?

Rick: I like to try to get it somewhere between 500,000 and two millionish.

Amy: Got you. Did you say that and I totally missed it?

Rick: I did. It’s okay.

Amy: Dang it. I’m trying to be a good student.EPISODE 172: GETTING STARTED WITH FACEBOOK ADS: THE LIST-BUILDING SERIESwww.amyporterfield.com/172



18

Rick: Keep in mind if you are a local business or something like that and your audience size is not that large it’s okay. We’re talking ideal here.

Amy: Okay. I’ve got it.

Rick: Keep in mind that if you get into a lookalike audience then you are talking about at least 2.1 million, cool, that’s alright.

Amy: When we’re talking about getting started with targeting I really do love audience insights. I am glad you said they came around and are doing a better job in helping you find your target market. With that I’m going to make a video and it’s just going to be a short video in the show notes.

I am going to walk you through how I would use audience insights to find more Facebook pages to target. There are a few things you might not know about audience insights that you could really make it work for you.

For those of you who don’t even know what audience insights is about, it’s a tool inside of Facebook that you can plug in some information and then get a bunch of ideas for other pages you might want to target with your Facebook ads.

I’ve been using it forever. Back in the day, I can’t believe how long it’s been around, actually. I love that it’s still a viable tool. So I’m going to make a video on my show notes to walk you through how to get started, how to find it, and how I use it to get a bunch of ideas for targeting. I just wanted to offer that to all of you. You’ll find it at http://www.amyporterfield.com/172.

Rick: The other thing it will give you, Amy, in addition to other pages, let’s just say I put you into audience insights, it is also going to give me a demographic breakdown of the people on Facebook who are interested in you.

It will tell me it is 77% women, 23% men. Then it will give me an age range.

Amy: That’s so good.








19

Rick: I will break it down and if you are doing the whole 80/20 and you have a very limited budget, since 77% of your audience is women maybe I only want to target women when I’m targeting you. Let’s say they are 25 to 44. It will give you that information so that you can really hone in on the targeting.

Amy: I’m so glad you brought that up. We are experimenting with some brand new ads for my Webinars That Convert program. I cater to men and women. I’m not a business that is just for female entrepreneurs. However, I do have more women in my programs than men.

For the first time, we actually wrote an ad that is speaking just to women entrepreneurs. Of course, we’re just targeting women in that ad. I can’t believe I’ve never done this before. But looking at our metrics it was obvious this could be a really great strategy. I’ll keep you guys updated on how that goes but I’m so glad you just said that was a good idea.

Rick: Remind me to make sure that we talk about that during the metrics portion of our discussion here because that is a little bit more advanced but since we are talking about that right now we should definitely talk about it a little bit later.

Amy: Okay, so I’m going to bring that topic up again when we get to metrics. I want to mention that there are so many different ways you can target with your Facebook ads. Targeting is two things to me. It is my favorite thing about Facebook ads. I feel you can get creative. You can find new audience. There are so many options.

If you asked me what my favorite thing about the opportunities inside of Facebook advertising I would definitely say it was targeting. With that I will also say there are so many opportunities that it can be overwhelming.

You have lookalike audiences. You’ve got retargeting. You can obviously target other Facebook pages. There are things you can do beyond that. But Rick is saying that if you’re just getting started you should start with targeting other Facebook pages.

I’m going to link to some other targeting episodes Rick and I have done to go beyond that with lookalike audiences and retargeting. Of course, you can target your own Facebook fans. I think that should probably be in the beginner strategy, right?




20

Rick: Yes, exactly. The reason I didn’t go right there is that a lot of people who are just starting out don’t have many fans so the question inevitably comes up, “Should I be spending money on ‘like’ ads?”

If you’re just starting out I don’t think you should. I don’t think that’s a good strategy. We are trying to build our email list and not necessarily get fans right off the bat. When you run ads where you are sending people to the lead magnet to download a blueprint you are going to get fans.

You are going to get likes off of that ad. It is a secondary benefit even though your primary objective is conversions you are going to get likes off of that.

Before we move on to getting started with setting stuff up I do want to finish off that tease from before about targeting as far as what I’ve been seeing on Facebook and what Facebook really wants you to be doing.

Facebook really wants you to be building custom audiences as quickly as you can and then creating lookalike audiences from those custom audiences. What the heck do I mean by that? Basically, the faster you can build retargeting audiences (people coming to your website) of people visiting your website and creating lookalike audiences from those people the algorithm has gotten much smarter. The effectiveness of the lookalike has gotten much better as well.

Again, you just mentioned there are tons of different ways you can do this but the faster you can build lists of your customer (for example, if you have a list of your highest-paying customers), again as I mentioned before this is more advanced stuff, but you can create a lookalike audience out of that audience and now we are talking.

Again, this is big picture here and something to work towards if you’re just starting out, but the faster you can build really quality custom audiences and turn those audiences into lookalike audiences that’s really where Facebook wants you to go.

Amy: And it’s incredibly powerful. We use this strategy all the time and it works well.

Rick: Exactly.




21

Amy: Okay, I think this is a perfect place to wrap up for today, just so you don’t feel completely overwhelmed if you’re just getting started with Facebook ads. We will pick up next week around the Power Editor and how to get started inside the Power Editor with a list-building Facebook ad campaign.

We will also talk about metrics and analytics if you’re just starting out because, believe me, there are a lot of analytics but you do not need to focus on all of them when you just start to get things rolling.

I can’t wait to come back here again next week with Rick Mulready, of course, where we will dive into even more getting started with Facebook ads goodness. I’ll see you here next week. Bye for now.




EPISODE 172 Getting Started With Facebook Ads: The List ...Podcast+-+Epis… · 3 Rick: I’m in...

Documents

Transcript of EPISODE 172 Getting Started With Facebook Ads: The List ...Podcast+-+Epis… · 3 Rick: I’m in...