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What Type of Ad Should You Run?

Let's talk briefly about what type of ad to run, and I'm gonna talk about all of your basic options. And, I'm not gonna go too in depth on any of this because they are always evolving. They're going to change. In fact, any time that I create an advertising package or an advertising program it's so quickly outdated I just stopped trying to do it. I stopped trying to walk people through creating the ad process because all the different platforms change and evolve, and they do it very quickly, but for years Facebook has been my favorite type of ad to run. So, Facebook offers two different types of ads. There's one that's called cost per click which is shortened to CPC advertisement. Cost per click is what is stands for, and then there's sponsored or boosted posts, and that's where you have a status update, and you decide that you'll spend $5. or something like that to reach more people. And, when you do that on Facebook they give you a suggested budget, and they say this is how many peopl...

e you can reach. The same thing happens when you've billed out a cost per click ad, CPC ad. The difference also is where they run on your Facebook page. The boosted post is gonna show up in everybody's feed in a relevant way close to the top. The cost per click ad is gonna show up in the sidebar to the right where we know there are advertisements on Facebook. So, when using a cost per click strategy I haven't talked about it yet, but Pinterest if you have a business account can also do promoted pins, and they have a cost per click strategy as well. A lot of the places that you try to advertise will have that CPC setup, and you'll be invited to enter a max bid whenever you create that campaign. You'll build it out so you have the title, you have pictures, you have the offer that you're suggesting, and then they're gonna invite you to enter a max bid. This number sometimes is suggested based on your platform. Usually it's suggested, and they'll say if you want that click people advertising to this target market are typically paying, and they'll say .39 to $1.09, and they'll ask you for a max bid. The number that you plug in does not represent your actual cost, so I always enter the highest bid. I will always enter $1.09 if that was my suggestion because I don't advertise just to keep things running. I always advertise for the meaty campaign. I'm always advertising to get seen. So, if I enter $1.09 as a max bid I usually average out. Cost per click advertising right now is averaging out at anywhere between 50 to 60 cents. I say that you wanting to take it back because it's always changing. When I started cost per click advertising in it was between 10 ad 20 cents, so it's going to change. Sometimes when I try it on different platforms, and Google is one of them, it's gotten really popular, and I was paying as much as $1.00 a click which is outrageous if you ask me. (laughing) So, the sponsor posts are boosts to the status updates that you already share, and that's actually my current overall favorite strategy because I think that it shows up in such a relevant place, and it's probably one that many of us are already familiar with it, and the reason that I prefer it is that over time when I started advertising on Facebook in those right sidebar ads would cost me an average 20 cents per click, and people would click them all day long. But, if you notice our activity we will learn to tune out where we know we're being advertised to. That's why if you have a blog with a lot of spammy links in it you almost stop reading that section because you're trying to tune out. You know they're trying to redirect you, so you skip past that, and you go to the part. Does anybody do that? Yeah, because we know where we're being advertised to, so we avoid it. So, our eye tells us, we decide let me stop paying attention to it. Facebook trends and the god awful stories that they show me, I'm like, "Please stop paying attention," 'cause I don't know what it is about me or my profile, but they send me the worst, scariest things on my thing and the most heart wrenching stories. I don't know why I attract it, but I have tried to train my eye to stop looking at the scary, upsetting stories. When we know somebody is intentionally trying to distract us or redirect us we will then train our eye to stop paying attention to it. It will distract us enough that we'll say, "Okay, I need to stop it with that," and then we have to actively avoid it. So, we've known since 2010 when I was advertising that they are trying to advertise us on the right sidebar, and because we know that we stop paying attention to it. So, my ads on the sidebar don't do as well anymore because people are doing what I'm doing, and I stop paying attention to what's over there. I pay attention to what my family and friends are doing in the actual feed, so that's what makes those boosted posts, even though they're not cost per click, and they run on a little bit of a different strategy, that's what makes them so valuable. You're showing up where people are paying attention and where they want to know more about whatever is being posted. You can then boost depending on how many people you want to get your advertisement in front of, and I believe they started out updates as just boost to your own fans, but now you're allowed to boost to other markets, and that's when it really starts to get valuable to your campaign. So, it can be a low cost option, it can be a great way to test if you have a little bit of a scared money situation going on. Don't be scared, and you can test for really low budgets there. And, then I'm gonna briefly run through the other different places that you might consider along the way. Please. Lisa, there are a couple of questions that came up in relation to the boost on Facebook, and one thing you touched upon a little bit just now, but I wanted to get a little clarity for our online students. So, Handmade by Adwa asks in terms of the fans versus non-fans in the boost is it better to boost your post to your fans since they are on your fan page already or select the audience? It sounds like from what you just said it's better to reach out to others? Yes. That will play out during a campaign. I'll give you a short answer, but I believe that's gonna come up again. So, when I'm planning out a campaign, so for the example that I'm gonna use I am marketing my book and it has a season, when I am planning that campaign I'm doing soft boosts using Facebook updates, and I do a mix between making sure everybody who likes my page on Facebook sees it. That's $5.00, and maybe the next time that I boost the next status update what I found what is not possible at the time of this taping is that I can't re-boost the same post to a different market, so once I decide that that share goes to my fans I can't come back in later and say, "Well, that did really great with my fans. "Now, I want to share the same," 'cause now it's got social proof all over it. People are loving it, engaging with it, commenting on it, so I would really like to show that to a different market. At the time of this airing they will not let you take that post and then change your market and show it do a different one. Yes, please? I'm wondering if you're gonna go into the concept of the lookalike audience from your email list on Facebook? The lookalike audience, explain this to me? Have you done this before? I saw this briefly, maybe it was another CreativeLive thing, but where they're taking their email list and importing it into Facebook and then creating a lookalike audience? Oh, no! That's new to me, and it sounds so exciting! Yeah, so basically it's using the power of the email list that you've already spent the time building, and then you can go into Facebook and say, "All these people who are on my email list, "I want to talk to them." You're giving me chills! (laughing) I can't wait! Research it! The lookalike audience on Facebook. Yeah, see? It's always evolving and Facebook is a great place to do it. That's good news for us. Thank you. That's all I know about it. That's a great place for us to go play. Thank you. Thank you for that tip. Thank you, yes? I have a question along those lines of who you're gonna boost it to. Would you say when you're doing more of a reach you would go for outside of your Facebook fans and when you're trying to convert more you're going for your Facebook fans? Yes, see I really do a mix of it all 'cause I'm working off of a marketing campaign that's always a little bit longer, so I'm gonna do a mix, and let me know if I don't answer your question, but I want to fall back too on what I'm talking about, and then we'll talk about it more. But, I'm gonna do a mix of talking specifically to my fans, making sure they all see the offer, and then the next post will go out to a targeted audience based on the offer where I know they're already buying, and I usually do that research a little bit on the fly because it's very time sensitive, but then again I know the niche, and I know where people are shopping and what they're buying. And, I mix it back and forth. I wish, and maybe it will become that you could take a post that is doing really well with your fans, and then show it to somebody else's audience. That would be fabulous, but you can't. But, then you can try it again, and you can just repost it. If you know it's doing well, and if your fans have told you this is very engaging for me, your ideal customer, then you can repost it and run it all over again. It's a great place to test. Start with your own base, see how it does, and then go to other markets where other people are buying. So, just to clarify your answer, Lisa, you post something to your fans, and then if it's successful you may repost it because Facebook doesn't let you do a different audience on the same post? So, you repost that same post and reach a different audience. The audience, do you decide by location or by interest? Always by interest. Always by interest, okay. However, there are really good location based businesses. If we're talking to an Etsy community they make things where they're gonna make state necklaces and things like that, so I love whenever we can build location into a marketing plan. I think it's really fun, and it's a really fun technique, and it's something that I don't get to do very often. But, let me clear about the different types of campaigns I'm running. I'm gonna walk you through these as well, but when I know something is coming and I'm doing a soft boost, so I'm just gonna call it a soft boost because it's not started yet. Let's say I have a book Your Best Year 2016, and it's a New Year's workbook, and it's coming out, and it's strong season is gonna be December through February. In October when I pull it it's a soft launch, a soft boost, which means I'm not gonna spend very much. I'm gonna spend about $5.00. I will test it on my fans to see how they're relating and interacting, and then I will go target audience. That's one way to do it because its soft. Basically I'm just trying to get them to my blog where they're hearing the announcements that it's coming, where they're seeing the boost. Wait, where they're seeing the announcements that it's coming and where they're seeing the pre-order activity, so there's different things that they're seeing there. So, that's a mix. I can test it on my fans, and then I can show it to another audience. However, there's another type of one that I'd run, and I'm going to really dive into it. And, it's a little bit advanced, but it's definitely something to give you the direction, and it's where it's an opt in. The whole point of it is to capture your email and hopefully convert you to buy the book, so that's where I did the free sample for the book, and it's 15 pages long. I do not want to show that to my fans. At that point it's been two months. If they haven't gotten on my list they're not gonna get on my list, and I'm not gonna waste my clicks on them, so I'm going outside of my audience, and I'm going hard outside my audience, and that's gonna be a hard boost, and that's where I really start to invest in the campaign. Great, and there are a few other questions that came in about this topic. So, Daisy Chain Oddities asked should the audience be broad or really narrow? Narrow. Narrow is always better. Because we all have these niche products, and we all are making specific products you want to narrow your audience as much as you can. When you narrow your audience you also get more for your advertising dollar because you're talking to very specific people rather than a general audience that may or may not, so the idea isn't to get clicks, but to get the right clicks. And, we will get to talk a lot about that, how to filter your clicks, so you make sure that you're getting very interested buyers. And, then Lisa you talked a little bit about you run a post, and if it's successful with your fans you may run it again, but Amanda Aragon her question was what types of posts do you boost? That's gonna go along with your advertising campaign, and you want it to contribute to your growth or profit. Let me do the blog because that's where my head's at. When I write that I am redirecting people to my blog where I'm announcing that a big product is coming. I don't just boost a blog post. That's advertising for advertising's sake, so I don't just write a blog post and then pay the money so everybody comes and looks at it. I don't see the point in that unless it has an opt in offer in it, and then in that case not only am I speaking to them, not only am I filtering the clicks for the right click, but if they got to my article and they opted in I'm also filtering the opt ins as well. Now I know I have people that are very interested. For my product based business I'm not boosting everyday communications. I'm boosting promotions. I'm boosting chances to opt in to my list, so your boost it is going to directly contribute to either your growth or profit. It's a good post to boost. That's an answer I like. One final question from Jake. Lisa, what do you think about sticky ads, the ads that follow you around the internet and appear as an ad on many sites you visit after having visited that company's site once? How effective are they? How are they perceived? Are they costly? I think that they're very interesting, but I can't speak for them. That is an advanced technique that I haven't learned, and the reason being is because there's cookies involved in that, and I don't know enough about, I don't even try to get into code or anything like that, but there's cookies involved in that, and it's beyond my realm. It is beyond my scope of knowledge, but I think that they're very interesting. I like sticky ads because guess what? It's showing customers 20 times, and it pops up everywhere you go. I like and appreciate the technique. I just need a web developer or something to help me learn cookies and all that stuff that goes along with it, but it's beyond my scope. I'm sorry. All right, so I'm gonna briefly run you through, outside of Facebook, some different places that you can consider in advertising. Again, these platforms are always changing, they're always evolving, and even how effective they are changes over time. So, even Etsy has its own promoted thing. What am I gonna say there? Product list? Promoted listings? Promoted listings, thank you. Etsy has its own promoted listings. I've had some seasons particularly with my annual workbook where I'm boosting, and it's doing fabulously. I've had my ads returned very heavily on the investment, and then I have some years where I'm practically breaking even. I just tried promoting listings again for the second year. Even though the book is better and doing better those promoted listings made me break even, so the platforms are always changing, and how effective they are is always changing. So, it's something to watch, but something to not make judgment on too quickly. So, remember that I don't invest scared money, and I'm always gonna keep my ads running for a solid period of time. I know they have to see them for seven days at least, that the customer needs to see them for seven days, so I don't ever want to run an ad for less than a week or take it down because I'm nervous. So again, that budget has to be solid. It has to be something that you're comfortable with. The walkthroughs of any of those platforms would be outdated by the time the next person watches this course, so we definitely don't want to do that. They're always changing, always evolving. Instead we're gonna spend our time today on ad campaigns, so that no matter what you're using or no matter what you're testing out you'll have the right campaigns to run, and that's our focus for today. And, we're gonna look at advertising strategies so that you'll know how to make the most for your advertising dollar. And, we're talking about again how to write and filter the ad, so the only person clicking on it is the perfect customer. You're gonna be careful of that, and those topics, the topics we're covering here can be applied to any platform, and that is what can keep this information evergreen and ever useful. Okay. So, with Pinterest you have promoted pins. That's a cost per click strategy. It comes with a max bid. You must have a business account for Pinterest in order to use it, and it's a very similar bid process and setup with Facebook, but I love it because you can take a pin that's working well. And, with Facebook it's a lot more strategy involved. You'll have to decide what picture you're gonna use and what text you're gonna use and where it's gonna go. Pinterest is a pin that's already going somewhere, that already has a good image, that already has interaction, and you just boost it. Then if you are not familiar with where that shows up whenever you log in to Pinterest these days you see a lot of promoted pins. It says it in gray right below the pin, so it's very relevant because they make those a priority when you land on the Pinterest page and your Pinterest feed. That's one, and those I find to be affordable, and I like an affordable option. The clicks aren't outrageous, it's fun to play with. I love seeing a lot of pins on any of my images. I love it. I love Pinterest. It has compound interests. There's two options. It's either pay per impression or pay per clicks to your website. I'm not sure about the first option I just gave you, but I know for sure the other one is pay to your website 'cause that's the one I always pick. I want to get clicks and people back on my blog. So, you pay only when the customer clicks which means when my pin is being promoted, and it gets re-pinned 100 times, and it gets liked, and it gets all this social proof all over it, if the customer didn't click I didn't pay a dime. That's powerful, so that's really fun to play with. Yes, please? Is that when they click all the way through to your site? They click that pin. Yeah, they have to click that pin, and they have to open my website. Okay, so if they just click to preview the pin that doesn't count? They have to click through to your site? I want to say I'm not sure 'cause I pay for website clicks, so I'm gonna speak from that knowledge to say that that means they're gonna click on my actual website. Awesome. It's affordable. It's average to Facebook, but look how long the effects are lasting. So, if 100 people pinned it, also if 100 people pinned that promoted pin and then the people that saw it open it I'm gonna pay for their clicks too, so any clicks that I get because of that initial promoted pin I'm gonna pay for, but it's spreading like wildfire, and it's spreading to customers who I wouldn't have reached otherwise, and I'm only paying for clicks. I'm not paying for re-pins and I'm not paying for hearts. Then think about this. I only pay for the seven days that the advertisement runs. Now that pin is living on. It is on 150 boards now because I was advertising it for seven days, and then the compound interest of Pinterest takes effect. Pinterest is compound interest at its finest. It means what is pinned today is gonna be even more popular in three months. It has an outrageous return on investment. That advertising strategy, you can't beat that. I don't notice a lot of conversion from that, but that's not the point because I'm getting growth from that. So, if the blog post that it's linking to is either going to contribute to my growth or profit then I'm on the right track. I mean, it's a no brainer. It's a no brainer for your advertising budget. Instagram has sponsored posts. That is relatively new. I know it's not brand new, but I'm not practiced with it. Is anybody here practiced with it? Okay, Cara is the Instagram guru. She taught Zero to 30,000 Followers in Six Months in our Market Your Etsy Shop to Sold Out Success, and she hasn't tried Instagram posts. I haven't tried them to speak for them yet. I will try them. I'm willing to try anything, and I will check that out, but it's just one of your options, and that's what we're running through. Google. I think I sound funny when I say Google. Google (laughing) has its own cost per click program. So, Google is where I first started, and I started in 2010 reading Tim Ferriss' The Four Hour Work Week. It's a great book to think about whenever you're getting into investments, but if I'm talking about advertising being outdated advice there's some things about Google advertising that has gotten extremely outdated in the last six years since I've read that book, and in that program I learned about the cost per click methods, and he was talking about ads that he was running on Google for 10 cents a click, and I'm telling you, I find it to be the most popular maybe, the most used by everybody out there, and the clicks are insanely, insanely outrageously priced. $1.00 a click, and I'm really talking to a niche market. I'm not going general. I'm not trying to compete with everybody. I'm at a niche market and a small reach. It's costing me $1.00 a click. I never found it to be worth the investment. What I do like about Google is that a lot of time business magazines like Inc. or places that you can sign up for where you get small business advice give coupons where you can try Google, AdSense or AdWords. And, they'll give you a $75 to a $100 free credit. If I get that credit I always play around because why not? That's free money, free advertising money, so I'll set something up, and try it and work with it. And, that's where the majority of my experience has come with as far as Google is concerned because I just have not seen a return on investment, and it's a very hefty investment at $1.00 a click. So, there are pros and cons to each form of advertising, and it is always changing. They're always changing. They will become less effective, and they will get really effective again, so with every advertisement that you create, and every advertising budget that you spent you're testing it. You're testing it. So, today I'll focus on the advertising platforms where I've seen a lot of success, but all of them are extremely user friendly, and very easy to explore and test out. Oh, I didn't mention Twitter. I didn't even have it in my notes because you know why? Twitter has a sponsor Tweet, they have different things going on. It took forever to get signed up and get admitted as one of their small business, and then when I could they cost a fortune. There's another thing that I've tried on Twitter. It's called a sponsored Tweet. (laughing) I'm realizing when I'm talking the craziest things that I've tried. So, there's this company called Sponsored Tweet where they have all kinds of celebrities. Everybody from the Kardashians to everybody, football stars, all that stuff, everybody, celebrities, and you can pay them money to Tweet what you want them to say. It will say Sponsored Tweet at the end of it, but you can pay them money, so I could really only afford Z-List people. I didn't even know who they were, but I paid something crazy like hundreds of dollars for somebody to sponsor, to Tweet out my thing, and I didn't know who they were, and it didn't go anywhere. There was a typo in the Tweet, and it didn't really work out for me. But, you could have people with a lot of influence on Twitter do it. That didn't really pan out though, and it's like magazine ads. How far is a Tweet really gonna go in an advertising campaign? It's a little crazy. I feel like I've tried it all. They're all user friendly. They're all easy to explore. You can really try anything. You can just get in there and start clicking around, and just see how it works, and that's a learning process in itself. More important than the type of ad you run is the reason that you're running the ad. That's always gonna be more important, and your desired end result, your reach for growth or profit in the marketing goal is what we're gonna pay attention to. So, you want to ask yourself which platform specifically matches your marketing goal, and for me Facebook is usually the answer, and Pinterest is a great complement to what I'm doing on Facebook. Again, it's not demographic based as much as it is interest based marketing. They will ask you to fill out some demographic things about your customer like what ages, and you should absolutely always narrow that down. I always narrow down the ages. There's no point in me marketing to very young people or very old people, so I always narrow that down. I always pick females for my industry 'cause I'm either gonna sell jewelry, or I'm going to sell creative business advice which I think is female dominated. I like that about it. And, then I pick what I need to. I make sure I'm not marketing to every country. I want to market to English speaking countries, that type of thing. So, remember you're telling Facebook everything about yourself, and you're telling them all the time. You're telling them where you live, whether or not you're married, if you have children, how old your children are, where you went to school, for high school and college, your alumni status, what stores you like. What stores you like, there's so much information for us as sellers when you tell Facebook what stores you like because I know the stores my ideal customer would shop in 'cause I've done my ideal customer exercise, and it's always evolving, so I know where they're shopping, and I know what their styles are. So, now imagine what I can do when I start pinpointing the stores that they go shopping in. What magazines you read, you tell it what bloggers you follow, what television shows you're into, and on, and on, and on. That list goes on and on. What documentaries you love. There's so much information. Yes, please? Yeah, and that's the power. I'm sorry I just keep thinking about this lookalike audience 'cause you have your email list that you've taken all that time to build. Yes. And, then you can be like, "Oh, I know they do all these things. "They read this magazine, they shop on Etsy, "they do all of this," and then you can be like, "Who else out 500 million people on Facebook "also have all those qualities," and then boom you're done. (laughing) Drop the mic. Yeah. (laughing) I can't wait to go play with it. Oh my gosh Rebecca, you're killing me. All right, so after you've taken the time to identify your ideal customer many of you will find Facebook to be a desirable option as well. It is absolutely made for advertisers, and that is even one more step further. I mean, that's gonna be amazing. Plus, and what I love the most about it is that it's affordable for our small businesses.