Facebook, with its massive user base and sophisticated advertising platform, remains a go-to platform for businesses looking to connect with their target audience. 

However, as the digital landscape continues to evolve, so do the strategies that work best for Facebook Ads.

On today’s show, we’ve got the lowdown on all things Facebook advertising with none other than Andrea Vahl, a multifaceted expert in the field. Andrea is a Facebook Advertising Specialist, Author, and Social Media Consultant, making her the perfect guest to unravel the mysteries of Facebook Ads for us.

We’ll discuss the challenges of ad tracking, harnessing the potential of Google Analytics, and explore the rationale behind broad versus niche targeting. Andrea will provide invaluable insights into Facebook’s ad recommendations, optimizing advertising budgets, and the strategic advantages of lead ads.

For those dedicated to mastering Facebook advertising and ensuring their campaigns resonate in a competitive space, this episode offers indispensable insights. Don’t miss it!

In this episode you’ll hear:

• How to set up a Facebook ads funnel for tracking
• The secrets of effective testing and targeting
• Tips for optimizing your ad campaigns

Links & Resources:

• Rick’s website
• DM me on Instagram
• Full episodes of The Art of Online Business Podcast on YouTube

Kwadwo [QUĀY.jo] Sampany-Kessie’s Links:

• Become a Facebook Ads Lead Gen Cheat Code Founding Member!
• Visit Kwadwo’s website for Facebook Ads help
• Say hi to Kwadwo on Instagram
• Subscribe to Kwadwo’s YouTube channel to learn with him as he learns about personal finance, financial freedom, foreign languages and enjoying life!

Andrea Vahl’s Links:

• Visit Andrea website
• DM Andrea on Instagram
• Subscribe to Andrea’s YouTube Channel

Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction
03:14 – About Andrea Vahl
08:19 – Tracking conversions
13:25 – Using Google Analytics
18:19 – Targeting strategies
21:36 – Facebook ad budgeting
30:19 – Running lead and sales ads
35:22 – Tracking leads and revenue
41:12 – Running ads during launches
46:39 – Connect with Andrea Vahl

Please support the podcast by giving an honest Rating/Review for the show on iTunes!

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:00:00]:

Andrea, can you tell us about ad budget? How much should I spend starting out? That’s the question I get. I want to hear your take on this.

Andrea Vahl [00:00:06]:

It is like, such a number one question and people are thinking about it in the wrong way, so they’re thinking, how much should I spend? You really have to back it up into how much do I make with my sales?

Rick Mulready [00:00:20]:

All right, welcome to today’s episode of the podcast here. Kwadwo, I know that you recently went to Podcast Movement, which is one of the guess, I think it’s the biggest, if I’m not mistaken, conference for podcasters. And yes, y’all, we’re going to be talking about Facebook ads today, but there’s a natural progression with what we’re talking about, natural connection with what we’re talking about here and our guest Andrea. But I’m always curious when people go to conferences. Kwadwo, what was the biggest takeaway or a couple big takeaways for you from that conference?

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:00:52]:

I think you cannot neglect YouTube and you cannot neglect having a video portion of your podcast. So many of the talks at the conference made it clear that the YouTube app is the most used app for listening to a podcast. And that even the fact that I just said listening to a podcast, that’s kind of going away. And people don’t really care if it’s audio only or video only. The stats are showing that people are consuming their podcast and both audio still wins out. But video is catching up quick and not that far behind.

Rick Mulready [00:01:25]:

Yeah, I think that’s really interesting in that because you and I chatted about this right after you got back from the conference. It’s like you just click a button on YouTube and it’s like, call it a podcast. Even if it’s not a podcast you can call it. And I wonder if they’re taking those stats into it and saying, yeah, YouTube is the number one new podcast. I don’t know. It’s interesting. It’s like, how are they being able to say that with numbers to back it up? I don’t know.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:01:53]:

They did a lot of interviews of people who, I guess consume podcasts and they went into just kind of zoom out and slide your chair back away from the screen and think about how people are searching for podcasts anyway. Like, yes, inside of the podcast app or Apple podcast app and to some extent spotify, depending on the age range. But if you’re Googling for podcasts related to whatever topic, what is Google going to know? It obviously has a vested interest in the YouTube platform. And so, as you know, those YouTube videos will show up at the top. And the YouTube product is it YouTube podcast product lead manager. The guy overall, the YouTube podcast direction was there and talking about don’t ask me to recite what he was talking about, but he was talking about and sharing YouTube’s direction and vision and what they’re going to come out with over the next year in the podcast world. And they’re not casually thinking about being a podcast platform, they’re coming after the other big platforms.

Rick Mulready [00:03:01]:

Well, I think that’s what’s know, because I’ve been talking about for, what, a year and a half on the podcast here about if you’re doing a podcast, you’ve got to be doing video and putting it on YouTube. So you connected with today’s guest at the conference, andrea and I’ve known Andrea for years. But you were able to connect with Andrea at the conference?

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:03:23]:

Yeah, let’s just call it Providence or separate serendipity. Serendipity. We were both at the same talk, and I think I just turned around and said hi to the lady in the cool blue frames, and somehow it came out pretty quick that I knew you, Rick, and she knew you. And I was like, wow. Can you be on the podcast? Because, Andrea, you’ve been involved with Facebook ads since 2009, right?

Andrea Vahl [00:03:50]:

Yeah, that’s when I started my business, 2009. And back in my day, ads weren’t even around yet, so it was all just kind of organic Facebook marketing. And then I think it was somewhere in 2000. No, it was before that. It was before that. But yeah, then the book we wrote the book Facebook Marketing All in One for Dummies, along with Amy Porterfield and Phyllis Care, that came out in 2011. And I think that’s, like, really early days of ads, it was just one button, and you just said, yes, boost this. And you had, like, two things to choose, like the age range, and it was like nothing. There was nothing to choose there. And now it’s just gotten so much more complicated.

Rick Mulready [00:04:34]:

People call me an OG. Andrea, if I’m an OG, you are an OG squared. You are true OG.

Andrea Vahl [00:04:44]:

I like to imagine myself as wise, not old.

Rick Mulready [00:04:50]:

I didn’t say old anywhere, because I.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:04:52]:

Feel you on that one.

Andrea Vahl [00:04:53]:

I know.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:04:54]:

No, but I thought this would be a great interview episode to have both of you together speaking directly to what you see is working right now and what you believe, because we can’t quite see through the crystal ball, but what you believe just would really help. Online course creators and coaches going forward and navigating this very interesting Facebook ad. So because obviously, Rick, before you made that Pivot to help online course creators and online coaches with the art of online business, remind some newer listeners what the podcast used to be called.

Rick Mulready [00:05:34]:

Yeah, it used to be called the Art of Paid Traffic.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:05:36]:

The art of paid traffic. And you had, for the longest period of time right. A course teaching Facebook ad managers.

Rick Mulready [00:05:44]:

Yeah, I’m just totally blanking right now.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:05:47]:

On what it was called.

Rick Mulready [00:05:47]:

FB Ad Manager Facebook ads was the focus up until, I want to say, 20, like, four years ago. Five years ago? No, because my daughter will be five this yeah, like five years ago. For sure. Yeah. And a lot has changed in that time when it comes to ads.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:06:06]:

Yeah, well, I like the way you think about ads, and so I figured both of you, with your experience, would be wonderful to interview together. So, Rick, you and me are going to interview Andrea, or Andrea, sorry, I keep saying because literally my nanny so you want to know why I keep messing up your name? It’s because my nanny’s name is Andrea, but I live in Mexico and so we say Andrea, and she was just here two days ago.

Andrea Vahl [00:06:31]:

Yeah, let’s go with that. That sounds way fancier today. I’m Andrea.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:06:39]:

So, Rick, you had a very good question right before we hit record, that you were going to ask Andrea about why, after all the crazy iOS privacy changes, why is she still in the game? In the ads game?

Rick Mulready [00:06:54]:

Yeah. I mean andrea like us. We were joking. You’re an OG. A lot has changed, as we all know, over the years. And the real big change, I think, came with iOS privacy updates and stuff like that. You said something really interesting about because I was asking why are you still in it?

Andrea Vahl [00:07:11]:

Yeah, and I was joking that I ask myself that question every day. No, but there was that period of time when they went to the iOS where everything was messed up. It was just a disaster. Tracking was a disaster. The pixel wasn’t working right. Everything and clients were upset. And people my business kind of has a dual focus where I do have some clients that I’ve had for a long time. And I run Facebook ad campaigns for people. Facebook and Instagram. But then I also have online courses and do the ads. I have a course for Ads managers as well. So kind of spanning all of those. Everyone was upset, nothing’s working. The clients aren’t happy because they’re not getting the results that they want or they were getting. The ad managers were having tough time because their clients were all upset. And it was just kind of a mess. And I literally was thinking, I got to get out of to I got to get out of so it was just disheartening. But then Facebook has gotten much better. The conversion API is working much better. And the tracking in the back end, they were doing some more modeling that seems to be really accurate on the conversions and things like that. So it’s gotten much better over the last six months to a year. And so that’s been really nice to see. And so that’s improved everyone’s results and improved everyone’s feelings. I mean, it’s definitely been still a challenge with the economic market that we’re in right now. I think that is affecting things. So there’s always something that some challenge that you’re dealing with, but in the end, I think it’s just so fun. You can just grow someone’s business like crazy with ads where organic marketing can take so much longer. It’s so much longer tail, and it’s fun to get instant results where you can sell stuff right away. It’s so exciting.

Rick Mulready [00:09:19]:

I know that a lot of people listening right now are like, okay, you just said it yourself, ads can allow you to grow your business really quickly. And they’re like, just tell me how. Yeah, I want to make sure that we do talk about that. I’d love to get your perspective on that. If I can just ask one follow up question on what you just said. You mentioned the conversion API. A lot of people think that that solves the tracking problem, but that’s not necessarily the case. How do you describe the conversion API to people?

Andrea Vahl [00:09:51]:

Yeah, it is really still like there’s still like tracking is never going to be perfect. It really isn’t because it depends on so many things. Are you doing first touch or last know? How are you even doing the attribution for a sale or a lead or something like that? But the conversion API is giving you kind of more of the back and stats, matching that up as best they can with someone who has purchased or opted in. It’s just never going to be perfect because there’s always going to be some missed conversions. Maybe there’s double counting in there due to several things, so it helps. But ultimately, the only way you would get totally perfect tracking would be to have your own separate funnel just for that channel. So that would be the only way you would have perfect, perfect tracking. And even then, probably there’s going to be some different glitches in the numbers that you get. But that is the sole biggest problem that everyone has is attribution and tracking for what channel is really giving you the conversions and the best return on your investment.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:11:03]:

One more time, Andrea, for the listeners that didn’t quite hear, did you just say they really have to have their own separate Facebook ads? Fellow?

Andrea Vahl [00:11:11]:

I mean, that would be the way to perfectly track it, but I’m not advocating for know. It’s not always necessarily right for someone’s business, but that would be the perfect way to track it.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:11:22]:

Would either of you care to elaborate on what that would mean if somebody were to want to track their ad performance and set up this Facebook ads funnel?

Rick Mulready [00:11:30]:

I don’t think it needs to be that difficult. I’ll share how I would think about it. Andrew, I’d love to hear and quadra, you do this as well with your clients and your coaching. You got your funnel. Wherever the funnel is, if it’s in whatever software that you’re using, just duplicate the funnel. Because you’ve got one funnel that for most people, all traffic is going into that instagram, TikTok, Facebook ads, whatever. Just duplicate the funnel and change the URL. Put like a Hyphen FB or something, and you send people to that funnel. And it’s very easy to duplicate a funnel in any of the tools that are out there now. So that becomes your Instagram Ads specific funnel. Would you agree?

Andrea Vahl [00:12:16]:

Yeah, for sure. That’s it. That’s the only thing that’s different about it is just it’s a whole separate it’s just the same as what you’re doing with your other landing page or whatever it is, except it’s just dedicated and that’s the only thing that’s getting sent there is Facebook Ads traffic. Now the question, I’ve only done that for a few of my clients have done that more specifically, but for the most part, most people are happy with a kind of more general approach. Like we’re going to track the numbers on the Pixel and the conversion API and kind of assume that they’re pretty close, right? And maybe do a couple of spot checks. Maybe we’ve got some UTM data that’s being pushed in there and maybe some better tracking software like Hiros or any of those types of software that does a little bit more intense tracking. But if you really did say, I need to know so that I am absolutely sure that Facebook Ads are giving me a positive ROI, then you would duplicate the funnel and have just a dedicated space to send that traffic.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:13:24]:

Well, there we go. So I’m going to take this section of the video and make a screen recording of it later on and just share it with clients. Because I have gotten a little bit of pushback from certain clients before. They will go unnamed saying they didn’t want to create a Facebook Ad specific funnel. They just wanted to have me manage it inside of Ad Manager, we use Google Analytics to track leads, right?

Rick Mulready [00:13:46]:

Can I share a admit something right now? We’re recording this on September 11 in Kwadwo. You’re going to do a Face palm here. Granted, I was out on Sabbatical for four months, but I have not upgraded to Ga Four on my website. Everybody who’s not upgraded to Google Analytics Four, shame on you. Shame on me. That passed, what was it, in July or something?

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:14:10]:

Yeah, go to my website. I literally have a free tutorial. It’s not behind an email address and a name. It’s just sitting there on my website. Kwadwo.com ga four. You can go there if you don’t have a Google Analytics account set up. I show you how to do it if you do. But somehow you still had Universal Analytics. What came before Ga Four? It will show you how to upgrade to Google Analytics for so there you go.

Rick Mulready [00:14:43]:

I’ll add that to the list. Yeah, please take care of that.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:14:48]:

I have a question. This one was going to be a little later in the podcast, but I really wanted to ask both of you what’s your hot take on all of these recommendations that the listener is seeing inside of Facebook Ad Manager when they go in there to set up a campaign. There’s so many options and Facebook’s telling you now, oh, you should combine your ad sets to this and you should change your creative to that. And it seems like it’s just for me, what seems like a minefield of suggestions from Facebook. What are your takes on those?

Andrea Vahl [00:15:19]:

Yeah, so the problem is Facebook isn’t always giving you the best advice they’re giving you. Most of the time they’re giving you the advice that’s good for, you know, occasionally it can work, but the big thing know, a lot of times they’re advising you to combine audiences, go really broad and put all your photos in one ad and just let them do all the decision making. And I think that is the way that Facebook’s going, Google’s going. It is really becoming a little more focused on their machine learning, their AI tools that they have going on. And I think eventually it’s going to really be good for a lot of advertisers. But for people who are new and you’re new to this realm, it is beneficial to really do some more systematic testing and know what works for you because Facebook’s giving you kind of generic advice and sometimes that’s not going to work for your type of business, for what your goals are. And it also can pay to do this testing so that you are maximizing and controlling those results yourself. Because I’ve definitely seen Facebook doing overspending on the wrong audience, the wrong image, all that stuff, and they’re not even giving the other ads or audiences a chance. Like they’ll spend $0.10 on an image and how do they know that that image isn’t going to outperform the one that they’ve given most of the budget to? So for people starting out, I think it makes much more sense to have a systematic test plan that you’re going to follow so you learn more about what audiences and ad images work better for you and then you can create more like that and just continue to get better results. Especially when your pixel is new and it hasn’t had a lot of activity yet. It helps to be able to do some of that testing yourself.

Rick Mulready [00:17:22]:

A lot of people listening, Andrea, they’re either running ads and not getting quite the results that they want or they’ve tried ads and they didn’t get the results that they want. On a recent episode here, Kwadwo and I talked about some of the top ten questions that people tend to have when it comes to ads. And we talked about this on that episode. But you just mentioned systematic testing and Kwadwo shared his methodology. What is your methodology when it comes to testing?

Andrea Vahl [00:17:52]:

Yeah. So I like to start with the audiences because that a lot of times is one of the bigger levers and just really kind of take a look at what assets you have and what kind of people you want to reach and put together a few groups of possible tests. And that could be it could be interest. Facebook has taken away a lot of interest and I will say wide targeting is working pretty well in a lot of cases. So I think don’t always go super narrow, but think about going wider if you can. Doesn’t always work for local audiences, but put together a few different audience possibilities and then make sure you’ve got enough variety in your creative. Like different images is huge. Maybe a video. I’ve definitely been seeing the vertical video reels working really well. More video ads can be working better than images in some cases. Some cases images are still outperforming. So come up with a lot of different variety of creatives to test as well. And I don’t do as much on the copy, but definitely that can make a huge difference too. I think the bigger places to start are the audiences and the images. And then if you’ve got a good copy and strong copy in general, that can be good. But it might be good to test some longer short form. I’m definitely seeing long form copy work really well. Just like kind of thinking about it from a hierarchical standpoint on all the different things that you’re going to hit. And that also could be different lead magnets or a lead form versus sending people to the website landing page. Some of that could come into play too.

Rick Mulready [00:19:49]:

I think this is a perfect example because Kwadwo, your testing is different. You lead with the copy. And so I think this is a perfect and neither one is wrong. It all works. I think this is another example where I think this is what a lot of people find frustrating because it’s like, tell me the one way to do it and there’s no one way to do it because it all works. Like, Andrew, you’re talking about leading with creative, right? And I tend to lean more towards that. But Kwadwo has a ton of gets amazing results testing with copy first and then moving towards the creative. And this is one of those things where it all works.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:20:35]:

I used to share this analogy, it’s a weight loss analogy, but it sums up the frustration. You want to shed a few pounds so that you can get in shape so that we can gain it all back in the upcoming holiday season. And you go to Google and you Google how to lose weight and you see the response from the paleo crowd and you see the response from the intermittent fasting gurus who are like, just eat less. Or in between whatever hours. And then you see the folks who say just eat only meat. And you see the ones who say, eat only vegetables. And they all look like gods and goddesses straight out of straight from Greek sculpted statues. And you’re just left there wondering, what do I do to get results? Feels a bit like that right now, doesn’t it?

Andrea Vahl [00:21:18]:

The big thing that we have in common here is test more than one thing, because so many people are like, yeah, I tried ads. It didn’t work. I’m like, well, show me what you tested. They tested, like, one, maybe two things, and like, yep, spent $20.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:21:36]:

So I know the listener is probably wondering, andrea, can you tell us about budget, ad budget? How much did I spend starting out? That’s the question I get. I want to hear your take on this.

Andrea Vahl [00:21:47]:

It is like, such a number one question, and people are thinking about it in the wrong way, so they’re thinking, how much should I spend? You really have to back it up into how much do I make with my sales and what is my conversion rates? If I know them? Now, a lot of people, if they’re new, they don’t know their conversion rates, right? So maybe you start out with, what’s the price point of my product? And then you make some calculated assumptions using general conversion rates around what’s the conversion rate from a list to the sale? What’s the conversion rate from cold to a lead? So you’re kind of using some of those more generic conversion rates to make some assumptions. So what you can spend is going to be very different for a $99 product versus a $2,000 product. And it’s also going to depend a little bit on what your niche is. Your niche, your nichey. I know both are used here on the podcast. And right before I always say it, I’m like, which one is going to come out of my mouth? I don’t know.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:22:55]:

I just responded to your post on Instagram, Andrea, saying that Niece has lots of ease in it and a silent N at the beginning or silent K at the beginning.

Andrea Vahl [00:23:04]:

Yeah. So, I mean, it does depend a little bit on that, because someone in the I’m going to teach your business how to make money is going to be a different conversion rate than someone who is in weight loss or someone who is in or selling a car, even. So, you really have to kind of do a little bit more calculation on what you can afford to spend, what is your marketing budget overall, and kind of approach it from a more holistic standpoint. Because the hard thing is, if you’re just starting out, sometimes things don’t convert right away for you, and it’s all about building the business for that later conversion. So obviously you want to be ROI positive as much as possible, but sometimes there’s a little bit of an investment in your business, and you have to think about, okay, if I’m launching a course, for example, I’m going to launch a course, and hopefully my conversions will be around this. If I have this many people on my list, this many people come to the webinar, this many people see the pitch and then buy. And then you know that in a month you’re going to have another product that maybe they’re going to want to buy, or maybe you have a downsell, or maybe you have something else, or maybe you have another launch where they buy at that time. So there is a little bit longer tail to some of this investment you’re making up front. And you kind of have to think bigger picture. Oftentimes. It’s not about what. Can I spend this week on my ads? It’s like, can my business bear a $5 per lead cost if my product price or eventual product price or my customer lifetime value is this?

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:24:46]:

Well Said. Anything you want to add to that, Rick?

Rick Mulready [00:24:49]:

Yeah, I think there’s a by the way, there’s no affiliation whatsoever, but I came across this podcast app called Snipped. Snipd. And it’s an AI based podcast app. And as you’re listening, if you hear, like, something that Andrea just said, you can click the little button on your phone and it’ll capture that clip and transcribe it, and it’ll save it for you as a note. The reason I bring that up is because, Andrea, what you just said is gold. Yet so often people don’t want to play the long game. They want to know. Just tell me how much to spend. And I want results in the next 14 days. And if I don’t get it, these don’t work.

Andrea Vahl [00:25:35]:

Exactly.

Rick Mulready [00:25:37]:

But you mentioned so many great things. There about number one. It’s a long game. Number two. You have to know what your numbers are. And I will tell you right now I have a one on one coaching client later this week, and I’m going through some of the questions that he’s posed. He’s running an evergreen funnel based on the back end of his top of funnel stuff. I want to know what his stats are. Because it’s the number one revenue producer in their business. I have a hunch that doesn’t know what those numbers are. And this is a very successful business. And so if you don’t know what those numbers are to what Andrea is talking about, you all try to figure out what those conversion stats are. So that just exactly what Andrea said back into being able to answer. Oh, okay. Well, how about I start spending X amount of dollars based on these other numbers?

Andrea Vahl [00:26:34]:

Yeah. And the hard thing is that answer I just gave is not what people want to hear. Right. They want to know. Wait. No, wait. I just asked how much can I spend per day? What I usually tell people when they’re saying, what can I spend per day? Is if you’re just starting out, start with something small like that. You can afford to invest in your business. So that could be $20 a day for 14 days. $50 a day for 14 days. See how the leads cost. Go. Start Tracking All This Stuff, and Then Get That Data On the back end of it to say, okay, we got 100 leads, we had five sales, let’s do the math on all of that and then scale it up from there. I think some people hear this whole like, facebook is an ATM or whatever and they’re like, go big or go home, let’s spend $5,000. Well, you don’t know how you convert on the back end of that if you’re launching something new. So start slow and plan for future launches. It’s not, launches are never one and done.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:27:40]:

Agreed. In fact, I would say Facebook probably does not treat you nice if you just throw a bunch of money at it. That’s a surefire way to lose unless you’re taking a measured response or a measured approach like you just said. I got a question for both of you that’s okay. Lead form ads versus sending people to a website to opt in, which do you feel is better right now?

Andrea Vahl [00:28:02]:

Yeah, I mean, I’m definitely seeing lead form ads be a lot less expensive. They just are. They’ve always been a lot less expensive. I think that if you can figure out some really good ways to use a lead form ad for your business, I think it’s a good idea. It does in general give you lower quality leads, but that could couple into quantity versus quality. But I do think that Facebook is really and has always, but now more so than ever wanting to keep people on their platform. So lead form ads, sometimes you get a little notification saying you’re leaving Facebook, are you sure you want to do know? And people get nervous with that kind of thing. So if you’ve got a lead form ad, it pops up. You can do some creative things with lead form ads. I think for sure you want to make sure that you’ve got higher intent ads on. So they have to double submit that they’re submitting their information. That’s going to improve the quality of your leads. And then the other thing too would be maybe to have a little more information that you might be asking for. Maybe it’s something that they do have to type in or answer some question and that can give you a little bit higher lead quality as well. But yeah, it’s always a balance. So I have a client right now that we’ve been doing lead form and website conversion ads for long years. We’ve been running them side by side and we’ve seen some ebbs and flows with which one is outperforming the other because if you’re sending them to a website, you can give them more information. You’ve got a little bit longer format there. You get to add in like BIOS and all kinds of other stuff that makes it feel a little more trustworthy. And so they submit their information. It’s a little bit higher intent with that as well. But we’ve had some good wins with the lead form ads recently where. We’re getting pretty high quality leads with that at one fifth of the cost of what we’re getting with the website conversion ads. So there is that balance of quality versus quantity, and you just have to track it.

Rick Mulready [00:30:19]:

Are you measuring all the way through to a sale?

Andrea Vahl [00:30:21]:

We’re tracking all the way through to a booked client, and we’re seeing which ones are giving us the lowest cost.

Rick Mulready [00:30:29]:

So when you are running both of them, are you running them both simultaneously? Are you sort of like, sort of piggybacking, like, all right, I’m going to run lead ads for this time, and then how are you running those?

Andrea Vahl [00:30:41]:

Yeah, there’s lots of schools of thoughts around that, too. And in general, I would probably say if you could run them more consecutively versus concurrently, that’s a better test. But we are running them consecutively, and we’re actually running them to the same audiences, which is probably again, but it’s all about getting at the end of the day, who cares if you’re getting the kind of cost per conversion to the sale that you want? It’s a lot of times about, like, let’s just build up the spend, and if we’re still hitting the numbers we need to hit, then why not?

Rick Mulready [00:31:19]:

What’s really interesting about that, too, and I asked that question because I know that you do, Andrea, but most people running their own ads don’t do this, so that when they say, oh, I’m getting this great cost per lead, but yet we don’t even know what that translates into paying customers. And I don’t know anything about the funnel that you’re running, but what I think is interesting, since you are tracking all the way through, is, you know what it costs to acquire, I’m assuming a sales call and then the conversion rate on the sales call, and then it’s like, okay, it cost me. I’m just going to make this up $150 to acquire a new coaching client. Again, I don’t know anything about the funnel, but that’s the type of number that we need to know in order to like, all right, cool. I’m paying. Whatever. Even just making this up $20 a lead. Some people would say, oh, my God, it’s so high. But wait, I’m paying $20 a lead, and the value of that customer is X.

Andrea Vahl [00:32:21]:

Exactly. And that’s why you have to know your numbers and really track all the way through if you can. And it’s hard to set up. It takes a while to set up. And that level of tracking may not be right to start for everybody, because I think people get overwhelmed. They’re like, oh, my God, now I’ve got to set up this entire tracking thing. And you don’t have to do that. What you have to do is just dip your toe in the water, start doing a little bit, start making sure that you’re booking clients from this, and then scale. This client was spending $100,000 a month on ads. So you’re not starting at that point. You’re starting much lower and you’re selling up. And this is after years and years.

Rick Mulready [00:33:03]:

Of scaling the other benefit, too, that I think a lot of people forget about. And we’re talking about tracking and all that stuff today, but when we are using lead ads, they’re staying on Facebook, so it’s much easier to trust the tracking in that sense from a lead ads perspective because they’re not leaving the.

Andrea Vahl [00:33:27]:

It’S definitely the tracking is dead. Yeah, that is the benefit, too.

Rick Mulready [00:33:31]:

Kuwait, are you using lead ads when you’re managing ads for your clients?

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:33:37]:

Yep. And if you ask which one is working better, it really differs from account to account.

Andrea Vahl [00:33:42]:

Yeah, that is true. That is true because definitely I’ve seen that as well. And there’s some kind of fun, creative things you can do with lead ads that people don’t think about, is that people think of them as leads only, but I use them for sales, so that way you’re getting some follow up information. So we’ve done it for like, a dance studio that had a special deal, like a $99 deal on a package. And so what they would do is say, sign up for a $99 package, they would fill out the lead form. Now they can go back and try and book that client in. So there’s some advantages to that, too, where you now have something tangible. It’s not just they’re bouncing off the sales page and leaving and you don’t really have you could do retargeting ads, but you have something more tangible to follow up with.

Rick Mulready [00:34:38]:

So wait, are you selling right within the lead ad?

Andrea Vahl [00:34:41]:

Basically, yeah. You’re saying sign up for this $99 package and they put their name and email in and they can go right. Then we do a redirect to the page to actually buy.

Rick Mulready [00:34:52]:

Oh, got you.

Andrea Vahl [00:34:53]:

Okay, buy it. So the redirect after they fill out the form is go to our website, and then they can actually buy it. If they don’t buy it, then the follow up sequence starts with giving them a call, email, that kind of thing. Hey, book your session.

Rick Mulready [00:35:10]:

We’re booking now and again. That’s easier to retarget because we’re not losing any data to privacy. It’s all within Facebook. So we can retarget those.

Andrea Vahl [00:35:20]:

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:35:22]:

Since both of you touched on the importance of a funnel, I literally just pulled a screenshot from a client’s account. Their name is removed. And this is a plug, by the way, for the YouTube channel the Art of Online Business. If you’re not following it, go there because you can see some basic tracking that would help you for your funnel. Because both Rick and Andrea, we’re talking about not just selling ad spend at the top of the funnel, but knowing how much your leads cost and then how much sales you’re getting from that funnel. And so I thought I would just share a screenshot. Ultra simple way. If you go to the YouTube channel, you can see it now. I’ll describe it to you if you’re just listening, but it has ad spend for a row, then leads for the next row, then cost per lead for the following row, then total revenue generated from that funnel. Again, you only know if you separate your organic and your paid traffic and then the earnings per lead. And then a simple equation. If you subtract the cost per lead from the earnings per lead, then you’re left with, hopefully, what is a positive number. Anything you guys want to add before I take this?

Rick Mulready [00:36:28]:

Yeah. You know, I’m going to ask, why is this person not spending more money? So I’m just looking at one. The cost per lead is $13.81. So we’ll just round up to $14. Their earnings per lead is basically $50. The next one, I see, $20. Cost per lead, earnings per lead, $79. Why is this person not spending is this the same person that I think it is?

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:36:52]:

Kwadwo no, it’s not, actually. It might be a bit self conditioning. This is another client of mine, so why am I not spending more money?

Rick Mulready [00:37:00]:

Yeah, why are you not spending more money on this?

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:37:02]:

I wanted to be confident that I had the right mix of ads. This person does have three different ads that are yielding the lower, like, 9.32 cent cost per lead that you see now. And so we have started scaling up by about 15% a day. I tend to be a little more conservative for clients, and I don’t want to scale up too quick before I really know that I have a set of ads to go with that’s going to work out.

Andrea Vahl [00:37:23]:

Yeah. And that’s just such a great, simple way to do your tracking, because it just makes so much sense. It’s just like right there in black and white. You can be like, hey, Facebook is an ATM.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:37:39]:

It is. For the lucky few, it is. But, yeah, in that sort of example, it’s kind of tracking the old way. We make fewer changes. We go week by week, and then you can attribute, oh, this one week. I was testing one ad set. This next week, it was a different audience. And you can thus see what’s affecting performance that way.

Rick Mulready [00:37:59]:

You said something really key there. Quaido you said, we don’t make a ton of changes or we make fewer changes. I think that’s a huge mistake that people make, is they’re watching it like it’s like a stock. They’re watching it and they’re like, oh, this isn’t quite it’s only been 36 hours, so I’m going to start tweaking now. No, stop tweaking after 36 hours.

Andrea Vahl [00:38:21]:

Yeah, it definitely takes some time to settle in. And I always tell people, too, you’re going to get the worst results at the beginning of the campaign, so just buckle up.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:38:34]:

Oh, man. Coming up at the end of this episode, what would both of you share to the online course creator who clearly understands the myriad of suggestions that Facebook is making inside of Facebook Ad Manager, but also would like to like if we could peer into a crystal ball for the like, what changes do you see coming? One, two, what kind of strategic thinking do you just believe will help this person out who’s managing ads for themselves?

Andrea Vahl [00:39:04]:

Yeah, Facebook is definitely going with a lot more automated stuff. They’re kind of actually making it difficult. They want to make all the decisions. Some of these things are now actually hiding around, adjusting your audiences, testing that they’re like. They want you to use Advantage plus Everything. Advantage plus Placements, advantage plus this. And they are trying to streamline it so that they’re delivering the best results. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think that it will get better and better. Google’s doing the same thing with their promax stuff and everything that they’re doing on that end. But I would say just follow the formula around, especially what Kwadwo and Rick teach around, doing some systematic testing and making sure that you know what’s working and also ignoring a lot of the things that Facebook is telling you. Because a lot of times people get nervous. They’re like, your leads are going to you’re probably going to get no leads or no sales the way you’ve set it up. And that’s not true. That is not true. And especially if you’re new, you think, oh no, but you haven’t even run a campaign maybe in the right way before. Maybe you’ve just done a boosted post or something that isn’t set up in the best way. And until you do that, you won’t really know what is working for you. And I think using things like using Facebook to grow your email list and then selling the course is just so incredibly powerful and it still remains powerful. I have clients who are having huge launches just using Facebook and Instagram ads. So it’s still working. It’s not dead or anything like that. It’s still going to be working for a long time. You don’t have to go all in on TikTok or whatever it know Facebook is still working. So just ignore a lot of their little helpful hints and just use the system that you guys are teaching to set up the ads in the best way.

Rick Mulready [00:41:12]:

Andrea ears just perked up. As you said, clients are still having huge launches.

Andrea Vahl [00:41:17]:

Yeah.

Rick Mulready [00:41:18]:

Question for you, are they running ads regularly or just for launches?

Andrea Vahl [00:41:24]:

Most of my clients are running ads all the time and some of them do have just particular launch phases, but I really don’t encourage that. I really want people to be running ads and building their list with different lead magnets all year long. Because between launches is a great time to test new lead magnets, test new things, and continue to build that relationship so that when you launch a course, if it’s just once or twice a year or maybe a quarter or whatever it is, you’re going to have a really warm audience who already knows you. You’re not trying to warm them up in two weeks or whatever your launch phase is, you’re nurturing them. And so that’s the best way, in my opinion. I have a few clients who are essentially launching every month, so it’s a little bit different because we’re always running the ads, like kind of for their next launch or launching different products. They’ve got different focuses for that. I have one client who is launching the same product over and over every two weeks, and we’re able to scale up and do really good things for his business. But yeah, I recommend running ads in between launches. Just building your list.

Rick Mulready [00:42:35]:

If I could take this microphone off and drop it. I want to echo that. I think that is the biggest mist. So that’s when we talk about OG ads it wasn’t too long ago that that’s what most people did, and myself included, where we would start ads. What between nine and eleven days prior to a launch, we would test for three to four days, then start to ramp up and then scale the few days right before launch opens.

Andrea Vahl [00:43:04]:

Right.

Rick Mulready [00:43:05]:

And that used to work. It doesn’t anymore because the algorithm and all the changes and so forth. But what Andrea just said is so important, you should be running ads consistently. That doesn’t mean a day or what have you, but use that time, just like Andrea said, to be testing, building your list. That way you’re creating an opportunity to build that relationship with people so that when you do launch, sure, you can run launch ads, but you have such a warmer audience at that point, they’re more likely to purchase. And the only thing I’ll add to that is I would say hire an ads. And this isn’t just a shameless plug for both of you, but yet it is. But I would hire an ads manager as quickly as you can. Now, what I’ve always been saying here on the podcast is, learn enough to be dangerous with them. I had another conversation with somebody last week where they said, oh yeah, I don’t know ads myself. I’ve gone through probably whatever number of agencies and they would have conversation. I had no idea how to speak to them or check the work, and I was just losing out on thousands of dollars because they weren’t doing what they’re supposed to. Learn ads. So that you do know the basics, that you could have an educated conversation with an ads manager and then go hire an ads manager. Because as a CEO of your business, you should not be spending your time doing ads yourself. Get somebody to do them for you who specializes in ads.

Andrea Vahl [00:44:32]:

Yeah, that is so perfect. Yes, absolutely. And you can eventually then scale up, train someone on your team, or whatever that might be. But if it’s you, you’re probably not the right person. Exactly.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:44:45]:

I love that you’re saying, both of you, what you’re saying, because I’m just thinking of one client. I do these funnel fixing calls. They’re strategy calls. We look at funnels, we look at ads. And this one client of mine, she has a 68 pound cost per lead, but then her earnings per lead is 114 pounds. And she does this, but does not run ads between launches for a myriad of reasons, which we won’t go into here, lest we call her out. I really like her, though, and I’m really trying to get her to run ads between launch so she can have some warm leads because her launches work. But it’s just so stressful. And we were running the numbers and looking at the options. Okay, how do we increase revenue here? Well, we could increase courses prices. Two, we could spend more ad money. But with the current equation, it was like, she’s going to have to spend $20,000 going into a launch, only to not be 100% sure, because we can never say, oh, it worked last time, it absolutely will be this way. But if she could recoup all that and just the anxiety and so hopefully she’s listening to this, and if she’s not, I’ll send her a clip right before our next call. But it has been really cool hearing from both of you. Andrea, where can people connect with you? I feel like somebody who’s not seeing this video can’t see that Facebook marketing for Dummies Book sitting right there on like do you understand? Does the listener understand just how good of a podcast guest we have? Right.

Rick Mulready [00:46:19]:

It’s synonymous, literally. When I started out in ads, andrea was one of the people who were synonymous with ads. And I learned from her. I started in 2010 just learning ads, and so Andrea was already into it at that point. Where can people connect with you?

Andrea Vahl [00:46:39]:

Andrea yeah, so people can connect with me at my main hub, which is Andreavall.com, or Andreavall.com, actually, Andrea Vahl.com. And that has everything. I’ve got a free guide there on 50 Facebook ads that work. I forget exactly what the title is. It’s Examples, and I just recently updated it. Examples of ads that have worked either with my experience or I know that are working and all different industries. And then the other thing I have there is a link to my podcast, which is latestartersclub.com. And you can also see some of my stand up comedy on that page, too. So it’s kind of a hub of everything, probably terrible for SEO.

Rick Mulready [00:47:26]:

And what kind of clients are you working with, Andrea?

Andrea Vahl [00:47:28]:

So I work with a real variety, which is fun. And I keep thinking I should specialize every once in a while, but I do mostly do course creator type people who are launching products, launching things. But I also do some local businesses. Some things like Realtors and other types of online businesses. Realtors lawyers, mortgage brokers, although that’s been a tough industry lately. And what else? Yeah, mostly course creators in general. So, yeah, it’s fun. I love it. And I’m glad that I’m back in love with it after that bumpy ride in 2021 or whatever. 2021, whatever. It was awesome.

Rick Mulready [00:48:05]:

Well, thank you for being here.

Andrea Vahl [00:48:07]:

Yeah, thank you, guys. This was super fun. Super fun to catch up and yeah, everything all right.

Rick Mulready [00:48:13]:

Hope you enjoyed that one with Andrea. Always a fun conversation. I think that she was if I’m mistaken, I had her on the podcast back when it was the art of paid traffic years and years and years ago, if I’m not mistaken. So it’s a lot of fun to have her back in episode what are we at, 725 or something like that. She’s awesome and super, super OG, super smart when it comes as you heard today, when it comes to Facebook ads. So thank you for listening today. Appreciate you. Until next time, my friend. Be well and we’ll chat with you soon. Bye.