Susan Wenograd is a Virginia-based advertising specialist. She’s actually my own go-to mentor on anything Facebook Ads or general advertising related, because she’s established herself as an expert there running campaigns for so many different types of businesses.

In this episode we talk about Facebook advertising and some of the tricks she’s learned, but more importantly we talk about the shift we are both seeing towards more social and demographic based targeting and away from straight classic PPC keyword targeted advertising.

Transcript

John: Hey everyone. Today I have with me Susan Wenograd who is based in Virginia and Susan is a Facebook advertising pro. She’s been a friend of mine for about a year now. We were connected through a mutual friend and she’s one of the…she is the person that I go to when I have Facebook ads questions, even PBC questions or I just need to complain about something. So Susan is a fantastic person. I’m super glad to have her on the show today and talk about Facebook ads and generally the direction of digital advertising and especially social advertising because that’s made…that’s risen so much in the last few years and I genuinely believe it’s gonna be the future.

So Susan, welcome. Super glad to have you. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Susan: Thank you. Yeah, totally. It sounds really strange to say, like it’s weird to hear the number of years but I started in digital marketing in 2005. So it’s been 12 years. It just feels like it was yesterday. But I actually started off as a writer and an editor for circuitcity.com when they were still around. So I was kinda more on the creative side for a while and then I thought it was like the coolest thing ever when I worked with the marketing team and I realized they were sending emails and they knew how many people opened them. Like I was like, “Oh, my God. You know that stuff.” Like I just thought that was really cool.

So I just got really interested in the marketing side because I was really…I found that I was way more interested in how people responded to the copy I was writing as opposed to even writing the copy itself. So I got really interested in the metrics side and the marketing team picked up on that. And so they hired me over to their side. So I ran their email marketing for a lot of their retention efforts so like upsales and that kinda stuff, and that was back in the days where we didn’t have programs like we have now where you could like make two clicks and say…you know, it was like we had to do manual polls and stuff. It was like this whole thing.

But I loved it. I really loved it. So around that time, I was getting ready to leave because I could tell that the business was kinda struggling, and I decided I wanted to freelance for a while, and I had clients that were asking me, “Hey, do you know anything about those ads that appear on Google?” And this was like ’07 I guess. And I was like, “No. But I’m willing to figure it out. Just don’t expect a lot.” Like I didn’t charge them a lot because I was like, “I might totally screw it up.”

So that was how I got into paid search and it was actually a really good fit for me because it kinda combined the word stuff that I liked doing as a writer with the metrics part of being a marketer. So I was just…I found I was really drawn to it, and I had an affinity for it, and I did well at it and so I’ve pretty much focused on that for ever since. I’ve had stints where I’ve done…you know, in house where I’ve had other things, where I’ve done like some content marketing, some email marketing. You know, I’ve done some greater depth and breadth stuff but paid media always felt like home. I just always felt most comfortable there.

So I’ve done PPC since then and then in 2014…I guess it was 2014, 2015, I started dabbling in Facebook advertising. When I was working in house, I worked for a home décor retailer and obviously, anything visually rich, social’s gonna be a big deal. So I started messing around with Facebook and it was so hard at first because when you’re so conditioned to AdWords, it’s like Facebook is just a completely different world. So it was really scary. It felt super confusing at first.

I think it kinda helped that I was on the in house side though because there’s not as much pressure as there is, I guess when you’re an agency and you’re spending the client’s money. You know, there’s a little bit…it’s a little bit more forgiving on that side. So I started messing around with it and I really loved it. Like it kind of again, took from like my previous experience of being an email marketer and doing visual stuff and combining it with metrics. So I’d like…

John: And you knew subject lines and how to entice clicks but not be spamy about it and all that stuff, yeah.

Susan: Yeah, and like how to…like what images actually resonate, and it’s never the one you think it’s gonna be. You know, it’s like always something like, “This is gonna suck.” And then it always wins. You’re like, “Damn it.”

John: Yeah.

Susan: So I started doing it there and then I’ve just kinda done it ever since for various agencies. Right now I do it for an agency called Five Mill. I’m pretty much…I still can do paid search. Like it’s still in my wheelhouse but most of my time these days has been on Facebook ads. I think the demand for it is so insanely high. There’s just…the supply is very low at the moment which I think will change but…

John: Yeah, yeah.

Susan: That’s kind of…

John: Have you seen a shift…I mean, you say the supply is really high for…or the demand is really high for Facebook ads right now. I should know supply, demand. I run a marketplace. But you say that the demand is really high. Have you seen that demand shifting from AdWords?

Susan: Yeah. I actually have.

John: Okay.

Susan: I’ve seen a lot of clients and it…I will say it depends on the vertical so I think before, paid search was kind of always the default. You know, it’s like everyone’s searching so we just need to figure out how to show up there. And like as the years have gone on, I think a lot of marketers have realized that like I can’t just kind of try an interject myself into someone else’s search. You know, it’s like…they’re like, “Well, if they’re searching for this, they’d be interested in what I have.” But it’s…they realize that’s not how search works. It’s like they’re bottom of the funnel, they know what they want. It’s like even in research stage, you gotta be really…have a great content strategy to make that work. And the clicks have gotten so expensive that it’s just like…

John: Crazy expensive.

Susan: Oh, my God. You gotta know what the hell you’re doing and what you wanna get out of it when you go in. You just can’t mess around with it like before. So but I’ve seen…especially…

John: Yeah, the barrier to entry is just…as an organic guy trying to learn paid, it is like…it’s so high and so risky. Yeah.

Susan: Yeah, it’s very risky and it’s so hypercompetitive because before it was like if you were really good at paid search, you usually were up against clients that did a really crappy job. You know what I mean? So it was like you could be half way good at it and probably outdo your competition. Now, everybody’s good at it and there’s tons of algorithmic learning, there’s all that stuff.

John: Yeah, programmatic, yeah.

Susan: And…yeah. Totally. And it’s like on…I think what I’m finding on the Facebook side, especially for products that are like new to market, like they’ve basically created a category that people don’t search for but there’s a humongous need. Facebook does amazingly well. So I have a lot of clients, especially at Five Mill where there are like a lot of VC backed startups where it’s not something that someone would search for. You know what I mean? Like it’s not necessarily something people even know exists. But they know who would buy it if they knew that it was around, you know. So it’s those kind of products that they do super well on Facebook.

And there have even been some clients where I’ve seen them move from paid search to Facebook just because it was getting so expensive in search that they’re like, “I have a much bigger audience on Facebook and I can afford to have the wasted clicks because the clicks are a third of the price.” You know, so it’s like…for some of them, it’s just an economic decision that it’s like the math works better for them to be there. So I’ve definitely seen…I don’t think paid search will ever go away but I think that from like kind of a prospecting and acquisition standpoint, I’m seeing a lot of money start to move to Facebook. It’s also easier to explain certain products on there versus a text ad search so…

John: Totally. Totally.

Susan: You have a lot of freedom.

John: Yeah, and it seems like…I mean, and this is something that we’ve…I…we talked about on the organic world for forever where…and certain people like Rand and people like that have been talking about like you’re going from like keywords to people and so it seems like it’s exactly that same thing. We’re on…in AdWords, you’re literally targeting keywords and like specific like groups of keywords and like if you’re searching this, it’s like broad matches and whatever which…I mean, even I know like broad match is not…it doesn’t like…you don’t wanna bet on broad match. But…

Susan: You get a lot of junk.

John: Yeah, you get a lot of junk. But like…but…so going from that to like we are targeting…like I see All Birds for example, like the shoes company from New Zealand. They’re like…like I see them all the time because I am a 33 year old white male in the U.S. that makes over 6 figures, right. Like I am their audience. And so like I’m never gonna go search for like Merino Wool New Zealand sneakers, right? But I see that and I’m like…

Susan: Those are awesome.

John: They’re kind of ugly but they look really comfortable and they’re not that badly…yeah, right? So…Plus, the visual aspect to it, right. Like I would never click on an All Birds ad in in AdWords, right. I’d go to Zappos or somewhere like that to buy shoes. But on Facebook, it’s like it’s right in the middle of my friends’ updates about like political stuff and their son like pooping on the floor that morning, right.

Susan: Totally, yeah. And it fits right in with the poop, right?

John: Yeah, it fits right in with the poop. Exactly.

Susan: Well, and I think…but it’s funny because the stuff that you highlighted, I think that that’s the number one reason I see PPC people who traditionally have only been on AdWords. Some of them really struggle with Facebook and just…they just can’t take to it because it’s such a different marketing platform.

For all the reasons you said where it’s like they are very kind of black and white, and I’ve often described paid search as it’s kinda more transactional in nature where it’s like you kinda know what you’re getting for the money you’re putting in. You know what I mean? It’s fairly predictable because you kinda have the numbers to know this is my conversion rate, this is how much I have to make. Like the math works very beautifully.

And the only thing that really varies is your bid and maybe your ad rank might affect what your conversion rate looks like, but there’s very defined levers that impact what you get on the other side when you put in the money in the machine, right.

John: You know your conversion rate, you’re spending a $1,000 and you get this. You get this much money back out.

Susan: It’s pretty predictable.

John: Yeah, and you find what you spend and yeah.

Susan: You know, you kinda know what you’re gonna get. And it’s hard with Facebook because you don’t have that. So it’s difficult for clients that are like, “Well, what am I gonna get out of it?” And it’s like, “Buddy, I don’t know until we start testing a whole lot of stuff because it doesn’t…like you’re gonna have certain groups that convert at 5% and some that convert at 1%.”

And the 1% might be better for you because the audience might be 5 times as cheap, you know. So it’s like there’s a lot of different considerations and there’s…there isn’t a black box element to Facebook that Google doesn’t have where, you know…especially with things like lookalike audiences or things that work really well that leave it up to the algorithm.

You know, clients are like, “Well, I don’t know which audience is working.” It’s like they’re just ones that look like your purchasers. That’s all I can tell you. Like I’m not setting up specific interests. Facebook is doing it for us and it does a hell of a job. So it’s also kinda I think uncomfortable for people just because there is…AdWords feels more transparent than Facebook does so…

John: Interesting.

Susan: A lot of people…I can see people struggle with that too.

John: Interesting. That’s really fascinating to me. I wanna dig into that a little bit more because…I mean, obviously, you’re like 100% on the paid side. I’m like 99.8% on the organic side.

Susan: Yeah.

John: And so this is the kind of conversation that I’ve always had with with clients on like…when I’m selling SEO consulting work. And like we were talking about before we started recording about like talking with clients about their budget and you’re like, “Well, what’s your budget?” And they’re like, “You tell me what it should be and what the return’s gonna be.” And you’re like, “It’s not really how this works.” But like in SEO forever, you’ve always been, you know…and actually, it’s…actually, if I’m putting it in even greater context, it’s…in the past, like 10 years ago…I wasn’t even in search 10 years ago. I’ve been in search for nine years. But in like 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009 I got into it but like before that, even up to like 2011, 2012 with Panda and Penguin, I could tell people like “This is basically like…” And we had all our keyword data and all of that. You know, I could tell them like, “Okay, like this is how much you’re making from this specific keyword. If we increase your rankings by like…by two, if we bump you from four to two, you’re gonna get this much more traffic and it’s gonna mean this much more because of the conversions.” And now, it’s opaque, right?

Susan: Yeah.

John: Like it was very…it was very clear. I could tell them like, “You throw 10 links at this page…” You know, 2009, I’m like, “We go buy like 10 links and point them to this page. Like all of a sudden, you’re gonna make this much more money.” They’re like, “Great. Let’s do that.” And it’s like money in, money out.

Susan: Yes, yes. This is transaction…it’s much more transactional.

John: Yeah, yeah. And now it’s so much more complicated. You know, where you can like go get all this informational like query traffic but like is it gonna convert and then like you have to think more about the full funnel. It seems like AdWords for a long time…people were just like, “I put in $1,000 and I make $5,000.”

Susan: A 100%, yeah.

John: And started thinking about SEO that way because they used to be able to and now they can’t and now it seems advertising is going back to that same thing and we’re having to become full funnel marketers in a lot of ways.

Susan: Yeah. No, it’s…and that’s definitely…I think that’s the other area that I see…even people that do Facebook marketing, they really struggle with even though every marketer and every client is like, “Oh, I understand last click doesn’t matter.” They’re still so conditioned to judge campaigns based on that whirly narrow vision. So it’s like I’ll take over Facebook accounts and they’ll have like 10 campaigns running and we’ll be like we’ll…and you’ll see one that has no conversions but that might not be its purpose. But they wanna turn it off. You know what I mean? They’re like, “Oh, but it’s not driving…” So where I see it a lot is like I have a video funnel that works really well where it’s like…you know, part of what I see is that people don’t utilize all the different campaign types in Facebook. They just kind of set up the conversion focused one and they just let it run and they’re like, “That’s the best it’s ever gonna do.”

John: Sure.

Susan: And I’ve gotten more into kind of driving top of funnel awareness more cheaply. So like running like a video view campaign and then remarketing to people that watched it to get the sale.

John: Yeah, yeah.

Susan: And you find that the CPAs…

John: We’ve been doing that on Credo. It’s been great, yeah.

Susan: Yeah, totally.

John: You set it up for me, yeah.

Susan: Yeah. I mean, I’m telling you it’s the CPA is so much better because you’re driving the top of funnel for so much cheaper. But people don’t think that way. You know what I mean? They’re not conditioned to think like how much does it cost me to drive this level of customer versus this level of customer in the funnel? They don’t think about…that those costs should be different and that when they’re different and you manage them that way, your cost to acquire them is actually less.

John: So how do you pitch that to clients? Because it’s…I mean, like I get that, you get that but someone that’s, you know…they’re a developer and they’re running a SaaS business. Like they don’t get that. How do you communicate it?

Susan: It’s hard. So for some clients, they get it faster because the ones that have a longer sale cycle, they tend to understand it better because they understand that it’s like a six-month sale cycle and there’s all these touch points. They get it. The ones that are harder are like…

John: And they figured out how to measure those different touch points. So it’s like, “We’ve gotta see them at a conference and we’ve gotta get them on a call and yeah.”

Susan: Yeah.

John: Yeah.

Susan: They’ve got something where they understand the steps and they’re very realistic about…a conversion on Facebook for them is probably gonna be a whitepaper download. It might not necessarily be a phone call. So they tend to actually have more realistic expectations because they’re so used to it being taking a long time and it really just being a small percentage of the population that’ll qualify. The ones that are kinda harder are like the ecommerce ones where they are so used to search. Like the ecom people and Google Shopping, it’s tough because they are so used to it being just…

John: Probably trouble too.

Susan: Oh, my God, yeah. It’s like they are so used to it just happening right then. So it’s actually a harder conversation with them because they’re like, “Well, but no. I should just be able to run an ad with my cool product in it and someone’s gonna buy it.” Like you know what I mean? They just don’t understand that it’s like…

John: Yeah.

Susan: So it’s…

John: Well, and the truth is more people will buy it than like a B2B, you know…like a 1,000…like 9.99 a month B2B product but at the same time, it’s like…it’s just not the same as what they’ve been used to.

Susan: No. And just the way that I usually wind up being able to get them to do it is because it’s actually fairly low risk. Because that top of funnel traffic is so cheap I don’t have to spend a ton to prove out the concept. You know what I mean? It’s like I can just set up like a video views campaign and then set up a, what a call a mid-funnel remarketing campaign where it’s basically like…it retargets the people that watched the video but that didn’t visit the site.

And so you actually can see the true return of what the video is driving independent of driving the traffic to the site. And so I can spend a few hundred bucks on a video views campaign and the retargeting cost, hardly nothing. So it’s usually a very low risk proposition for them. So that’s usually kinda how I get it in. They kinda understand the concept usually. Like a lot of times I’ll do like a quick diagram in PowerPoint and then they get it. Like once they see the funnel, they’re like, “Oh, okay. I understand.”

A lot of times, it’s it’s such a low risk position that if they’re spending 20K a month and I’m like, “Let’s take 800 bucks and do this.” They’re like, “Okay, fine.”

John: Yeah, whatever.

Susan: And then it does well and they’re like, “Great. More of that. Whatever you did, do more of that.”

John: Yeah, yeah. Interesting. So where do you…I mean, the…obviously, there’s been like…there’s been tracking in place for like…for a long time. Like you can, you know…and remarketing…I mean, even now, it blows my mind when people aren’t doing any remarketing like…and there’s a ton of companies that have been so organic focused that they’re like, “No, we’re not like remarketing anyone.” I’m like…

Susan: So cheap too. It’s so cheap.

John: Why aren’t you remarketing people? But it’s fascinating how now we can, you know…someone comes to your site from organic, you retarget them you drop a Facebook Pixel on them, you retarget them. And and then get them into…you know, download a whitepaper or whatever and then you put them in a little bit different bucket. Where do you think that’s gonna expand to? Because like thinking about like…thinking about TV, right. Like now we can’t really connect up like digital and TV…at least that I know of. Can’t connect up like digital and TV but like if people are running like cheap…like cheap ads on like Netflix or something like that, like how cool would it be to be able to…you know, if I’ve been seeing like…

Susan: You want like one Pixel to rule them all.

John: Yeah, exactly. Like I’ve been seeing Trivago ads on like…my wife and I…we were watching the “Handmaid’s Tale” and I’ve been seeing Trivago ads on Hulu, right, but like what if they can know that I watched these Trivago ads on Hulu and then they retarget me when I’m on Facebook and I’ve just, you know…and then I also like Expedia and Head Monk.

Susan: Yeah. I think that they’ll get there. I think…but that’s gonna require partnership between different platforms and I think that’s kind of the roadblock probably.

John: Or Facebook owning the platform.

Susan: Yeah. Well, that’s the thing. It’s like they’re very protective of their data and they don’t wanna share it necessarily unless it’s gonna be mutually beneficial. So I think it’s gonna…the other problem too is like then you’re getting flooded with a bunch of partners that are gonna wanna do that. You know what I mean? And so then it’s kinda like how do you…what’s the criteria for who they partner with and who they don’t?

John: Right, right.

Susan: I personally think within the Facebook ecosystem, I think that they’re going to start to let you get more detailed in how you retarget people based on how they interact with you on Facebook because they’ve already kinda started to do that where they opened up the option where if they watch, you can specify how much of the video of yours that they watched and then retarget them.

You can specify which video. I…my hope and what I think they’re gonna do is start extending that to your posts and your ads that they’ve interacted with. So just for example, like right now, you can create retargeting. I think it might still be in beta because I haven’t seen it in all my accounts but you can do retargeting based on people that have interacted with your posts but you can’t specify the post and you can’t say how they interacted.

So it’s kind of like a general…and it works. That’s another funnel that actually works as well.

John: So could a view be an interaction?

Susan: What was that?

John: Could a view be an interaction? Like they saw the post or more like they liked it or whatever?

Susan: No, they have to have like liked it or commented or clicked on it, basically.

John: Gotcha, gotcha.

Susan: So my hope is that they’ll get to the point where like you can separate out that they clicked on it versus they reacted or commented because it’s like if they clicked on it, I want them in the website bucket anyway. I don’t want them…you know what I mean? So I think that would be an amazing play for content marketers though because it’s like…you know, especially the ones that gets lots of comments and that kind of stuff. It’s like I’ve done some of that. Another good kind of pro tip funnel way is if you have like…if you’re selling something and you wanna start gathering an interested audience, if you share it like a piece of third party content that’s not yours…so it’s you’re not selling anything and just set it up as like a linked clicks campaign and let people click through.

So like let’s say you’re selling home security systems or something and you have like a third party for us to research about burglaries or whatever it might be. Then set up retargeting to people that interacted with your posts and then you’ll have an audience of people that you know is interested. But that’s why I wanted to get to the point where I can.

John: So shared organically like…maybe not boosted but do like a clicks campaign on that, like on that link, on that post of yours.

Susan: Well, to drive it and everyone’s like, “Don’t drive it to a third party.” I’m like, “Yes. It’s so cheap. Like you’re not paying a lot and then you’ll have…you’ll grow your remarketing audience.

John: Wow. That’s brilliant.

Susan: But there’s things like that where it’s like I want them…but I wanna be able to specify which post. Do you know what I mean? So it’s like if I run the third party stuff, like I wanna bucket the people that clicked on the third party ad because they’re still top of funnel versus people that clicked through on a post that went to my site or whatever so…

John: Right, right. Interesting.

Susan: I think they’re gonna get more granular with that. I’m so sure they’re gonna use those reactions for something some day.

John: Of course, of course, yeah.

Susan: I’m sure they’re using it on the back end somehow but all of us are like, “Please, could we target based on if they loved something or hated something or whatever”.

John: I know, right. Yeah. But it wouldn’t surprise me if they were doing like…I mean, they’re obviously using it as like sentiment sentiment analysis.

Susan: Yeah, to populate the feed.

John: So…yeah, populate your feed and show you more of stuff that you’ve loved and less of stuff that made you angry or something like that. I’m sure they have something like that to show you some percentage of stuff that makes you angry to keep things interesting, right?

Susan: Sure, yeah. They gotta keep you engaged, right.

John: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But at the same time, like that sort of stuff would be super valuable to marketers.

 

Susan: It’s just weird. If you really think about them, it’s already amazing enough that you can like segment people based on their interest, the sites they’ve been to, the things they do online, you know.

John: It’s unreal, yeah.

Susan: But now like they’ll be able to like put us emotionally into boxes. You know what I mean? Where it’s kind of like, “Here’s post number 600,489. Here are the happy people. Here are the angry people.” Like it’s just weird. Like they’re creating these shoeboxes of emotions that they can categorize people. It’s so weird. It’s just so amazing.

John: Totally. And then think about that further in. Like if you know…you know, if you can basically bucket people, you don’t even have to see their like personal information but if you can bucket people into like, “These are people that have loved us.” And so like they’re gonna spend money with us and so show them directly conversion campaigns. These are people that are like angry about something that we posted and so we need to like basically move them into the like…into the heart bucket.

Susan: Yeah.

John: That would be…that’d be…I mean, wow. That blows my mind. That’s so cool.

Susan: I know. I mean, I’m waiting, I’m like, “I know you all can do it. I have faith.” We’re just waiting and so they’re spending their time making this UI updates to the Power Editor and stuff. And I’m like, “I don’t care about any of that. Like give me the technology.”

John: Right, right. So I…that’s awesome. So let’s switch gears real quick. I wanna talk about…so I talked with a lot of people that…actually, it’s funny that you mentioned that you’ve been seeing people shift from AdWords to Facebook ads because on Credo now I kinda treat them like similarly and have like AdWords and like Facebook ads and I get way more people looking for Facebook ads than for AdWords.

I call it Google Ads on the site because that’s what marketers call it. Right, exactly. Which actually helped with conversion when I switch it to that but…you know, I get a lot of businesses that come and they’re like, “We need we need advertising, right.” It sounds like the people from like 2007 where they were like, “Tell me about these Google Ads things, right?” Like now it’s like people are like, “Tell me about these Facebook ads stuff.”

Susan: Yeah. What do I do on the Facebook?

John: Yeah, yeah. The Facebook. It’s like the Google.

Susan: Yeah. Exactly.

John: So when you get those sorts of questions, like where do you start with people? And I’m really thinking about like right now like if you’re speaking with a with a business owner like they come and they’re like, “I have an ecommerce…” So this happened today. They’re like, “I have a new ecommerce store and I have like 1,500 bucks a month, you know.” They’re saying, “I’m selling shoes. I have 1,500 bucks a month to spend on Facebook.” Like where do I start? Or like where where should I go to learn? Like what would you tell them?

Susan: Normally…depending on the type of business they are but like in the example you just gave…

John: Yeah, ecommerce store.

Susan: For 1,500 bucks and if they’re selling ecommerce, I would be like, “You need to be doing remarketing with the dynamic product ads all day long. Like just start there.” It’s low…because the other thing is too…it’s like if they’re really used to search, if you can start them with the lower hanging fruit on Facebook of remarketing, it kinda gets them comfortable with it. You know what I mean? It’s like they see that it can perform, they start to kinda understand how it works, how things render in someone’s feed. It’s way…it’s like very risk averse way to start. So normally, I tell them to do that and simultaneously I mean, they kinda have to do this anyway but get the Facebook Pixel on your site so we can start collecting information about who comes to your site. You won’t use it yet but you’re gonna wanna have a really rich history for when you’re ready to do some acquisition prospecting type stuff.

But usually those are the people I’ll say, “Start with some remarketing first and see how much of the $1,500 it spends.” You know what I mean? If your audience is so small that it doesn’t even spend that, then we can talk about some top of funnel brand awareness strategies that we could test, maybe try and find some mid funnel type people. But usually, I’ll say, “Start with remarketing first.

John: Gotcha.

Susan: Just because people…it’s overwhelming. I mean, it’s a really overwhelming platform and it gets their feet wet.

John: Yeah, totally, totally. Well, then also you know that you’re only going after the people that are that are directly interested or come…finding you from whatever place. I think about like a local business, right, like a restaurant. Like I don’t see any restaurants retargeting me on Facebook and I’m kinda like, “Why not?” Like like…I mean, there’s a great restaurant five blocks that way from me that like I’ve been to a couple of times like…and I booked on Open Table. Like they get my contact information. Why are you not putting me into that to like get me to come back and like…

Susan: And the easiest thing ever is it’s like just…and even if it’s such a small radius, it’s like, “Do it in a 5-mile radius. Offer a coupon that only is offered on Facebook and then see how many redemptions you get.” You know what I mean? It’s like you can do a reach campaign for like 10 bucks a day. I mean, it costs nothing. It’s like why are you not…I just don’t understand. It’s like you can target people that have been within 1-mile radius of your restaurant. Like people that have been here recently. You know what I mean? It’s like they’ve walked right by you. Send…make sure they get a coupon. It’s like…it’s…but I think part of it…it’s like…it seems obvious to us but it’s like none of that is obvious to find in the Facebook interface, you know. I think that’s the worst part is like it’s its own worst enemy. You know what I mean?

John: So true. Yeah, yeah.

Susan: Like people wanna give you money. It’s just…it’s become so…and I understand why it’s complicated. It’s really no one’s fault but it’s like…it’s just made it…I mean, AdWords is the same way. It’s become difficult for your average advertiser to try and run it.

John: Totally.

Susan: Or like inter-platforms.

John: Right, right, exactly, yeah. They’ve become more that…like yeah. I mean, they…obviously, they…well, money’s in the enterprise, right? So it makes sense that like…you know, it makes way more economic sense for Google to like double down on getting Marriott to spend another like $5 million than to find 50,000 businesses that can each spend 10K or…I think that math works out, right? It would be like…you see where it is. Like because those 50,000 businesses are gonna require so much more like customer support and all of that.

Susan: Yeah. Yeah.

John: We were talking about that privately.

Susan: Yeah.

John: But yeah. Like they still require so much more…yeah.

Susan: You know what I mean? So it’s totally…where do you want your time to go? You know, where do you want your resources to go?

John: Yeah. So how do you think like Facebook or like business owners or someone with 1,500 bucks about to spend on ecommerce. Like that…or the advertiser ecommerce store. But they’ve never done any advertising like…I mean, that’s a huge thing to know like where where do I…I mean, obviously, they can like come to Credo right, but like there are…but like it’s tough to find an agency or a consultant that like…because if they can spend 1,500 bucks a month total and you tell them that they’re gonna have to pay you 300 of that, like as your fee, they’re gonna be like…I mean, it’s the opportunity cost, right? But…

Susan: Yeah, yeah.

John: Like what do you like personally advice people to do in that case?

Susan: I usually tell people…I mean, and what’s hard is there’s really not any…like Facebook really doesn’t have training. They have like help articles. You know what I mean? Where it’s like it answers very specific questions.

John: At least AdWords has that, yeah.

Susan: Yeah. It’s like they answer very specific questions or they have these like overview pages that give the marketing sell on different functionality but not really how to do it.

So there’s kind of this missing piece in between where it’s like it’s either for people that know exactly what they need to do or people that have never touched the platform and there’s nothing really in between to help them get from one to the other. I’ve often recommended that people follow Jon Loomer. He actually has really good…J-O-N L-O-O-M-E-R.

But he’s got really great training materials. He’s very down to earth. He’s not particularly expensive either so he’s got some really good introductory courses for like 50 to 100 bucks a piece that can help you get started so you kind of…he has like a four week program on understanding the Facebook Pixel where it’s like one class a week so you understand what it is, where to find it, how to install it. And so he’s very good about taking people through the basics in a very like plainspoken way that’s not intimidating.

So I usually recommend if someone is kind of on the DIY boat, that’s usually a good place to go to to start. His also really good at…if you start getting into it, he tends to get access to betas and stuff sooner than other people, so he’s really good about taking screenshots so you kinda know what it does and what to expect once it appears in your account. So I usually recommend…like from a learning standpoint, he’s probably the best-known but I think it’s for good reason. You know, he’s very normal. You know, he’s not one of those gurus that’s like talking $10,000 courses or…you know, he’s not doing any of that stuff. It’s like he’s very genuinely helpful. So I usually tell people if they have to do it themselves, that’s where I would start.

John: He’s not trying to sell you like click funnels or something like that?

Susan: No.

 

John: Literally, just educating you?

Susan: Yeah. And I mean, he’s got like a mastermind group but I think it’s like a 100 bucks a month. Like it’s not…it’s nothing crazy. Yeah, it’s like very normal feeling, you know.

John: Yeah, yeah, totally.

Susan: So it’s…you know, you’re not gonna get hit with up sells every time you try and checkout or anything like that. So it’s usually the best way to start.

John: Awesome. Awesome. Well, I wanna be respectful of your time so thank you so much for joining me today. I’ve learned a ton. I’ve actually gotten some more ideas.

Susan: Hey, I’m glad.

John: And stuff that I’ll think about privately.

Susan: I’ll answer any other questions you have when you try to implement it after.

John: I know, right? That’s always the problem.

Susan: Yeah.

John: But where can people find you online and where…I mean, if they wanna hear you speak…you do a lot of speaking. Where are you speaking this fall?

Susan: Yeah. This fall’s busy. So I’ll be…anybody that’s in the UK, I’ll be at BrightonSEO. I’m speaking there like in the afternoon I think. And then I will be at Pubcon. I will be at SMX East. And then I’m at basically all the digital summits on the eastern seaboard. I think there’s like four or five of them coming up. So like Raleigh, Philly, Charlotte.

John: Atlanta?

Susan: I don’t know if I’m gonna be at Atlanta. I think I’m gonna be at the one in Dallas. I think Atlanta was like…I didn’t wanna deal with the flight. I try to stick…I’ll be in D.C. as well so…

John: Okay, okay.

Susan: And then I’m always on Twitter so you can find me at susanedub on Twitter.

John: @Susanedub, yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you for your time. I really appreciate it.