Facebook Ads in 2022 W/ Rick Mulready

Gabe Harris:

I thought a cool thing to be able to talk about is, you used to be knee-deep into Facebook ads, and I imagine obviously you still are, but it looks like you’re pulling back a little bit from going to more of a 10,000 foot analysis for businesses.

So, you can be able to actually take a look at full-funnel Facebook ads, optimize there and I imagine, optimize all paid channels organically, more of a strategic standpoint?

So we’d love to learn how your idea of Facebook ads has evolved, say, over the past year or two.

Yeah. Well, it’s creative. Right? It’s always been important, but for the past year and a half, especially the past year, it’s never been more important than it’s ever been.

The success of your Facebook ads hinges on: Number one, you got to have a good offer. If you have a crappy offer, the best creative, the best ad campaign set up, isn’t going to do anything. So you’ve got to have a great offer, and then it’s just about testing creative.

The reason for it is because the targeting has gotten so much broader. They’ve taken away so many interests. You can still get targeted, but the audience size that you really need to target is so much bigger than it used to be.

Years ago it was like, “All right, we can get away with 100,000, maybe half a million people.” Whereas you need to be doing at least a couple of million people, at least.

And when you have that broad an audience and we’re now relying so heavily on Facebook’s AI or the algorithm to find us the people that we want to be reaching, it comes down to the creative.

“Our creative has to speak to the people that we want to pull out of the overall audience.”

Our creative has to speak to the people that we want to sort of, quote, unquote, “pull out, if you will” of the overall audience. And so that’s the biggest change that has really gone on, not to say the whole attribution thing is completely different than it used to be.

Whereas, before you could be like, “All right, you know what? I’m going to rely pretty heavily on the metric or the stats that Facebook is showing me on the ads manager.” Now you can trust, pretty much, how much you spend? Maybe your click-through rate and that’s about it. You know what I mean?

Because the data is so skewed and basically at this point it’s modeled data. They’re just taking, again, the machine learning, what they see from all the campaigns and stuff and the performance of your camp.

They’re modeling out the results that they’re giving you. And so you really have to, what I call triangulate the data, meaning, “All right, this is what Facebook is showing me. This is what my CRM is showing me.” Whatever, ConvertKit or active campaign. And then, “This is what my landing page software’s telling me.” Those three tools are not going to match up.

I mean, that’s no different than what it always was. They would never match up. However, you kind of have to take data from each piece and try to figure out what’s most accurate.

And that’s been one of the biggest differences and also one of the biggest frustrations, is like, “How do I know what’s actually working here and what my actual results are based on this data that I’m seeing?”

Yeah, very true. It’s like almost seeing the views on a video. So, say if you send them to a landing page and actually have them watching a view, that’s going to be more accurate data than anything it’s going to be able to tell you, because at least you can be able to see that somebody opened it up and viewed that video. But the amount of clicks, you can almost basically just throw that out the window now.

Yeah. I mean the more that you can keep the experience on Facebook, so for example, if you are trying to grow your list — running ads to a lead magnet, get people to opt in — I would absolutely be trying lead ads, the whole experience within the ad unit.

And that’s nothing new. Lead ads have been around for years and years and years. They used to be terrible in terms of the quality of the lead. A lot of people were like, “Oh my God, I got great lead costs using the lead ads.”

But the quality of the lead was really not good. Simply because of the fact that when you click on the ad… And for those people listening right now who don’t understand what a lead ad is, a lead ad as a user is, basically the ad looks no different than any other ad that you see in the Facebook feed or Instagram feed. And you click on the ad and the experience is right there within the ad unit. You don’t leave Facebook or Instagram, and it auto-populates.

It can auto-populate with your name and your email address or whatever information that you’re asking for.

In the past it’s kind of not been good at all because a lot of people use a throwaway email address. Right? On Facebook or what have you. So you could get cheap leads, but the quality of lead wasn’t very good.

Whereas, Facebook has done a lot of, I don’t know what they’ve done in the back end, but lead ads have done a whole lot better and you can do some different things with it, where you can turn off the auto-population of the fields.

“It’s what they call first-party data, meaning it’s all within the Facebook platform or Instagram and not leaving. So you can track all that data and all that data should be pretty accurate.”

So the experience is still within the ad unit but you can ask people to actually fill in their name and their email address. It’ll auto-populate, but you can have them confirm the information.

These are things that weren’t available in the past, just as an example, which make it a lot more of a quality lead. It’s what they call first-party data, meaning it’s all within the Facebook platform or Instagram and not leaving. So you can track all that data and all that data should be pretty accurate.

So they’ve made up a lot of advancements on the back end of lead ads, but again, they’re not brand new. But we’ve seen a lot more success over post-iOS because Facebook realizes that, “We gotta solve something here.” Because this affected them a lot more than I think they realized.

That’s interesting. So my experience of lead ads is pre-iOS updates or where the lead quality… Say, if you’re sending that to a sales team, they know something’s going on. They don’t know what exactly is going on, but they knew that the lead quality was significantly lower. Even the email open rates for those particular leads were significantly lower as well.

Sure. Yeah. And the reason for that like what we talked about earlier is the information a lot of times that people put into Facebook, is kind of a throwaway email address or something like that, or an email address that they just don’t even check, whereas, I don’t know. What I’ve seen, I click on a lot of ads just to see the experience, especially on Instagram.

“Watch the feed, click on some ads and look at the experience.”

I love the experience of clicking on an ad, having the information right there. Meaning, all right, if I want to opt in for this lead magnet and it’s asking for my first name and email and it auto-populates and I can see it right there like, “Oh yeah, that’s the right information. Submit. Done.” You know what I mean?

I think that’s a really seamless experience. Just watch your feed in Instagram or if you’re on Facebook, still. Watch the feed, click on some ads and look at the experience.

The majority of the ads at least that I see in a lot of my students on Instagram are that experience. Meaning, I click on it, the information is right there, it’s populated, you confirm it and you’re done. And it’s a great experience. It’s really seamless.

Yeah. What experience would you rather go for? Obviously the answer is you test it and you figure it out. One of the reasons I also like sending them to a landing page is once they fill out the form, then you can send them to a thank you page. And then you can send them to a video that gives them a little bit more information and gets them excited about going to the next step in the funnel. It’s basically you’re holding their hand as they’re going through that experience.

Totally.

Where with lead forms, you’re not going through that experience. Actually, one of my beefs I wish that Facebook would do, is giving the option of having a video after they submit the form.

Mm-hmm. Yep.

It’s still natively within the platform.

Sure. Yeah, I agree. The only thing I’ve seen that is of any similarity to that is, I saw an ad one time and we haven’t tested this ourselves but I kind of liked it. It was this quote, unquote, “thank you page.” So after they opted in on the lead ad side, the last page was almost an additional offer.

It was kind of an upsell and it described the offer and then there was a call to action button and then that button took you off of Instagram over to the external landing page.

I liked it. I liked the experience, but I totally agree with what you’re saying Gabe, like, “All right, let’s have a video on that thank you page to continue the journey for that person.”

Yeah. My goal is just, I want you to remember me as best as you possibly can and let’s be real. If you’re doing a sales team speed-to-lead under five minutes, most likely it’s not happening. I would love for it to happen.

Yeah. Do you mean on the lead ad side or do you mean go into an external page?

So if you’re doing a B2B and someone fills it out and then the sales person’s supposed to follow up with them as quickly as possible. Everybody says speed-to-lead five minutes. Yes, we’re doing that-

Totally.

… but in reality it is not happening at the same rate.

So the best that I can be able to actually have them remember the brand, is for them to actually fill out the form. For me it’s going to increase not the likability but the possibility that they’re actually going to engage once they are interacting in that down funnel process.

Yeah. No, and I agree. And I mean, you can set it up where you’re getting lead ad information really quickly, whether you’re direct connected to your email CRM or you’re using Zapier and whatever level.

But yes, absolutely. I would trust your own landing page going into your email software, depending on what landing page you’re using. But I like that, I agree. I mean that it’s all about the speed, how quickly that follow up interaction can happen.

Mm-hmm. And also if you’re going between landing page or lead gen, what you’re asking for too. Right?

Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Asking for 10 questions and very in depth questions, I would almost go lead form or auto-form because everything is going to be pre-filled to an extent, or at least it’s easier for the audience to answer that in.

Where if it’s a lead landing page and you’re asking 10 questions, that conversion rate is going to go significantly lower because of the amounts of questions you are asking.

Totally. Yep.

Cool. Actually, so now that you are, you’ve pulled back a little bit and not just with Facebook ads. How do you see, this is I guess a fun question everybody’s talking about, the blend with TikTok?

Yeah. I mean, and I have not tested TikTok yet. I was just telling somebody this morning where I resisted TikTok for so long and my wife’s been on it for a long time. She’s an online business coach and well, she’s a health coach online and she’s been using TikTok for a long time.

And I would just see her laughing in the evening time watching and I’m like, “Oh, she’s watching TikTok again.” She would show me, she’d be like, “Check this out.” And I, not using the platform, would be like, “Oh yeah, I don’t really get it.”

And then for some reason, literally when we’re recording this right now, the third week of August. Three weeks ago, beginning of August, something clicked where I started to watch the platform. And I started to consume content on there and I am completely hooked, on TikTok.

It is the first platform that when I’m done, when I shut my phone off and I’ve just watched a whole bunch of videos, I feel better, I laughed and I learned something. Literally I can check all those boxes pretty much every time I watch.

And how many social platforms can you say that about? And obviously the growth that it has seen and is seeing, I’m about to start doing just organic stuff on there. We have not yet jumped into the ad side, but I do know a lot of people who are doing TikTok ads right now and doing really, really well.

“The opportunity that exists with TikTok is huge.”

It is the Facebook of 10 years ago. It is still very much the infancy I think. And a lot of people think that TikTok is like, “Oh, just the younger creators. You have to go on there and dance and stuff like that or point, whatever.” That is so not true.

One of my accelerator coaching members is a TikTok expert. She’s got half a million followers or something like that. And one of the things that she said to me, that’s really stuck with me, I don’t remember the exact numbers but she said, “Oh, a massive amount, millions and millions and millions of people are of that older demographic, but no one realizes it because they’re not creating, they’re consuming.”

And so we as marketers need to understand that. That just because we don’t see the quote, unquote, “older” market creating content on there, doesn’t mean they’re not on there. They’re consuming content, they’re not creating.

And so from an ads perspective… Look I mean, Facebook and Instagram are, you see what’s been going on the past few weeks here with Instagram trying to change things up and be more like TikTok and then there’s this outcry of like, “What are you doing?”

They know that they’re losing a whole lot of ground. And I’m not saying that Facebook or Instagram ads are going anywhere, but the opportunity that exists with TikTok is huge.

Yeah. One of the differences that I’ve noticed, and I think that this is a sign of TikTok just growing as a platform, is influencer style or native style where you just shoot it from your phone?

Yep.

And this is from TikTok themselves, so take it with a big grain of salt. Influencer type ads do two times better than branded content. And the branding ads are a typical ad that you would see.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s because people are wanting… The ads that are native to the platform, resonate better.

I come across a whole bunch of ads on TikTok and I’m like, “That is a great ad.” Because it’s seamless to the rest of the content that I’m seeing and they pick up on trends or what have you. They’re doing a really good job.

And I think that the more of us that can create that sort of, and again, that’s not anything new. I mean, that really shifted on Facebook a few years ago where we ran tons of tests.

I had students running tests and it was, “All right, let’s do something that’s, quote, unquote, ‘professionally’ done on a DSLR camera versus grabbing my phone and shooting video.” And the phone content always outperformed the nicer looking video, so it makes sense. Right? Because it’s the type of platform that it is.

“When you can match the type of ad to the native content on the platform, that’s where you’re going to start winning.”

And you look at Instagram, for example. What are the best performing ads? Reels. Number one that’s, again, on your phone. I mean, granted there,  they’ve been going towards video for forever.

But reels, stories, the newsfeed ads, I mean, yeah they work for people for sure, but it’s about reels. Right? So when you can match the type of ad to the native content on the platform, that’s where you’re going to start winning.

Mm-hmm. I would agree. So when somebody’s starting out with Facebook ads, say if they’re a student of yours, is that one of the very first things that you would tell them is just grab a phone, do a selfie and start talking about what your product or service is?

Because setting up, I actually think setting up the Facebook ads is really relatively simple. The algorithm takes a hold of it. But what would you recommend when somebody’s looking to be able to make creative? Because that’s such a dynamic platform. Especially video, it’s such a dynamic expression.

Where do you even start with making videos?

For Facebook?

Mm-hmm. Facebook. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, we’ll go with Facebook.

It’s really, I mean, no one wants to hear this, but you have to understand the fundamentals of business of marketing.

You have to understand the person that you’re trying to help. What do your people need? What’s going on with your person, if you will. How do you uniquely solve that problem? Are you speaking to those things? And I say those things, meaning are you speaking directly to your person?

And again, there’s nothing sexy about what I just said, but so many people do not get this right. You’d be surprised at very successful businesses from a revenue perspective. You dive into their business and it’s like, “Holy cow, this person isn’t even speaking to their target audience.” That is, what it’s all about.

Once you have that understanding, then you can create creative where you’re speaking directly to them.

“The best YouTube videos call out what the problem is and then they let you know what the video is going to be about.”

Whether it’s copy and people use the word “hook.” I like to say, what angle are you taking?

You should have three to five, at least, different types of angles. And all I mean by that is you’re using the first couple of lines, the first to three lines of your copy to get your target person’s attention, and you’re testing different ways to do that.

If you do a video, it’s the exact same concept where you’re using different angles at the top of the video to get their attention.

It’s just like watching a YouTube video. The best YouTube videos call out what the problem is and then they let you know what the video is going to be about. So you’re like, “Oh, okay, I’m going to stick around.” It’s the same kind of thing with a Facebook video ad or Instagram video ad.

It’s that kind of catch their attention and you’re testing different angles there to find out which one works, and keep it short. That’s one of the key things is keep it short.

It’s just a simple format. All right, catch their attention, introduce yourself really, really quickly, establish credibility, go into the solution, then have a call to action. In a really short amount of time.

Yeah, actually that is a really cool way of talking about it. And I would also say the creative, by having those hooks, is actually going to control your targeting audience more than any other tool that you have.

Totally. Yeah. For so many years, it was hard for people to grasp. All right, so if I want to target whatever audience, the entrepreneur’s audience, this is a huge audience. Right? But what if I want to pull people out of that? I want to identify people within that overall audience.

Well, it’s your creative that does that. It’s your image, it’s your video, it’s your copy, it’s your headline.

Those are the elements of the ad creative that are pulling those people out if you will, of the overall audience. And now more than ever again, kind of coming full circle, it’s super, super important to do that.

Yeah. Oh man, that is a breath of fresh air. As it was for so long, when paid social was first bubbling up, you just implemented paid search best practices.

Yup.

And you can get refined targeting, get as micro as you want to. And I would say maybe just over the past two, three years? At least maybe from personally realizing, that is not the way to go. It is its own beast. You have to speak to that beast and who it is, not who you think it is.

Yeah. And I think a big reason for that is the whole progression if you will of AI and the machine learning that these platforms now have, that are obviously way smarter than we are. We want to give them enough information to go find the people that we’re trying to reach.

And then once they start to do that, it learns on that and it’s going to just snowball effect. So the more data that they have to be able to find the people that we’re looking for, it’s just going to continue with that.

But yeah, I mean, I also find it on the flip side of that, Gabe. A few years ago, people would be, they’d start layering in four different targets.

It’s like, “I want to reach the people that have an interest in this, who also have an interest in this and also do this.” And I’m like, “Wait, you’re choking off the algorithm. You’re limiting it too much. Let’s take a step back here and really lean on the targeting.” But again, what we’re talking about here, leaning on the creative to speak to the people that we really want to.

Yeah. That is fascinating. And also if you ever go down to Facebook headquarters, it’s just building and building and building and building of just engineers, who are trying to improve this targeting. You and I would think it’s just Facebook reps, but there’s actually engineers.

Yeah. And I mean, they know at this point, and I don’t have any insider information or anything like that, but from what I’ve seen and heard and read and all that stuff, I really think that this whole iOS 14 and 14.5, the update and the privacy stuff, affected them way more than they were expecting. I’m sure they would never admit that but Instagram, Facebook, Google, it’s huge effect.

I would also say with Cambridge Analytica when they realize they can’t use that data, so they had two points. “We can’t use salary anymore. We can’t use all these data.” And they said, “Well, how can we be able to find behaviors between the two of them?”

Right.

And we did.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they’ll figure it out. They need to, I mean the first thing they need to figure out is how do they keep the numbers. Right? Because if the numbers continue to leave in droves that they’re doing on Facebook and Instagram, that’s a problem. But I would say a very close second to that is they got to figure out the advertising platform.

Not that it doesn’t work. I don’t mean to sort of extend that thought or anything, because it definitely works. I hear so many people saying, “Oh, it doesn’t work anymore. Oh, it’s way too expensive.”

Well maybe, but I also can tell you all, I have a bunch of students that I work with in our program that are crushing it on Facebook and Instagram, really well.

Nothing affected them at all and they’re doing just fine. They’re like, “I’ll take it all day long.” So, that’s what it’s all about.

I would say. So when you hear about people succeeding on Facebook, those are the people who have good creative.

Typically, on the performance bell curve, they’re getting the seven out of 10, to eight out of 10, the nine out of 10, the 10 out of 10.

Yeah.

That’s only 30%.

And the other thing too, I think Gabe, and this is something I’ve seen for the past few years, especially in the online space where so many people launch. They do a launch of their course or what have you, and they haven’t been running ads. It’s been maybe eight months since they’ve run ads, and they’re like, “Oh, I’m going to do another launch here. I’m going to go spend 50 grand on ads and just ramp up really quickly.” Those days are gone.

Can you still do it? Absolutely. But your costs are going to be high.

“The people that are most successful are the ones that are running ads consistently.”

The people that are most successful are the ones that are running ads consistently. And I don’t mean spending a thousand dollars a day. Of course, you can do that.

But even if you’re running a couple dollars a day where you’re running video view ads and sort of staying in front of the audiences and from a branding perspective, Facebook likes that continuous spend so that when you do need to go have an event or a special promotion or what have you, you’re going to get much better results.

You can also make that your testing ground. Where you’re testing different messages, you’re testing different angles and offers and what have you. And you can do that really inexpensively so that when you are ready for, “Oh, okay, cool. I want to really ramp up really quickly or I have this training coming up or a workshop” or whatever it might be, you already have those learnings.

And you’ve been running all along and so it’s not like a big, “Okay, I’m going to spend 60 grand over the next 10 days and I haven’t spent in forever.” That’s one of the big differences too.

I’m laughing because I know the outcome of spending $60,000 in 10 days when you haven’t been spending anything.

It’s not pretty.

I’ve been quiet before in the past. Let’s double, triple the budget overnight. And just seeing what happens with your CPA at best, doubling.

Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I get why it does that but also, and I’ve always felt this way. For the most part, you spend more money on Google. Your lead costs are not going to do a kind of drastic jump that Facebook does.

It’s like, “Wait, I want to spend more money with you, Facebook. Why am I being penalized for it?” And I do get it from the technology, the back end of it all. And I mean, I get all that, but that is one thing, probably the biggest thing I wish that were different over the years, is that I’m really happy with the results. I want to crank this up. My audience size can handle that bigger of a budget.

My costs are going to double here, at least. I wish I wasn’t penalized for that.

Or giving awareness as to why you’re penalized.

Well, that would be too smart. That’d be too helpful, Gabe. Come on now.

Yeah. We can go into the learning phase when it says you’re in and out of it. That is an inaccurate pinpoint to me. That really doesn’t give you any clarity or how many conversions that you’re going to be able to get based off your spend. I forgot-

Oh yeah. I’m like, “Okay.” But I don’t take that into account at all. Like, “Okay. Whatever.”

Do you remember when they used to be able to do split tests with different assets?

Yeah. Yeah.

That was nothing special. Facebook did nothing.

It was nothing special and also what they didn’t tell you right up front is that in order for that to work, you had to be spending a lot of money.

For the average advertiser, they weren’t going to get results from that with any meaningful data because the budget was too small.

You had to be spending a lot of money in order to really see what you were trying to see. Meaning clear winners, et cetera. And I mean, we can talk about frustrating things for a long time Gabe, but totally agree with you.

I’m actually starting to fall in love with CBO or what was it, ADO? Ad budget distribution? Now, but I used to really, really hate it.

Well, yeah. I mean and a lot of people, and this is where you ask different people too. Right? My thought, my belief and what we’ve seen is when you’re testing, you’re testing with ABO, ad set budget optimization. That’s the stereotypical, what we’ve always done. We set a budget, “All right, this ad set’s $10.” Or whatever it might be.

“The algorithm has gotten so smart. We’re certainly not smarter than it. So it’s like, ‘All right, let’s let it help us.'”

Once we start to find winners and audience’s messaging, all that type of stuff, then we start a CBO campaign where it’s like, “Okay, we know what works. Now, let’s kind of open it up. We’ll set the budget, the campaign level and then let Facebook’s AI, the algorithm really get to work.”

But I also know other people and I don’t know how you do it Gabe, but I know other people testing with CBO too and getting some results. We haven’t seen that personally, but again, the algorithm has gotten so smart. We’re certainly not smarter than it. So it’s like, “All right, let’s let it help us.”

Yeah. A little insight, I’ll run three different ad sets, obviously depends on many different objectives campaigns. In one campaign, you have a lookalike of 10%, broad, and retargeting.

Yeah. Yeah. And what I love about that, and a lot of people don’t realize it, but each ad set is learning off of one another when they’re in the same campaign.

And that’s really cool. Right? Because oftentimes people think like, “Oh, I’m going to get the best results from my retargeting.” And the way that is, quote, unquote, “supposed” to work is that the retargeting will be the best out of the gates.

But then the bigger audiences like the 10% lookalike for example, or wide open, hopefully they’re learning off of the type of people that are converting from the warm audiences. So now the machine learning, the algorithm is going to find more of those people in the broader audiences. And then you have massive ability to scale because the audiences are huge.

And also for anybody listening, retargeting is not guaranteed to work. What it is, it’s a tool that Facebook gave advertisers and they don’t know if it’s going to work or not.

They don’t know, should I retarget somebody after seven days, after 21 days? What that time lapse is, what the interactions are. They just basically said, “Advertisers, you play with it. We don’t know what it does.”

Right. And that’s really where a lot of people are unfortunately lost if you will, when it comes to ads. And I say lost from the perspective of so many people aren’t willing to test and put the time in to learn.

You’re starting a new campaign and you have never run ads before. I mean your first 90 days-ish are just, you’re just gathering data. Whereas when most people don’t realize that they’re like, “Well, wait, I didn’t get results in 90 days.” And so like, “This doesn’t work.” It’s like, “Well you got to be in it for the long haul.”

I would totally agree.

Oh actually we got one other part as well. I’ve got three different pizza creatives and we’d love to see your intuitive. Which one will you rank top, middle and bottom based off of performance?

So Rick didn’t see these before. This is strictly to his intuition, but we’ll see what he sees at the speed that he would browse around in Instagram.

So I want to tell you which one I think is the best?

Mm-hmm.

Okay, cool. All right.

Yep. So for-

No pressure.

We got Blaze Pizza.

Now, we got Papa John’s.

Okay.

And Papa Murphy’s.

I have to pick one?

Yeah. Or if you can, rank them but you can call one A, one B, and number three, if you like.

So I actually didn’t love any of them, but I will rank them though. I would say how I would rank them are Papa John’s, the middle one, first. I mean the other ones are probably Blaze, the second, that last one, the third.

“What I liked about it was that it looks native to the platform.”

Here’s why and I don’t even love the Papa John’s one because I don’t even see a call to action on that ad. And maybe there was some call to action elsewhere, but what’s the offer? That’s just a straight branding play. What I liked about it was that it looks native to the platform like we were talking about earlier. That’s what I liked about it.

And it’s sort of playing off of what kind of, or the types of creative that are native to the platform. That’s the kind of thing that you would see on Instagram for example.

“I didn’t see a call to action.”

Blaze, I thought it was too long, but I liked how quick it moved but I didn’t see a call to action. At that very end it was like, was it blazepizza.com or something like that. Well it’s like, “Okay, cool. What’s the offer? What do you want me to do here?” I still think it was too long.

“You’ve got to create ads that are native for the platform that you’re advertising on.”

The last one I liked, but it was a TV commercial. That’s what it was. I mean, for me it was a TV commercial. So I think somebody’s trying to take that and just stick it onto a platform like Instagram and you’ve got to create ads like what we’re talking about. You’ve got to create ads that are native for the platform that you’re advertising on. As a TV ad, great. Instagram, err. Nope.

So do you have stats about which one performed the best?

Oh no. These are all pulled from Facebook ad library, so it most likely is a TV commercial that they’re like, “We did it, might as well try it.”

Sure.

And I don’t hate that because if it sucks, it won’t get any budget distribution.

Right.

Unless if that’s your only ad, then that’s a little problematic.

So if I were working on that team, it’s like, “Okay, you’ve got your TV ad. When you’re filming that, just take a few extra minutes if you will and film content that will be native to Instagram, that would be native for TikTok.”

You’ve got everybody there, you’re producing all this, now create the content specifically for those platforms.

Mm-hmm. Or you can also, if it’s a big, big national campaign where people are going to get the frequency and abundant people that see on TV are also going to see on social media, play it off a little bit. Have a little bit deeper of a story.

Totally.

So it’s not the same commercial that they’re seeing, but they’re seeing it more in depth of the brand.

Yeah. For Papa John’s I was into the kid. I was watching the kid and what he was doing there. And then the other two, just kind of like, I didn’t really care about anything specifically. Give me some sort of story, story sell.

And lead with that story, because one thing I know, on traditional media, I always say it’s like EDM, where you slowly build up the beat and then it drops. But if you do that on social media, ain’t nobody around to know why they should be watching the video.

Exactly. You’ve lost them. Yep. A hundred percent.

Cool. Well, I am glad I did not lose you on that analogy.

You did not.

Awesome. Well, Rick, if people are looking to learn more, be able to grow their business, where can they be able to check out more about you?

Best place, thank you for asking. Best place is the podcast, The Art of Online Business. All the podcasting platforms, the website, rickmulready.com and then if anybody wants to shoot me a message over on Instagram, I’m @rickmulready.

Awesome. Well, Rick, thank you so much for your time. Really enjoyed-

Absolutely.

… to get nerdy with you about Facebook ads or-

We can talk about it forever.

… should we say now Meta ads?

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Thanks so much, Gabe. I appreciate it, man.

Likewise. Cool, that is good. Man, we can nerd out quite some time about Facebook ads.

Forever. Yeah.

The way that you talk about creative, I almost never hear anybody talk about creative that way.

Oh really?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. To me, people put that on third tier of importance.

Yeah.

When it’s really, I’ve told people, “Cut your advertising budget in half and put that into investing in creative.”

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, especially these days, the audiences are so much bigger. You want to leverage the AI and you do that through, obviously in the way you set the campaign up, but you just test in creative to find what gets dialed in. So yeah.

Cool. Oh, and one little thing, well, I know you’re not doing TikTok yet, but have you seen their new stuff that they came out with?

Mm-hmm.

So you can actually see what frame people are clicking on now. Are they clicking on one second? Five seconds? 10 seconds?

Oh, interesting.

It’s fascinating. But yeah, if you get into TikTok, you can be able to do that on their creator studio, you can be able to see that data. It’s been a fascinating journey for me, the past four days over it.

Nice. Nice. I’ll check it out. Thanks man.