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Ep. 120 Make Facebook Ads Your Audience Loves

by Torie Mathis | Smart AF Show

Make Facebook Ads Your Audience Loves

Have you heard that people hate Facebook ads? Oh, that must be why Facebook’s ad revenue brought in $84.2 Billion in 2020. People actually LOVE to buy things they want. So if your Facebook ads are leading people to things they want, they will be successful.

In this episode, Torie Mathis and her cohost Sean discuss the reasons your Facebook ads may be under-performing (aka customers don’t like them) and how to fix them.

Listen or watch the full episode below:

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –

(transcription is auto-generated)

SAF 120

[00:00:00] Torie: Like, they just have money coming out there butt, they’re like woo. Show them a logo to everybody. Like you can’t do that.

Hey, what’s up. It’s Torie Mathis, your host. And I am here with the one and only Sean Mathis, Founder of Miles Through Time Automotive Museum.

What’s going on?

So Sean and I have both run a lot of Facebook ads. Sean has ads running often for Miles Through Time and definitely when he has a big event coming out and we’ve got a pretty good system for the ads and how we run them.

I also run a lot of campaigns for clients. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. And I have created huge lists for lots of clients, and it really bothers me so much when I hear small businesses say that Facebook ads don’t work because Facebook is an amazing opportunity to get in front of so many people, like more people than you could ever have gotten in front of before.

Like if you were trying to put an ad on TV or something, like it just, it’s such a game changer.

[00:01:11] Sean: I was just going to say, have you ever heard of anybody say TV commercials don’t work like 20 years ago? 10 years ago? Like not today, but you know, back when everybody just watched the local TV. Would it have not have been great to have seen your business on a commercial during, during any show really? Cause you know, the people are sitting there watching it. You’re like, oh yeah, people are going to see that. There’s no doubt about it. People are going to see your commercial.

[00:01:37] Torie: And with TV commercials, like it was a very shotgun approach because you couldn’t dial in, who was going to see it other than like what the show was. But it was still like, it kind of went out to everybody, but Facebook ads aren’t like that. Like, you can be very specific on who you want to show your ad to. And so I had, you know, I like to post things on Facebook about how businesses can like change their advertising, how they can get more sales and get in front of people with Facebook.

And I had a comment the other day that said that people don’t like Facebook ads. They’re like the small business owners that I talked to. You know, they, they hear that people don’t like to see ads on Facebook. I call bullshit. I love seeing ads that know me. I love seeing ads that allow me to maybe find a, like, if I’m looking for a product and then it shows me five competitors of them, all of a sudden because it knows, then it’s allowing me to like compare and contrast.

It allows me to see businesses and company’s products. I would have never been able to find on my own. And if I’m already interested in something, I’m already looking at something like that is the perfect time to show me more of what I want to see.

[00:02:52] Sean: I ordered all these hats because of Facebook ads. I was looking specifically for hats for the museum of this stylish did not really know him, what I was looking for and, you know, one quick search of that and I wound up having. Facebook feed full of various companies that do this, that then enabled me to investigate a little bit more and see the quality. See what type of hat, see what the prices were in the price points.

And no matter what, this style hats, too expensive order, a bunch of them.

[00:03:23] Torie: This is true. It’s like products being delivered to you. You’re like I’m interested in hats today. And so people run up and go, Hey, Sean, look at my hat. What do you think of my hat? What is? I think that that is a fantastic opportunity. So I don’t think that people hate Facebook ads I think they hate shitty Facebook campaigns.

[00:03:43] Sean: Plus some of these people that get kind of a, I don’t know what the word is, but like they’d let you know that they’re not happy with the ad completely works against him cause I see it all the time on some of our other client’s ads not I’ve never seen it on miles through time stuff, but on some of the other ones, they’re like I don’t know why you’re showing this to me.

[00:04:06] Torie: Like you just, it on it. You just engaged with it. So we’re probably going to show it to you more because that’s how the Facebook algorithm works.

[00:04:13] Sean: It’s still a computer algorithm figuring all this kind of stuff out. And the moment you engage in it, And you don’t want to see it you’ve screwed the whole thing up.

And so the only option you have, which is super, super simple.

[00:04:29] Torie: Super simple, is to click.

[00:04:32] Sean: I think it was three little dots. Don’t show me this anymore. Yeah.

[00:04:37] Torie: When you click the three little dots on an ad, it’ll say like, why are you showing me this? And then there’s options. It’ll show you exactly what the targeting of the ad is. So you can see why it’s showing you. And sometimes they’re weird. It’s like people who were in the United States in the last week like that’s like the dumbest targeting ever.

[00:04:56] Sean: It is. It’s the stupidest targeting and that’s the company that’s paying for those. And they’re just, they’re blasting it out there, which is going to be expensive for them. And there’s, I mean, you’re going to get that kind of stuff. No matter what, if companies keep doing that.

[00:05:11] Torie: The three little dots you had an option to say, do not show me this. Right. And then they give you options because I already bought them. Because it’s irrelevant or because it’s poopy, like there’s one, that’s like, like you’re saying it’s inappropriate or something, whatever that one is. So you, and then, then it’s like, oh, not this type of person. Then you’re fixing the algorithm rather than complaining.

[00:05:36] Sean: It works in your favor to do that quite a bit. Whenever you see an ad, like if you really don’t want to see that kind of stuff, then let Facebook know and you’re not going to see it because it makes, it makes the app. Cheaper, which is more appealing for everybody on the spend side of it, you know, that makes Facebook look better. It makes the advertisers cost less.

[00:06:05] Torie: Has decided that this is the hat that he’s buying. He can be like, okay. I’m done with hats now start showing me hats. And so it’s easy to go in there and be like, okay, I’m done with this. I like I’m moving on to something else now. And then it starts to show you something else. Like no other place. Can you do that? I think it’s awesome.

[00:06:23] Sean: I mean the Facebook or the Miles Through Time you know, I’ve got, you know, between certain ages and it’s going to men and women, and then it’s within an area of the museum, which makes sense for, you know, a day trip kind of thing.

[00:06:38] Torie: And then they have to have, there’s like a bucket of interest that we’ve put in so that they, so at least we’re grabbing people that have some type of automotive or history.

[00:06:47] Sean: But if it turns out somebody sees it and they’re not into it. They don’t ever have to see that ad again if it doesn’t strike their interest, you know, and if they find that it’s popping up in their news feed all the time and get to annoying you know, one to two clicks and it’s gone, and it helps me as the business owner paying for that ad when people do that.

But when you just comment on it, you know, it’s going to show you more, which makes, unless they’re doing it on purpose, they’re like I’m gonna make you spend even more with your lazy ad spend. I don’t know why you would want to do that because then you’re going to get more garbage ads and really, I mean, you can, I hear people talk about it on Facebook all the time, all this stuff that they don’t want to see, ads or posts, I’m like clean it up, man.

Following people, you don’t want to see you stop seeing the ads you don’t want to see. I mean, my feed is full of cars and the ads I see right now are electric bicycles and motorcycles and watches. Every once in a while I still get some hats or some clothing one but that’s it. I mean, if, if there’s something random that pops up like I get a Coke ad or something, and I just simply click, I’m not into this.

And I move on. I don’t get butthurt about it. But people seem to do, like, they, they get upset about these ads and it’s way better than what it used to be when we were kids watching, you know, regular local TV. And, you know, I got to sit through 15 different drug commercials.

[00:08:21] Torie: Who has the worst ads right now. So. The ability to pick and choose ads based on what your interests are and being able to like skip them. Like, that’s huge. Like, and if you don’t, if you don’t think that like Facebook’s is better, like go to the weather channel. Yeah, they changed this thing and made it so that they want you to have their premium service.

So that they’re bombarding you now with ads. So annoying that maybe, oh, you know, it’s so annoying that like I’m asking Alexa now, because I don’t even want to go on there. Like any video that you watch, they force you to watch like this 25 second video. That’s like always the state farm video. It’s like the same exact, you know, there’s a hurricane state farm is here.

I know. Okay. Click like Alexa, just tell it to me. So I think that if somebody is saying that they hate Facebook ads, I think it’s just that they’re just not understanding how it works.

[00:09:20] Sean: What are you, what are you doing right as the business owner? What is the ad that you’re putting out there? I saw one. Eh, they weren’t a client of ours, but I, I was, I knew who this was because I had seen it through my email and they had actually posted their newsletter, that they send an email on the social media, which I find a weird in general, but apparently that’s a thing which is fine, except that they put money behind this to get more people, to see this newsletter, which came across as just some texts with the link that goes to newsletter. Like there was no picture, there was no text with it whatsoever it’s just something that they’re like, Hey, let’s put some money behind this and see if some more people okay. Without any thought behind it whatsoever. And yet if I saw that, I’m like, what the hell is this ad?

It’s, you know, it’s stupid. And then as the people that paid for it, I’d be like, this didn’t work. You know, Facebook doesn’t work. It’s real easy to throw your hands up. You know, it’s not my fault it’s Facebook.

[00:10:24] Torie: I think the thing that people don’t understand about ads. You can tell if they work or not by setting them up properly. And if you are not like picking. A specific action, a specific offer for people when you’re showing your ad, you have no way of seeing if it’s working. Like we’re not Pepsi, we’re not AT and T we’re not just putting our logo out there everywhere. Like normal people can not mark it that way. That logo, branding type marketing.

Like, don’t do that. Like you are correct. It doesn’t work. Like they just have money coming out there, but they’re like, woo. Show them the logo to everybody. Like you can’t do that. That’s not right. So you have to have a specific offer, a specific action that you want somebody to do. You want them to RSVP for your event on Facebook.

You want them to sign up for this coupon and you know, you give that you, they give you your email and then you give them the coupon. And then you can tell if it’s working or if it’s not working. And with Facebook, you can test, like, let’s try it with this audience and this audience and see which one is better, and then you can see where you should put more money in front of it. Does that make sense that you can, you can do these types of things and it’s really not that hard? However, it is really, really easy to do it wrong.

[00:11:49] Sean: It’s super easy to do it wrong.

[00:11:50] Torie: I hear people all the time go. I blew a thousand dollars. I didn’t get anything. Well, first. Why the fuck you put a thousand dollars or something that you didn’t know was going to work. Like it’s if you want to. Okay. So before, when you did ads, you had to like, do like a contract. And so you didn’t really have a choice. You’re like you’re in for three months, you know, you got this billboard for three months and you have to pay this no matter, like with Facebook ads, throw five bucks on it.

There are $2 on it a day. If you want. Like that might be a little bit low. And then if you don’t want any more, you can just turn it off, like turn it on, turn it off. You have total control.

[00:12:25] Sean: So if you can set the total budget, say you want to spend $120 over X amount of days. It’ll figure itself out exactly how much you’ll get spent on a daily basis.

[00:12:37] Torie: There’s if you’re just like below and through money like that, that’s just it’s. Not setting it up in a way that you’re being responsible about your money because you don’t have to do it that way. But if you have an offer and you’re sending somebody to a place with just that offer, which means you can’t send them to your newsletter because that’s not an, there’s not something there and you don’t want to send them just to your website.

Remember we’re not A T and T we’re not Pepsi. You don’t want to just be like, Hey know about me, go check out all my shit on my website. That’s not telling them to do that. One thing, like you, you might know how many people landed on your website, but because you have so many options, you don’t really know what they did or what they didn’t do.

[00:13:18] Sean: Yeah. It’s like Miles Through Time if I didn’t know, like if it wasn’t a business where people actually had to pay to cover. It would be real hard for me how I have my ad set up to know what was working, but because I can tell that like people actually, even this last Saturday, they, like, I found you on Facebook.

Like they want to tell me exactly how they found it. Yeah. He popped up on my Facebook and the thing is, is every once in a while I see my own ad pop up in my Facebook feed because I’m under the same thing. You know, it’ll, it’ll pop up in the marketplace, it’ll pop up in the newsfeed. It’ll pop up in events. I mean, it’s, it’s everywhere that it could possibly be. And it gets in front of people and it gets them to come into the door, which is what I want them to do.

[00:14:04] Torie: Yeah. So with you, you definitely want to catch those people that are in the area. And then again, when Sean has an event, he makes sure that the event is what it like setting up an event on Facebook. Like that is what the ad is for because when somebody says they want to go to that event, then it’s almost as good as getting their email. Because if you update the event, it updates all of those different people. So you have a two way conversation there with them, which is really important. I would say one of the best things that you can do is make sure that you have an offer that gets people’s attention and then get their email, which means you probably need to send them to a landing page and not just to your website.

So that offer and then getting the email and then being able to follow up with them because you have that email or because they have said yes to the event on Facebook, that’s another way that you could do it. But I think the email is even better if that’s the way that, you know if you can work that out to get their email.

[00:15:00] Sean: The email is really the most valuable thing you can get from other than obviously their actual money in exchange for the value that you provide. But I mean, the emails that I capture from Al, so your time, like that is how I reach the most people is when I send an email. I’m reaching almost everybody on the list. Let me back up a little bit. So of all the people that are on there, you know, it’s actually, it’s around 40% that actually open and read the email.

Every single time, no matter how many people are on there, how much the list grows. Every time I sent it still only about 40% of them open. And yet that is still so much better than the reach I had. If I just share something on social media.

[00:15:49] Torie: Well, if you think about it though, like it, when you’re sharing something on social media, you’re competing against cat videos and politics, and like all of these different things that people are kind of like escaping life and then going there to like out a bit.

That’s really hard to like interrupt them inside there. So you really have to have something, like I say, you have to get their attention on Facebook, but when you email so like, if you can just grab their email, you know, in some way, you know, get their attention to grab their email, then do the through email, not trying to just sell through Facebook because nobody wants to be sold straight through Facebook. But people get sold through email a lot easier.

Cause then you can build that relationship and that trust with them a little bit more. And you’re not competing when you email somebody you’re do you have a direct contact with just them, for them to open your email? Like that’s so much more effective.

[00:16:43] Sean: More time too. It’s not like I got their email. I’m going to get them now. I’m going to sell them, you know? You’re not doing that. You’re introducing them to things. You’re letting them know stuff you’re providing value. Give them something else that is, that would benefit them a little nugget of knowledge or whatever the case may be. And eventually, you can slip in a little, Hey, this is what we offer if you’re interested in it kind of a thing, and they’ll keep going through that process to where they buy, or they’re going to unsubscribe and you’ll be done with them and there’s no harm. Okay.

[00:17:16] Torie: Facebook is a little bit better for like, Hey, get to know me. Hey, do you like this? And then you get to know them through an email and then you sell them later not selling them directly through Facebook.

Like the very first time, they’ve seen you because that’s a lot harder sell. I think it can work for people, but I think you need to throw so much money. And so many people through that, that it’s a lot harder to do. Yeah, I would say like, Gulf, it, like, even if you don’t like Facebook, if you don’t like Facebook ads, like go fishing and Facebook because people are there and they want to click on things and they want to sign up and they want to do all these things on there.

So grab their attention and get their email. Then do everything through the followup, because then you have them and then you can make friends with them and you can have a relationship with them. And then they’ll like you, and then they’ll totally want to buy from you and refer you to their friends and like that’s where it happens. Not directly on Facebook all buy my shit, buy my shit.

[00:18:16] Sean: I mean there’s definitely a wrong way and a right way to do this. And there is a way to piss people off and have them hate the ads. And then there’s another way where, you know, it’s fantastic because it’s letting them know things that are out there that they’re into. You know, if you’ve got to see ads one way or another, would you not rather see the ads that are going to be pertain to your particular interest?

I mean I would, because honestly there’s no getting around and Facebook makes money off of selling ads. You’re going to see them. Okay.

[00:18:48] Torie: So as a consumer, if you’re not happy with the ads that you’re seeing, you can easily adjust those by clicking the three little dots and just know that like, whatever you look up, whatever, you’re like, like you’re going to end up getting shown that kind of same thing.

So. You know I personally think it’s a good thing. I’m not looking up crazy shit that you know I don’t want to see. So, you know, maybe that’s why people don’t like them because it shows them the stuff that they’re looking at. Ooh. Maybe there’s something crazy going on there. It’s like a mirror back at you on which you really love. Oh, my goodness.

As I, every once in a while, I’ll look on Tory’s phone for something or vice versa and it screws it all up because our interests in that kind of thing are completely different. So yeah. And next thing you know, I’m, I’m, I’ve got leggings and workout gear on my stuff.

Yeah. I can tell you, I can tell when Riley’s got topped on my, my computer and done something because, oh my God all of a sudden it’s like video games and roadblocks stuff. And like, it definitely puts a little bit of a hook in there. So if you’re the business owner and you want to do Facebook ads, then you remember some of these things like you can test it. You can just put a little bit of money on it until you kind of work out the details.

You want to make sure that you have an offer for people that like grabs their attention and gets their email. Then you can start to develop the relationship with them a little bit better. And then you don’t feel like you’re wasting your money because even if they didn’t buy right now, at least you have that email address that you can continue to market with them.

Cause a lot of time the sale is made in the follow-up and not necessarily directly on Facebook. Facebook is a great place to fish, you know, go in there, grab people that, that are interested in some of the things that you know, you’re selling or that you’re doing. And I think that you’ll really find that Facebook ads do work.

The Facebook ads can be pretty awesome. Well for the consumer and for the business owner.

[00:20:51] Sean: If it wasn’t for Facebook ads, I don’t really think we could have grown miles through time at the rate that we have grown it and get it in front of as many people as possible because the alternatives that I’ve tried where the billboard and, you know, the golf course and a radio spot, a magazine like garbage. And if I could have take, if I could go back and take all the money I spent on all those and throw all that into Facebook, I would hands down in a heartbeat.

[00:21:19] Torie: Well, I think it’s good that you have tried those out because then you have, you understand like the importance of Facebook and have a little bit more faith in it that like you really can make it work for you.

And so I hate to see people say that like it doesn’t work and it’s just wasting money. And like people don’t like to see ads because I really think that that is just a bad attitude that is going to keep you from amazing opportunities and being able to reach so many people so more.

[00:21:47] Sean: Plus the ad shows like you ha if you do it correctly, it’ll show on Instagram as well. And that I’ll tell you there’s a completely different demographic of people especially like from the museum wise, the people that are seeing Miles Through Times ad on Instagram are not the same people that are seeing it on Facebook. But if I can get in front of all those people and get them into the doors of Miles Through Time, it’s a win.

And that’s all I really care about.