Mastering Facebook and Instagram Ads: A Comprehensive Guide with Expert Ana Katz

Ready to take your digital marketing game to the next level? This episode is your go-to guide. 

Joined by digital marketing expert Ana Katz, we delve deep into the realm of Facebook and Instagram ads, specifically tailored for studio owners. 

Learn the ins and outs of video view campaigns, the importance of lead generation, and why follow-through is just as crucial as lead acquisition. 

Ana also sheds light on creating a mobile-friendly landing page and setting up a successful marketing funnel. Budgeting for your ads? We've got you covered with pragmatic tips to measure campaign success. 

There's no cookie-cutter approach here—Ana emphasizes finding your unique path to create impactful ad campaigns. Don't miss out on these game-changing insights!

GRAB YOUR FREE RESOURCE:
The Studio Owner's Guide to MASTERING REELS

📲 Follow Seran on Instagram @seran_spring_three

❤️ Loved this episode? Leave a review - your review helps spread the word about the show and I read each and every one!

🎧 Never miss a new episode! Be sure to follow or subscribe to stay up to date

Work with Seran:

🌟 Join the Thrive Membership and get the support and accountability you need as you grow your business

🌟Enroll in the Marketing Intensive and get everything you need to master your marketing and finally build a thriving studio business

Join my FREE FB group - and ask me your biz questions!

🤳 Join the Growing A Studio Business Facebook Community

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Do you feel like you're really in the loop about how Facebook and Instagram ads can drive your business growth to the next level? Or maybe you're tired of hit and miss campaigns that cost money but get you nothing? Well, today you're in for a real treat. We have a special guest who is an expert on making these platforms work for you. Anna Katz is a Facebook and Instagram ads strategist and coach, and she is going to dive deep into how to create a holistic digital marketing strategy, how to build impactful funnels and so much more. You guys, I just wrapped recording this with Anna and it was a phenomenally valuable episode, and I'm so excited to share it with you. Well, hi there, I'm Sarah in Glenfield. I'm a business and marketing strategist just for boutique fitness studio owners like you. If you're ready to be inspired and make a bigger impact, you're in the right place. All you need are a few key strategies, the right mindset and some support along the way. Join me as I share the real life insights that will help you grow a sustainable and profitable studio.

Speaker 1: 1:20

This is the Pilates business podcast. Welcome back to another episode of the Pilates business podcast. I'm your host, sarah in Glenfield, and today we are diving into a topic that has puzzled many studio owners the world of Facebook and Instagram ads. Now we are not just talking today about hitting that boost post button and crossing your fingers. No, we are talking about putting together campaigns that bring in real clients, real revenue, and that truly build a community within your studio To unpack this complex world.

Speaker 1: 2:07

I've got a very special guest joining us today Anna Katz. Anna is a Facebook and Instagram ads strategist who focuses on getting her clients bigger results, lots of traffic, more sales and customers who can't stop talking about their brand. Now, anna and I actually worked together a while ago and she was so amazingly helpful that I wanted to bring her into your world too, because she really knows how to introduce these concepts in this world so simply and breaks it down into such an easy way to understand, and she knows how to build campaigns really from the ground up that do make an impact. So I'm so excited to have you here today with us, anna, welcome.

Speaker 2: 2:57

Thank you so much for having me Very happy to be here.

Speaker 1: 3:02

I'm so excited for this conversation because I have so many questions that I want to ask you that I have been asked over the years and that I have worked with you on over the years as well. But why don't you start by sharing a little bit about how you got into the wonderful world of digital ads?

Speaker 2: 3:22

Of course. Oh my goodness, I've been a digital marketer for at least 11 years. I started running Facebook ads when it was as easy as just boosting. You didn't even need audiences. I started running Facebook ads.

Speaker 2: 3:43

I used to be a marketing associate for a medium-sized fashion business here in New York and I noticed that when we had a big social media following Facebook Instagram was just getting started. But when we will boost posts, we will get a lot of engagement and that was very exciting. All the comments, all the lights. And then, when it wasn't me at the time but when one of the owners of the business will do an ad campaign, meaning from the back end of ads manager, instead of boosting, we will not only get likes and comments, but we will get sales, a lot of sales. And he wasn't an expert on it, he was just pushing buttons, to be honest. So, after me watching behind the curtain, because I was in charge of social media and emails and all that stuff but I was looking at what was happening and I was analyzing that on Google Analytics and I'm like there is something here that we need to dig in more, because if somebody is just pushing buttons and we're getting sales, there's got to be a better way to do this to make more money.

Speaker 2: 5:06

I got certified on Instagram and Facebook ads. I started all the podcasts from my mentor, rick Morready, which I know is also your mentor, amy Porterfield, when she used to teach Facebook ads and I started not just to learn about how to advertise marketing campaigns to make purchase like to get sales, but how to walk the customer through a journey where he goes from falling from just meeting you to purchasing one, keep coming and then referring clients to you, so what we call a funnel a marketing funnel through Facebook ads, where it becomes like this thing, where you build rabies and fans and purchases keep coming and it helps increase customer lifetime value. So that's how I started Facebook ads and then from there I helped the commerce side of the business go from 300,000 a year to 1 million a year, and it wasn't just through Facebook ads, because Facebook ads is just one part of the marketing puzzle. You have to have all the marketing pieces together in order for the ads to work. But that's how I got started.

Speaker 1: 6:28

Wow, fascinating. And so today you work with businesses of all sizes. We're on developing not just the ads themselves or setting it up inside of what we call the meta universe right business but also with making sure that that whole kind of marketing ecosystem is working well together. So tell us a little bit about the process that you use or how you kind of make sure that some of those pieces the puzzle are working, before you actually get into perhaps the nitty gritty of the actual ad set up itself.

Speaker 2: 7:07

Yes, yes. So I work with businesses who, just when I get started with ads and the general marketing and many times they say I want to run Facebook ads but they don't know yet. They need an all dealer. I call it like the marketing puzzle, like all the other pieces of the puzzle together, and I also hold businesses who have a proven funnel in place, who are already walking their customers through their journey and they're ready to scale right to two, five, 10, exit and reach way more people and make way more sales.

Speaker 2: 7:42

But the way to get started with Facebook ads it's, honestly, to make sure you have a plan. I never, ever, recommend just to be like oh we need more customers, let me boost the post. And then a lot of people give Facebook ad and Instagram ads a bad reputation because they don't work. But Facebook and Instagram ads will always work as long as you have the strategy in place. Why do I mean by a strategy? Do you have an email marketing strategy in place for when you start getting the leads, they engage with you and they contact you? Do you have a system in place where you're running ads just not making offers, but you're also running ads engaging that audience that you're trying to convert? Do you have systems in place where you can actually follow up with the leads? I cannot tell you how many times I see people running lead generation campaigns, but they never reach out to the leads.

Speaker 2: 8:51

Oh, my goodness yes, yes, they're collecting phone numbers and they're collecting emails, but they don't have the human power, they don't have the team or the time to reach out to the leads that they're attracting. So, before you run Facebook ads, make sure you have a strategy in place, because, if and when they work, it's all hands on how you're going to warm up the leads, how you're going to convert them, so they don't only become one-time customers but they become month-to-month customers that are actually generating a big customer lifetime value, because you just don't want customers to spend a one-month membership in ads that you want and to become recurring customers Exactly and it's really important, I think, to map out that customer journey and I think so many folks are.

Speaker 1: 9:51

Well, I always find that when I do this with some of the studio owners that I work with and we look at those funnels or that top end of the funnel, it can be so helpful to really visually map it out with boxes and arrows and where you want them to go and what the touchpoints look like and also then what you want everyone, what people need to know at that touchpoint to keep moving them along the funnel. Because, like you said, it's one thing to have an ad and boost a post and get some leads, but if you're not then following up with those leads, with those ongoing follow-up campaigns of sort whether that's in-person or automated then you really are missing out on a huge amount of potential revenue for the business and clients too. So, yes, that whole kind of big picture funnel is definitely a great starting point.

Speaker 2: 10:45

Okay. So for the funnel, I wish that you could see my hand, but imagine it being like a cone-shaped thing right Upside down, where the top of funnel is like a huge audience, right, let's say, for example, 1,000 people from an audience that you're attracting in. And the way I usually recommend to start the top of funnel with Facebook ads is not just with an offer. So there's two campaigns. I recommend One of them, especially for studios, and I say this because I also go to an amazing studio here in New York and I've been loyal to them for three years and this is how I know it works, because I've seen it in social media as well.

Speaker 2: 11:40

One of the campaigns is VideoView Campaigns, where you are showing people in your area and we have to talk about audiences, which is one important step too. What's one of the most important ones? But when you were showing that audience that you're attracting, what's going on inside of your studio? What do classes look like? What testimonials people are giving you? I know in Facebook you cannot do before and after Don't try, because your account may get shut down showing before and after pictures of your customers, but you can show their testimonials and they can tell your audience what the transformation they've had or, honestly, what your classes look like. You can give your audience so much FOMO or fear of missing out or what they're not doing by using your offer. So the first campaign I will recommend and this can be as easy as a $5 a day campaign honestly, you don't have to spend a lot of money on it and I recommend video view campaigns more than engagement campaigns of just images, because you are here not to get a lot of likes and comments. You're here to engage people so they get so fed up of the fear of missing out that they have to check out your studio. And you can have just a team member, you know, making a quick reel of a class and showing what each person of the class is doing.

Speaker 2: 13:15

Let's say they're doing a Pilates class or boot camp, different exercises and just make three to four ads video ads see which ones perform the best, which ones get the most views, and then keep those running. And keep them running on Evergreen. What I mean by Evergreen is this Facebook ads is not just I'm going to test this for a month and then I'm going to stop it if I don't get any clients. This is a long term game. So commit to having a digital marketing budget on the side for at least six months, because Facebook ads will always work for you. It's just a matter of testing.

Speaker 2: 13:58

So one campaign to start the funnel is video views campaign to a cold audience and a cold audience and people who don't know you yet, who you're going to get in front of them, to again engage them with your videos and give them that like fear of missing out, like this class looks so fun and so amazing and I need to get in shape. I want to see what what this is about. So that's one campaign, and the other campaign that I recommend running alongside with it to the same audience is a lead generation campaign. Where is where you are going to track leads? You can run this campaign. Make sure you have a landing page. I recommend doing landing pages because there's another type of campaign that you can do on Facebook. It's called. I forgot it's just for leads. You can, people can like typing them their email in it, but I found from experience that the kind of the leads are lower quality leads. Right.

Speaker 1: 15:05

Yeah, I think what you're talking about is where you can see, don't need to leave Instagram or Facebook to add your email.

Speaker 2: 15:12

Yeah, you don't need a landing page.

Speaker 1: 15:13

But the benefit of doing the landing page is that it's on your website and that's where you collect the emails, directly on your website, which presumably then also perhaps allows you to create more audiences, maybe.

Speaker 2: 15:27

Yes, so, and with Facebook, there is a way to do that with Facebook, too, when you don't need a landing page, you can just like a form that you just have to fill out. That because Instagram, facebook, out of, fill that information and I think they've getting better at it. But the quality of the of the leads is not as good, because people are giving you older emails that they may never check. Also, with a landing page, you give the audience a chance to stay on your website, check out your packages, check out videos and all that stuff. So just make sure you have a really nice landing page that you know is already converted and it's easier for your audience to navigate. Also, a must do is make sure it's social, is mobile friendly. 95% of the audience is going to opt in from their phone. So if you're just focusing on a landing page that's desktop friendly meaning there, looks really nice on the computer but does not look good on your mobile phone, it's going to be a big conversion rate problem. People are not going to convert as nice and then you're going to be wondering why aren't you, your ads working?

Speaker 2: 16:44

So that's the other campaign, a lead generation campaign, where you give them a really good offer and ideally is an offer that you have run before, that you know your audience once.

Speaker 2: 16:56

For example, a free class or a free week, or give them something in exchange for them from the visiting to Syria really good offer that's going to push them to go to your studio and checking your classes out in an exchange for your emails and, I'm sorry, in exchange for their emails and their phone numbers.

Speaker 2: 17:19

And here's the thing make sure, if you're committing to run a lead generation campaign, that you will reach out to them, ideally as soon as possible, because if you take, I think, more than three days, when people opt in for these campaigns, they're in the momentum, they're excited, they want to get in shape. If you wait a week to reach out to them, they are going to tell you that they don't need to go to the gym anymore, that they might do it later. They have lost momentum. So that's a big reason why maybe sometimes the ads don't work. Also because you're not following the process as quick as we wanted to. So that's why I said at the beginning, like, make sure, before you run Facebook ads, you have a strategy in place on how you're going to follow through the process.

Speaker 1: 18:10

Yeah, absolutely, and everyone who's listening knows I'm really big on those follow-up emails. So yes, and there's lots of ways that you could do that, usually within your scheduling software, your studio management software, that you can automatically send a follow-up to anyone who has purchased a particular offer, and that particular offer would be what you perhaps put in your Facebook or Instagram ads. So definitely you want to do that, and less than three days is great, but I think as soon as you can, you want to reach out to them and probably have more than one outreach if they don't move into that next step of perhaps booking that class or making that purchase or what have you, depending on how you set up the funnel.

Speaker 2: 18:56

Absolutely so. That's kind of. We're talking about the funnel, so that's the top of the funnel. So you're running campaigns video view campaigns and lead generation campaigns to cold audiences who don't know who you are yet. After that, as you move people down from the funnel, you can run retargeting campaigns. What does it mean? You can create audiences based on people who have clicked your ad, who have watched at least 25% of your videos, who have visited your social media pages or website traffic, and you can retarget them with the same offer and give them like a quick action bonus or something for them to take action on the offer. And that's an end there. Also, you have to make sure, like Sarah just said, follow up with them through email. That's another part of retargeting. It's not just on Facebook, just on Facebook ads anymore. It's part of your system doing the work and reaching out to them and then from there they become customers, they become clients. You keep engaging them and you keep also giving your clients incentives for them to keep bringing in your customers.

Speaker 1: 20:13

Absolutely so. That was such a helpful big picture overview. Would you say that that you know? I would say what sort of point would you say? People are kind of ready to get started with ads. If they thought about the funnel, who is sort of the most prime, in the best position to start to run Instagram ads, would you say? That that is such a good question.

Speaker 2: 20:42

Here's who I will recommend running ads to and here's where I won't wouldn't recommend running ads to. I will not recommend running ads to somebody who, let's say, doesn't have the systems in place to follow up through the process, because you're going to be wasting so much money and get frustrated with it have if you don't have a plan in place on what emails is the leader going to get once they obtain, who's going to be reaching out to them, who's going to make sure they're converting and what assets are we going to promote, what videos? If you're just like going to do one ad oh, this video looks really good, let me just run an ad and see how it does I would not recommend you doing that. I will recommend running ads to the studios who they have had some success right and they want to bring in more customers. They have a plan in place again and how to work people through a half funnel. They have systems and they are ready to get in more a lot of new customers, because I've also seen people get very excited and they put the funnels in place and then they ask to really good where they get overwhelmed and they have to shut their ads down like turn them off because they don't know what to do with all the leads that are coming in. So you're ready to run Facebook ads as long as you have your systems in place and you know you have the capacity for more clients, and there's nothing wrong with turning your ads off once you're a full capacity. That's actually a good sign that your ads is really good and you've attracted all these clients. But again, have a plan in place.

Speaker 2: 22:36

One thing to know is that when you turn campaigns off, when you turn them back on Facebook does not guarantee that the campaigns are going to do as good as they used to. So just something to keep in the back of your head. If you're one of your used to turning campaigns on and off, just make sure. Another thing to add on if you're serious about running Facebook ads, especially if you have a small audience let's say 500 people or more in a Facebook ads audience make sure you're keeping the content engaging with the images for the ads in the videos for the video views campaigns, because people get tired of seeing the same thing over and over and over and they might stop paying attention to your ads. So just make sure if the frequency I say if it's above five or four. If one person has seen the same ad five to four times, it's time to freshen up the ad and show different videos. And you can show the same offer, just different images, to make sure you keep attracting clients and keep capturing their attention.

Speaker 1: 23:49

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You don't want you want to be. We know, once you start running ads, you got to want to look at the numbers and the data as well. Right, but before we get into that part of it, the biggest question I think that people have around Facebook ads, or the biggest, I think, amount of uncertainty people have, is you know what, how much should I spend, or what should my budget be, or what is it is it does it have to be thousands or you know, is $5 a day really going to make a difference? What's your take on that and what do you look at to sort of determine the how much one of your clients should spend?

Speaker 2: 24:26

So it always depends, right? I always look at it this way how much does it cost you to acquire a customer and what is the customer lifetime value? So, for example, the customer lifetime value is no, let's say a membership, and I'm going to speak for the gym that I, the membership for my gym is $150 a month, but my lifetime value is 150 times 12 and I'm not great. I'll just like doing numbers. I'm going to put my calculator here. So 150 times 12 is my lifetime value to the gym is $1,800. So if one lead costs your own Facebook ads $100 to convert, but the cost of that lead is $1,800, you just 18 acts to your investment by 18. But a lot of people get scared because, oh my gosh, I just spend $100 on one person to convert. That's a lot of money. But you have to look at the big picture and this is what I'm saying have systems in place for somebody you know to just buy your membership once, but to continue coming in and be consistent, get the results that they also want and that you provide your clients. So you for for the daily budget, which is enough. Running Facebook ads is scary and a lot of like people don't have a lot of marketing budget to spend on Facebook ads, even with what I just explained For the video view campaigns, I will.

Speaker 2: 26:00

You can do as low as $5 for the lead generation. I will recommend not to do less than $30. I will say between $50 and $30 a day and then see what your cost per lead is. So if your cost per lead is, let's say, $10, so you know if you spend $30 a day you're going to get three leads. If you spend $50 a day you're going to get five leads and then play with that number. The better that your ads perform, the more that Facebook is going to reward you and bring the cost per lead down. But it depends on your conversion rate. If you get three leads is one of those three leads converting into customers? And again, what's the customer lifetime value? And then you will see you as you get leads and get customers, you will start getting more comfortable with it and give Facebook more money because you'll see how the game works and get more comfortable with it as you get more leads and more clients. But I will say definitely no less than $30 a day for a lead generation campaign.

Speaker 1: 27:10

Yeah, that's really helpful to have that data point and you know what makes the cost per lead come down on an ad. You know copy, graphics, the offer, but also probably the landing page and whether or not that's converting to. I think you know it's not just the offer. We might spend a lot of time thinking about what should I put in my, what should I offer and what should I sell them in my ad campaign, but there's so much more to it and you've already mentioned testing different pictures and different graphics and different videos out. But it's kind of important to be thoughtful about. You know what's going to have an impact and what's going to be very compelling for someone to take an action immediately on your ad, because you really only have their attention for that split second right.

Speaker 2: 27:55

Yes, yes, and that's such a good point. I can't say how many times I've seen beautiful ads with beautiful videos or like amazing images and then you click on the ad and it's like you were taking somewhere else, like it does not correlate with the image that you were showing on the on the front end. So just make sure that the ad is very cohesive with the landing page, where the audience is going to have the same experience that they were having on Facebook. So think about your audience. What's going to stop them from scrolling on their feed and what's going to capture their attention where they actually take the time to click on that ad or to watch that video? And that are some hooks.

Speaker 2: 28:42

You know when, when you run ads, you have like two lines to. They're called the hook, where you pick their brain, where they want to click on the read more button. Those there's like other things like 10 words max. Those are the most important ones. Those are the ones you want to focus on more, because if you don't, if you put like the best part of the copy at the end, people are not going to get to read that because they're just going to keep scrolling on the feed because they. You didn't get their attention. So all of this matters to get the conversions that you want.

Speaker 1: 29:21

Yeah, so it really is a a, a, an ecosystem. That all like the puzzle you said. Right, all of these pieces have to work together In order for Facebook well, in order for your business to to benefit from running ads right Cause your Facebook ads can be perfect, but if the other parts of the funnel are not developed, then then it's not going to be that helpful for you, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 29:48

And that's why I always say, like you were saying Facebook ads is just one part of the puzzle. You must have all the other pieces of the puzzle together for them to work. If you just run Facebook ads but you don't have systems in place, you don't have an email marketing strategy in place, you don't have a good offer in place, you're going to be trying money down the toilet, and that's what we don't want, right? We're doing the ads to ultimately like help more people and grow our business. That's what we want.

Speaker 1: 30:19

Absolutely Well. This was so helpful and so insightful and so many little pieces of amazing nuggets of advice, and so thank you so much, Anna, for joining us today. I really appreciate it. Before I let you go, can you please share where people can connect with you and learn a bit more about you and what you do?

Speaker 2: 30:41

Yes, so I'm mostly hanging out on Instagram at Anna Katz Digital and I have a really good blog on my website, annakatzdigitalcom. I post really good advice and I know Facebook ads can be very intimidating. On the back end the platform, the reports, how to set up the campaign. So I have a lot of really good blogs on how to do all of that manual button pushing stuff, the shooting getting in the way of you running ads.

Speaker 1: 31:16

Awesome. I'm going to link to all of that in the show notes, but thanks so much again, anna, for joining us. Really appreciate. This has been amazing.

Speaker 2: 31:27

My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1: 31:30

I really hope this episode of the Pilates Business Podcast was helpful to you. If it was be sure to never miss another episode by hitting that follow or subscribe button wherever you listen to podcasts. Did you love this episode and want more? Head to spring3.com and check out my free resources that will help you run a profitable and fulfilling studio business. Before you go, one last reminder there is no one way to do what you do, only your way. So whatever it is that you want to do, create or offer, you've got this. Thanks again for joining me today and have a wonderful rest of your day.