My Weekly Marketing

Mastering Facebook Ads with Stacy Covitz

• Janice Hostager • Season 1 • Episode 108

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Facebook ads have changed a lot over the years, but they’re still one of the most powerful tools available—if you know how to use them well. In this episode, ad strategist Stacy Covitz shares a practical, no-hype approach to getting started with Meta ads, even on a small budget. She explains how to build a strong foundation, reach the right people, and make the most of Meta’s targeting tools.

We also talk about what makes an ad worth clicking, which metrics actually matter, and why testing your offer is more important than perfect execution. If you’re ready to take a more thoughtful approach to Facebook and Instagram ads, this episode is a great place to start.

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Janice Hostager:

I'm Janice Hostager. After three decades in the marketing business and many years of being an entrepreneur, I've learned a thing or two about marketing. Join me as we talk about marketing, small business and life in between. Welcome to My Weekly Marketing. Hey, hey, and welcome to another episode of My Weekly Marketing.

Janice Hostager:

When I started using Facebook ads way back in 2012 for my then business, there was a Chrome plugin that would help you determine who you could target on Facebook, and it was called the Power Editor, and that was the only way you could choose an audience. Those were the golden days of Facebook ads, when you could still get a lot of organic engagement to your business page and ads were pennies a click. Boy, do I miss those days. Now? Facebook has about 52,000 data points on each user. This includes demographic data, behavioral data such as likes, shares and comments, the device you use on Facebook, location data, data from websites that use Facebook's AdPixel, data obtained from third-party sources that Facebook is partnered with, and information provided by advertisers, such as customer lists or contact information. So if you are now, or have ever been, on Facebook, instagram or any of Meta's sites, they know you well. If you're someone that's concerned about your data being used in the hands of corporate America because it's all owned by Meta. It's probably not a good thing, but for those of us running ads, it's a goldmine. As an advertiser, you can only access about 100 points of data to define your audience, but even still, Facebook ads are still one of the most powerful forms of advertising for many reasons.

Janice Hostager:

So today we're diving deep into the world of Facebook ads with my friend, Stacy Covitz. Stacy is a Facebook and Instagram ad strategist. She helps experienced female entrepreneurs grow their audience and make more sales without wasting time and money on ads that don't work. She's also a wife and mother of four. So if you've used Facebook ads in the past or if you're new to them, one thing that we all know about Facebook ads platform is that it's always changing. So this episode will help equip you with practical insights and some expert tips to help you navigate the complexity of Facebook ads. And be sure to stay on to the end when Stacy's sharing a link to a quiz where you can find out if you're ready to run Facebook ads in your business. So here's my chat with Stacy. Hey, Stacy, welcome to My Weekly Marketing.

Stacy Covitz:

Thank you so much for having me.

Stacy Covitz:

I'm excited to be here.

Janice Hostager:

All right so, before we jump into Facebook ads, I was creeping on your LinkedIn a little bit and you have such a diverse background, including sales, non-profit, teaching and of course entrepreneurship, so what do you think? So, what has being an entrepreneur? How have you brought all of that together? And what has your background brought into your business? Because I think this is, people's story is so interesting because they bring so much into their own business. So what is that for you?

Stacy Covitz:

Such a good question. Didn't see that one coming. It's interesting because my background, starting from a teenager, before I was a teenager, 12 years old, my first job was at a skating rink, roller skating rink, and so customer service, you know, helping people at the snack bar and it just evolved to more customer service, more customer service, and then I was server and I've had so many jobs and as an entrepreneur, as you know, you do everything, right? You have to know how to do everything.

Stacy Covitz:

I mean, there's stuff that I didn't do before, like tech and all of that, but everything is sales you know, you know, attracting clients and having calls with clients and customer service that's one of my big, big mission statements is I want to give people really amazing service. And so, and I worked at companies like Delta Airlines, Marriott, you know, big customer service focused companies. Sales, not usually my strong suit, but I have done a lot of jobs. What I did for the longest time was I stayed home with four children, so that'll teach you everything right how to negotiate, how to give choices and yes, so I think that having so many jobs under my belt is definitely a benefit and has helped me tremendously in entrepreneurship.

Janice Hostager:

Yeah, I love that you brought in parenting too and sales for different reasons, but you're absolutely right. As a parent, there is so much like years and years ago there was a book called the One Minute Manager and I just read through that and I thought not recently, but at the time years ago when I read through it I thought this is so applicable to parenting. You know catch them doing something right and you know just like so much overlap in management and parenting and even just strategy.

Janice Hostager:

You know getting through the day or traveling with kids when they're little, you know, I mean, it really does involve that and pivoting, and there are so many parallels between things that you learn as a parent and things that you learn as an entrepreneur. For sure. But, and sales too, I also. You know, I think sales gets a bad rap sometimes because it really is about relationships and I know you and I know you're very relational and you love talking to people and getting to know them and that really is sales too. You know right, did you feel like that? You were good at that because you have that background in sales or in relationships and relationship building.

Stacy Covitz:

So, yes, and no. Part of my relationship building is I'm so curious about people, so curious about their stories and you know everything. Stuff that people wouldn't even think of, I think of, and so it wasn't such a great asset in sales because I have left someone, when I was selling at one point insurance, I would do these three-hour presentations and be told you are the most informative salesperson and you know that's not really what you should be doing in sales, but right like, oh, you're such a great teacher. I really enjoy sharing knowledge with people and that's not necessarily the number one skill you should have for sales.

Janice Hostager:

It wasn't a good fit for you is what you're saying.

Stacy Covitz:

That is what I'm saying. That is what I'm saying.

Janice Hostager:

Well now, I love that you're all about Facebook ads, because and let me clarify here quickly when we talk about Facebook ads, what I really mean is Meta ads, and they're used on Facebook and Instagram, Messenger and the Facebook audience network. I hope I'm not leaving anybody out there, but they're really, I think, a good place, a good starting point for new businesses. Just getting comfortable with paid ads. What do you feel about that? Do you think that's right?

Stacy Covitz:

Absolutely agree with you. A lot of people think that if you're going to go into paid advertising, that you need this huge budget and you need this huge audience and you need all of these things that are for bigger businesses. But what I found and what I try to teach is that everybody needs brand awareness, and one of the best tools to get brand awareness quickly and for a very, very low budget are Facebook ads, because you can run these you know $2 a day type ads and just have them running in the background and get your face known and start being known as an expert in your industry and you don't need a whole lot of experience to get those going. So, yes, I absolutely agree that there there is. There is a Facebook ad strategy probably for almost every kind of business, in my opinion. I'm sure there's exceptions, but.

Janice Hostager:

No, yeah. I well, I agree, I think especially yeah

Stacy Covitz:

What.

Janice Hostager:

Well, no, I was going to say is that, especially in that awareness stage, I think, as you were talking about, or for businesses that will be found on Facebook, that you wouldn't necessarily go to Google to find. Like, if you have a pain point or something like that that you are seeking a quick solution for, then you might go to Google to look for that. But that awareness aspect, you're absolutely right. You can run ads that are just to your content or to your site for lead magnet or something like that. That would still be good for that same audience. Did that make sense, right?

Stacy Covitz:

Yes, yes, that does make sense. That does make sense, and the good thing about it versus Google ads is a lot of people have a guilty pleasure of just doing this, right, all the time. And that's the beauty of Facebook and Instagram ads is they're not necessarily working, like working at their job. They're, you know, in bed before you know, doing, eating dinner. Whatever they're doing while they're scrolling and you can capture their attention and it might not be something that they were thinking of.

Janice Hostager:

So when you first? So if you're first running an ad and let's say you're not necessarily trying to sell at that point, what do you have it go to? Do you have it go to a lead magnet, or do you have it go to maybe an article or a podcast, or what is it that you would send somebody to?

Stacy Covitz:

So when someone is brand new and they want just to get some recognition, a lot of times I like to start with no call to action, not sending them anywhere. So because the deeper you get clicking and you're asking for a click or you're asking for some sort of conversion, the ads get more expensive. So if you're just starting out, you can do no call to action, no clicking necessary, just running. You know, like video view ads and you can. The reason why I love those so much is you can really do a lot of testing that way before you start ramping up. So test your headlines, test your copy, your creative and just start running those. I don't want to say baby ads, because they're not baby ads. I encourage even my clients that have big ad budgets and are running conversion ads to always be running these in the background because you're building. You can build up an audience that way and attract more people if that makes sense yeah totally yeah.

Stacy Covitz:

It's essentially like organic If you're posting on Facebook and then you come back and you say, okay, I just spent all this time on this beautiful graphic and I went all out and three people saw it. Nobody commented, nobody shared it, nothing happened, and so it's like that, except you could get thousands of people to see it, and that's a difference. So you're not asking for them to actually take any action, but you're getting awareness.

Janice Hostager:

So if you're getting engagement on, let's say, an ad like that, does that benefit your account as a whole?

Stacy Covitz:

That's such a good question because that's another reason why I encourage people, even if they're not necessarily ready for ads and they don't have everything dialed in yet. When you first open a Meta ads account, they have a lot of policies and procedures and now they have bots in place and brand new accounts are getting flagged and you have a small ad limit in the beginning, like sometimes $2 a day, where they'll cap you. So, to answer your question, yes, because if you could start running those type of ads, you are seasoning your account, you are proving to Meta you're a real business, you're a real person, and the algorithm is starting to get to know you and who you're targeting and what your messaging is, and so by the time you are ready, it's really like you know how, like just Chat GPT is so much smarter the more you use it, right? So it's a, the meta algorithm is just scary smart.

Janice Hostager:

Yeah, yeah, and that's interesting because you're right, they have so many data points on every single human being that's ever walked into the metasphere for sure, so does that help? Let's say in organic, let's say I'm running some, so what do you call these? What is your term for that? Like, not awareness, necessarily, or maybe awareness ads? Is that what you call them?

Stacy Covitz:

Yeah, building brand awareness billboard ads. You know it's like a billboard, that you would see something like that.

Stacy Covitz:

So so you can have them running different ones, and then by the time you are ready to have some sort of a conversion ad, you've already been targeting the same audience with these, with these ads, and so people all of a sudden, when they're in the market for it, they say, oh, I know her, I know Janice, she's that marketing person. I see her all the time, she's everywhere and you've spent $2 a day, so it's pretty powerful.

Janice Hostager:

Right right, I didn't realize that about new accounts, that meta limits their spend, that puts all these kind of breaks on their ads. That's really kind of interesting. So much has changed. I mean every day something changes on their ad platform.

Stacy Covitz:

Please don't get me started on that. Oh, my goodness, every day.

Janice Hostager:

Yeah, yeah. So what about their overall? So if I'm going to run an awareness ad or a billboard ad, will that benefit me when I go to post or make an organic post?

Stacy Covitz:

That's a good question. I have found so, in fact, a campaign I was just running for a client she was. She was we were doing conversion ads to get people to sign up for a webinar and they were crushing it. They were doing so so great and we've turned them off because it happened and it was successful. And now I look at her organic and it see ms - and I don't know, the a nswer is I don't know There could be an answer and that's interesting and I'm going to write it down because I want to find out but it seems like her organic, social, is now being seen more.

Janice Hostager:

Okay, so..,

Stacy Covitz:

I don't know.

Janice Hostager:

Well, I'm curious because you know, when you engage with a post, any post, especially repeatedly, you're going to see it more in your feed.

Janice Hostager:

So that's going to get, you're going to get greater engagement overall. So I was curious whether or not, after the ad was turned off, whether that would still be a thing. I think officially they would say I've heard it both ways. I mean, I've been with Facebook ads so many years that and they changed so many things in the process. But initially they said - they don't really say. But initially the data said that yes, it did help. But then for a while it was not it didn't seem to help. So I was curious whether or not you'd seen that with clients or if it didn't make any difference. Just kind of curious. And maybe it depends, is the answer with Facebook.

Stacy Covitz:

Everything. Everything is it depends, right? I feel like my business answer seems to be it wouldn't benefit them necessarily for that to be the case, right? And if you want to take Meta as a company and kind of their model, I would say probably not. They probably pay to play and once you turn it off, but I don't know. So that's not for me to say.

Janice Hostager:

Oh sure, yeah, it does sound that way, n. So uh, what are the primary reasons that businesses should consider using Facebook Ads as part of their strategy? Is it awareness? Is it engagement? Are there different reasons for using it across what I call the Trail of the Sale, from awareness, all the way to when they buy and refer?

Janice Hostager:

All of the above and it just depends on what your goal is. So if you're brand new and you feel like your organic social media is going nowhere and you're shouting out to just the abyss and nobody's seeing anything, that's a great place to start. Let's start running some you know billboard ads. Let's start getting you know, get an ad account, start building up an audience, testing out some copy messaging all the way up to. I have this product and it's selling really well right now organically, but I feel like I've capped out. I really want to scale. So now you've got an offer that's already selling, you have your audience, you have your messaging, everything is dialed in. You could really, really make a lot more if you start putting ads towards that product. Now, the other side of that are people that are just launching a product for the first time and they've never tested it. That is a disaster waiting to happen and that is where you hear ads don't work, right? "Oh, I tried ads. It didn't work," and a lot of times it's because you didn't have an offer that was already proven and selling and people loving it. s

Janice Hostager:

Brick and mortar businesses for traffic. You know you have a restaurant, you can use a coupon code. Or, you know, get this free sandwich if you buy one or give us this code so you could do that. There are people that are podcasters. You could do ads for traffic. You want to get more downloads for your podcast. There's so many ways that you could use ads to really boost your business, as long as you do it with strategy in mind, right, You're not just going in there and pushing buttons and hoping.

Janice Hostager:

Right, and n I think that's what you hit on too is that you need to think this through and you think through the whole sales journey, the customer journey, what their goals are, first of all, starting with that, of course, and then who their audience is, and thinking through the whole big picture of it. So, y choosing N audience Now, in the olden days when I started doing ads, I would go in there and there used to be some great tools in there for really understanding who your ideal customer was and targeting them to a T. Now they have like something called Advantage Plus right, and some other tools, and they probably have changed since I last opened it two weeks ago. That really will. they'll choose your audience for you.

Janice Hostager:

So I've heard some experts say, "eah, yeah, let them choose it. They know more than you do," which makes sense to me, and actually I did that on the last ad that I ran. I let them choose my audience and they did a really pretty good job, I must say. But I've also heard some people say "No, no, you want to go in there and choose the audience. Is it a one or the other, or is it a sometimes both either, and neither nor?

Stacy Covitz:

All of the above.

Stacy Covitz:

So for me, I'm still in the "I want control", because I like you. I remember whe, when we, when we controlled exactly who we were showing it to m. Now it's great to test, right. So have have one, run two campaigns exactly the same: one ad set with let them choose, and one with your targeting and see what happens, You know, depending on what your niche is like. I just had this client that she was so specialized. There's no way I was going to let Facebook choose. There's no way, because I mean, she, her audience is probably 100,000 people in the country, so that would make no sense. And it's interesting because I just did a podcast episode about targeting and audiences. And you're right.

Stacy Covitz:

It used to be, ,oh, everyone had to like Amy Porterfield and yoga, and they have to be engaged shoppers and you know all the layers. And now I think that that can actually go against you. I think that you really need to just have maybe one interest, you know, one thing at a time and then always test with them, letting them decide. l I t like to, I like to do a little of both. So an , I d I I range I do women, you know, 30 to whatever 60, and then the rest you know in the country, because I wouldn't want to do every country and t see what happens. But they are so smart now they are so smart.

Janice Hostager:

So you would just do basic demographics, and then let them choose the other audience, Like test one. that's basic demographics, or do you test going pretty deep?

Stacy Covitz:

graphics, or or do you test going pretty deep just So I'll do a broad. S o, and broad means, I would say, women in this age range in the US, and then you do the rest, You find the rest of the people, and then I will have another audience that I want to control. b I w t k. I w t . B Because I want to know, because otherwise, how do you know who is responding?

Stacy Covitz:

If you're letting them choose. I like to have a little bit of control, especially if I'm going to retarget, because I want to know which right. I want to know who, what type of people, which audience is working. Y, eah.

Janice Hostager:

S, lthough I will say that I got m- -my ad did , a well and of course there's so many factors that go into an ad that The well, the last time I ran one and let them choose the whole thing, I didn't test it, which I should have, shame on me, but I was in a hurry. But you know, and I got it was for it was for lead magnet and I got a lot of downloads and the cost per click was really good. I can't recall exactly what it was, but it was. It was nominal and I was really happy with it. Yay, but that may be that one particular segment of the audience. It may have been what I was selling, it may have been. There's so many variables that go into an ad so it's hard to know. But I was just curious to like if you had one or the other that you lean towards and it sounds like you don't. You're saying test both.

Stacy Covitz:

Yes, I don't ever. I don't ever just let them decide. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't have a client and just leave it all to Meta. Yeah, and I shouldn't say never, because everything's changing. And one of my when I said don't get me started on all the the changes. Every day, sometimes twice a day, I'll go in there and I'll say where did this setting go? Why is this called this? And now, a big thing that is just is if I don't want them to choose my creative and you know, oh, enhancements and all of this, if I don't want that, I have to go in and click off, click off, click off, click off. And if you don't know how to do that or where to go, you're kind of just, you're just at their mercy, which I don't like. But I mean I'll have to evolve, right, we're evolving.

Janice Hostager:

I mean, I'm with you. It is very hard to stay up with all the changes that take place on there, and that's why there are people like you in the world that can help us business owners, because it is really hard. I mean, even having done this for years and years, I get a little nervous when I'm like, okay, I don't, what is this? This is a new thing. I don't know what this is, you know, and especially if I'm doing it for a client, which is why now I tend to outsource that because, honestly and that's true of a lot of areas of marketing there's so many changes, there's so much depth to it that there's no possible way that we can stay on top of everything. A for me, as a strategist l other than what you just talked about with starting with billboard ads and kind of going beyond that a little bit A there some tips and tricks that you like to utilize, or are you not wanting to share those?

Stacy Covitz:

I can put that under the. "t depends right. It depends a lot, I would say a lot on the offer and a lot on the budget, because a l, o, a lot of people will come to you and they'll say, okay, well, I, you know, I have, I have kind of a big budget, you know, $300. And oh, yeah, okay, yeah, that's right.

Janice Hostager:

G a f a t t y t r, might not go as far as they think y.

Stacy Covitz:

Yeah, it doesn't go very far, so it does just depend. It's interesting because, you know, you and I were at Social Media Marketing World together and there were some workshops that had some unique strategies that I'm excited to test. But you know, right now, I would say, messaging is pretty much trending. You know, it doesn't have to be a bot like a m Chat, it could just be message me this word, and those are performing pretty well a It kind of goes all over the place, like it used to be video. You know, videos, video, video, video. And now carousels are performing really well because you can have 10 slides and each slide could be a different message and a different. You message, know, you could send you them to a different place. So it's kind of kind of a great, I would say, like a good bang for your buck, carousel ads and they and they perform really well. But yeah it, it just depends on so many things. I would say the messaging ads are working pretty well.

Janice Hostager:

So you're talking about, like, integration with ManyChat or something like that, where you just say "comment podcast below and we'll send you a link to it, kind of thing.

Stacy Covitz:

Yes, yes, and I will caution about a basic word like that and make it more of a i a if you're going to try this, make it more of a podcast number 27, something like that, Because if it's a word like podcast or ad or whatever, something that's generic, it could kind of send it off the rails because a lot of people will not be expecting, not be intending to get a message and then the bot is triggering because you know what I mean.

Stacy Covitz:

So they may just have a comment using those words yes, and ' 're getting yes and their inbox is full of y yes yes . s yes yes correct, correct so be a little bit more specific, and the nice thing is is you don't have to have, you Many don't hat even have to have many chat, because you can Meta. do r this s natively u in u in meta really set up us. It's a shorter, you know it's not going to be a very robust sequence, but it could be, you know, a couple steps.

Janice Hostager:

Okay, r, t, I didn't even know that. Well, it's like I got to get my head in there again and figure out what's going on. h hallenges hallenges hallenges I think when working with clients is that they look at after the ad has run. They'll look at all the metrics and won't really know how to read them or what metrics they should pay attention to. So do you feel like there's some KPIs or key performance metrics that you base, like your success on, or that people should look for when they're doing ads?

Stacy Covitz:

Yes, great question, and I just did a podcast about this. O, ecause a lot of people will be very disappointed because they think that their ads didn't work, but the reality is they weren't looking at the right metrics, because it's not a one-size-fits-all. It depends on what your North Star goal is. If I'm going for sales, I don't a awareness billboard for a retargeting I d w want, I don't care about clicks, I don't care about cost per click, because I'm not asking them to click, I just want them to watch this video. And it's interesting because if you're not skilled in ads manager and how it's set up, you could adjust all of the columns and the different reporting so it only shows what you're interested in, but it auto-populates. And so if you, let's say, you ran a video view campaign and you go to your campaign and then you're looking at performance, let's say, and it'll have cost per click and it'll have all of these metrics that are completely irrelevant to what you should be looking for or hoping to get And and so you could look at that and not know and think"h oh, this is terrible. I didn't get any clicks Okay okay, but did you have a call to action for anybody to click? No So so as long as you know how to set up your columns so So you you're only testing or looking at the metrics that are relevant to what you're trying to do. So if you you have, if you're selling something and you don't want to go above l a a 30 a sale and this is for a high ticket, you know, or I don't want to go, I don't want to spend more than sale, 30 per sale then you want to see your cost per cost right result That's Right, that's a, a metric that's important to you. If you're getting clicks and your cost per result is low and everything is coming in and you're getting sales and conversions and it's just crushing it, you shouldn't really care what your CPM is, if that makes sense. Yes, we have this, I do in my head. I have a certain number. I want to make sure that my CPM is under, but, like this last campaign that I i w, it was. I couldn't have asked for a better campaign and a better result. But, yeah, the CPM was a little bit higher. So it depends. That's the answer.

Stacy Covitz:

then Then have a look at the big picture. You know, do a more in-depth audit, but there's some basic KPIs to check for. You're not getting any clicks. Okay, what's your creative. You know what does that look like? So you know there's some basic formulas like like. So S y k t. s There's T s b f l t getting clicks but nobody's converting. Okay, so what is your landing page like? So I mean the metrics. Definitely you want to. They tell a story.

Janice Hostager:

They do. Yeah, and I work. I work with clients about that a lot, because e everything you can see where the audience starts falling off, and that's the point in which you need to start looking. And it's easy to say, "oh my gosh, my ad didn't convert o it didn't. nobody, not a lot of people, clicked on it. Therefore, it you know it must be me or it must be my product or my ad.

Janice Hostager:

Really, right, Don't we kind of do that? Sometimes you know it's like, "oh, "what was I thinking? You know I shouldn't have done this or that. We kind of beat ourselves up. But in fact, there's, like you said earlier I think it was before we started recording, it's like it's all data r, And it's the quote I used, was and I've used this before on my podcast, it's like you either get the answer you wanted or the results you needed. And that is true in ads, that's true in anything in marketing. And that's what I love about data. I'm not a numbers person at all, but the data really do help you when you're trying to figure out why things are not working. It tells you what to look at, for sure. So I love that. You said that.

Stacy Covitz:

Y, I love it, I love looking at all of it. I'm not an expert by any means, but I would love to. I mean I love learning, so I would love to just know everything about that. And now they have you know. I mean I went to one again, the convention, and now they have you know, I mean I went to one again, the convention, One of the programs, just it's kind of creepy.

Janice Hostager:

How detailed you could see what your customer journey and where they're falling off. And you know the hot heat maps and all of that. I'm sure you're aware of all of those. It really is. There are so many tools out there that didn't exist for anybody before the computer age. I don't know how they sold anything. Honestly, you know, it's just like it's a lot of guessing, you know, and. But yeah, and it's just getting more and more targeted, with AI coming in, and just about every single piece of software I use is integrating AI at some point in the process. You know everything from Photoshop to, well, Meta, if we're doing ads, they're integrating AI. I mean, everybody's integrating AI right now. And why not? Because it's a time saver and it makes our job so much easier, especially as business owners Could talk all day on this.

Stacy Covitz:

but and I probably will at some point I know, I know, and it's yeah, it's a mixed bag. It's amazing, amazing.

Janice Hostager:

Yeah, so talk to me a little about retargeting. What role does that play in maintaining engagement and conversions on Facebook, like when do you use retargeting ads and when do you not?

Stacy Covitz:

Let's say I don't have any audience and I want to build up an audience, I will, let's say, let Meta decide who they send these to, and I would do. You know, engagement video views. And then I would go and I would look at my metrics and I would filter out the people or the segment of how many video views I got, and then you could say 50%. You know, 50% view. So if your video, let's say, is a minute and someone is watching 30 seconds, well, in today's world, whew, wow, they love you.

Janice Hostager:

That's pretty good. Yes, they love you, right.

Stacy Covitz:

Yes, so that would. I would make a custom audience out of those people. And if I have a really niche audience that I'm going after Target and they watch a hundred percent, I feel like that's a slam dunk If you were talking about something that is so off the wall to most people and someone's watching that for two minutes, either they have too much time on their hands or they're your ideal client. So I would take those audiences and create a custom audience, which is a beautiful thing that you could do in meta and then I would use that audience for my middle of funnel. I would call that a warm lead. So that would be my. That would be my middle bottom the funnel, where I would be now going for the ass, going for the sale or, you know, get an appointment or something like that. So that's how I use it to to build up an audience.

Janice Hostager:

Or you could take that group of leads and run conversion ads to them in meta as well.

Stacy Covitz:

Yes, exactly, I'm sorry, that's what I meant. Yes, oh, so take that custom audience so I would create audience from you know this many minutes watched and then I would show those people my conversion ads. Love that and they're warm, you know they're warm leads. They already know me, they already like me. They watched a minute of some random. You know if you're completely on some random topic and someone's watching it, you know and they love it and they're watching it, then yay, part of me wants to go into like, okay, explain how you do that so people can understand.

Janice Hostager:

But then I realize that that gets kind of complex, especially when we're on a podcast because we can't show video here.

Stacy Covitz:

Yes, yes, yes, I mean, that is the beautiful thing about meta advertising is there's three types of audiences. So there's your broad, you know, you just let meta decide. There's your custom audience, which is what I was just referring to, which is essentially everybody on the platform or on your website that has engaged with you somehow. Either they've commented, they've gone to your website. If it's pixeled, that's a different topic. So you can create audiences, specific audiences, that refer to people that visited my website all the way up to six months ago, people that engaged with me on Instagram. That could be one audience. So then you can go and say, well, this product does really well on Instagram and so I'm going to target all these people that have engaged with me on Instagram and that's how I'm going to send my ad to and you know, talk about targeting, right, right, those are your people. They are.

Stacy Covitz:

Yeah, so, yeah, so you can do a, you know, just a regular audience and then, or you can have a custom audience, and then they have other audiences that you can create, which are called lookalike audiences, which you could take 1%, 3% of, let's say, your email list. You could upload your email list into Meta and target them, or you can exclude them. Well, they're getting rid of that. I shouldn't say that.

Janice Hostager:

But oh, are they Good to know. Okay, right.

Stacy Covitz:

I know I was like no, yeah so exclusion right now is still possible yeah, so exclusion right now is still possible. So you want to exclude all your buyers. Let's say, if you want to go broad, yeah, so you can do a lookalike audience, which is find me people that are like these people, so they have the same, you know, interests and age, demographic and all of that. Find those people for me. And those do really well, I mean surprisingly so. Lookalike audiences sometimes are just like a secret gem.

Janice Hostager:

They are and there are so many things that you can do with that information and I think people, when clients that I meet, they'll say I just want to run an ad, but there's so many layers of people in there and you talked about the, you know the lookalike audiences and I think, as I understood it, 1% means that they are going to be most closely aligned with you, right? And 2% gets a little further out, right? Thank you, Okay.

Stacy Covitz:

That's exactly. Yeah, that's exactly what it is, and I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't explain it.

Janice Hostager:

Well, because at some point that 1%, you're going to kind of exhaust that group of people. So you want to go a little broader out as you go along, correct, if you're hitting that same audience.

Stacy Covitz:

Yes, yes, and if I'm doing a lookalike audience, I will do several. I'll you know. I'll test 1% and then I'll test 3%. Oh okay, you know, and then if I'm not getting results, I might go up to 5%, but depending on how much I'm putting towards it, I might not go higher than that, gotcha.

Janice Hostager:

Wow Well, stacey you have been so helpful in helping me get caught up on what's happening with Facebook ads and helping my listeners understand really the basics of running a Facebook ad. And you have a freebie for us, right?

Stacy Covitz:

I do Tell us more about that freebie for us, right? Tell us more about that. I'm super excited about this. So, speaking of AI, I just created a custom GBT. So it's like using ChatGBT and you do need to have the paid version. And if you don't have the paid version and you want to still do this, I have a PDF as well. So you go in and you it's a a quiz and it will help you if you're ready for Facebook ads. So it's a question, it's going to ask you questions and you answer and you can have a chat with it, conversation, whatever you want, and it's going to help you decide if you're ready for Facebook ads and if you're not. It's a checklist to see what you need to get going, to get up to speed, to not waste your money, because that is my mission is to make sure that everybody that puts money in gets some sort of value when they are doing their ads.

Janice Hostager:

That is such a great idea. I love that because you're really going to. I mean, I get that question quite a bit. It's like, should I be running Facebook ads? And this will just answer that question. I absolutely love it and I'll put the link to that in the show notes. And Stacey people could find you on LinkedIn, instagram, all of the above.

Stacy Covitz:

Yes, all of the above. All of the above, and I'm like the collar with no shoes, so I'm not that active on Instagram and Facebook but, I am there.

Janice Hostager:

I think we've had this conversation, because, yeah, I you know it's like when you're taking care of all the other people's accounts, it's really hard to focus on your own, and I think anybody in business kind of understands that.

Stacy Covitz:

Right right.

Janice Hostager:

Thank you so much for being with us today and I appreciate it, and I will share all the links to everything that you offered.

Stacy Covitz:

Thank you so much for having me.

Janice Hostager:

And that's a wrap. For more information about anything we talked about today, visit myweeklymarketingcom. Forward slash 108. That's 108. Remember that in the ever-evolving world of marketing and small business, there's always something new to learn, so be sure to subscribe so you'll always stay up to date. Thanks so much for joining me today. See you next time. Bye for now.

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Janice Hostager

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