Podcasting and Digital Marketing Business Growth Hacks: Making Digital Real

Crafting Winning Strategies for Paid Social Ads

• Mike Roberts - Making Digital Real

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Today, I'm joined by Claire Shelley - Facebook and Instagram Ads Specialist, helping coaches and service providers to demystify ads, so that they can consistently attract aligned clients and make more sales using the power of paid advertising. 

Claire delves into the intricacies of creating successful ad campaigns, emphasising the importance of resonating messaging and understanding the customer journey. She shares valuable insights on the common pitfalls businesses encounter when venturing into paid social media advertising and offers practical advice on how to avoid them.

Claire's approach goes beyond just setting up ads; she stresses the significance of validating your offer and ensuring your content is effective before amplifying it with paid advertising. Our discussion also explores the nuances of different ad formats, the power of lead magnets over direct sales, and the art of crafting ad copy that converts. Claire generously shares a success story, highlighting the transformative impact a well-executed Facebook ad campaign can have on audience reach and business growth.

Tune in for an engaging conversation that demystifies the world of social media ads and paves the way for your digital marketing success.

To stay updated with our latest episodes and gain access to exclusive content, be sure to subscribe to the Making Digital Real podcast. Visit our website at https://vault.makingdigitalreal.co.uk/

Sonal Patel:

I Mike's on all here. Just wanted to say thank you so much for a recent podcast episode of yours that I listened to about LinkedIn and sending audio messages to people I feel connected to resonate with, I'm actually going to be connecting with a lady who is very much aligned with my mission and vision on the Empower your teen girl podcast. And if it wasn't for your episode, giving me that little nudge and encouragement to just send an audio message to a complete stranger. I wouldn't be in a position where we are now, building a friendship and connection and collaboration to empower teen girls. I'm so grateful. I love your bite sized episodes, and can't wait to hear more by

Mike Roberts:

massive thanks there to Sonal Patel of the Empower your teen girls podcast really appreciate the reviews. And I'll be throwing a few more of them in over the coming weeks. Since the beginning of the year, I've been talking to so many clients about the opportunities of LinkedIn ads. Now when it comes to getting your content seen by the right people, if you're creating a campaign, if you've got a special service or offering, or even a lead magnet that you want to get in front of people, I believe that LinkedIn ads is always a really good option to keep in the back of your mind. Throwing a little bit of money at these platforms is always an area that should be considered. Because it's a very, very good quick win. It really does work. But you've got to do it right. And there's so many people that are doing it wrong. Now, I'm not going to focus on LinkedIn ads on this episode today. I'm going to wait for another time to do that. But what I am going to do is I am going to bring in somebody to talk about Facebook ads. And in my opinion, one of the best people to talk about this is a brilliant contact of mine called Claire Shelley. So if you are interested or have some questions about Facebook ads, this is the episode for you. Let's get straight into it. This is my conversation with Claire.

Jo Pickard:

Welcome to the making digital real podcast.

Claire Shelley:

I, as you said Facebook and Instagram ads specialist, I help coaches, service providers, and anyone wanting to work on lead gen. I help them to demystify ads and make more sales using the power of paid advertising.

Mike Roberts:

Now I know this is going to be a massive area of interest to our listeners. On a lot of occasions, I've spoken on LinkedIn ads, that's something that I do a lot of and I help people with LinkedIn ads, not necessarily Facebook and Instagram, though. So I'm really excited about this conversation. And what I'd like you to do is just imagine that most of our audience have either never contemplated spending money on a social media platform. What is the pitfalls? And where did most people go wrong? When they throw money at these social media platforms and get nowhere? What is it they're doing wrong? Great

Claire Shelley:

question. So I often think that the the main problem is that people will be they've set up their business, they're using social media to promote their business, they are doing all the things marketing that they need to be doing, and often not always getting the results they want. So they are promoting whatever it is that they're selling on a regular basis and maybe not getting any leads or sales. And often they the misconception is I need more people to see my content. And often, I find that that isn't necessarily right. So the reason that people aren't clicking on posts or coming through and becoming leads or you know, booking inquiries, a lot of the time is down to the messaging within an ad all within a social post. And so showing that post to more people isn't going to solve the problem. And I think that's something that people when they dive into ADS, they're very excited to be using ADS because they're they're getting their business and their their services in front of more people but they're not going to solve the problem with having more traffic. They need to work on their messaging a lot of the time and perfect that and then once that's really resonating with people, they're going to start seeing more results. So essentially what you need to be doing is validating your offer, whatever that might be first making sure that your social media content is working and performing for you before scaling things with ads.

Mike Roberts:

Okay, so what you do is you actually Look at the steps before creating the ad and posting it rather than during and afterwards.

Claire Shelley:

Yeah. So making sure that the content is is viable and good. Before you put it into an ad, because essentially, ads adds are amplifying what you've already got. So you're you're making sure that you're, you've got that, right. And if if somebody were to come to me, and they didn't have that in place, and they didn't have their foundations, and I could guide them in terms of potentially some of the steps that they can take, or some of the things they could change, to get them in the right position to do that. And

Mike Roberts:

what about the actual content itself? So we've got the text, let's say so we've we've decided on the the actual sales copy, so to speak in the text? Yeah, a carousel ads, the big thing on Facebook these days or a video or image? What's what's the big thing right now in 2024? Wow.

Claire Shelley:

And that's a really good question that I suspect a lot of people will be asking themselves, what type of ads that should I be using. And ultimately, and I'm sure that you find this with the LinkedIn ads, you don't know until you test it, you don't know until you try. So I always recommend starting with a selection of different types of ads. So if you're, if you're ready, you've got your, your, as you say, your copy, sort of nailed down and you know what you want to say in your ad, trying different formats, to start with putting out three or four different types of formats to start with, is a good place to test the water, because then you're feeding those ads out. And then you're being able to dig into the data that Facebook is letting you know which one of those ads is resonating or performing better. And then you can make data driven decisions on exactly what you want to go with, which is better for you. And it's always going to be different for each client or for each business, it's always going to be different, you're never going to have, you know, a specific type of format, there's always going to be a winner across the board. It just depends. And the only way you're going to know that is to test your ads out.

Mike Roberts:

And what's your thoughts on using ads on social media? More as a lead magnet, rather than trying to sell your high ticket offer, so to speak? What what's kind of like? What would you say to people? Let's just say some of my audience are coaches, and they have this 2000 pound offer this six week course programme, you know, and people are thinking, Oh, if I get a do a Facebook ad for this 2000 pound coaching course that I'm offering, what would you say to somebody would you say, look at maybe look at a lead magnet, what would your advice be? Yeah,

Claire Shelley:

and that's a really common thing that I come up against people are using ADS to try and promote something of a higher value. And it's, it's kind of understanding the customer journey is the important part. Because without, you know, the best will in the world, if somebody is seeing a really great ad, if they've never heard of you before, they don't know you, they don't have any trust with you, they're not going to spend that amount of money, the first time they ever come across you. And so it's about taking that customer journey into consideration. And when we're using ADS, we're very much building awareness of what that business does. And so I would always recommend, especially but working in the coaching space, is to have your ads as kind of a stepping stone into your business. So your as you say, you could you could use a lead magnet. And that would be a really great strategy to use. Because by using a lead magnet, you're offering something free, you're getting on someone's radar, you're getting them to opt in for something, they're then coming into your email list, you're then able to nurture them with emails, and then it's kind of a much more of a it's a slow process because they are learning who you are, and then going through that process of getting to know you. And that's a much safer strategy to use for if you wanted to sell a high ticket offer. So I would say yeah, definitely, starting with a lead magnet or something along those lines would be a really great place to start because I use member vault.

Mike Roberts:

And what I like about member vault is the fact that it's almost like an engine by marketplace in one landing page. So as soon as you get somebody on your member vault site, they're not getting lost in a big website. So when I've used ads in the past, taking them to a freebie on my member vault page has just been more of more value to me to try and to sell a high ticket offer. And and I think That's one of the things that people can get a little bit confused about when they think about ads on social media, they think it's got to be an ad for something that I want to sell, therefore, it needs to be a product that costs money. And it doesn't, it can be literally a free ebook or a free audio file, a free meditation, whatever it might be, to get that person into your little digital landscape, right?

Claire Shelley:

Yeah, exactly. It's about attracting leads and getting people into your world. And, and the great thing about using ads for lead generation is that Facebook won't be charging you the premium rates as if you were trying to sell something. So you can get your leads at a much lower rate than you would if you were trying to sell something of a higher value. So so it's a great strategy to use. And, yeah, I'd always recommend going down that route. Yeah,

Mike Roberts:

sometimes the value is in the name and an email address that you've collected, not the sale.

Claire Shelley:

Yeah, exactly. And I think that it's something that people underestimate, if they're in the online world, and they're trying to sell coaching packages, or programmes, memberships, all that sort of thing, is having a big enough audience to make a good number of sales. Because if you come into it, a lot of people maybe have started in the corporate world, and they know their subject inside out. And they're now trying to take this into the online world, and but they're starting from ground zero, when it comes to not having an audience, if you don't have the numbers, you don't have the audience, then the sale was just going to be that much slower. Because because of what we talked about earlier in the fact that you need a good number of people aware of you and trusting you to be in a position to buy it because not everyone's going to be at that right point to buy. So all the time growing that audiences is really important.

Mike Roberts:

So we're gonna come on to in a moment, the all important three ninja tips that I would love for you to share with our audience. Let's imagine that on Monday morning, they are going to head straight to Facebook or Instagram and start paying for ads. I want three tips from you. But before we do that, first of all, have you got an example of a particular Facebook ad campaign that you've managed for somebody that was highly successful? And what what's what comes to mind?

Claire Shelley:

Yeah, sure. I recently ran a campaign for a client. She is an interior designer, and she's wanting to sell a course that helps people to style their own homes. And she came to me having never run ads before. And I always when I talk to people about Anzo, I often have to kind of make them aware that you know, because if it's a new account, there's no data in that account. And essentially, when you're starting with ads, you're you're you're buying data. And so I never promised stellar results overnight, from the get go. It's much like organic marketing, it takes time to establish and build those foundations and to get to a really good optimal point. So I never promised stellar results straight out the gate. However, this campaign, she was wanting to, it was a launch. So she was wanting to people to come into a webinar. And then on the back of the webinar, she was selling her course, and just the the rate at which the campaign took off. And the cost per leads for a webinar, which were literally a couple of pounds, which is unheard of normally, normally, you know, you'd be looking at sort of anywhere between five and 15 pounds, maybe for a lead for a webinar. They were coming in super cheap. And because of that she was able to take her webinar from normally having Around 40 people, she ended up with over 500 people in her webinar, which was amazing. Wow. Yeah, and just, it's just so exciting. And so thrilling when you have campaigns like that, that just take off, and you can just see the value that's going to bring to her business, because that's, you know, 500 people added to an email list within a matter of days, literally. And yeah, that's gonna be so good for her not only in the process of her doing her launch, but in the longer term as well. So

Mike Roberts:

three ninja tips time, and then we'll ask you about how people can get in touch with you and what you've got planned for this year. So your three golden tips for our listeners.

Claire Shelley:

So my three golden tips and this is down to its three tips for writing ad copy that converts because when we see an ad in our feed, we're first captured by the graphics. That's what will capture our attention in the first instance but then after that, what people will look at is the copy. So they're going to be looking at the headline and the snippet of text that you can see above the grid. FIQ are the image. And that copy is what is going to compel people to take action, they're going to click on that ad, and they're going to do more. So we want that copy to really resonate, and to really hit the mark. Because as we all know, the online space is very noisy, that we've got a load of things going on through all platforms, we're scrolling through and seeing all the time. So we want to really capture their attention. And the first tip is to have your ad copy to be benefits lead, rather than features. And what I mean by that is, for example, if you're selling a course, the features of your course might be that it's seven modules, you've got video lessons, you've got checklist, you've got PDFs. But really what people are wanting to see is how is this going to help me what what is this going to benefit me? And what's the benefit for me how, what's this going to help me to do and so taking it more on the benefit side you'd be focusing on. For example, I launched a course recently that enables coaches to get leads every day without spending more time on social media. So that's the benefit that they're going to be taking a course. And at the end of that course, the outcome is that they get more leads, regular leads every day without having to do more hustle. So that's kind of the thing, that's something that people struggle with is making sure that they in their ad copy that they've got the things that are going to really resonate with their readers. So you having a benefit driven copy is always going to be an advantage. Okay. So tip number two is to make it relevant to the person and this is something that comes up a lot. People don't necessarily want to niche, that magic word, nobody wants to niche. And I think people resist niching, because they are worried that they're going to cut out potential clients or prospective buyers. But when you're vying for people's attention, you really want to make it as specific as possible. So, for example, if you're a local business, lead with your copy saying, you know, in x town, or whatever mentioned the town, so that people know that, that's where they they're going to be going for your business. Or call out, you know, if you're talking to stay at home moms, if you've got a service or product that helps stay at home mums, call that out in your in your copy, say, you know, attention, stay at home moms or whatever, just just make sure that whatever it is that you're saying in your copy is really going to attract somebody's attention, because that's them, or they have that specific problem. So you might be saying, you know, are you suffering with a sore back, only people who have a sore back are going to be drawn into that ad. So it's going to make sure that you've got the right people clicking through and doing the things that you want them to do. So that's tip number two. Okay, so third one is to use social proof in your ads. So this could be one of two things that you could either use. So if you've had a course run, and you've had some really great feedback, and you have permission to share that feedback, you could have a quote in there from a client saying, This is what happened, I took the course and this was the outcome, this is what I gained. That's really powerful, because it's building trust and authority, and people are more likely to take action on something if they have that visible proof that somebody has already benefited from from from buying in. And another great tip is to use numbers make it really, really specific. So if someone has joined your course, and as a result, they have obtained 500 new leads, for example, that in itself is is going to speak volumes, rather than making wishy washy, you know, and less specific. So if you can use numbers, make it and make it specific, then then definitely do that.

Mike Roberts:

That is brilliant. So tell us what's happening in your world this year. What have you got coming up? And what services are you offering right now? And how can people get in touch with you?

Claire Shelley:

So I have most recently launched a group programme, so I'm helping people to obtain leads using ADS. So the great thing about the course is that I know a lot of people come to us thinking it's going to cost them a fortune and they can't afford it. But the strategy that I'm teaching in this course is to enable people to get leads on a budget of 10 pounds a day. So that's just kicked off and I'm so I'm going through that Now, so it's my first group of programmes. So that's all good enjoying. But yeah, if people want to get in touch with me, then I'm very active on LinkedIn. Or probably the easiest thing to do is to go to my website. So it's WW dot, and it's plushly, which is CLA, IR E, and then surely is Sh E double l ey.co.uk. And when you go to my website, then there's all the links there from all my social platforms. So come and engage and connect with me. I would love to see, that's

Mike Roberts:

amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining me on this week's making digital real podcast. My pleasure. And hopefully we'll catch up again soon.

Claire Shelley:

Awesome. Thanks, Mike. It's been great. What a brilliant

Mike Roberts:

conversation with Claire that was. Now if you are looking at boosting your sales through Instagram or Facebook ads, you know where to go. Here's what I want you to do in terms of LinkedIn ads. If this is something you're thinking of next time you log into LinkedIn, in the top right hand corner where it says for business, I want you to click on that little button that says advertise. Now, don't worry, I'm not asking you to do anything. But I want you to explore that Campaign Manager page. I want you to get to understand it. I want you to ask me any questions if you get stuck, but but please do explore it and have a think while you're looking through all these pages, looking at your various options and opportunities, how you can get something of value or interest into your clients the feed and really look at the potential because honestly it is there and I would love to help you on that journey.

Jo Pickard:

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Making digital real podcast until next time, keep innovating, keep growing and keep making digital real