Master The Inbox

How to craft compelling Meta ads for Black Friday with strategist Crystal Johnson

• Monica Badiu • Season 2 • Episode 11

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Black Friday is a huge opportunity for course creators to boost revenue. But   running successful campaigns isn’t as easy as just hitting ‘publish.’ Today we’re talking about your Black Friday ads strategy, so whether you’re just starting or looking to level up, this episode is packed with insights you won’t want to miss.

Summary

In this episode, Monica Badiu and Crystal Johnson discuss effective strategies for running Black Friday ads, emphasizing the importance of planning ahead, retargeting, and understanding audience behavior. They cover common mistakes, budgeting, the significance of choosing the right platforms, and the differences between direct and indirect messaging in ads. The conversation also highlights the challenges of managing ad campaigns during the busy holiday season and offers insights into optimizing ad performance and content creation.

Takeaways

  • Black Friday is a prime opportunity for course creators to boost revenue.
  • Planning for Black Friday ads should start well in advance.
  • Building an audience and email list is crucial before the sale.
  • Retargeting is key during Black Friday; focus on warm leads.
  • Video ads are effective for building trust and engagement.
  • Teaser ads should be used as Black Friday approaches.
  • Extending the sale beyond just Black Friday can be beneficial.
  • Boosting posts is not as effective as running ads through the ads manager.
  • Testing different ad variations can lead to better results.
  • Understanding your audience's behavior is essential for successful campaigns.

Meet my guest, Crystal Johnson
Crystal is a toddler boy mom, a FB/IG (Meta) Ads Strategist, and a certified Life and Success Coach. She is passionate about helping other entrepreneurs, especially female coaches and course creators, find the right ad strategy for their business and scale using the  power of FB and IG ads.

Connect with Crystal


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Hey, this season of Master the Inbox is all about helping you get rea

Hi. And welcome.
My name is Monica Badiu. I am a marketing consultant turned conversion copywriter and copy coach. I help online course creators and info product businesses sell more through persuasive, non-spammy, no fluff copywriting.

I teach about copywriting, digital marketing, and conversion strategies tested in my businesses and with my clients.


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[00:00:00] Black Friday is a huge opportunity for course creators to boost revenue. But running successful campaigns isn't as easy as just throwing a discount and then hitting publish. Today we're talking about your Black Friday ad strategy. So whether you're just starting or looking to level up, this episode is packed with insights you won't want to miss.

[00:00:29] Hey, you're listening to Master the Inbox, the podcast where course creators, coaches, and consultants come to learn how to sell with email in a non spammy way. I'm your host, Monica Badiou, a customer centric copywriter, course creator, and entrepreneur. And today, along with my guest, Crystal Johnson, we're going to tackle Black Friday ads.

[00:00:50] Crystal is a toddler boy mom, a Facebook Instagram ad strategist, and a certified life and success coach. She's passionate about helping [00:01:00] other entrepreneurs, especially female coaches and course creators find the right ad strategy for their business and scale using the power of Facebook and Instagram ads.

[00:01:11] Hello, Crystal, and welcome to the show. Hi, Monica. Thanks so much for having me on. So let's, let's dive right in, because we're getting very close to Black Friday, and I know a lot of people are considering running ads, because I mean, it's like the easiest thing you can do, and I'm using like air quotes for easiest.

[00:01:32] So, I think it's worthwhile to just talk about the most common mistakes you see people making when it comes to their Black Friday ads. Yeah, absolutely. So like you just said, it's not quite as simple as just throwing up a discount and then making tons of sales, right? So you really need to strategize ahead of time, um, like you also alluded to, before Black Friday gets here.

[00:01:59] Uh, and one of the [00:02:00] most important things that you need to do is start with building up your audience and email list prior to the sale. So in the months, in the weeks leading up to black Friday, you want to go ahead and be building up those audiences with ads. And then the black Friday is all about retargeting.

[00:02:16] So then when the sale time comes around, you're going to be able to retarget tons of people who already are familiar with your brand already familiar, you know, build up the anticipation. I might be getting ahead of the conversation here, but, um, but yeah, the biggest mistake is definitely just thinking you can throw up a few ads and you're going to make massive money.

[00:02:34] I mean, I know people are doing exactly that. Like it's the week of Black Friday and they're thinking, Hmm, now's the time to going live with those Black Friday ads. That's awesome. So you mentioned starting this campaign ahead of time. How far in advance should, and how much [00:03:00] time should you even be planning for before you hit, you know, publish ad?

[00:03:06] Yeah, that's a great question. So, I mean, it's already October. It's going to be October next week. It feels like it's already October, I guess. So, right now is the perfect time to go ahead and start, um, start planning those ads. And you want to go ahead and start building your audiences first. And the best way I like to do that is using video ads.

[00:03:26] And then, When I get closer to Black Friday. So maybe like the beginning of November, you could, you know, one strategy is to build like an early bird special, have people go ahead and sign up, or at least get on the early bird list so that they know that they're going to be the first ones to find out as soon as that Black Friday sale goes live.

[00:03:44] So I would say, I mean, now, honestly, you, you know, go ahead and plan right now and start getting everything together, get all of your assets in order and get those ads. So let's talk about platforms, maybe, or channels. Now, is there a [00:04:00] specific channel that would work better than another, like, maybe I'm on Facebook, like I have a big audience on Facebook, and I want to place ads on Instagram, but I'm not that active on Instagram.

[00:04:14] Is that something that matters? Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, anytime you're running ads, you want to find out where your people are. So if your people are mostly on Instagram, then maybe you want to lean into more like Instagram ads, more story ads, real ads, depending on where your people are. Of course, you know, doing some testing is always great.

[00:04:32] If your people are on TikTok, you can run TikTok ads. Um, so it really is very important to find out where your people are, but of course, like, you can also do multiple channels, you know, so if you have, if your people are on TikTok and Instagram, then maybe you split your budget, do half on Instagram, half on TikTok, and just really get some good data and see which one performs best, and then you can scale that up.

[00:04:57] The keyword here, budget, I mean, [00:05:00] what's a minimum budget one can expect to invest to get some kind of results? Do you have any benchmarks or do you have any examples of campaigns you might have run for your clients? Yeah. So with budget, I mean, it's really hard because of course, depending on the industry, depending on the price point of the product, you know, do you have 500 followers or do you have 50, 000 followers are your goals, 500 or 500, 000.

[00:05:29] So budget is really going to depend on a lot of different factors, especially like just how big your business is, you know, how much you're wanting to spend. See on return on investment, all of that stuff. I mean, I've had clients use just a couple of thousand dollars, you know, because that was within their budget.

[00:05:45] And we really focused on, like I said, retargeting, but we're built now caveat here, we're building their email list all year long, you know, so they already had a huge email list, about 40, 000 people. So they were able to go in, you know, we started building up the [00:06:00] audience, warming them up prior to black Friday, and then we retargeted them and we were able to sell them.

[00:06:04] See success, you know, with our black Friday sale, but that's because like I said, it's not just, she never runs ads. She threw up a few ads and then she made sales. We are running ads for her consistently all year long, building her email list, you know, launching different programs, doing all kinds of other ads all year to build those audiences, keep people engaged.

[00:06:24] And so that is a big factor too, but it's not too late to start, you know, you could start building your audience now and start building your email list. And then that's already going to give you some people to retarget. You can retarget your Facebook engagers, um, Instagram engagers. You know, there's a lot of different ways you can go about retargeting, but yeah, there's just a lot of factors that go into it.

[00:06:44] What do you think is different about like specifically running ads for Black Friday, like this time of the year versus. The rest of the year, because I know a lot of people, they don't think about, Hey, I actually need more leads [00:07:00] in. I need more people buying my stuff throughout the year. You're just like, well, Black Friday is coming.

[00:07:06] I want more people now. So what's something that's different this time of the year that maybe, you know, business owners aren't really taking into account, but ad strategists, they're like, No way in hell we're doing that in November. Yeah, absolutely. So like I mentioned, Black Friday is really all about retargeting.

[00:07:28] So this is not the time of year that you want to really focus a ton of your ad spend on cold audiences. I mean, I would still run some, um, ads to cold, probably focusing more on lookalike audiences, lookalike of your past purchasers, you know, lookalikes of the people who are most likely going to buy, but this is the Really the biggest time of year to focus on retargeting people.

[00:07:52] People are going to be in a buying mode, getting ready for the holidays. You know, they don't want to like find someone new if they see you come through with a [00:08:00] sale and they're like, Oh, I already know this person. I already trust this person. And don't discount people that have already bought from you. I mean, even if they bought from you in the past, you want to be retargeting them with your black Friday special.

[00:08:10] I mean, of course you have to have, you know, a good special, something new, maybe something they haven't bought before. Um, but really leaning into retargeting and focusing on that warm audience that you've been building up and working on all year long, instead of trying to, like, for example, in like a live launch, we're really focused on getting tons of new people in the door, bringing people into the webinar.

[00:08:32] And then selling them that way, this Black Friday is going to be, or all Black Fridays, but for Black Friday, you really want to focus on those people that you've already been engaging with and building your audience around. Because they would be like the warmest leads, right? What type of content, like what type of creative elements would work best for retargeting ads during Black Friday?

[00:08:56] So definitely starting out. Like I said, I love [00:09:00] using video ads to build audiences because you were able to very quickly build that like, know and trust. And we all know at this point, the power of video. So really creating some great, um, just value based ads in the month or weeks leading up to November, you know, for example.

[00:09:17] So for October, maybe focusing on just doing your video strategy, and that's going to give you tons of new audiences to retarget and Facebook, because we can retarget people based on how much of the video that they watch. So we can retarget segments of people. If they've watched 25%, 50%, those hottest leads, like people who have watched 95 to a hundred percent of the video.

[00:09:41] So starting definitely with some video ads, I think first. Um, and then when you get into the sale, you know, doing some graphics, maybe you try carousels, depending on what works best for you. You can test different things out. You can do gifts. I mean, I always like to test lots of different creative. Now I do have clients that of course, we've [00:10:00] figured out what works best for them, whether it's reels or, you know, gifts, we still are always testing, but we can kind of like conclude like, okay.

[00:10:08] Carousels always work really well for us. In this type of ad, you know, um, so leaning into that. And then also when you get to the sales portion of everything, you want to be retargeting people with testimonials. So you can do video testimonials, written testimonials, but that's really important, you know, for those people who are like on the fence about buying, but not really sure yet.

[00:10:31] Um, if you retarget them and you have some great testimonials, that might just be the thing that pushes them over the edge. That's cool. And now I'm wondering, cause with email marketing, when it comes to Black Friday, we can't afford to be more direct and have direct teasers, you know, that are saying, Hey, Black Friday is happening three weeks from now.

[00:10:51] Or Hey, Do you want to get in our early bird special Black Friday deal? Hit this button here or whatever. So when it [00:11:00] comes to the ads you're creating, do you focus on like a direct messaging for Black Friday? Hey, it's coming. Or do you take a more indirect approach? Which is like, hey, do you have this problem?

[00:11:14] Then Check this out, because it has helped other people just like you, um, solve this specific pain point. So, which way are you going? Yeah, that's a great question. So, like, I was talking about with the video ads, that's where I would talk about just the more maybe not talk about black Friday yet. Right? So, for October, do those value videos talked about the problem that you are black Friday.

[00:11:39] offer is going to solve. And then as we get closer to Black Friday, that's when you really do want to start, you know, teaser ads, like Black Friday is coming. We're going to have this early bird special opening up, you know, be on the lookout for these emails or whatever your strategy is. Definitely. You want to use emails during this time, but yeah, I mean, when it gets closer to Black Friday, [00:12:00] definitely like, Letting people know like I have a special deal coming.

[00:12:03] This is gonna be the only time you can get this all year You know, this will be the lowest prices of the year This is your last chance of the year to get x for you know for this price or for this discount Um, we're gonna have free shipping like whatever your promo is gonna be for black friday You can you know, you can indirectly or directly mention it In the ads leading up to the actual promotion, because we want to get people excited.

[00:12:27] Right. It's kind of like with apple, like they're talking about the new iPhone coming like way before they release it. So that everyone's interested, everyone's already looking into it. You know, they're already looking into if they want to buy it before it's even available. So definitely taking some notes from Apple or, you know, big companies like that and infusing that into your own strategy.

[00:12:50] That's cool. So what about doing the actual Black Friday promotion? Cause like what my clients are doing and what we're doing [00:13:00] is we're starting Black Friday early. I mean, most people are just doing like November 29th or whatever the day of Black Friday is. And I think that's. That creates a major challenge if you're only gonna run like an ad that says hey cart is open And it's just like fourth a day because I assume we like competition the ad costs are probably very high and then there's a big chance that if your audience is small in terms of like retargeting who's been on your email list, maybe who's been on your website or whatever.

[00:13:35] I assume the actual cost of you having a chance to display your ad to that limited audience is even more costly. So what's your take on that? How do you handle like the, hey, the countdown is It's on live. The cart is open. Here's the offer. Go get it now. Yeah, well, exactly like you just said, I do think that just having [00:14:00] that one day isn't really enough because these days, I mean, everyone is running Black Friday promotions.

[00:14:06] And so people are just going to be inundated. In their inbox, in their Facebook feed, you know, everywhere they look, it's going to be black Friday specials. So I do think having that extended sale is good to give buyers more time than just that one day, you know, and like you said, I mean, ad costs competition is going to be much, much higher on actual black Friday.

[00:14:26] And now we also do have like cyber Monday too. So even extending it and maybe doing like a black Friday through cyber Monday sale. Or just doing special promos around both of those days. Like I mentioned, maybe you have one day that's like a free shipping day and just like doing some different promos.

[00:14:42] But also, um, what you said really highlighted the importance of having people on your email list because when they're on Facebook, the competition is going to be high, you know, I mean, That's why we want to start early with building those audiences so that we can retarget people, um, and get them engaged with our stuff because the more they engage with [00:15:00] our stuff, you know, we're going to take, uh, presidents over the competition and actually getting in front of them again.

[00:15:06] Um, so that pulls in a lot of the strategy that we've been talking about, but I mean, even sending with emails, I'm not sure what you guys are doing, but. Even sending like two to three emails per day, like during the actual promotion period, I mean, people are expecting it. People aren't going to get like annoyed these days.

[00:15:22] I mean, I don't know about you, but I know there's tons of emails in my inbox. I never even get to, so if I miss something like, and I'm like, Oh man, I missed it. Like, I would rather someone send me multiple emails telling me about their situation. sale. If it's something I'm really interested in. Um, but this brings us back to exactly why you want to focus on those hottest leads, like the, you know, the buyers, the past purchasers, lookalikes of those people, and really hone in on your warm audience versus trying to target, you know, tons of cold people who are going to be inundated with just, you know, There's tons and tons of advertising and sales.

[00:15:56] Well, that's why I'm bringing this up, because I [00:16:00] know this is like the question I get so often the week of Black Friday, it's like, hey, we're thinking about running ads. Is there any way you can help us with, like, some, um, Ad copy? I'm like, what do you mean you're running ads now? That's not how it works. So, I've been researching so much more for Black Friday this year and I was looking at previous campaigns to identify some really cool insights.

[00:16:29] And what I noticed with the clients I've been writing for While the majority of sales are still happening the day of Black Friday, but I'm looking at the engagement with the emails and the people that are waiting until November 29th or whatever, the last minute people, let's call them that, they are still engaging and opening the previous emails as well.

[00:16:57] And what I realized is that when you do like [00:17:00] two or three days for Black Friday day and you have those. two or three emails that last day, the results are not better than starting like five days earlier because you have all those multiple touch points that allow you to kind of do more than just shout out, hey, there's an expiring discount and it's Black Friday, it's the best of the year.

[00:17:23] So that's very interesting to see because for this specific time of the year, sending those extra emails. It's not actually hurting, especially if you're doing like the whole segmentation thing which you mentioned. And then the strategy starting earlier and doing the email list cleanup and all of that.

[00:17:43] So I know I find like the more I research this, the more I find Black Friday. So it's fascinating to see how consumer behavior shifts. It's so interesting to see how easy it is to [00:18:00] sell something when throughout the year you've demonstrated value and then the people on your list were like just waiting for like the cherry on top, right?

[00:18:10] a small nudge or people who just couldn't afford your services before and then black friday comes and you see how much of that audience was just waiting for you to say hey we have black friday i'm writing that is so interesting thank you for sharing that yeah i mean it's it's funny because like you said i mean i feel like i've even been that person before you know where it's like oh wow this is like the one time per year That I'm going to get a savings on X product because sometimes people don't really put sales out there.

[00:18:44] And so it is kind of a unique time. Um, for all of those people who are like wanting that little discount that usually doesn't exist. And then finally, this is your opportunity to, you know, have them become buyers. So that is so interesting. Yeah. [00:19:00] I love that. Prime time for marketers. So what's your personal least favorite thing about Black Friday as an ad strategist?

[00:19:12] Oh, man. Um, I guess I mean, it is just a busy time for everyone. So, you know, getting ready for the holidays and then also managing like Black Friday campaigns and everything like that. It can just be a little overwhelming sometimes. That's another reason that if you plan early and get everything, all your assets in place, you can actually schedule out those ads, which is amazing, you know, and that way, They're running.

[00:19:37] I mean, we still manage them. We still check in on them, all of that stuff, but it's so much less stressful to have everything planned ahead of time, have all your assets ready, your campaign set up, um, you know, so doing your due diligence on planning and getting ready for black Friday, you mentioned life checking them.

[00:19:54] So I know that with. Other ads, you need to let them run a couple of days, right? To [00:20:00] collect data before you go in and change things. But with Black Friday, you have a very time period. I mean, what do you do? What, what are some benchmarks or red flags that are telling you, Hey, we need to pause this ad or tweak it or do something because this isn't working?

[00:20:20] Yeah, yeah. So with any ad campaigns, I mean, I do let them run for a few days, but I, I'm always checking them. You know, I want to make sure something isn't off with the campaign. You want to make sure, um, the data is, I mean, you, there's lots of different things I look at to make sure that the ads are running correctly and spending correctly and all of that stuff, but as far as making tweaks and changes, like you said, you want to wait, um, to really let the ads have a little time to optimize.

[00:20:46] You know, hopefully get out of learning mode, which is a whole nother thing. I mean, but we won't go down that path right now um, but Yeah, so with black friday, like you said you do have a small window But sometimes the best thing that you can do with ads [00:21:00] is to give them that time to run. So it's a small window But you know, you set everything up, you have your strategy in place.

[00:21:06] Maybe you've already done some testing in the weeks prior. And that way you already know, like these audiences are working best. Cause you've already tested like a few different segments of your warm audience. So you've already kind of honed in. That's another good thing about starting early is you can see which audiences.

[00:21:22] So when you set up that sales campaign, you know, like, okay, I'm using this audience, this audience, and this audience. That's it. You set those up. You've already decided on your creative and we're always running multiple versions of the creative so you might be testing out like You know, let's just say for ease, uh, two to three graphics, two copies.

[00:21:42] So you really have six ads running so you're going to be able to go in see which one's performing best And you can always turn off the ones that are underperforming um, so making changes like that is good now as far as like Going in and just completely starting over with the campaign since it is such a small window I mean [00:22:00] there may be an instance where I would make that decision But most of the time i'm probably just going to hone in on what is working best scale up the budget on those And then you know try to leave the ads alone anytime you're running ads alone For just a short time like that, it is just a different strategy to manage them.

[00:22:18] But yeah, there's definitely still ways to optimize, still ways to make sure that you're getting like the best, like bang for your buck, if you will, um, on your spin for, for Black Friday. How do you feel about running countdown hats? Sort of like, hey, today's the last day, and then maybe a video with some kind of a countdown or, I don't know, something along those lines, because, you know, we have Black Friday, it's urgency, and the, like, the worst and best part at the same time is that you have everything as, like, November 29th at, like, 11 59 p.

[00:22:54] m., whatever, which means that you won't know exactly How [00:23:00] good that campaign is until that specific day and it's not enough time to What can you do with those ads? Right. Yeah. Um, so with the countdown timer, like you mentioned I really like when people put that on their landing page So maybe you know leading up to black friday people are joining the the early bird list or something like that And then maybe on the thank you page you have like a countdown timer That tells them like, okay, we have three days, you know, two hours, 38 seconds, whatever, till the sale.

[00:23:32] Um, so I really like those I think they're really fun and cool or or the opposite way like counting down to the sale and then maybe also like Sending like an email that's counting down. Like you have this long left until you, you have to buy, but like you said, you never know until the end. Um, but one strategy you could always, I mean, you can think beyond black Friday, you know, maybe your sale ends, you didn't make all the sales you want it to do.

[00:23:54] Maybe you have like another offer that you're going to come out with. Um, you know, following black Friday and saying, [00:24:00] well, you missed the black Friday deal, but I have this for you. So there's like always ways that you can change up your strategy if needed. you know, add on additional days for the sale or a new sale or just maybe even leading into then like, uh, okay, you miss black Friday, but I have this holiday.

[00:24:17] So, you know, the holidays are such a great time. You can just get really creative and, um, just create another promo based on like the fact that the holidays are coming up or, you know, new year's is coming. That's a great point because a lot of people, they kind of stop at black Friday, maybe cyber Monday, but those are just like the beginning.

[00:24:38] Because it's like Boxing Day, there is like, I think it's Free Shipping Day, Small Business Saturday at some point, then obviously Christmas, New Year, but there are many more opportunities to run sales. They don't have to be as big as Black Friday, but that's the thing with like Q4. People are looking for [00:25:00] things to buy.

[00:25:02] So I have one more question for you, and this is, I think, maybe the worst question an ad strategist could get, but you mentioned throughout this interview how you should have a few different variants of an ad and how you should do the strategy, but I'm going to tell you what most people do in my experience.

[00:25:21] They boost a post. What's your take on that? Uh, boosting posts. I mean, you know, I know that Facebook wants to give people an easy way to put a little bit of money behind a post, get more engagement on that post. It's just really such a different ballgame and Facebook almost makes it seem like, I mean, it actually says like you're running an ad and you are to some extent, but running ads from the back end of ads manager, like there's.

[00:25:50] There's Meta Business Manager, which is what I use to run ads. And then there's Meta Business Suite. So it's kind of crazy because it is like two different backends of [00:26:00] Facebook. Meta Business Suite is more where you manage the organic social media, scheduling out your posts. And that's where you can also boost posts, aka create an ad, you know.

[00:26:10] But, um, Business Manager, We can set it up and we can test, I mean, the limitations with boosting a post, let me just break it down as basically as I can is you're using one post, you know, with ads manager, we can create different versions, different copies, different graphics, you know, you can test out all these different things to accomplish your goals.

[00:26:29] So if you're boosting a post, you only have that one post, that one piece of copy, you're putting money behind it. You're not really testing anything different, anything new. You can pick one audience, you know? So it's just not. It's not the best use of your money I mean if you're just wanting more engagement and you're like, okay, I want people to see this one real Then I definitely think there's like a place for boosting post But if you're really wanting to get leads get sales, you know, see what works best use your money in the best possible way Definitely [00:27:00] running ads just gives you so much more control It's so much more data back there for you to look at and manage Um, like I said, you can turn off the different variations of ads.

[00:27:10] You can test different audiences with the same ads. So for that same, like, say you're boosting a post for 20 a day for that same 20 a day, you can take that and you can test out, you know, four or five, six different ads, and then really see what works best and scale that up versus just putting all your eggs in one basket, hoping that it works.

[00:27:31] Like I said, there are certain cases where boosting a post would, I mean, it would be beneficial. If you just want to get, you have like a new restaurant reel and you want everyone to see it, then boosting that may be great. But for most things, I would say running ads from a business manager. Is really going to give you so much more that was such a good explanation because I, I know, I know, and I'm a business owner myself and I'm looking at that and, you know, Instagram or Facebook always ask [00:28:00] like, do you want to boost this?

[00:28:02] And it makes it sound like it's so easy and simple. And there's kind of this expectation. Expectation that boosting it, you know, sends it to more people you know in your audience or that like your page or whatever. I mean, I'm sure there are lots of like false expectations there coming from lack of knowledge, but I'm so happy that.

[00:28:24] We had this specific answer because I know that's what a lot of people are doing with their Black Friday ads, you know, like posting, Hey, Black Friday is live, go here. And then they boost that. It's good to know. Why not? Right. Yes. I mean, it is a very easy, quick way to do things. I just don't think it's necessarily the most effective way, I guess, depending on your goals, you know?

[00:28:50] So, yeah, I, I'm glad that we could mention that and talk about it. Cause I know it is a huge question and it is misleading. Like you said, I mean, I feel like Facebook. I [00:29:00] mean, they even call it running an ad, so it is running an ad, but it's just not quite as robust as what you can do with, you know, Facebook business.

[00:29:08] And I'm, I'm thinking now it's going to be a little bit difficult to even figure out the conversions from that, like the results. I don't think, I think you have maybe people who saw it, people who may be engaged with it, and it may be clicked your link, but I don't think you can see more than that, right?

[00:29:26] Like if people actually purchase from that. Well, so you can go into business manager, um, again to see, so even though you set up the boosted posts, like from your phone or from business suite, you can still go into business manager and it shows up there, um, in the ads manager. So you can see more, uh, more metrics and everything like that.

[00:29:48] Um, so you would be able to see all of that stuff, but I would just say if you are boosting a post, I wouldn't have huge expectations on sales and leads and things like that. It's more. More to get more engagement on that [00:30:00] one specific post. I mean, if you have like an amazing funnel set up, you know, and you boost the post and that post just really takes off and people are clicking and going through, and then that's amazing.

[00:30:10] But I, I don't think that was probably the case. I love how polite you are. Okay, cool. So we learned that an ad strategy for Black Friday should start ahead of time. Ideally, you spend more time engaging and then running ads throughout the year to find out what works, what doesn't, to actually refine your audience.

[00:30:35] And then even test different visuals, different types of ads to see what works better. Ideally, a lot of your Black Friday ad strategy is focused on retargeting and then engaging the audience you already have. Don't mess with the ads unless they're good. They're doing really bad. And then ideally, don't just sponsor [00:31:00] posts.

[00:31:00] Try to figure out how to create an ad that is basically following the rules of digital marketing, because with volume based marketing, you need to figure out ways to split test your content live. I mean, as it is happening, similar to how you would split test a subject line. And then the platform says, okay, this is a winner and we're just going to show the rest of your audience this subject line because this percentage of your audience has already chosen that as the winner.

[00:31:32] Awesome. Is there any last piece of advice you'd like to give people about their Black Friday ads? Yeah, well, I just wanted to mention just because what you said about split testing I mean, that's the limitations with a boosted post too. It's like you're testing out one Caption, whereas like I've seen ads completely flop with one piece of copy and then do amazing with another piece of copy So just that small minor tweak.

[00:31:57] I mean you might think oh, this is the [00:32:00] worst at you know This this content just didn't work at all So But it may have just been your hook, so, but you'll never know that if you just lose the phone. That's a really good reminder, Crystal. Thank you so much. So if our listeners want to learn more about you or even hire you, where can they find you?

[00:32:17] Yeah, yeah. So you can come to my website is www. cjandcocreative. com. You can also find me on Instagram under the same handle. I'm most active there. Uh, so that's probably the best. Thank you, Crystal. And good luck with your Black Friday campaigns. Thank you. Thank you so much. You've listened to Master the Inbox.

[00:32:39] In this season, we're focusing on strategies to help course creators, coaches, and consultants run successful Black Friday campaigns. And if you found this episode useful, then please help me spread the word. Like, share, and subscribe wherever you're [00:33:00] listening.