Advertising Your Wedding Business with Facebook & Instagram in 2025 with Kyle Meloche

Ready to transform your wedding business with Facebook and Instagram advertising? This episode delivers game-changing insights from digital marketing expert Kyle of Social Geeks, who manages Wedding Academy's successful ad campaigns.

Before spending a single dollar on ads, Kyle emphasizes the importance of preparation. Your business is like a bucket—Facebook ads are the tap that can fill it with leads, but if your bucket has holes (poor systems, confusing website, no follow-up process), you'll waste your investment. Smart wedding pros install tracking tools like Google Analytics and the Facebook Pixel immediately, even if advertising isn't in their immediate plans. This data becomes invaluable when you eventually launch campaigns.

Kyle breaks down the three-tiered marketing funnel approach that wedding businesses should implement. Top-of-funnel content educates and provides value through guides or quizzes. Middle-of-funnel targets those who've already engaged with your brand. Bottom-of-funnel focuses on converting hot prospects with testimonials and limited-time offers. Each tier requires different messaging and expectations.

The episode delivers practical formulas for calculating your ideal ad budget based on what a lead is truly worth to your business. For photographers, planners, or venues charging thousands per wedding, understanding this math prevents overspending while ensuring sufficient investment to generate results. Kyle recommends starting with $10-20 daily to test different approaches before scaling what works.

The conversation explores Meta's latest innovations, including Advantage Plus AI-powered campaigns and advanced lead generation options that integrate with CRM systems. These tools enable automated follow-up sequences that dramatically increase conversion rates. Kyle shares how responding to leads within five minutes can be a game-changer for wedding professionals—something now possible through integration with platforms like Go High Level.

Whether you're completely new to Facebook advertising or looking to optimize existing campaigns, this episode provides actionable strategies to improve your digital marketing performance and attract your ideal wedding

Chapters

• 0:52 Reunion and Wedding Plans
• 3:12 Introduction to Social Media Marketing
• 5:14 Setting Up Before Running Ads
• 11:15 Understanding Campaign Budgets
• 19:22 Marketing Funnel Explained
• 26:30 Crafting Effective Ad Copy
• 31:59 Audience Targeting Strategies
• 40:55 Recent Meta Platform Changes
• 46:55 Final Tips and Q&A

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:29

Kyle, thank you so much for coming back. It's so nice to see you. I. Are you working? I heard you're on a holiday at the moment no, I'm very much working.

Speaker 2: 0:37

Yeah, absolutely, it's been pretty busy the last little bit, but, um, I did come back from a wedding. Uh, I was in Queenstown, new, zealand, which was beautiful for a friend's wedding there, so came back and then we had a cyclone, so that was fun now a little birdie told me that there's another wedding coming around the corner. Yes, I'm getting married actually in May, so that's exciting. It's a lot of work. I have a newfound respect for wedding planners, that's for sure.

Speaker 1: 1:01

Excellent, I'll keep that in mind when I need to pull that one out against you. Cool, and when you were at this recent wedding anything, you, anything you picked up that you were like definitely not going to do that, or definitely am going to do that.

Speaker 2: 1:13

That. Yeah, look, there was a lot of stuff there that I really liked. They did share plates, which I thought was a really good idea, where, being New Zealand, they had, like lamb on the bone, big roast that they bring out for each table and people just kind of picked away at the food. So that was really nice, a lot more communal, and it was just a beautiful location right on lake wanaka, a beautiful, beautiful scenery.

Speaker 2: 1:33

The only thing I'd say is that if you're in the full sun in australia, new zealand, you really need to think about shade for your guests. You know, the whole ceremony was in the sun and it got hot, so, luckily, my partner and I put on heaps of spf 50, but there was, uh, quite a few guests that had not thought of that and they were red as you get. Um, so the sunburns were probably the big thing that they hadn't hadn't maybe thought of. Um, there was a few people who had shade umbrellas, which was a good, uh good tip, but, um, it was windy so some of them turned inside out during the ceremony as well, which was a a bit of a bit of a blunder. So, yeah, that was. It was a beautiful wedding. Uh, really, really enjoyed it. But those, those are probably the main things, really, I guess.

Speaker 1: 2:13

Wow, there you go.

Speaker 3: 2:15

Yeah, always a good look for the umbrellas to go the wrong way too at a wedding.

Speaker 2: 2:19

Yeah. Yeah, the bride's veil blew away as well when she was walking down the aisle. It was just that windy so it just kind of flew off and that was a bit of a moment. Everyone kind of had a bit of a chuckle and moved on.

Speaker 1: 2:32

but uh, yeah, it was definitely windy, that's for sure please tell me they got a photo of that like I think so yeah, I haven't seen all the photos yet, but um, yeah, that'd be such a great action shot, just like yeah, yeah, I love it. So I know that everyone thinks that we're here to just talk about weddings and you know great little tips, but we're not. We're here today to talk about Facebook and Instagram. Some of you may have heard Kyle a few. I was going to say a few weeks ago.

Speaker 1: 2:57

It's probably a bit longer than that a month or two ago, where we talked about GHL go high level and I know a stack of you went off and signed up and you know in the process of talking to Tim about getting his help with that platform. But I did touch on the fact that Kyle has a business called Social Geeks and he runs all the digital marketing for Wedding Academy. So any Facebook ads you might see, google search campaigns, display campaigns. We've dabbled in lots of different platforms but we absolutely adore him and love his insights. He's absolutely got his finger on the pulse, so we thought it'd be a great idea to get him back more often, maybe every now and then, to talk about a range of different platforms, because in this wedding space it's just ever-evolving, isn't it, and it's impossible to stay on top of what each of these platforms and what the latest algorithms are, what are the latest tips.

Speaker 1: 3:53

So it's great to have an expert like Kyle to do all that homework for us and give us the cliff notes and just let us know what we need to be doing right now on these platforms. Before we get started, get yourself a pen and paper. I'm sure there's going to be lots of things you're going to jot down, or you're going to tell your ads guy, or go and log into Ads Manager yourself and change immediately. What do you reckon?

Speaker 2: 4:19

Looking forward to it. It's going to be fun.

Speaker 3: 4:21

And I've got a pen ready as well.

Speaker 1: 4:24

Yeah, Ben, you most of all need to be listening to this.

Speaker 3: 4:27

Yeah, thanks for that. It's a bit pointed.

Speaker 1: 4:30

Right, it's a bit pointed, right. So, um, let's, let's talk about, for those people who haven't kind of played with facebook and instagram ads yet, I guess, well, let's start there in terms of what are the first kind of steps that they should take before even thinking about launching a facebook or instagram ad campaign yeah, great question.

Speaker 2: 4:50

I think that from my experience with Facebook ads we've been we've been running Facebook ads for clients for probably going on nine years like this is like pre really. They had like all the amazing AI and tracking pixels that you could kind of use and back in the day it was really just traffic to your website. Now there's so many different objectives and so many different things you can do with it, which is pretty exciting, but it can be daunting as well. I think if you're just starting out, you're kind of like where do I start? I think the first things that I recommend to people is, if you're looking to do Facebook ads, you want to make sure that you've already got things in place that will help you with converting traffic to your website, or you already have a proven model for success for how you handle new inquiries.

Speaker 2: 5:32

Because if you use the bucket analogy, if your business is a bucket and you're looking to turn on the tap and fill it with water, facebook is the tap right.

Speaker 2: 5:40

You can crank that on and suddenly flood your bucket, but if your bucket's full of holes, you're not going to hold on to much right.

Speaker 2: 5:46

So you want to make sure that your website has really clear ways that people can contact you, whether it's live chat, whether it's a quiz, which we talked about in our last episode, or you have things there in place to help people in getting started booking in a conversation with you, and you want to make sure that those work right, because there's nothing worse than starting a campaign, spending hundreds of dollars and then realizing I forgot to switch on Calendly or something was there that was a technical issue. So really important that before you start spending money on ads, you do a customer journey audit through your process. Can people get in touch with me and is this working already? Right? So we use Google Analytics or there's heaps of tools for tracking these things.

Speaker 2: 6:29

You just want to look at your conversion rate of how many people have come to your website versus how many people have reached out and actually booked in a call with you or have taken your quiz or have started some type of conversation with you and your business. So that's probably number one. I don't know if that's kind of a bit too duh, but I think it's an important thing to point out because it is missed a lot of the time.

Speaker 1: 6:52

I love that. There's nothing worse than a leaky funnel is there, and I know back in my days working at News Corp, this wasn't just in relation to Facebook and Instagram, this was in relation to any kind of spending money, marketing, advertising. You needed to, yes, get your website in place, get a way to catch those details of those people, but I think something that people also don't think of is getting that Google Analytics on the site well before just to be gathering that data. So you've got something for when you're, you know, building those first campaigns, to kind of go hey, we, you know we're really targeting and we can tell, because we've got this data from our website, women in New South Wales that are interested in this start collecting your data now. Even if you're not planning on doing a campaign for a few months, there's nothing stopping you from getting that.

Speaker 2: 7:43

I couldn't agree more, Jack.

Speaker 2: 7:44

That's really good advice.

Speaker 2: 7:46

On that note, I would definitely agree and say the Facebook pixel adding that to your website when you launch your website, not when you want to start advertising, is such a hack that you will you'll you'll reap the rewards of installing that as soon as you can, because, even if you're not planning to advertise now or in the near future, when, when the time does come, that tracking code that you install for Facebook will already have all of the data to understand who is visiting your website and who is converting, which you can say when you're setting up your campaigns.

Speaker 2: 8:20

I want to find more people like this. I want to find more people like the people who have converted on my website, and that can be a huge benefit to any business, right? So that definitely Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel. If you're launching a website, I always recommend you may as well install that straight from day dot, because it's going to mean that when you do want to go and advertise, whether it's six months down the line or a couple of years down the line, you've given those platforms enough data to help you in finding your ideal audience, right? So, yeah, great advice.

Speaker 3: 10:13

Would you agree, colin? Having a funnel set up before you actually start throwing money at Instagram or Facebook is the right way to do it.

Speaker 2: 10:23

I would say so. I think because using the bucket approach again, like if you haven't kind of road tested something that you know works and helps you in, you know it could be as simple as just having a book, a free call with me type of option on there so that you can talk about their needs, what they're planning, get a better feel for the wedding number of guests, all of those details that will help you in providing a personalized quote or service. You want to be able to capture that information. So having like a form or something there that you know people have gone through and it's worked well and you can see that there's a decent conversion rate, is a really promising sign that you know, if you turn on the tap, that your buckets not just going to spill out. So I do find that with Facebook ads, google ads, if you look at it this way, it's probably the least trustworthy type of traffic you're going to get because, unlike a referral, somebody who's referring you on that's probably the highest trustworthy type of channel that you can get new clients from, because somebody's vouched for you, somebody's basically going Jack's amazing, you need to work with her and then they'll reach out and they'll be like, yeah, you were referred by Ben and so it's a nice and easy way to get started.

Speaker 2: 11:33

Facebook and Google ads obviously we kind of look at that with a bit of distrust. The general consumer will look at it and go, well, I haven't heard of this person before and they're obviously paying for ads, so I'll check them out. They seem pretty good, the ad seems great, but you know there's you gotta, you gotta build up that trust with them. So this is why having a good funnel with your reviews and testimonials and case studies and, you know, portfolios, things like that that prove that you are good at what you do, that's a way that you can build trust with those, with those new visitors. Yeah, letting have a funnel, it's just kind of thinking through the basics, basics right. Like if you were in this person's shoes, how would you decide to go and book in a call with this person? You're probably going to be hopefully amazed at all the reviews, the wonderful reviews they have, the, the photos look amazing, all the things that you would look at and go yeah, okay, this person clearly is reputable and I'm keen to to have a chat.

Speaker 2: 12:27

So you know we talk about funnels a lot but realistically, you just need somewhere you can send people that has this information and the next steps for them to then take that up. You don't even necessarily have a website or a funnel set up, because nowadays you can even start just like messenger conversations. You know you can get leads off Facebook as well, so you could, in theory, run ads even before you have all of this stuff. It's just that the higher the price point of your service, the more you're going to have to work to build up that trust and get people to believe that you're a reputable provider of service.

Speaker 2: 13:00

So if you're a wedding planner or a photographer, you're not probably going to charge $10. You're probably going to charge a bit more than that. So you need to build up that trust and I think that's why having a good funnel would make sense. But again, if you're just starting a conversation, you could do that right. You can have a great video that talks about who you are, what you do, and then it's like if you're interested, get in touch, and that starts a Facebook message or an Instagram message or whatever, and you're starting the conversation there. So that also is an option that you can run through Facebook ads.

Speaker 3: 13:28

Yeah, yeah. So, and speaking of turning the tap on, we all know that it costs money. So how much do we need to spend to get an effective ad or to get something that's going to return for us?

Speaker 2: 13:39

Yeah, good question. So I guess, with Facebook ads again, you want to start with a few things in mind. The first thing is is you want to know what a customer is worth to your business approximately, because we're all in the business of providing a service. So what we're looking to generate is leads right, we're in the lead generation kind of campaign and out of that we want to know what's the cost per lead that we're paying to get those. And then how many leads do we need to convert into one customer? So let's just take Ben, for example.

Speaker 2: 14:09

Let's say you know you're an awesome photographer. You charge, let's say, two grand, three grand, maybe I'm, you know, way off here, but maybe you charge 10 grand, I don't know. Let's say you charge three grand, just for the example, for you know a wedding and you know you need 10 leads in order to get one person to book for a wedding. You could say that the approximate value of each lead that comes through is worth about $300 to the business in potential revenue. So you'd want to make sure that your cost per lead is well below $300. If you're spending $300, you're in trouble because you're basically just spending money to get a client and then there's nothing left at the end of the day. So you're probably looking at setting up like what is a reasonable cost per acquisition and a cost per lead. We normally try to divide that by three at a minimum, right To kind of say we really want to keep that below a third of what our potential revenue would be at most. So for you, a cost per lead of $100 would be kind of like if we're above that, we're in trouble, if we're below that, we're okay. So that's kind of how I would explain it to you. And then figuring out as well, how many leads do you want per month? And you don't have to go and spend $100 per day to start with. You can start really small, test it out. It might take a while. Let's say you spend $10 a day and you test it out for a month.

Speaker 2: 15:25

You're trying to figure out what's the right audience, what's the right message and what's the right placement on Facebook ads as well to get people to take the action you want and then measure how many people you are converting into a paid customer. And that could take time. People you know they're not ready to make a decision straight away. They might take three months before they say yes to booking you in as a photographer. But you want to keep a track on that using tools like GoHighLevel or other CRMs, to kind of track where those leads have gotten up to and when they do convert, you flick it back to. Okay, we got that from a Facebook ad. So great, our conversion rate from Facebook ads is 10%, or whatever it would be. Does that answer your question, though, man? I don't know if, yeah, it does. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 16:11

I'll say yes. It's a question that I asked my web developer and I said dude, how much do I need to spend? And he's gone.

Speaker 2: 16:17

Well, you know, if you're spending 10 bucks a day, it's probably not enough because you're not getting the reach yeah, so that's it, yeah, absolutely it's not a black and white question, it's it's very much a gray area, and I guess it just comes down to what your budget is yeah, I do think, though you, I've been doing this for a long time and we have a process that we've tested and found that works really well for us and most clients, right? So the way that we work is we try to go through a 30-day testing process on a low budget and what we're trying to do is get some wins on the board so we can figure out the numbers for the business. And before we spend a single dollar, we want to talk to the client. Or, if you're watching and you're kind of going, well, the numbers that he said kind of make sense. They could work for me. You'd want to figure out what those costs are and what the numbers are so that you know what success looks like for you, because it's going to be different for everyone, right? So obviously, the higher your price point, the more you're probably going to spend to get a customer. That's just kind of the rule of thumb. It's generally a linear kind of equation there, but you do want to make sure that you're testing on a small scale so you're not spending five grand for your first month and getting zero out of it. You really want to test. We generally say start with $20 a day, test to see what works best.

Speaker 2: 17:36

And the great thing about Facebook ads is you can split, test heaps of different things. You can test different offers, you can test different audiences, you can test different creatives. You can even test which placements so it could be Facebook versus Instagram or Reels versus in your feed. So there's a lot of different things you can test to really hone in on what's working best for your business with your audience. So you know, everybody needs a good offer these days, so the offer really is the thing that sells it.

Speaker 2: 18:00

But look, you don't have to go straight to like hey, I'm a photographer, book me for your wedding. It could be you're doing a top of funnel kind of a softer approach, where you're like download my free guide on how to choose a photographer for your wedding, right? So you're then getting their contact details into a database and nurturing them through that. So there's a lot of different ways you can approach it. Everybody wants to get customers. So that's what we call bottom of the funnel targeting, because that's the highest intent.

Speaker 2: 18:28

People are ready to buy, but that's only going to be probably 10% or less of people who are ready to go, and in the wedding industry, probably less right, because how many people are getting married? And out of the people who are getting married, how many of those are, like you know, at that active stage of booking a photographer or a wedding planner? They're probably just doing research and they're probably looking around. So you do want to blend up your marketing, to kind of think about the different stages of your marketing, which you could probably elaborate on further. But I've talked enough, so I'll go back to you guys and see if that's all thinking in.

Speaker 1: 18:59

I think it's very important, though, to think about how it can be so successful to layer different kinds of Facebook campaigns from the top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel to move people along. So many people think I just put on an ad and press, go and make it a lead campaign and just sit back and watch. It doesn't work. It doesn't work like that. It's a great way to throw away your money.

Speaker 2: 19:25

Yeah, that's a good point. That's a very good point.

Speaker 1: 19:26

Something that I learned really a few years ago, which just blew my mind, so simple, is that that top of funnel you know it could be a brand awareness campaign. Quite often it is is really about building demand. Right, that's what that's for, and if you want the bottom of your funnel to be as full as it can be, you've got to start up there and build demand. It's really massive because it it just it truly is a funnel in that it reduces, doesn't it?

Speaker 2: 19:53

yes, yeah, exactly right. Yeah, I think it's actually probably a good time to explain for those who might, you know, be like what the hell are you guys talking about with the funnel? Okay, cool, yeah, so the the three main areas that we look at with facebook ads is your top, middle and bottom of funnel. Now, the difference between these is that at the top of funnel it's generally, like jack said, brand awareness and people who are looking for information, but they're not necessarily intending yet to make a decision. So the stuff that works really well top of funnel is very broad audiences. This could be people who are interested in weddings or they've recently changed their relationship status to engage. Like you're still wanting to target your ideal audience, but the type of content there isn't book a photographer, although that might work. You know, you might want to test sales based approaches. At top of funnel, it's probably going to be more informational content, educational content or some type of content that is drawing them in, and I think the best way to serve people top of funnel is to provide them information and then give, give them some type of value in exchange for their contact details, because it's going to cost you way less to get them to subscribe for a free download than it is to try to get them to book in a sales call, right, like it's just they don't know who you are, there's no trust yet. There's nothing there. But if they're able to get access to a guide on finding a photographer or you know how to plan a wedding, anything like that, it might be a free cheat sheet. It might be a quiz which I think Wedding Academy does really well. You've got a fantastic quiz there explaining what type of wedding planner would you be. Those types of things people will engage with and out of that they're doing it in exchange for their contact details. So top of funnels, brand awareness and trying to qualify intent.

Speaker 2: 21:35

The next stage is kind of your middle of funnel, where they're a lot warmer. They've taken some action. Really good audiences for this using Facebook ads could be anybody who's watched one of your videos, 100% Like. If you've got videos on Facebook, on Instagram, if people have watched to the end of your video pretty clear indicator that they're interested in what you're talking about and they might be ready to go for your next offer. It also could be people who've engaged with your brand over the last let's say. You know, it depends on the business, but it could be the last year up to a year for targeting. So these are people who've liked to post and, you know, commented on a post, shared a post, anything like that, or even followed your page in the last year. So those are kind of warmer audiences. And it could be even like website visitors, right, like people who've gone to your blogs or have done something on the website but maybe haven't taken that next step of converting into, you know, a consultation, or they haven't taken the quiz, they haven't downloaded anything. These are still warm audiences because they've taken some action that shows you that they're interested in what it is you're promoting. So warm audiences are going to be a lot smaller in the middle of funnel, but you know they've filtered in and they've shown some level of engagement and interaction with your brand.

Speaker 2: 22:46

Bottom of funnel is going to be the smallest segment of your funnel and that is people who have kind of gotten to the end stage but then, for whatever reason, they've dropped off. So if you think about it like you know, you've got courses online or you've got a book, a call. They've gone in and they've started filling out the form and then they left, or they've gone and they've looked at a product page and then they've, then they disappeared. And it's not that they're not interested. Is that people are busy? Maybe they're at work or they're, you know, have shown that they're just about ready to take that step with you, but they just need a little bit more, either time or a little bit of a reminder, to kind of get them to take that next step.

Speaker 2: 23:28

So those ads are generally the best performers, but it's the smallest audience, right.

Speaker 2: 23:33

So you've already put in the groundwork of building up the crust, pushing them through, getting them to that stage where they're ready to go, and that last little ad could come up and be like here's some social proof, here's our customer reviews or here's some testimonials that will help you in convincing you that you should take this next step. Bottom of funnel can be really powerful but, as Jack said before, you kind of want to feed it from top, middle to bottom and look, you can sell to top of funnel. There's nothing saying you can't do bottom of funnel ads at the top, but again, you might want a bit more of a gentle approach with people at the top. That's more educational and nurturing than just being like buy my course or book me for your wedding. You want to kind of lead them to that final stage. So it's a really important concept, I guess, to grasp for us geeks in marketing. But I think it is very useful to think about in terms of the content you're putting out and especially how you're structuring and promoting your ads.

Speaker 3: 24:29

I like that whole explanation there. I'm a big believer in a transitional call to action, then a bit of nurturing and then an actual call to action, which is pretty much that funnel you were talking about Kyle. So yeah, mate, when it comes to ad copy, there's a whole lot of little segments within creating an ad that we need to look at. We've got ad copy, we've got targeting, we've got all that sort of stuff. How important is that small little bit of ad copy that we've got targeting? We've got all that sort of stuff. How important is that small little bit of ad copy that we've got to play with?

Speaker 2: 25:02

Yeah, good question, man. I think that ad copy is important and it really does depend on the business and the industry as well and where you're placing those ads as well, because, for example, if you're promoting video content and you're targeting reels, people don't often click on the caption to read your text unless they're super, super interested in what you are talking about. And we find that video works great for driving brand awareness and getting people aware of who you are and what you do, but it doesn't convert well to clicks. People watch the video. They might not click through to your website or read the text right. So I do think that, based on where you're targeting and what type of assets you're using in your marketing campaign, it will depend on what content you're putting in there as the written content. So I always find and this might be just because I'm an old school Facebook marketer, but I always find that single image and carousel based content still works the best at driving traffic, like a high click-through rate to your website or to your offer. So I think it's just less distractions. You know what I mean. There's not as much like video or something there kind of distracting people from taking that next step. And also in those you'll find that the text is often read a lot more. So those that you know, if you have long form text in that ad, people will go through it and read it before they kind of click through. So again I could say you know, you want to test these things out.

Speaker 2: 26:29

Something recent that Facebook has done in the ads platform is they've made ads so that instead of creating, let's say, 25 variations of an ad, you can put in up to five different variations of body text as well as five different headlines in the same ad.

Speaker 2: 26:46

And what Facebook does with its AI is it kind of swaps those out, tests them for you and combines into the best possible ad that it can. And to keep it from getting too boring for people, it will also swap out that text. So you kind of have you can also use five different images as well. So it's basically I'm trying to work out the math five times five times five, you've essentially got like 125 variations of the same ad that Facebook will kind of change up to keep it fresh and avoid ad fatigue. So you can create in one ad, you know, heaps of different varieties of headlines and body texts as well in the ad and, depending on the placement, obviously, like Instagram, you don't really see a headline like you do with Facebook posts, but you kind of have a varied kind of look and feel and heaps of different options that you're feeding through your audience.

Speaker 3: 27:36

So in that text, mate. I'm sure this is a question that everyone's got In that text. Are we taking them on a journey? Are we telling them a story? Are we adding a call to action? What does that text entail?

Speaker 2: 27:52

Yeah, good question, man. One of the methods that we really like to write our ads in is what we call the pass method. There's so many different. Ai is great for this. Guys, if you want to look at how to write good ads, go to ChatGPT or any of the AI platforms and just type in what are the different writing methods for Facebook ads? We like PASS because the PASS method is what's the problem that your audience are facing? How do you align yourself with that problem and then how do you solve that problem for your audience members?

Speaker 2: 28:21

So a good example might be you know, like we're thinking of the wedding industry. Are you struggling with overwhelm of planning your wedding? Oh, you're putting in late nights. You're, you're googling too many different providers. The venues are all adding extra costs on extra cost. You know you're struggling to even know where to start.

Speaker 2: 28:37

You're aligning with that problem and you're kind of talking about how that problem is agitating and how it is something that you can relate to, and then you'd probably say something like look, booking a wedding planner can help you with just getting rid of the stress, helping make this a day that you can actually enjoy rather than a day that you dread.

Speaker 2: 28:57

So you're kind of writing that content in a way where it's like here's the problem, here's how the problem sucks and you know all the things that you're probably experiencing right now. Then here's how we can help solve that Right. So that's a really I think that's a really good method to, especially top of funnel, align with the person and make them feel like they're seen you know what I mean Like they actually are going oh, wow, yeah, they totally get the problem that I'm facing and why not book in a call Like you know what's the worst that could happen? So I think that's a good method that I find works well, but there's so many different ways you know that you can address it, but that's one that I really like.

Speaker 1: 29:30

I think too, the fact that you can do a lead form on Facebook without leaving Facebook is huge these days. I mean, that's obviously been around for a while and it feels non-offensive. It now pre-populates your name and your phone number and your email, so you know it can be done on the phone, while you're waiting for the bus or whatever. But, kyle, can you walk us through? It doesn't just stay on Facebook anymore, you don't have to. In the oldenen days, you had to go back in and download your csv file, didn't you? But now it can link with software such as go, high level software that we have to use and you can.

Speaker 1: 30:04

You can incorporate that as a way of receiving data and kicking off automations and doing a whole range of other things. So 100 could you maybe? Um, I've got go high level in mind, but I know that this could apply to active campaign youaign lots of other platforms.

Speaker 2: 30:18

Could you walk us?

Speaker 1: 30:19

through a basic kind of structure of a funnel that might come from a Facebook lead ad.

Speaker 2: 30:25

Yeah, sure. So with Facebook lead ads which you can choose kind of where you want to send that or get that lead from. So, just like Jack said, you can have this as a kind of a lead form in Facebook and Instagram, where I'm sure everyone watching this probably has seen one of these at some point in the past. But if you click on the you know get offer or contact or learn more, it pops up with a form, often with your details already filled out, so your name, your number, your email address, and you can just click send type of thing and or you know the next step, whatever it is. So that is one way that you can get leads really quickly. You can also do messenger campaigns through leads, so you can kind of say I want to start a conversation and the cool thing is is you can semi automate this now as well with kind of frequently asked questions or qualifying questions that start the conversation while you're being notified. To jump in, the last one is you can obviously send them to a website or have them, you know, go to a landing page and that type of thing. All of these can plug into CRM systems or HubSpot's a good example, gohighlevel as well, even MailChimp. You can plug into Facebook ads so that, as soon as you get a lead, certain actions can then happen. A really important one is notifying you, so you know. You can set up a text message or a phone call or you know an email to make sure that you know that this is happening, and then you can also set up automated emails to that person to make sure that you know. It's like hey, we've received your inquiry. Here's a bit more about us. You know, if it's an urgent inquiry, here's how you can reach out to us right away. Otherwise, our team will be in touch within hours. Let's say, you can also then send out a series of emails. If they open this email, then you send out this. If they don't open, then send out that. So there's a lot of actions you can do. Post that In Go High Level.

Speaker 2: 32:06

There's what they call a recipe, which is just a simple template, let's say, of an automation workflow where any new lead that comes in, it sends an email, a notification to you, and it can even call you from the. You know you have to set up, obviously, a phone number, but it can call you and say hey, there's a new lead that's just come through. Do you want to be connected? And you push any number on the pad and it calls them right then and you and you're basically connected through the phone. So that can be a really powerful way.

Speaker 2: 32:31

Like, if you you know, if you're able to call a lead within the first five minutes, that's like a game changer for most businesses, because nobody expects you to give them a call within five minutes, like that's unheard of. So I like that, that workflow. And if you're busy and you say no, you can send them a voicemail, which would be something like hi, it's Jack from winning Academy. You know, just saw your lead come through, tried to give you a call. Let me know if you have some time to talk. My number is blah, blah, blah. So things like that are kind of the automation that you can do from a lead gen perspective and they're not too difficult to set up. Like it's something that you can set up with relative ease these days. It just kind of depends on how hardcore you want to go, because you know calling and texting and all that might be a bit much, but you can definitely do emails and you know Facebook messages and a whole bunch more automated. So, yeah, those are some of the things you can do.

Speaker 3: 33:18

Mate, I kind of want to say very quickly, but I know it might not be Audience targeting is huge. Audience demographics are huge. Can you give us a couple of quick tips when it comes to targeting audience demographics, what to add what not to, what to exclude, all that sort of stuff?

Speaker 2: 33:37

Yeah, absolutely so. Facebook has gone through a lot of changes over the past. The up-to-date 2025 kind of like recommendations from people who do this day in, day out is that you want to go broad now with your audience targeting, because, based on your business and based on your targeting, facebook's pretty good and I should start saying meta I don't know why I keep saying Facebook but they're pretty good at drilling in on your ideal target market and figuring it out for you. So back in the day you used to find interest targeting was all the rage. There's lookalike audiences, which are still really powerful, but the broad audience targeting seems to be working quite well for most clients. So I still think, though, a really good audience tip is that, if you're just starting out to do some Facebook ads, if you have any data that you can feed meta and its algorithm you know to help in targeting your audience better, you want to make sure that you've taken steps to give that data through to Facebook. So a really good and easy way to do this is, if you have an email list of previous customers, you can upload this data and say these are my customers. I want to find more people like this. Now Facebook has 50,000 plus data points per person. It's much better than you putting in interested in weddings to kind of go here's my customers. Look at all of the people on this list, figure out the profile based off these 50,000 data points and help me find a 99% match to these people. So that's what we call a 1% lookalike audience. So if you can upload your customer data, that's like a goldmine for helping in targeting audiences and then create a lookalike audience based off that for whichever location you want to target Often it's Australia or it might be the US or it might be the UK Go broad if you can service that area. Or if you're a local photographer and you want to go for the Sunshine Coast or Brisbane, you want to make sure you're setting that up in terms of targeting.

Speaker 2: 35:34

But you can create those lookalike audiences. You can also do this with email databases. You can do this with a lot of different stuff. I've seen people do this and I'm not saying that this is something that I do because I think there's a gray area here but there's people who use tools to pull data from Instagram accounts to get the people who are following certain Instagram accounts upload that and say I want to find a way to target these people or create lookalike audiences off that.

Speaker 2: 36:00

Again, facebook's pretty, you know, they're pretty strict on data privacy and things like that, so they you do have to kind of say yes, I've gotten this data firsthand, type of thing. But there's definitely brands that I've seen who have done that before, where they're kind of, you know, crawling the internet to build up these lists. So there's definitely ways to do that legally. I don't think that's illegal, but it's definitely frowned upon. But your customer list, your email list, would be a great place to start. You can use your Instagram account, you can use your Facebook account. Like I said earlier, I want to target all the people who've engaged with me in some way over the last year. That's also a great audience to start with. Those are what we call warm audiences and then the lookalike audiences off that would be kind of top of funnel cold audiences that we want to see if we can get people through and get them to come and have a chat.

Speaker 1: 36:48

Now talking about people who are engaged. I'm not going there with you, ben, don't worry.

Speaker 2: 36:54

Yeah that'll be later.

Speaker 1: 36:59

something that facebook and instagram has as targeting, which is not on pinterest, it's not on google, it's not on linkedin, is the current relationship status, and even though most of us in my vintage are kind of not as active as we were on facebook, we might be there for the groups and marketplace, but we're not on there trawling like we used to. We certainly like to go in and update that we got married or that we got engaged, and that is a targeting that you can't really get elsewhere. Can you on these other platforms?

Speaker 2: 37:31

It's really unique.

Speaker 1: 37:34

And for us, you know, to target someone that's got engaged three months just got engaged, or three months ago, or six months ago, 12 months ago, you know it. It sounds really specific, but you can get even more laser focused than that. You can kind of think about well, I'm a venue, I'm the usually the first thing to get booked, you know, or I'm the last thing to get booked, and so you can kind of play with those timings and, and you know, put your other data on top and and and really you really find those people that are your people, but they've got engaged and your ad's gonna be right in front of them at the right time 100%.

Speaker 2: 38:11

I think it's hard to get people to pay you money off an ad straight off the bat, but if you can start conversations with people who've just gotten engaged, that's definitely a good place to start.

Speaker 2: 38:21

Like that is what I would be focusing on for wedding planners or photographers with Facebook ads would be like just start the conversation, target local for your area, people who've recently become engaged, and try to do some type of soft approach where it's like hey, here's who we are, here's what we do.

Speaker 2: 38:37

Do the pass method, because that's always good and let's have a chat and they can just send you a message or whatever the next step might be. People are fine sending a message on Facebook. Like I think a lot of people prefer that soft approach where they're like you know they might be a bit less inclined to give you their email address and their phone number, because we all have this happen where you, you do that and then suddenly you're just flooded with emails and you're like oh my God, unsubscribe Whereas a Facebook message. What's the harm of that? They might be able to send you a message, but they're not going to spam the hell out of you, I hope anyways on a Facebook message. So I think that would be probably a good strategy worth testing. I reckon if you're first starting out Awesome.

Speaker 3: 39:13

Thank you very much, mate. This has been very informative.

Speaker 2: 39:15

Awesome. Well, I'm always happy to chat with you guys. It it's, it's always a blast. I love, uh, seeing your sibling rivalry, uh going on. You know you guys got a great energy and it's no. Wedding academy is awesome. So I'm really excited to be able to kind of contribute and help out and I love talking about this stuff guys. So you know it's, it's always a pleasure we love it too.

Speaker 1: 39:34

I'm nerding out all the time over the stuff um kyle. If someone hasn't made a facebook ad in a couple of years and they logged in today, what's changed? What do they need to forget about? That never existed and really lays a focus on.

Speaker 2: 39:51

The big thing that I would say is Advantage Plus. What is that? Advantage Plus is Facebook's AI campaigns. Google has this, facebook has this. A lot of the big platforms are going down this path TikTok, as you know. A lot of the big platforms are going down this path, tiktok as well. So a lot of the ad platforms are starting to go look, let our AI target the right audience, create the right ads. And, you know, trust us to spend your money, sort of thing.

Speaker 2: 40:16

We've done a lot of testing with Advantage Plus and it does work well. But it also can be, you know, when things go awry, especially for bigger accounts where you have a lot of budget being spent, it's very hard to diagnose what the problem is and how to fix it. So I still prefer to have kind of a bit more manual control over who our audience is and where we're targeting and things like that. But we do often have some budget for Advantage Plus audience targeting and we do use a lot of the advantage plus for helping optimize the ads, because what it will do is it will take your creative and it will, you know, it might enhance the colors, it might put music to it, it might, you know, create a video for you and things like that, where it might take you a couple of hours to do that. But you know, with a click of a button, advantageantage Plus can kind of help you with creating different variation. It also can help you write your ads, which is pretty cool, but I find it's very Americanized. So you know, you kind of have to say you know it needs to be a bit more Australian, please, or you kind of have to tweak it a bit, but it can help you with writing headlines, writing descriptions for your text and so on. So for somebody who's just getting started, it can be a huge yeah, a huge time saver, that's for sure, and it is actually really good. I've got a client who we've just started working with and they have advantage plus campaigns running at the moment and they're getting a pretty good return from it. The only thing is is that we talked about the funnel.

Speaker 2: 41:34

Advantage plus will go for the people who it thinks will buy first. So it often will you know you're going, hey, target all of Australia or all of the U? S, and it will just go into the people who've been to your website and that's it, because it's like I'm just going for the best you know, bang for your buck, and this audience seems to work great. So then, all of a sudden, your ads are going. Our ads have been seen seven times on average per person Like we're targeting millions of people here. Why is that happening? It's because AI knows these are the people who are going to buy best. So it can be a little bit sometimes tricky because you can't really configure it and say stop doing that. You know, don't target this. It's like it's going to do what it thinks works best, which can be a blessing. It can also be a curse. So that's a big change, I think.

Speaker 1: 42:15

Just quickly. How does one find advantage? Is that you go in and you create a campaign and it's a new campaign option, or where does it sit?

Speaker 2: 42:22

when you're setting up a campaign there's a little wizard that pops up and essentially it will say would you like to to create a you know, an advantage plus automatic campaign, or would you like to use the boring manual settings?

Speaker 1: 42:31

so it kind of I bet that's what it says it sells the.

Speaker 2: 42:35

You know, yeah, it's very much like. This is the best and you should use this or or manual. Don't do this one. This one's awful, but the manual configuration is how it's been done since Facebook ads has started. If you want to control where it's being shown, who it's being shown to, you still want to have that manual control. I prefer manual control, but that's only because when you're spending that big bucks, you want to know exactly what's going wrong and how you can fix it right. So having that manual control just means it's not a black box that you're trying to crack open and you know peek into which AI can be at times.

Speaker 1: 43:09

Would these do really well for, like a two-day flash sale where you've just you've got some money to throw at a campaign? Yeah, yeah, I think. So I'm thinking like a.

Speaker 2: 43:17

PMAX kind of. You know. Yeah, we find that it works really well. It works well for e-commerce, it works well for sales. The only problem is is it can take away from other campaigns because you know we'll normally structure our campaigns in that top, middle and bottom of funnel like we talked about. So top of funnel it's kind of more traffic or brand awareness. Middle of funnel it might be add to carts. Bottom would be like the sale and when we do an advantage plus campaign it will kind of take away from your bottom of funnel campaigns. If you're saying I want sales, or if you know you say add to carts, it's going to take away from that other campaign. So you just need to be careful, I guess, of what else is running.

Speaker 2: 43:52

Running advantage plus campaigns on their own could be amazing. And I think starting out especially if you're not super confident with going through it all and you know optimizing these things and and split testing I think advantage plus is a great place to start because it's kind of like you know, bowling with the, with the buffer lanes, you know like you're like, oh, I can't, I can't really lose here. But it does get frustrating when you're, you know, trying to customize it and really kind of drill into it a bit more. So, yeah, it's a great place to start. I just think it can be problematic if you're running other campaigns at the same time. So for a sale, flash sale, yeah, it could be actually really good. I think it could be a fantastic campaign to try out.

Speaker 2: 44:31

Awesome, I've talked way too much, guys. I really appreciate you having me on. I know that we probably are in the future hopefully going to talk more about other ad platforms. So what I'll say to anyone watching if you are interested in learning more about Facebook ads, we do offer coaching and services like that for people who want to do it themselves. Or if you're looking for help in having somebody manage it for you, you can always book in a free chat with me. We can go through it and talk about how it could work. So more than happy to have a chat. Probably I'm hoping we'll have a chat in the future. Talking about Google ads too, because I find Facebook ads a lot more people are confident in how that works. Google ads is kind of like a. I have no idea how this works, so Google ads can be really confusing.

Speaker 1: 45:11

Ben, do you have any final questions before we go? I think he's done the 18 year old question.

Speaker 3: 45:16

Yes, yeah, we did in the beginning, and I do know that Kyle has another appointment. So, mate, thank you so much. People can find you at socialgeekscomau.

Speaker 2: 45:25

Yes, that's right, yeah, and I would love to have a chat. So thanks so much, guys, for having me on. It's been a lot of fun, great We'll see you soon. See you soon, mate. Thanks so much, guys, take care.