EP 261 - Five Steps to Transform Your Meta Ads

We break down why traditional funnels fail on Meta and how five intent stages reshape creative, copy, and targeting. Aggie Meroni shares AI tactics for faster research, stronger hooks, and ad formats that build trust and drive sales.

EPISODE RESOURCES ✍️

Replays available inside the all-access pass: Our course library

Check Aggie’s book: click

ABOUT YOUR TEACHER 💛

Aggie Meroni is the Founder of White Bee Digital, a Paid Social Agency, specialising in managing Meta™Ads to help grow eCommerce brands.

Aggie has over 14 years of sales and marketing experience and has worked with hundreds of companies from start-ups to 8-figure businesses to develop and manage their Meta™Ads strategies.

Aggie’s website: click

Connect with Aggie on LinkedIn: click

Connect on Instagram: click

Chapters

• 0:00 Reframing Meta Ads Around Intent
• 1:10 Welcome To Old Marketing School
• 2:30 Guest Intro And Book Spotlight
• 4:30 Why Traditional Funnels Miss The Mark
• 6:20 Meta’s AI And Creative-Led Targeting
• 8:40 The Five Stages Of Buyer Awareness
• 12:20 Demand Generation vs Demand Capture
• 15:40 Ad Example: Heights Hook And Education
• 18:20 Hooks That Earn The Right Attention
• 21:00 Using AI For Research And Review Mining
• 23:20 Ad Example: Motion App Diagnoses Pain
• 26:00 UGC, Comments, And Authentic Proof
• 28:40 Founder Story Ads That Convert Cold Audiences
• 31:40 Planning Beats Building: AI As Copilot
• 34:20 Context Documents And Better Headlines
• 37:00 Creative Ideation And Iteration With AI
• 39:20 Advantage Plus: Promise And Pitfalls
• 42:00 Human Strategy In An AI-Driven Account
• 44:20 Key Takeaways And Practical Next Steps
• 45:30 Where To Find Aggie And Her Book
• 46:10 Closing Notes And All Access Pass

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

What if the problem with your meta ads is in your targeting or your budget, but your audience is intent? What if every click makes sense once you understand which stage that person is truly in? Let's dive deeper into that. Welcome back to Old Marketing School, Dear Rebel. My name is Fab, and I am your marketing BFF and head teacher at the school. And in today's class, paid social strategist Aggie Maroni breaks down why traditional funnels miss the mark and how to design meta ad journeys that align with five core stages of buyer intent. You will hear how intent shapes each stage, what to show and what to say at every step, and even play along as we describe rear ads in our guest the stage segment. We really want to give you an idea of what works and examples in the wild of types of ads that could work for yourself, regardless of whichever business or product you're trying to push. Angie also shares some of her favorite and dare I say unexpected ways to use AI for ad creation and also planning and strategizing. If you want to watch the full replay, which also includes Q ⁇ A, worksheets, and every class and session recording for this specific season, you can check out the link in the show notes. If you want to access even more, including our whole host of short courses, other training workshops, and all of our resources, plus more live events and deep dives, then go and check out the All Access Pass. And of course, that link is also in the show notes. Without further ado, I hope that today you can reframe the power of ads and what meta-ads could actually do for you right now. All there's left for me to say is make today's class begin. Today we're not just talking about meta-ads. We're talking about some of the things that we don't think about when it comes to ads. Going from click to conversion, right? Taking the actual step that gets us from getting in front of people's screens, most likely mobile screens, all the way into getting into buying, committing, converting, whatever that might look like. And one of the things I love about this is that it's really about looking at funnels in a different way. I'm introducing lovely to you today as the Queen of Axe. But I will let you actually, if you don't mind, introduce yourself with a bit more context than just me repeating how incredible you are as a also best-selling author as well. Because at the time of us chatting today, you just came out with a book, which is incredible. So tell us about yourself. Tell us about your book, my darling, and then I will read the truth and lie, and I want people to think and try and guess which one is a truth and which one is a lie. So yeah, please introduce yourself, my darling.

SPEAKER_02: 2:58

Thank you. So my name is Aggie Moroney, and I run an agency called White Be Digital, and we specialise in scaling e-commerce brands with paid social, and that includes meta-ads. So I have over 14 years experience in sales and marketing. I've not always worked with e-commerce. I used to be in sales in the city of London, so in the finance sector, and changed in 2020 to focus on e-commerce because it's much more exciting. Um, as Fab said, I did release a book last week and it was bestseller in five categories on Amazon. So I can now say I'm a best-selling author as well, which is amazing. Um, I'm also kind of um advisor for various business platforms as well, and one of the few female trainers, like metally trainers in the UK.

SPEAKER_01: 3:49

Now I'm not forcing anybody to do anything, but if you're here online with us, can we please choose a best reaction that shows yay! Best selling author. Come on, team, come on, I know you got this. Well done, by the way. Um, how does that how does that feel? How did it feel actually writing the book? Especially in your book within a framework that talks about a topic that might not sound as exciting. How did it feel that for you? Because it's exciting for us, but then as we know, as marketers, we're geeks. Not everybody is inside on that.

SPEAKER_02: 4:21

Do you know what? The reason I wrote it was because I felt I was having the same conversations again and again, and it wasn't just with new advertisers, it was with big corporate marketing teams that didn't like maybe they did meta-ads as part of their job, not their job. And things moved so fast, and I just felt that there was a lack of kind of the foundational knowledge around meta-ads that doesn't change, so no matter what buttons move, there are some principles that just don't change around meta-ads. So that's why I wrote the book, and I wrote it in such a way that anybody who reads it will understand meta-ads. I really wanted it to be accessible to everybody because if as soon as you understand how to run profitable ads, you can literally transform any business, whether you're working with clients or for yourselves, it can literally change your future. And my dad is currently reading my book and he's in his 70s, and he's like, Wow, it's really interesting. I didn't like this about ads. So I was like, Well, if you can follow it and you're in your mid-70s and you're not techie, I've done my job.

SPEAKER_01: 5:23

That is honestly one of the best accolades when people actually read it and maybe they're not experts or they're done. I think there's a curse of knowledge, which maybe some of us will fall into, and we'll try very hard today to break things down as much as possible. But sometimes it's forgetting that a course curse of knowledge means that sometimes people hear what we're saying and they struggle because we have years and years of experience and understandings of the inners and outs. So I love that you've wrote a book that actually helps us with that. And before we talk about some of the things inside this book as well and other things, I want to know what's the lie? What's the truth and what's the lie? Alright, what we got? Which one out of these three is a lie? I'm gonna get us to think about it before you reveal the answer. Did Aggie jump out of a plane? Is she an undefeated Star Wars champion? Obsessed, by the way. Or does she speak Polish? Which ones are the truths? Does she speak Polish as she jumped out of a plane? And which one is the lie? I would love for you to try and guess the lie for us. See if we can think about it. And now I'm gonna do another roll. So I wanna know. Which one is the lie? Have we guessed it right? We guessed it wrong. Should I guess it? Should you tell us? How do we do it? I don't know. So I can't share.

SPEAKER_02: 6:48

I'm happy to share. So I've never jumped out for playing.

SPEAKER_01: 6:56

I have a question about the Thumb Wars champion. How many thumb wars have you had to make yourself undefeated?

SPEAKER_02: 7:03

Because we're talking about five or six, or we're talking about like the not been in a formal competition, even though I discovered my talent going to a competition, which is like one of these random things I went to in my twenties. And I just I've got really small hands as well. So it it defies logic that I'm great at thumb walls, but I've never been beaten.

SPEAKER_01: 7:26

I'm obsessed with a while. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. I absolutely love that. Now, now that we know that, now that we know that about yourself, and we know now to challenge on a thumb wall, just in case anybody actually meets you real life. Excellent. Um so we're gonna talk about different funnel stages and different approaches, but in a way that maybe you don't expect. So different type of funnel we're gonna look at. We're gonna also talk within that, uh, look at what's working and what's not at a different stage. And then we're also gonna talk about AI, which it's uh it changes and it shifts, but hopefully some of the concepts that we talk about within that are also gonna be timeless. Obviously, we're talking about platform things and features may change, but we're gonna try and give you some ideas on how to take things to the next level. Now, most of us might have seen the traditional funnel. We have usually awareness, you know, introducing the brand itself. We've got consideration, which a lot of the talent we see in ads also as we're targeting what audiences. And then we've got the conversion, which is maybe where a lot of us associate ads with. But we're talking about a new funnel today. We're actually not gonna be talking about the awareness, consideration, and conversion, which is very common when it comes to ads. Now, a lot of the fact that we have actually a mix in uh in here today of fresh and new approaches to uh funnels as well, which is really exciting. We're actually gonna talk about a new tapping funnel. Can you guess? Once again, you can guess it, you can think about it. How many funn stages does this new funnel approach have? Are we gonna look at five, four, or three? But today we are gonna look at five stages. And before you think, oh my god, that sounds like a lot, actually the breakdown makes it very intuitive for us and to see that these are actually the progression one of the other. So Andy, I'm actually gonna let you share with us what the funnel looks like with these five stages of awareness.

SPEAKER_02: 9:20

So the traditional three-tib funnel, probably historically, is how if you've ever run ads before, you might have a separate campaign that targets different people at different stages of the funnel. Now, the reason we've tied AI into this session today is because Meta is just going all in on AI now, and even with really strong exclusions to exclude exclude warm audiences from cold, etc., Meta is just showing your ads to everybody now. Okay, so your targeting comes from your ad creatives, so what you're showing people visually and also your messaging. And Meta will scan each ad and it will say, Okay, well, that looks like it would be for someone who doesn't really know the brand that well. So we'll share it more to cold audiences. So your targeting happens at an ad level now, and AI is scanning it to know. Now, this can be completely overwhelming if you don't have your normal three-tier structure anymore, thinking, crikey, where do I even begin? So, this five-stage five stages of awareness, I haven't invented this. This is very well known in ad circles, this framework, and it really helps you um kind of brainstorm, and you can use various AI tools to help you with this as well. And it meets your buyer where they are in their decision journey, like where they are in their decision making. So, for example, the great thing about meta ads as a platform, it's demand generation. So it generates demand for the product or service that you're trying to promote, as opposed to say Google Ads, which is demand capture. So people are already searching for things that you're selling on Facebook or Meta or Instagram, so Meta is Facebook and Instagram, people will be shown ads constantly as they're scrolling their feed, and you might be showing something, they have absolutely no idea what it is, they have no idea it exists, they have no idea what it's for, but you're bringing them completely something new. Okay, so that's stage one, completely unaware of what you're selling or showing. Then at the next stage a person, they're aware that there's a problem. So maybe they've got a niggle of something that's annoying them, but they didn't realise that there was a solution to the niggle. So something like, I've struggled with this for years. One example that I give, based on personal experience, is lawn maintenance products. I know it sounds random, but my husband's obsessed with our lawn in our garden. So he didn't realise that it was an issue, that our our lawn was bad. It had patches in it, it was like, you know, bits of it were dead, but you know, we didn't really think about it. Then he saw the ad and thought, oh my goodness, that's my lawn, it looks terrible. So now he's become problem aware. He's like, oh my goodness, my lawn has never been good. I don't know what to do about it. Then he starts getting served ads by different providers of fertilizers, grass seeds. There's lots of different solutions, and the AI is going to be showing all the different brands that provide a solution to this lawn problem. Then you become aware of like what product matches your exact problem. So you'll get you'll start associating certain product with a problem. Now, there was a product that dominated ads in in lawn care this summer. I kept seeing lots of people in my age bracket talking about it. So I know the targeting was brilliant because it was all the same age demographic, probably people that had homes and they were like, okay, I need to like let my kids roam in the garden in a safe place. So then we associated that brand with that particular lawn care. Okay. And then finally, the most aware, and this is usually where advertisers traditionally focused. It's not the like we'll go into this more later on in the session. But if you only target this bottom rung of the ladder, the ones that are most aware and ready to buy, you miss out on 80% of the people that could be your potential customers or clients. And this is where you give some kind of urgency, limited offer, buy now, layer with lots of things that make people take the action today. So just having this framework in mind will mean hopefully, number one, you'll never run out of angles for your ads. And secondly, you'll always have a different type of um creative that you can incorporate based on where your cluster potential customer and client are in this framework.

SPEAKER_01: 14:01

I love that. And actually, one of the things that I was thinking about as well is it works in the way that it breaks it down in a depth of kind of thinking and a depth of buyer over necessarily audiences, which is nothing wrong with that, because obviously the the semantics when we're going into ads is gonna be audience targeting. So you're still thinking about audience, but the small shift that we're making here is that we're thinking about them as buyers already. So we're already kind of going through that stage of we know that at the end we want them to converse and find a more product or service to be the solution to their problem. So we're gonna really focus on the messaging around that. What I've done sneakily, I've actually provided us with some examples of ads that I personally found brilliant. And a couple of little things about these ads are gonna kind of talk us through. So that I'm gonna ask the usual question which stage of awareness do you think it is or would you match it closest to? So we're really testing the queen of ads as we keep calling today. As I'm gonna keep calling you today, we're really testing yes. Uh but I think it's in interesting to be able to see some real examples of kind of what they feel like for us. So I'm gonna talk us through this for just a few seconds. And the reason why I love this ad from Heights that I'm kind of talking through is that it kind of goes into a really strong hook. So obviously, we can argue that hook, you know, a high hook rate can still be a positive thing when it comes to ads. Just talking about the creatives, right? Because that's part of in general what ads can be strong ads, but especially for these kinds of ads, having a strong dating, a strong hookup, a strong first three to five seconds is very, very important. Uh and maybe can also help the algorithm, maybe it can also help the AI. You probably tell us a bit more about that. But this uh ad from Heights that I wanted to talk about is an ad. There's a video, they're all videos, the ones that I chose in today, uh, because I kind of like the versatility of some of these. It's very specific to a pain point. It kind of taps into the fact that people are busy, and then it goes into breaking it all down for us. We are here to tell you in 20 seconds or less how our product is gonna give you the right solution for your needs. And obviously, we're gonna do it fast and we're gonna do it in a way that is convincing. What would you say are the stages of awareness that we might look into this? And how does this work?

SPEAKER_02: 16:22

So, for me, I think there are two things here. So, this ad assumes that you know you have something wrong with your gut, so you're already problem aware. So, now not only are they positioning or educating you on the solution, so stage three of the funnel is usually educational content. Okay, so that can really help if you've got a demo video, explainer, maybe you need to show a diagram of something about how this particular problem can be solved. But they are also kind of going into level four, which is man making you products aware. So they're already positioning themselves as the solution to that problem, as the only solution to that problem. I'd say it's not fully product problem kind of matching yet, because usually in that stage four, where you become product aware, that's where you'd lay in loads of um social proof, so lots of reviews, you know, sells out all the time, how many thousand, you know, gut happy guts or whatever they would put as their social proof in the ad. So for me, this is a solution education ad. And the next step and layer on top of that would be to add social proof as well.

SPEAKER_01: 17:40

The question that I will add on that as a follow-up is how important is right now, and is it just right now, or is it something that maybe we can take into the future, you reckon? To have a really strong hook, whether it's a video or whether it's just the fact that the first thing that you see in a static ad is really punchy. Do you think we are still in that quote unquote cliche of we need to catch people's attention? We have very little lead weight unless people are aware of our product. Do you think that changes actually the the ratio of I'm gonna say acceptance and patience because that's kind of weird, but it is like people might be a bit more forgiving and they might actually stick around for a bit longer because they know us, or hooks are still incredibly important when it comes to creatives and the way that we present our ads, regardless of the stages?

SPEAKER_02: 18:31

So important. You have to grab someone's attention. And I mean, this I if anything, I think our attention sponsor getting shorter. So it's really, really important. I always I know it's a bit like aggressive, but so you need to slap someone in the face with your ads. It has to literally jump out of the screen to someone. Now, this is done in two different ways, and I'd say Iron caution a bit as well here. So for video ads, that first like text overlay or the movement in the in the video needs to catch someone's eye or needs to either evoke an emotion, evoke curiosity, just around people are really nosy. So, you know, video is like unboxing of gifts and things like that, people love because they're really nosy and want to see what's in the gift. Or if you've just got a static ad, being really considerate on what the actual words are that you're adding over the top. Is it evoking emotion? Is it stating what is happening in the ad? It might just be a sale. So you just say 50% off sale, that's a hook as well. People like definitely gonna click on that ad. The one thing I would say, do not try and grab attention for attention's sake. So I see a lot of shocking ads, but they have nothing to do with what is being sold. So people will stop to look at the ad and think, huh? What is this? They might even click on the websites, but it won't be what they expect, and they'll just leave. So you're effectively training the algorithm to appeal to people that have nothing to do with your products and won't be interested in what you sell. So that's why I say, yes, you need to capture attention, it has to be intentional, it has to be the right attention.

SPEAKER_01: 20:09

I was thinking about it, I think that's one of the trickiest things as well, and I guess that's where would you argue that maybe even AI tools can help us with the testing? Because I think there's a lot of obviously assumptions uh what works and what doesn't work, and also we try to make it to follow what we see from other people when we consume the content. But as you say, attention span is getting shorter, things are changing so fast. So I'm kind of wondering, is there a way that we can help ourselves to start maybe um making our life a bit easier? But yes, testing and yes, trying is experimenting, but changing the system a tiny bit and make it a bit faster for us to iterate, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02: 20:49

The biggest time saver now for AI is processing data. So the research stage, which so many advertisers skip, which is the most important part of advertising. So if you're working for what have a big enough brand that has lots of reviews, data mining on those reviews has so many golden nuggets, and it's what we do at my agency now. So we we um we analyze for motivations, so what made someone buy, uh, the pain points, so what pain point triggered them to buy? So I guess it's similar to motivation, but kind of like the negative side of it, and also objection to why what stopped them from buying, or stop someone from buying. So it might be that they didn't buy from a competitor for X reason, but they bought with you instead. That is all gold. Like those are the things that will make people buy. So when you have the right prompts, you can pull out this information, including the actual wording that your customers and clients are using, and then you just mirror that language in the ads, and it feels like you're speaking directly to your audience.

SPEAKER_01: 21:55

There's actually a little ad that I wanted to show us before we jump into the next little quiz. This is actually talking about tapping into pain points and understanding your audience a bit better. Now you can do it also with very simple, for example, B-roll-based ads. This is from Motion app. So if you don't know them, they are an app. It actually helps with productivity and a simple B-roll of somebody in front of a desk, and then there's a simple question to which then is going to be some text overlay of answers. The question is: do you want to reduce obviously your stress uh and double your productivity? And then there is no stress, no angry clients, and no missed deadlines as part of the text. And then after that, it goes into explaining obviously what the ad is about. So what Angie mentioned here is really understanding and the importance of research, data mining, uh, reviews. One of the things that I love is that in, for example, you do put a bit more time into that. And maybe, maybe, you don't have actually the time of the resources to then create uh more complex or more um, you know, or different variants of ads that might be requiring more time. Even things like B-Rolls, even things like archived content can work as long as you really tap into, I think, in my opinion, the micro level of what are some of the things that your audience is really struggling with, or what are some of the ways that you can continue the sentence and the thoughts that we have talked about in the stages of awareness. You know, the dot dot dot that we have. Like I'm really struggling with dot dot dot. My suggestion, and I want to hear if there's anything else you want to add, is organic or paid content, regardless. Can we make it specific? I think the more specific, the better. Motion apps in here. Yes, it talks about stress, but also it said things like no angry clients, no missed deadlines. You could run a more specific. If I were me, I would make even more like, you know, no 4 30 p.m. Slack notifications, whatever it is. But I still like that it went a bit more specific. You know, they actually looked at some of the things that potentially their users mentioned as pain points. That's my thing. I really like to go specific, and I think like when you do that on organic, why not doing it unpaid? But I don't know if you have any other thoughts about that when it comes to these nuances of this research that you have.

SPEAKER_02: 24:12

Absolutely. I'm completely in agreement with you. The more you can understand your ideal clients, and I think this is actually a really good kind of lit sort of segue into this. In the past, adulting was very much about, I mean, you always need to know your audience if it's about their demographics, their sex, their age, their location, perhaps some pre-populated interests within ads manager, you could select and build out these audiences, you know, by their interests. Now you really, really need to know your audience, but you actually need to know what's inside their head. What is keeping them up so much at night that they will say, I I totally relate to that ad. Wow, this video that I've got that problem. Yeah, my clients are like, I've missed my deadlines, I've got angry clients. I I didn't realise that other people felt this way. So this is definitely an unaware ad because they're trying, they're diagnosing you. So you realise actually you do have a problem. It's like, oh yeah, and now they're positioning themselves as the solution. They're kind of working through all of the stages within the ads, which is why it's so good. And I think you also touched on a really good point. You don't have to be polished. If the messaging is on point and you're and they literally feel like you're they're looking into you're looking into their soul, you can show them anything, and you will buy like from them. So I think that's why you cannot overlook the research stage when you're building your ads. And I've lost camp the amount of times I've spoken to advertisers who stress so much about how they're building up the campaign, they get to the ad stage and they're like, uh I don't know what to put in the ad now. And it's like that is literally the last thing you should do is the build. Everything you else comes first. So like all the strategy, research, mapping out what you're going to be talking about, and then you build it in your in your ads manager.

SPEAKER_01: 26:03

This actually leads me to another example that I want to bring us to the type of ad, which can potentially answer the question, or the problem, or the challenge of I don't know how to build my ad, or I don't have time, or I don't know where where I can get the content. There's so much content that we might already have that can actually be reused when done well. And this is another ad example that I wanted to bring in, which is potentially again a stage of the awareness that can cross depending on the specifics of an ad, but user-generated content and uh reviews and and personalized experiences is something that you mentioned within the five stages. And I find that uh Freya broth, Spoon broth does it incredibly well. Uh, what I like about uh this set of ads that they created is that they did it on TikTok mainly, but you can see them also on Instagram. And also, some people have lifted it from TikTok and then put it as a paid one on Instagram, for example, which I think is really clever, um, which is basically comment responses as a hook, which I think is incredibly clever. Uh, usually, you know, if you find we talked about data mining and review mining, it can be an objection maybe that people bring up or product benefit or something like an organic comment. And then basically you can tie into that and by asking your audience, your followers, some questions or some things they have, you can reuse that. And then in this case, what they do a lot with their IIs, they actually use real customers and/or creators to actually explain how they use the product in their own experience. But I've seen it done pretty well with employee-generated content as well. And there are other examples, one more that I'm gonna bring to us in a second. But I wanted to hear from you these kind of content, maybe the specific ad obviously is about somebody answering a comment or question about uh how is your skin so glowy? Which is again a benefit, right? Something ad results that they got. What would you say? Where would you say this ad fits, this type of ad fits when it comes to the stage of awareness? And is it the common one for user-generated content and reviews and actual experiences, or can they cross different stages?

SPEAKER_02: 28:07

So this format is amazing. That's it. And it's so simple. Like we've used this with all our browser that we work with. These taste grants at the same time, genuine comment that you've got to paste over a video. You can prove your digital bits and whatever design tools you do. The concept there's a few things that I can point out, which is why I think all the time. So, how is your skin so glowy? So glowy. It's not the word. It's kind of or unflavored the way that the result is it. That's this isn't a soft company saying you will have clear skin or radiance or whatever mocking lingo they use internally. And this is the client. But glowy. It's all the time. I mean, okay, I spent more than three different flavors. Curated and we it appears. It's just the lady on country text. That's it. But essentially, this is usually record down the street is what helps the message and improves your digestion. There is no excuse not to make ads. This is not high production, this isn't high, you know, budget. Anyone can make ads like this. And I would argue they are more effective because they look natural. People are zoning out now to ads that are very, very overpolished. And I mean it's always been that way. But even more, now we're in the world of AI, there's so much fake content around. If something looks genuine, and I know there's lots of UGC AI stuff going around now as well, then it will get harder to spots. But if you can create something that is difficult for AI to Replicates, it seems to be landing more. So I don't know if that's whether just the me short and medium term. This is like the pattern because AOI isn't quite there yet. But I would definitely lean into that. And I'd say this is more around the solution aware um stage and the positioning the products shapes every day to create glowy skin. And still drinking them. I think it's brilliant. I love these more organic looking posts. And it's interesting you say that they took that from TikTok. Because TikTok is such a great learning ground for Instagram and Facebook ads. Because it's more authentic, where it comes across more authentic, so it's easy to just take that video and post it onto Instagram and Facebook.

SPEAKER_01: 30:49

See, if I I use reading my mind, love everything you said. Plus, you are kind of leaning into the next example. So it is a butt. Can I help it? It's not me, it's her. That's what I'm gonna say. So again. Thank you. I now have another example of unsilted, more fresh, and actually another type of uh paid content and ad that I've seen a lot, which is founder-driven and brand driven, but in a way that is like the personal story, the backstory. And I think one of the notes that we can make here is that this type of content, and I'll tell you which ad we're looking at right now, um, is really based on the fact that when you look at content app, when you bring your punch in and find brand, but also maximum times and resources.

SPEAKER_00: 31:33

Two brothers who you came in. What's it called? So they got to work blending organic stamps and spices by hand, cutting out sugar after this chai keep tasting the center of New York City and it became a hit. That authentic taste. And it's just your story. Colkata Chaix. Um, cultural heritage and child spice, comforting, but you can't find it any crazy. Well, exactly what happens in two brothers.

SPEAKER_01: 32:08

Obviously, the underlying question is always this type of uh founder led backstory. What kind of stage of awareness could this be? But I have another question before that, which is who would you target with this kind of ad? Well, obviously, it might be tied to the stage of awareness, I know, but if we're looking actually at the people that we're trying to target, if we wanted to slightly guide us towards uh newer, fresher audiences or more aware audiences, you know, who would we look at? And is it actually the stage of awareness that we're looking at, or can we get a bit creative with that?

SPEAKER_02: 32:41

So it's a really good question. So when I was training in ads, say five over five years ago now, this type of ad, a founder ad, we're always told this is to nurture your warm audience. So people that know about your brand already, show them this ad and they will buy from you. Now, since I've been running ads, I've found that this ad type of ad works for all stages. And the reason why is you are telling a story, and humans cannot help a story. They love it, they want to know where the brand originated. Then no, it taps into laziness again. People want to know who are these guys, and suddenly, oh, you see cute pictures. Like how do those two things connect? And it's like a loop. So you see them now, you see them as babies or kids, and then in between, you see how they went from kids to where they are now, and it takes they take you on the journey, you emotionally get invested in the brand, and then you check them out. So it doesn't necessarily mean that they're gonna buy there and then, but they've already got this emotional connection to them. So down the line, they're more likely to buy. So whenever we feature our clients, some of them are too big to have the founder in now, but if they have part of the team explaining things, demoing things, showing the origin of things, or like the features and the backstory behind why certain things are how they are, they do amazingly. The comments, the shares, the sales that you get from it. Storytelling is massively underrated in meta ads. And it does frustrate me slightly that in the official training from Meta, they always say short, punchy copy always works, you know, just get to the point, sell the thing. It's not true. Like in experience from experience, the more you kind of hold space for your audience and give them the opportunity to get to know you, learn about where you're from and why things are important to you, your values align. And suddenly, because your values align and they can see something in themselves, in you, they're more invested in what you do and they're more likely to recommend you. Even if they can't afford you at the moment or it's not the right time, it's a good thing.

SPEAKER_00: 34:53

But you can't find it anyway. Actually, that's exactly what happened to Any and I was like, two brothers grew up with real time.

SPEAKER_02: 34:58

Only to realise So it's it's incredibly powerful, just type of story.

SPEAKER_01: 35:04

And I love the fact that you actually mention how to go against the gray. None that it's just because we do as a school, like a lot of that, right? There's being rebels in the way that we try to do things differently. But I think it's important also to appreciate that sometimes there will be the odd little rebel that's like, I'm gonna try and use this for awareness that we'll bring new audiences, even if they don't know who we are, I'm gonna literally tell them our backstory and see if they connect with it. And actually, shock horror, as you say, using storytelling really works, uh, even for new audiences. And I think it's that just to add to your point, it's just it builds a connection. And then when they see the brand again or they see you again, or whoever it is that is representing the brand in this case, then they will recognize it, and then it might be when they convert. So it really kind of builds, I think, trust faster. You know, I think that's very important to remember. Now, I think um AI and using kind of the tools that have been given to us, not just outside of Meta, but also within Meta, can actually help us make our life easier. So, what are some of the things that we can think about and that we can tap into when it comes to ads and AI integrations? Sure.

SPEAKER_02: 36:13

So before I go through this list, I just want to caveat this for saying that I think AOA can get a really bad press in the ads world because there are lots of dubious people around claiming that you can do all these weird and wonderful things with it, you can literally press a button and all your ads are ready, or the copy, all the you know, creatives, everything's perfect, and you just print money. If only that were the case, we'd all be millionaires, right? Well, I want to say is when you uh use any external tools, so Chat GPT, Claude, Perplexity, they are actually terrible ad strategists if you give them no steer on what you need. Okay. But if you create brand context documents, so that's telling the the AI about your brand or about the business, these are really detailed. So, you know, 5,000 words is a standard kind of brand context document. You put lots and lots of information, as much as you can about the brand, so that the AI really understands where you're coming from. Um, and then you can layer in something called a context document, which is what I'll go into in point two in a second. But for us as an agency, we kind of go, we have a three-stage kind of umbrella. You have the plan stage, the build stage, and the growth stage. So everyone focuses on the build stage, panicking about settings and the tech and everything. Do not worry about it. It's a learned skill. If you really want to figure that out, you can just take a course and you'll you'll learn how to do it. The planning stage is where the gold is, and that's where you should spend most of your time. And this is where AI can save you so much time. So competitor analysis. So, for example, deep research within ChatGBT, you can select, you can write and add your brand context document about your brand, and you can prompt it to say, these are the five competitors we're aware of. You know, they you can do background research for you, can pull out what the objections, pain points, motivations are about the thing that you sell. And it will take about 20 minutes to run it, but you'll have about a 30-page report, 30-page report at the end, and it's absolute gold to get started. You can also, and I mentioned this before, mine your reviews. So export CSV of all your reviews, layer it with a prompt to say, you know, tell me what the pain points or motivations or objections are here, pull out the examples of with the, you know, the actual quotes from the customer or clients, and include like their name or first name and initial or something. So you can just literally use anything that they post about in the ads. Now, the second one is kind of linked to the first one. So once you've done your compester analysis, your client reviews, you're like, right, this is where I spot the opportunities that I can talk about in my ads. And this is where you can create these context documents, they're called. And this is your instructions to the AI. So, for example, if you need headlines for your ads, so that's the text overlay. If you've got a creative ad, you know, and you need to put the strap line, you can tell Meta, or the sorry, the AI what makes a good headline. So you can pull a transcript off YouTube where someone, an expert in it, is talking about headlines and say, create a context document for me, telling me all these like, you know, the key points that make a great headline. And then you run it through AI with your brand context document and all your research that you've done, and it will tell you what headlines it thinks could work for your ads. Now, it doesn't mean that you literally take those straight away and use them in your ads, but you're not going from zero. You're not trying to come up with all these contexts, like all this content out of the blue. It's giving you a stepping stone to get started. And you can rerun it a few times, it'll give you different options. But then as the marketer, as the expert, you know what is the best, what the best ones are. This is why I think it's really important to stress that AI can't replace your expertise and your experience because you're still pulling the bits that you think are the best and then using those. So that's what I would, you know, that's the second way that AI is amazing. So that's external to um meta ads manager. Now, number three is about creatives for AI. Well, AI, sorry, creatives are made with AI. I think we still have a lot of development to happen in this space. At the moment, it's still extremely time consuming to get exactly what you have in your mind created by AI. But even in six months, the developments have been insane, like how much it's improved. So I think even another six months, who knows how quickly you'll be able to generate hundreds of iterations of ads that you you can use for your um for your campaigns. I think the main thing is if you can ideate, so create the concepts for your ads with AI, and using that five stages of awareness as well, you'll always have lots of ideas, plus all the AI research and everything you do. Creating the creatives after that is actually the easy thing because you know what you need to show in those ads. Advantage Plus handles targeting, budget, and creative optimisation. So Meta, or Mark Zuckerberg, who's obviously the founder, CEO of Meta, announced this year that by the end of next year, Meta will take over everything. Agencies won't be needed anymore. You'll have your cre all your content will be created at a touchable button within, you know, Meta, and you'll be printing money. Once you tell them how much money you want to make, they'll make it for you. Now, it probably sounds like VD now, and we're like, no, it's never gonna happen. I do think we're gonna get closer to it. I think at the moment it's a bit too rogue, it does not do what you want, and you really do need to be on top of what's happening in the ad account because things, enhancements suddenly switch on that you didn't ask for, and all these weird and wonderful things are going on because all the development's happening behind the scenes. I do think it will get more efficient, but I do also think that the ad strategists will still be the puppeteers, sort of like guiding what's happening. And I also think the expertise is needed so that you can spot when something's not going well, if something's going wrong and there's an emergency, you're not waiting for the AI to flag it with you, and you can literally dip into the account and you'll see, oh my goodness, I need to pause that, or why's that stopped spending, or where's that random picture come from? You know, I didn't add that into the ad ad account. So I think the human touch is still very much needed. And I heard a phrase today saying it's AI applied. I think AI will be applied to everything that we do, but as the humans, we need to maintain our expertise and be discerning about how we apply it to what we're trying to do.

SPEAKER_01: 43:14

And that is definitely one of the ways that you can, I think, apply AI as a skill almost, and I or use AI as a companion and the skill of knowing how to use the best as a companion. It can be such a great thing in this case when it comes to your um paid content strategy, if that makes sense. Understanding when to use it, when to plug into it, how to plug into it. A couple of the things we talked about today before um we wrap up is looking at really awareness in the different stages as a way to reframe the final journey. Uh, using stories and real people actually can really be a great way to build connections even with your audiences. We have learned. People trust people, and so you you use the generated content that can actually work so much better. And it saves us time again, which is amazing. Look at AI as a core pilot, you know your driver, so it can guide you with what you're currently doing. And actually, that means you can spend the time with planning, maybe doing the research. And potentially, if you're strapped with your resources, you can use what you already have in your creatives, your B-rolls, uh videos, content that you already have to really tap into those stages of awareness, those stories, those problems, those solutions that we're looking for as well. First of all, I want to say thank you so much to Aggie. And I want you to please tell us where our lonely humans can find out more about you if they want to connect with you, but also if they want to find out more about your book, where should they go?

SPEAKER_02: 44:41

Sure. So come and follow me on Instagram. My handle is at Swite Be Digital, and I'm also really active on LinkedIn, so come and uh connect with me over there as well.

SPEAKER_01: 44:52

Tell us a bit more about the book agenda.

SPEAKER_02: 44:55

So the book is called Crack the Code, and you can find links to it on my Instagram and my LinkedIn, and it's on Amazon, Crack the Code, um, Aggie Moroney.

SPEAKER_01: 45:06

So we might as well go and buy it. Again, after having had two books myself, I I I painfully remind people how much they need to hide their books because it's a labor of love. So it's a labor of uh meta love, so or ad love, I should say. So please go and check it out and grab your copy as well. So Aggie, thank you so much again for seeking the time to answer all these questions and actually play with me the game of guests, the ad. I really appreciate that. And that is it. I hope you enjoyed our latest class in session. And if you want to access more of these sessions, don't forget to check out our All Access Pass, where all our accredited show courses, all of our short training, on-demand workshops live, as well as every single plug-and-play template we ever created to make marketing better for marketers, just like yourself. I will be remiss if I didn't remind you to be kind to yourself and others and encourage you to never stop learning because practice makes progress. And until next time, class is dismissed.