You are listening to My Freedom Grove podcast with Gretchen Hernandez, episode 193.

Welcome to My Freedom Grove Podcast, your calm space for practical help to get your dream business up and running while being authentically you and taking care of your mental health. I'm your host, Gretchen Hernandez. I'm so glad you're here!

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Hi there my Strong Friends.  Have you done anything fun lately?  Something to get your energy up and you laughing?

I just got off of a Networking call.  My friend Jillene Emerich, the creator of the Coaching Posse hosts a biweekly Networking call that is so fun.  It’s full of laughter and great questions.  It goes way beyond business so we can get to know each other as humans.

This is such a great way to bring up your energy and get Law of Attraction to work in your favor.

Another way of getting your energy up is with the Magic Mind Productivity Shots.  These little 2oz. Shots are great.  If you’ve ever tried other brands of energy drinks and hated the flavor, you should try these instead.  

Magic Mind Productivity Shots flavor is different.  They have a fresh earthy flavor of matcha and a hint of lemon.  I keep my refrigerated.  It’s refreshing.  You instantly feel like you’re doing a healthy thing instead of putting chemicals into your body. 

The Magic Mind Productivity Shot helps you increase your energy, mood and clears your head. 

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed with all the tasks of entrepreneurship, you’ll notice these shots make a big difference.  Sometimes our tasks list seem way too big.  But what might be happening is some brain challenges from memory issues or brain fog.  The Magic Mind Productivity Shots have a special ingredient called Cognizin(R).  It helps with mental acuity and working memory.

Um, Yes, please.  As someone that struggles with short term memory and ADHD symptoms I get stumped sometimes.  I’m doing a task, and I may switch to another task.  When I come back to the original task, I can’t remember what I’m doing or how to do it.  I’m wracking my brain or checking my notes for information.  I get so frustrated.  But, I noticed when I drink the Magic Mind Productivity shot in the morning, I’m able to do all my tasks without the memory issues.  Can I just tell you, by the end of the day I felt so victorious. You need to try these out.

Another cool thing I noticed, Magic Mind Productivity shots are eligible for HSA and FSA.  For anyone that doesn’t know what that means, let me explain.  Some Health Care plans allow you to put pre-tax money away into a spending account.  You can only spend that money on legitimate health care services and items.  So, if Magic Mind Productivity shots are eligible, you know they are legit.  I bet you won’t find any other energy drinks on that approved list.

As this episode’s sponsor, Magic Mind gave me specials to give you.  You can get up to 56% off your first subscription by using the link www.magicmind.com/MYFREEDOM.  You can also use the code MYFREEDOM20 to get 20% off your first order.  Give it a try.  You can thank me later.

From one magical topic to the next.  Let’s move on to the 4 magical components of Facebook Ads.


In last week’s episode I gave you a first introduction to using Facebook Ads in your business.  Both as a way to generate leads & sales and as a way to do Market Research to validate your offers and sales funnels before you build them.

This is the 2nd in a 5 episode series.  You can also look forward to 

Ep 194  How do I know if my Facebook Ads are Working? (Metrics Demystified)

Ep 195 How Does a Meta Pixel help?

Ep 196  Use it or Lose It - Planning & Keeping Track of Facebook Ad Testing Data

Just as a reminder, I have a special offer on my website.  You can get the Irresistible Offer Research Guide and BONUS Facebook Ads click-by-click tutorial for just $17.  By the time you finish watching the video, you will have your ads up and running.

That’s why you need to know about the 4 magical components of Facebook ads.  These are the 4 things that help your ad to work.  Another reminder from last week, the job of a Facebook ad is to send traffic to something.  That something can be your website, podcast, opt-in page, registration page or sales page.  If all the traffic got there, it worked.  It’s now the page’s job to do the next part.

WHAT ARE THE 4 MAGICAL COMPONENTS OF A FACEBOOK AD?

1. The Creative (image, video, carousel)

2. The Headline

3. The copy (aka Primary Text)

4. The audience

All 4 components need to get tested.  When all 4 are dialed in, your ad results will be stellar.  If even one of the components is off, your results will either be decreased or non-existent.

WHERE TO START?

The most fun part is creating the “Creative”, so most people start there.  I don’t blame you.  It is fun.  And it’s something you see.  It feels very tangible.

However, when you are testing these 4 magical components, it’s important to start with audience testing.

If you show your ad to the wrong audience, the data is invalid for your business.  For example, if you had an ad that hit it big with people in South America, but your time zones never match up for a 1:1, your ad really doesn’t matter.

The same goes for gender.  If you have a service specifically for men, but your ad is being shown to all genders, your data will be mixed.  It might even lead you to questioning who you should serve.  If all of a sudden all the genders, besides men, were responding well to the ad, would you be tempted to abandon the men?

Your audience is important to you.  They are who you designed your products and services for.  Give them a chance.  Only show your ads to them.  Then experiment with your different ads to determine which ads they like.

The Order I would recommend testing is this:

      1.  Audience

2. Creative
3. Headline
4. Copy

When you’re testing the audience, you still need to have at least a creative and a headline.  Depending on your Creative, you may not need copy.

Start with 1 creative & headline that you’ve already had success with organically.  Use that to test several different audiences.  Using the data you can determine which audience wins.

If you need help reading the Facebook Ads metrics to understand where to enter the audience and how to read the data, make sure to get the Irresistible Offer Research Guide. The Guide and Bonus video with click by click instructions will show you everything.

AUDIENCE

Audience may be customized in 5 different ways.

1. Advantage Plus
2. From Demographics & Interests
3. From your email list & lookalike lists
4. From your Facebook Pixel & lookalike lists
5. Combo of any of those plus Advantage Plus

Advantage Plus

Facebook’s built in Data Scientist.  It scans the creative and copy of your ad.  It picks up on key words and intent.  Then it analyzes it’s audience to show it to the best fit.  The ad runs for a while.  It gets automatically analyzed for the sub-audiences that respond best, and drops the rest.  It runs for a while with that audience then analyzes again.  It drops off low performing audiences and shows it to the best.  It keeps doing this reassess & drop until your ad is being show to the best performing audience.  This sounds like a great option.   Let FB do all the work.

I tested this audience against my customized audiences for 3 days.  After a 3 day comparison, my customized audiences did better.  However, the way Advantage Plus works may take longer than 3 days.  If I was running a long term ad, this would probably be the best optional.

Demographics & Interests

This is where you can specify other companies they follow, activities they like, education level, income level, job titles or industries, family status, professional associations, and things about their journey.  For example, one of my audiences includes businesses that started in the last 24 months.

I recently discovered that Adrienne Richardson has a Free Audience Selection Cheat Sheet.  Her cheat sheet has the different topics that are relevant to our businesses such as Parenting, Personal Growth, Career and Business.  For each topic she lists all of the things to put into the audience demographics and Interests.  She created this list after working as a FB Ad professional for 15 years.  I’ll put the link in the show notes.

Email & Look Alike Lists

You’ve spent a lot of time building up your email list.  Hopefully, you have it cleaned up to only have your ideal customer avatars.  I know it’s tempting in the beginning to add family and friends.  But, if they are not your ideal customer avatars, it’s not going to be helpful when you create your look alike lists in Facebook.

First, let me explain what a look alike list is.  Facebook has people’s email addresses.  They used them when they signed up for their accounts.  When you upload your list, FB can go pull those records.  Included in their data tables are all of their demographics, interests and buying behaviors.  FB develops an average customer profile.  Then it searches its database for other accounts that match the average customer profile.  Lookalike audiences can be generated  based on a percentage.  1% lookalike will match almost everything from the average customer profile.  2% lookalike is missing some of the matching characteristics.  3% missing more of the matching characteristics, and so on.

How can you get the best Look Alike lists?  Prune it first.  You can do the pruning either in your CRM or from a spreadsheet.  If you do it in your CRM, you are removing people that are not your ideal customer avatar, including people that have not interacted with your site in at least 90 days.  This deletes them at the source.  Then you can export your CSV file from your CRM and upload to Facebook.

If you prefer to keep your email list intact, you may download your CSV file.  Then you open the file and prune.  You download a CSV file from that and upload into Facebook.

When you select your audience for your ad, you can choose to just pick a certain percentage of lookalike audience, or a range.

Facebook Pixel & Lookalike

It’s possible to create an audience based on the data picked up by your Facebook Pixel, specifically everyone that interacted with your website or anything on your Facebook profile.  I’ll go into more details about a Facebook Pixel in a couple weeks.  You can also create a lookalike audience of people picked up by your Facebook Pixel.

Combo & Advantage Plus

This is the one that I would use for an ad that I’m going to run long term or at multiple times throughout the year.  It gives you the short term benefit of your customized audience that you know works.  Plus it adds in Facebook’s Data Analysis to improve your audience over time.  Win today, even bigger win later on.

CREATIVE

There are 3 types of Creatives.  Static images, videos and carousels.  I haven’t done carousels yet.  And I’m starting to experiment with videos.  I have tons of experience with static images.

There are two ways that you can test creatives.

1.  Which version is best?  The most common is to create several variations of the same creative type.  For example, static images.  You may choose to test 3-4 different static images to see which does better.  
2. Which creative type is best?    You may choose to see if a static image or a video does best.  Or if a static vs. carousel does best.

There are micro-components in a creative.

There is the visual of what is in the creative, like a person face, an image that shows an action or emotion, colors, textures, places in time, or eye catching tom foolery.  One of my favorite ads has a picture of a woman with her head on a table.  She has purple hair.  Her tongue is sticking out and its covered in rainbow sprinkles.  It makes me so happy to see that picture.  It grabs my attention every time.  Unfortunately, I can’t remember what the ad is about.

That’s something to keep in mind.  You want to capture somebody’s attention.  Eye catching creatives will do that.  You get to choose if the image is just eye catching.  Or if it’s eye catching and relevant to the rest of the ad. 

I’ve seen that eye-catching ad at least 50 times.  I love it.  But, I don’t remember what it’s for.  I think I started to read the ad a little, but it’s not of interest to me.  But, boy, I’m interested in that picture.  That’s not going to help the business.  Their pixel picks up that I’m interacting with the ad.  The business spends money showing the ad to people that are interested.  But, it wasn’t for their product/service, their Return on Ad Spend may take a hit.

Other micro-components include text on the visual, moving things like flashes, glitter or banners.  You also have the option of sound, either voice, music or both. 

If you use a voice in your creative, your other micro-components are the script, presentation and energy.

Each component and sub-component can be tested so you end up with the ad that performs the best.  

There are a lot of opportunities to optimize your ad.  The downside, is that there are also opportunities for your ad to miss the mark.  This is important information to have.  Because I’ve seen too many entrepreneurs run 1 ad, not get any sales, and decide “Facebook Ads don’t work”.  No, that’s not the case.  If the desired amount of traffic came to your page, the ad worked.  If the desired amount of traffic didn’t come, one or more components didn’t work.  That’s much different than saying the whole thing didn’t work.

HEADLINE

A headline is that small set of words that appear on a light grey banner under your creative.  Technically, there are 3 lines of words that appear here.

1.  Display URL (which could be your website)
2. Headline - in the biggest, bold font

3. Description - smaller font

I encourage you to test out different headlines.  I learned the hard way that I really suck at headlines.  I’m not a trained copywriter.  I’m a regular entrepreneur like you that didn’t go to school to learn copy writing.

I did a series of 20 headline tests.  18 of them bombed.  Ouch.  The 2 that didn’t bomb just barely passed the test.  At first, it stung.  But then I was grateful.  I knew where I needed to improve.

I have a quick and easy way of isolating the headline testing so it’s not influenced by a fancy creative.  I show you exactly how to do this in the Irresistible Offer Research Guide.  You can find that link in the show notes and on the first page of my website.

COPY

This is the part I see most people get stumped on.  Like I said, none of us are copywriters.  That’s where practicing on organic posts helps.  When you can develop your style that pulls people in and gets them to click, things get so much easier.

I have a technique I call The Connection Factor.  I use my authentic stories to connect.  Specifically I connect using my old Mindset Models and Old Experiment Records.  By borrowing the structure of those 2 tools, I have the framework for my story.  I also know what to include for that piece of the story, because it was already recorded in real time.

I developed this technique when I was trying to create consultations in person.  I needed to be able to walk up to a stranger, strike up a conversation and connect deeply within a few minutes.  I got so skilled at it that I could create consultations within 5 minutes of meeting someone.  That skill translated perfectly to posts and ads.

I teach The Connection Factor in an online course by the same name.  That course is available for purchase off the shelf.  It’s also included in the Unshakable Business Co-Lab.  When you get coaching with me, I help you develop this skill for both in person and online.

When you’re testing copy, you want to have multiple versions that resonate with different motivations.  Think about the different motivations for why someone would want your offer.  Once you have a collection of motivations, write copy for each one.

Test the copy with the same creative and headline.  Only the copy changes.  That way you can isolate the results.

Once you find the version that works best, you can keep it or optimize it.  You’d be surprised how much a single word change can impact results.

Testing the 4 magical components of Facebook Ads is fun.  And it doesn’t have to be expensive.  I’m presenting a special class about $4 Facebook Ads at the Platform & Profit summit coming up at the beginning of May.  I’ll share more details about this summit on next week’s podcast.

In the meantime, you can get a lot of the information you need in the Irresistible Offer Research Guide.  It includes what things to test, including the headlines and copy.  Plus, how to do the testing.  You’ll get access to the Bonus Tutorial video to get your Facebook ads up and running.  This is a click - by - click tutorial.  By the end of the video, you’ll have your ads up and running.  I also show you how to keep the ads cost down during your testing phase.  This is a special offer.  The price is only $17.  Even better, when you choose to work with me 1:1 or join the Unshakable Business Co-Lab, I will credit your $17 towards that future purchase.

The link for this special offer is on the front page of my website.  I’ll also include the link in the show notes.

If you prefer Done with You support, I have some 1:1 spots available.  I have all of the tracking templates ready to go.  I even help you with your graphics.  You can schedule a free consultation by going to the contact me page of my website at www.myfreedomgrove.com.

My friends, Facebook Ads can help your business in so many ways.  Even if you don’t use them to drive traffic to your site & offers.  You can use them to test out the messaging on your pages.  That way all of your organic marketing will give you better results.

All of this information is available in the transcript.  Happy testing.  I hope you have a great week.  I’ll talk with you soon.  Bye Bye.

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