Facebook & Instagram Ads with Luan Jardine

Laura

0:04
Hi, this is Laura Lee Griffin

Nikki

0:06
And this is Nikki May with Startist Society, inspiring you to stop getting in your own way and start building an art business and life that you love.

Laura

0:15
We are artists who believe strongly in the power of community, accountability, following your intuition, taking small actionable steps and breaking down the barriers of fear and procrastination that keep you stuck.

Nikki

0:30
Follow along with us on our creative business journey as we encourage you on yours.

Laura

0:38
So Nikki who are we talking to today?

Nikki

0:41
Well, Laura, like us, I know a lot of our listeners are interested in learning more about Facebook and Instagram ads but don’t even know where to start. So today we’re talking to Luan Jardine, a feminist mental health advocate and ambitiously creative Facebook and Instagram marketing consultant that I met in Quinn Tempest’s Create Your Purpose Collective. When we decided to dive deeper into Facebook and Instagram advertising, Laura, I immediately thought of Luan.

Laura

1:11
Yeah, people think the goal of advertising is selling all the things. But it’s also really important to make sure that you’re reaching the right audience in a way that really aligns with your values and your brand. And Luan has a holistic approach that not only looks at your bottom line numbers, but focuses on amplifying meaningful messages of creative business owners who are striving to create change or make the lives of people better. And we know that art does that beautifully and our Startists are the perfect people to learn from what she has to share.

Nikki

1:45
Luan, welcome to the Startist Society. We’re so excited to learn from you today.

Luan

1:51
I’m so excited to be here.

Laura

1:53
So Luan, we like to start out our interviews by having our guests share their Startist story with us. Now we know you specialize in Facebook and Instagram advertising, but can you tell us a bit about your background and how you got started in business and grew to be the Facebook advertising expert that you are now?

Luan

2:13
Yeah, and actually it started in an artful way. When I was in high school, in grade 10, I believe it was, or grade 11.

Nikki

2:24
Wait, wait, wait….Please don’t tell me that you’re young enough that Facebook was around when you were in high school?

Luan

2:31
Yeah, I’m 25.

Nikki

2:32
Oh my god.

Laura

2:35
Nikki, we’re so old. We’re so old.

Nikki

2:37
Oh my god, we’re so old.

Luan

2:40
The, story’s pretty short.

Nikki

2:43
All right, so you’re in high school?

Luan

2:45
Yeah, I’m in high school. But it’s, I didn’t get into ads then. In high school, I took a graphic design class. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is amazing. I can express myself through design and on a computer; I love computers. I’d always been learning new programs growing up, just like out of boredom. So I took this class, and it was the one class where my teacher really let me fully express myself. He was so, I don’t know, he was so encouraging in everything that I did, and I felt so seen. Some of my work wasn’t amazing. Some of it’s behind me right now. And it wasn’t even about the way things turned out, it was just the way I felt during the process. And it’s what I thought I wanted to do. So I considered going to graphic design school when I was like 15 or 16, and doing some sort of program, but I didn’t have a fully built art portfolio, which is what you need to go to art school. So I tried to brainstorm and I always knew I wanted to have a business, be in business, some type of way. So I was trying to blend business and art essentially or like creativity. And that’s kind of how it led me to marketing. So graduating high school, I went to university in Kelowna, BC, Canada, just like a small town in BC. And they have a really great program for management. So I went into that and I was able to dabble in a little bit of graphic design for some of my classes and presentations. And I did their co op program. So I got to work with a lot of really small businesses and dabble in different marketing elements. And I job hopped, so when they talk about millennials or Gen Zed, I don’t really know which one I fit into, when they talk about them job hopping. I was one of them. I had with my co op jobs. I had seven jobs in two years. Which was a lot.

Nikki

4:45
It’s a lot, but it probably gave you a wide range of experience.

Luan

4:49
It did, it did. It really did. And that was really the awesome thing about it. I learned so much about different industries. But I never stayed at one job to become excellent at any one industry or any one thing, so I had this goal where I wanted to stay at a job for a year. So I did that last year. I stayed at a job at a marketing agency, I learned so much. And then I decided to quit. I was like, I’ve had so many jobs, I feel like this has run its course, I need to do my own thing now like this will… me being self employed is going to be the longest job I ever have. That’s what I decided to do, I quit my job and I realized this gap in the market was Facebook and Instagram ads. And…

Nikki

5:28
Did you realize that before after you quit the job?

Luan

5:32
I realized it after.

Nikki

5:35
That’s bold. That’s bold.

Luan

5:37
Yeah, I didn’t really have like a solid plan. I knew I could do different components of marketing. And I was going to offer myself as like a one woman agency. And I realized that’s way too much. So I decided to hone in my services on Facebook and Instagram advertising, because I realized I knew how to do it, not very many people know how. There’s strategy guy can teach people and there’s so much creativity in it. Like there’s the design, photography, like written copy strategy, and consulting all mashed into it. So it felt like just like the natural progression of my skill set. And I love it. It’s brought me to so many cool people.

Laura

6:15
Yeah, and like that graphic design element really like blends in really well with it.

Luan

6:20
Yeah, I’m really thankful that they offered graphic design in my high school. Because like, yeah, now I know how to, like use Adobe Illustrator and stuff. And I don’t think I would have learned otherwise.

Nikki

6:30
Probably not. So we’ve done just like a tiny bit of Facebook advertising. And the options are overwhelming.

Laura

6:40
Yeah, for sure.

Nikki

6:41
I mean, how do you even know where to begin?

Luan

6:45
That’s a great question. Advertising, it’s like marketing magic. But it’s not magic, unfortunately. And I think that’s important to keep in mind.

Nikki

6:57
We only we only invited you here because we thought you were going to provide some magic for us.

Laura

7:02
Yeah, like a magical unicorn.

Luan

7:04
Let me just get on my wand and swing it around for you.

Nikki

7:08
Okay, we’ll listen to your magic words instead.

Luan

7:11
Hopefully, they’re magical. Yeah, so it’s almost marketing magic. But if you throw money at it, it’s not guaranteed to produce results. But I feel like that’s why so many of your listeners will be, probably get some killer results, because they’re already creative, already making art. And I think that’s one of the things that people really struggle with is the creative element. It’s just the strategy that needs to be put in place. So it is quite confusing in the backend of Business Manager. So usually what I suggest people to do is, try boosting posts first. It might not get you the results you want, but it’s a good place to start if you have like the ad spend to do that. And then to kind of dive in a little bit deeper afterwards. You can go into Business Manager, go to into ads and see how your boosted post performed in likes, that’s kind of set up. And then it might be a little bit easier to break things down from there as opposed to just like, create campaign, okay, what are all these things popping up.

Nikki

8:07
So that’s just that’s just kind of a bit of advice for somebody to just take the first step and and do something that that is not quite as scary. Because, I mean, there’s so many things…you can boost posts, there’s, you know, all kinds of types of ads on you know, it asks you, you know, is this for audience growth or products or, you know, promote your website? I mean, can you give us a little bit of a breakdown of what the different types of ads are, and how you kind of decide what the right kind to use is?

Luan

8:39
Yes, my favorite part. So the way I kind of see it is like a funnel. And Quinn actually put it in a really awesome way – who we know from the Collective, Quinn Tempest. She says, it’s the introductory handshake to your business, which I loved. So ads is like the thing that can introduce you to new people that you may not have met otherwise, because people will find you on Instagram, and maybe Facebook, but like, probably not Facebook, let’s be real, it’s kind of a mess. So people will find you on Instagram, but it won’t be nearly as many people as if you use that money to pay for ads. So it’s an introductory handshake to your business. So you can target people with an introductory offer like signing up for your email list. And you would target a cold audience. So a cold audience means anyone that hasn’t interacted with your brand before. They don’t know who you are. They don’t know what you offer, but they’re interested in things to do with your brand. And then it funnels down into a warm audience and the warm audience is who you try to sell to. So you’re not asking for an email address in exchange for like a free item or resource or whatever. You’re asking them to purchase something and the warm audience is anyone that’s familiar with your brand, they know who you are. They’re engaged and they’re ready to purchase. And then all of that converts down into just that conversion, the hot audience. And then you can market them to purchase things, they’ll probably be part of your email list or something, and they’ll just keep coming back, the loyalty.

Laura

10:13
Okay, so there’s like three different groups you’re talking about, like a cold audience are the people that you want to get on your email list, the warm audience you’re selling an item to and the hot audience that have purchased from you before, then you’re trying to get repeat purchases.

Luan

10:29
Yeah, exactly.

Nikki

10:31
And what you’re really doing is, if I hearing this correctly, is your ads are really to get that first step, to reach the cold audience, because you kind of already have the warm audience listening to you. So the ads that you’re doing are mostly targeting the cold audience.

Luan

10:49
Yeah, exactly. So the ads that I primarily do are to build people’s email lists, because you own your email list, you can market to your email list as much as you want. But ads, unfortunately, they do cost money. So you target people with your ads. And like, it’s easy for people to give their email in exchange for, I don’t know, like, five tips or a resource or whatever it may be, a free painting class. But it’s harder to ask people to pay money in exchange for like, maybe a course or a piece of art or something like that, if they don’t already know you. So that’s why growing your email list with ads is so amazing. And then you can stop running ads and just target those people via email.

Laura

11:32
So let’s talk a little bit about the the money aspect, because you mentioned, you know, it cost money, right? And when people are just starting out, what kind of a budget would somebody expect to spend to see some kind of result in growing their email list?

Luan

11:47
Yeah, that’s a good question. I feel like I get asked this a lot. And it’s annoying, because I can’t give like a straight answer. Because it depends on someone’s budget and the length of time they want to run their campaign. So I would say…

Nikki

12:00
Let’s, let’s actually step back one step from that and say, Okay, I am an artist. And it’s the end of September, and I want to reach new people to sell my art and products to for the holidays. And I come to you and I say, I want to do some ads, because I want to grow my audience so that they’ll buy things for the holidays. I’m selling, you know, original art, prints, products with my art on them. Luan, what do I do help me, I need ads. Where do we start?

Nikki

12:09
That’s a good scenario, I like it. I would say, get started before things get too busy. So if you want to grow your email list and sell things over the holidays, you want to get ads up and running as quickly as you can without like driving yourself crazy.

Nikki

12:53
Like two months ago?

Luan

12:56
We won’t say that. But…

Nikki

12:57
Okay. But say we’re starting now.

Luan

12:59
Yeah, if you’re starting now, I would try to get ads up and running as quickly as you can like, in a reasonable way. So that you’re building that email list so that you don’t have to run ads over that super expensive time. Because when you think about it, everyone is running ads over like Black Friday, Christmas, Boxing Day, I don’t know if that’s in America, it’s in Canada.

Nikki

13:23
It’s not, but we have listeners in Canada, too.

Luan

13:27
Yeah, the sale after Christmas, basically where everyone tries to get rid of all that Christmas stuff. So that’s a really expensive time to advertise. Because the advertising is all on a cost per bid. So you bid to get your spot on Instagram or Facebook. That’s going to go up if everyone in the world is advertising at the same time. So right now, October, there, there are no major holidays in October, aside from Canadian Thanksgiving, and that’s not really a time that companies tend to run, like special sales or anything. So right now, building an email list is like prime time, get that going. For a budget, I would say $10 a day is an awesome place to start, if you can afford that. If you can’t, then you can set I don’t know, 50 bucks for a week or whatever makes sense for you.

Nikki

14:19
So what period of time would you say if we were starting? If you’re saying okay, if I can spend $10 a day Should I just do that forever or for a period of time?

Luan

14:29
Um ongoing, honestly, you would probably get a lot of traction that way ,you wave to maintain the ads, make sure that they’re still converting and that people still like them. Otherwise it might be time to refresh the creative aspect. But yeah, ongoing campaigns for email marketing, like as the objective to get people to sign up to your email list actually they work really well.

Laura

14:50
So let’s stop and talk about converting, so when you say the word converting, you’re talking about somebody clicked on the ad and they joined your email list, right?

Luan

15:01
Yeah, it’s, I kind of use it as like an umbrella term for anyone doing an action that you can capture. So it might be like a conversion could be an email lead, or it could be a purchase, or it could be an add to cart. If you capture some information from that person, I can consider it a conversion.

Laura

15:21
And Facebook will tell you that like in the analytics, it’ll give you some information.

Luan

15:26
Yeah, yeah, it will, if you have your Facebook Pixel installed on your website, and you need to jump through a few hoops now, because of iOS 14. So you got to like verify your domain and set up these conversion events and all of this, it’s less intimidating than it sounds. After that’s all set up, it tracks pretty well, it’s not 100%, because some people have opted out of tracking with iOS 14. But that just means the numbers that Facebook is recording might be more than what it is. So that’s kind of nice to think about.

Nikki

15:58
Okay, so I decide I’m going to run some ads to try to get people on my email list, and I’m going to spend $10 a day. And let’s say, I’m going to try that for, I don’t know, two weeks to start just because I’m feeling timid. What do I offer? How do I know what kind of audience, because I know that you can target specific kinds of audiences. So how do I even know where to start with setting that all up.

Luan

16:28
Um, so what I would do when you create a campaign, for growing your email list, I would suggest a conversion campaign just because like I said, capturing the lead is considered a conversion. Some people might get confused, because there is an option to have a lead campaign versus a conversion campaign. The difference between the two is a lead campaign captures people’s information right on Facebook or Instagram, it doesn’t capture it on your website. So it’s not necessarily being tracked by the pixel the same way. And you can set up like a customized landing page. So that’s usually why I suggest to do a conversion, optimize for lead conversion event. And then in terms of the audience, you want to target the audience that is going to speak the same language that your emails are in. So what I would do is research what countries would make sense for that. So research what countries in the world that you would want to market to. So probably North America, a lot of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and then there’s some other places in the world, of course, that speak English. So capturing all of those, and then thinking about the details that you want people to embody in that audience. So it might be people that are interested in watercolor painting, it might be people that are interested in online classes, or engaged shoppers, or people that are interested in supporting small businesses and things like that. And you can put all of those into your detailed targeting, and then you begin to create your ads. So in the ads, you just need your written copy, and an image. And I usually usually suggest quite a few images, like 5 to 10 if you can, just to test what performs the best. And if you can have multiple pieces of written copy as well to test that too, it’s great, because then Facebook will put the budget towards what’s performing the best as opposed to putting the budget towards its only option sort of thing.

Laura

18:35
So when you say multiple photos, do you mean like a carousel or

Luan

18:39
That is an option. So the ad formats that you can do are just a static image, a carousel or video. Unfortunately, you can’t do like specific Reel type of promo videos yet, but you can do like a story creative version, which you can obviously put adspend behind. So when I say 5 to 10 images, I really mean like five to 10 static images or carousels or videos.

Nikki

19:09
So are you setting it up as if you’re setting up five different ads? Is that how that works? And they…

Luan

19:16
Yeah, all within the same campaign and the same audience?

Nikki

19:19
Okay.

Laura

19:20
So you can have a master campaign and then individual ads inside of the master campaign. I didn’t realize that.

Luan

19:26
Yeah, and it makes it a lot easier to because the less campaigns you have running, the lesson will be competing with each other so you’ll get more bang for your buck.

Laura

19:33
Okay, so I find it interesting though, like if you have a limited budget, like the example that we gave you and you have let’s say $10 a day to spend or less and you do an audience like of English speaking countries, you’re going to have like millions of people but you can only target like a, I don’t know 200 or 300 a day with that kind of money, I’m not sure what it is but and so is it ever better to narrow your target audience gets down to like a specific geographical region or something to test it out? Or do you think it’s better to go broad?

Luan

20:06
I think it’s better to go broad, I would say narrowing is good if you’re getting, you’re not getting the results that you want. So last year, I ran this campaign, and I set the audience to be worldwide, narrowed by the language being English, but all of the budget was eaten up by certain countries that are densely populated. So it wasn’t reaching certain regions. And that was really frustrating because the people in those densely populated areas weren’t converting the way we wanted them to. So in that sense, I think it’s important to narrow so if people aren’t, yeah, purchasing, if people aren’t signing up for your email list, then definitely consider removing the country or it might be like a vague, detailed targeting that you need to remove.

Nikki

20:52
Can you change your audience and narrow it down in the middle of a campaign that’s running? Can you go like, look at your numbers, see it’s not converting and say, Okay, I just want to keep the same thing going, but I wanna like, narrow it down to just North America, when before you had the whole world or something. Can you do that in the middle of a running campaign?

Luan

21:14
Yeah, you can, you can either edit the audience ad set itself, or you can duplicate it, make all the changes you want, and then publish a new ad set and toggle off the old one sort of thing?

Nikki

21:27
Is there any benefit to doing it one way or the other.

Luan

21:31
I’d say it’s easier to track results when you duplicate it, because then you know, what the differences between the targeting and the results coming in from right?

Nikki

21:39
Makes sense.

Luan

21:40
But the thing to keep in mind, if you do need to make adjustments mid campaign is that it will set everything into review again, so it might take a day or two for things to get up and running.

Laura

21:49
Oh, interesting.

Nikki

21:50
So it might be better to duplicate it, start a new one, and don’t turn the old one off until the new one starts running, like makes it through the review process.

Luan

22:00
I typically don’t do that, I usually toggle off the old one, if it’s not bringing in the results just because you don’t want to spend money towards something that’s not working. So just save those few bucks and toggle it off. And then let the other one start spending your money when it’s ready.

Nikki

22:14
That makes sense.

Laura

22:15
So I actually have an example, once I wanted to just test out ads myself just for kicks, and I took this watercolor, it was actually a little dachshund dog with a French beret that I had painted and my watercolor journal. And I thought it would just be interesting to boost the post and see, like, if I got any additional followers. It wasn’t to try to get anybody on email list, it wasn’t like being targeted and intentional. It was just, you know, seeing what would happen. And I targeted the audience as like women between the age of like 30 and 65, who were into watercolor, whatever. And like, all like everybody who liked my posts were like 15 year old boys and girls. So I don’t know…it was like, not the audience…and I was like, and I wonder if it’s because the content was this cute dog image that Facebook just decided to show it to a completely different audience that it thought would like it, but I was like, but then what’s the point of paying for an advertisement if you’re not hitting the right target? So I don’t know if that was just my unique experience, because I only like tested it out for a couple days once, but it was very strange to me. So I don’t know if you’ve ever had that happen with anything before.

Luan

23:23
That is so interesting. Um, I don’t think I’ve had that happen to me before but

Laura

23:28
It might be user error.

Luan

23:32
It could be Facebook being weird because Facebook is like super interesting that way. What I do know is you need to be I think it’s 13 years old to sign up for Facebook. And people sign up when they’re like eight years old saying they’re 13 so those 15 year old boys might have said they were 18 year old woman or like 30 year old women, so somehow they managed to fit within your target audience even or like it could be that their mom’s Facebook was linked to theirs or something like some sort of weird loophole.

Laura

24:11
Yeah, it could have been, that was just random, but I haven’t really seen where it’s been successful. I know some artists that I admire people like Tracy Verdugo. She has done some really broad campaigns to promote like classes that are probably between I would say 27 and 39 dollars or something like that. And she has had amazing results with Facebook ads and Instagram ads you know through that it, just having the right videos and testing and targets and I know she’s got somebody who works on that aspect for her. But I definitely can see the value of it if you know what you’re doing. That’s that’s the key phrase, if you know what you’re doing. So when you’re getting started, just getting started that can be really difficult.

Luan

24:56
Yeah, definitely. I definitely, yeah, it is key to know what you’re doing. Because you don’t want to spend money on something when you don’t really think there’s going to be any results from it. So if there’s ever any hesitancy just hold off, make sure you understand. And if you don’t understand, ask someone that does, or there’s so many forums, videos and like, resources to learn from just to make sure you’re doing the right thing. Yeah, do all that before you like spend all your money expecting people to purchase, like thousands of dollars worth of product or courses from you.

Laura

25:30
Well, and there are people I know who do ads, you know, like we said, $10 a day, or $50 a week, or even less than that in a week. And there are people that spend like $20,000 on ads, you know, when they’re doing a big product launch or something. And when I hear those numbers, it’s like, I catch my breath, and like gasp, but then you know, the results are like $350,000 of sales. So like, you can understand why you know why they spend that money, it’s just feels like a risk upfront. And that’s not where we’re at. And that’s not where our listeners are at, you know, we’re we’re on the lower end of the scale, right now. Um, but it’s interesting to see how it can work

Nikki

26:10
Well let’s, let’s talk a little bit more about figuring out the, the audience that you want to target. So, you know, we talked about this in terms of all kinds of things in our business, not just advertising, but like writing the copy on your website, you know, you need to know who your ideal customer is, so that you know you’re speaking to them. So to figure out who you want to target with your ads, do you want to do the same kind of thing? Do you want to maybe look at your like, I know, I can look at the analytics from who listens to our podcast and see that it’s mostly women ages this to this in these areas of the world… so would you target an audience that looks like the audience that you already have?

Luan

26:54
Yeah, I might confuse you with this one. But you can target look alikes on Facebook. So through Facebook ads is what I mean. So you can target people that have interacted with your website, Instagram, and Facebook, and also target people that look like the people who have interacted with your website, Instagram and Facebook. So it kind of takes away all the guesswork for you. And Facebook just kind of does its magic.

Laura

27:21
So is the pixel thing you talked about before, that thing you install on your website, that’s what can tell, hey, this person, this Facebook person went to your website?

Luan

27:30
Yeah, yeah. So the pixel is like, so crucial for anyone you want to target that has been on your website or has, or anyone that looks like anyone that’s been on your website. But if you don’t have a pixel on your website, or you don’t have a website, you can still target the people on Instagram and Facebook and people that look like them.

Nikki

27:49
Or you hire Nikki May to build your website for you and set that up.

Nikki

27:58
And then we’ll send them to Luan to set up their Facebook ads for them.

Laura

28:03
There you go.

Luan

28:04
There you go, Dream Team.

Laura

28:06
So the pixel is is free to install on your website, right? Because I think I have it on mine. Yeah, I don’t I don’t know if I did the iOS 14 stuff you were talking about. Like I think I’ve had mine for a while. So I don’t know if I need to go like update something on mine now.

Luan

28:20
It’s possible, you might want to go into Facebook business manager and see if there’s any like big red alert.

Laura

28:28
Good idea.

Nikki

28:29
Danger, danger.

Luan

28:30
It looks scary. But but the verifying your domain and it’s not as bad as it sounds, there was so much scary stuff coming out when iOS 14 came out, but it’s like it’s fine. Everything’s fine. We’re all still here. It’s not a pandemic, like it’s not another one.

Nikki

28:45
And they if there is something that you have to do they give you instructions on how to do it.Okay, I still want to know, and you probably can’t answer this. I’m not sure anybody can. Why do they call it a pixel?

Luan

29:00
I don’t think I’ve ever even asked that question. I have no idea.

Nikki

29:04
Beecause I design things in Photoshop. And that’s made up of pixels. And my cat’s name is Pixel. But I don’t know what that has to do with Facebook advertising.

Luan

29:17
I think the name pixel is like the furthest thing to do with advertising ever.

Laura

29:23
Well, maybe it’s just that one little pixel that’s tracking, you know, the overall big picture advertising stream.

Nikki

29:31
Like this smallest… it’s like an atom. It’s like breaking things down into its smallest parts. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Luan

29:39
I think we just debunked that. Yeah, I think we just figured it out.

Laura

29:42
Just if you haven’t figured it out by now we’re total geeks just so you know.

Nikki

29:48
And if we don’t know something, we’re just gonna make it up. All right, so we wanted to talk about, a little bit about the interpreting your results on your ads. So I know you can go look at the the analytics and it’ll tell you something like 2087 people saw your ad, but like, how do we know what’s good? Whether it was actually effective? You know, how do we interpret those results?

Luan

30:20
Yeah, that’s a good question. So the key things I look at when I’m interpreting results are the cost per conversion. So that might be capturing leads, or that might be purchases, might be view content, whatever that conversion is for you. And the cost per click, and there’s a cost per click, that’s all clicks. So that might be people clicking on your profile, or that might be people clicking on the button to go to your website. So cost per conversion, cost per click, and then cost per link click, are the things you want to look at. So reach and impressions are both super important, but you’re more concerned about the people that are actually doing stuff.

Laura

31:02
For the people that are interacting, when you say cost per click, what is a good range, if I’m looking at, okay, I invested this money, and I had this many clicks, what is a good cost per click results to have?

Luan

31:15
Think, if your offering isn’t restricted, or your audience isn’t restricted by region, so if you’re targeting like, nationwide sort of thing, like whole countries, a good cost per click I’d say is anything under $4. And anything under $2 is like you are hitting the sweet spot, you are doing excellent sort of thing.

Nikki

31:42
Okay. And what’s the difference if you’re targeting a smaller area or a smaller audience?

Luan

31:48
The difference is, so when you’re targeting a smaller, it’s usually region that is like the biggest restrictor for things. Let’s say you own an art store, like a static retail, like brick and mortar sort of art store. And you need to target people to come into your art store. So the people that you’re targeting, it’s going to be a lot less people that are interested in art in your small region than the whole country. So the cost of someone clicking on your ad to get more information to visit your store is less likely than if you had an online store and you were targeting the country to click on your website.

Nikki

32:28
So the cost, the cost per click would be higher.

Luan

32:32
Yeah, like around like under $10 for that, and that might be even a little high.

Laura

32:39
So let’s go back. I’m a finance girl, as many people know.

Nikki

32:43
And by girl, she means geek.

Laura

32:45
Yes, I am a geek. And so being in the finance world, I’m always sort of like looking at the number crunching side of things. Even though I know that’s not an important place to come from in business, we want to be passionate, we want to, we want to be drawing people based on our values and what we want to offer in the world. But if I’m looking at the numbers that you just quoted me, let’s say you have $10 a day in your budget, and you’re saying like, that’s $2 to get to my website, is that what that $2 is?

Luan

33:11
Yeah.

Laura

33:11
So not as not necessarily to my Instagram profile, or things like that. That’s for like clicking over to a website where they might actually put in an email address.

Luan

33:19
Yeah, exactly.

Laura

33:20
And so I might be getting like five people on my email list a day, let’s say. And maybe not all those people sign up on the list, but let’s pretend they do. So that’s like 35 people a week. So if I’m investing that money, and it’s $2 per click, my hope is that I’ll get that money back, and then some right in sales. So I’m kind of interested to know, when we talk about like, converting to sales, you know, you know, what makes it so important to invest in advertising, you know, is is that there’s some return on it later, is there like an average return to people usually make x times more than what they spent on the advertising back?

Luan

33:57
I am not 100% sure about the email marketing aspect just because I handle the Facebook advertising and then the conversions that come after when they’re on a list, I’m not 100% sure on what the return on investment would be. But what I would suggest is to define the value of a lead to you. So maybe you’re thinking, Okay, the value of this person to me is $2 or $5, or whatever. And let’s say you’re making $10 a month, so you’re getting two times your return on investment sort of thing. So that’s what I would suggest for that. But for like e-commerce, the return on investment, ideally is two times or more what you put into the ads, so taking into account like the time of year, how competitive things are, what your offer is, how big your audience is, and the price of your offer because that can really impact things. Like if you ever low cost offer typically your return on investment is much, much better. That’s kind of like the range of things. For me, it’s not really like a clear thing, unfortunately.

Laura

35:07
And in your experience when you look at ads that you’ve helped people create before, once you’ve created for yourself, is there a certain type of ad that does way better than the others like that you see tends to get more results on a regular basis?

Luan

35:21
Yes. Right now carousels are doing well. But I’m thinking that’s probably going to swap out for video soon. Because I think people show up really well in carousels, just in general, just because of like e-commerce people, like swiping through viewing products or learning things in carousel type images, especially if they’re only cohesive. So for all the designers out there, if they want to do like a beautiful carousel, that’ll probably perform very well. But yeah, Facebook and Instagram are really pushing video, as we all know, it’s like the introduction of Instagram reels and all of that.

Nikki

35:59
I’m sure that’s going to trickle down to ads performing better, too. But yeah, but I can, I can totally see why the carousel ones are because I actually like the carousel ads where, you know, as you swipe through, you can link directly to that product.

Luan

36:16
Yeah, it’s like more interactive. Yeah, you can do that if you set up a carousel ad to write, set it up so that each image links to a different product.

Luan

36:26
Yeah. Or it can even be like a different landing page or different. I don’t know a different page on your website, different blog posts, yeah, whatever, whatever you want.

Laura

36:34
Oh, that’s kind of cool. If you were like launching a collection of prints, and then you could have, like, each carousel could be a different print that people could click and link over to. And that would be kind of cool.

Luan

36:46
Yeah, that would probably perform really well.

Nikki

36:48
Maybe I’ll try that in the next week or so with all the T shirts that I’ve been doing.

Laura

36:53
Oh, yeah.

Nikki

36:54
Try linking to different different shirts in each one.

Laura

36:57
Yeah, for those that don’t know, Nikki right now is doing a challenge called like shirt tober or something,

Nikki

37:02
Shirtember.

Laura

37:03
Shirtember, we’re in September at the time of this recording. And so every day, she’s creating like a print on demand t shirt with her own designs on it, which is really cool. So that would be a really cool carousel to have.

Nikki

37:14
Yeah, I think I’m gonna give that a try. For sure.

Luan

37:18
Yeah. And the other thing I would suggest is when you do a carousel, or really any type of ad creative, is having a story version of that. So what I’ve noticed is carousels performed really well in feed. And then for stories videos are performing really well. And whether it’s you talking to your phone, I know, like, probably like, 90% of people hate doing that. So if you don’t want to do that, that’s fine.

Nikki

37:44
And we talk about how much we should do that, and don’t do that in almost every episode.

Laura

37:49
Yes, yes.

Luan

37:50
That’s so relatable.

Nikki

37:51
When you’re when you’re setting up a campaign, can you say, show this one in the feed show this version in the in the stories?

Luan

38:00
Yes, you can.

Nikki

38:02
Oh, that’s awesome.

Luan

38:03
It is, it’s a little bit confusing. Um, yeah. So if you can’t figure it out, don’t kick yourself too hard. If at the end of the day, if you do have like an…

Nikki

38:13
Call you?

Nikki

38:14
Yeah, or just like, call me and I’ll help you. You can have those like in-feed posts or ads ssk your story, I’m sure everyone has seen those Instagram stories.

Nikki

38:28
Cool. Cool.

Laura

38:29
So I know for some of the beginners to Facebook and Instagram ads, like myself and Nikki, you offer some done for you services or sort of DIY help. Can you tell us a little bit about those services that you offer? And how to know if we should hire you or someone like you or if we should just set up and run our own ads?

Luan

38:49
Yeah, that’s a great question, I actually created a couple email resources for people that are considering running Facebook ads.

Nikki

38:58
Which we will definitely link to in the show notes.

Luan

39:00
So one of them is DIY Your Facebook ads. So it kind of walks you through the general pros of running a Facebook ad campaign, and the general structure of it and some like prompts to get your, just the ideas flowing around your audience and your ad creative. And then I have another resource that’s Outsourcing Your Ads. It’s kind of a guide to gauge whether you’re ready, or what you should try before you go and hire someone and what you should look for when you hire someone. And in terms of my services. So if you get those resources and you want to try running your own ads, I offer Facebook ad audits. So that’s really great for people that don’t want to hand off their ads to someone else. So the audit, essentially I would go in and see how everything’s going, see how everything’s working and give you some tips on how to optimize your campaign. But if you’re ready to outsource your ads, I essentially do it all for you. So I would set up the campaign, I do offer to do the ad creative. But of course, if someone wants to do their own creative, typically it’s more on brand if you do it yourself. So that’s a pretty good option is to do it yourself. And then I would set up the campaign, monitor it and give you your results. And then the last thing I have is just consulting services. So that would be like it could be advertising, it could be, I don’t know, anything sort of marketing related that I’m able to help with for different companies, typically startups.

Nikki

40:35
Well, like say, I downloaded your, your DIY freebie. And I thought, Okay, well, I want to try to do this myself, but I’m a little scared. And I’m not ready to hire someone to do it for me, but I just want a little bit of help kind of figuring out my strategy. That’s the kind of thing that you can help with on a consulting basis?

Luan

40:56
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve actually had a call with a client where we, she did have some understanding of Facebook ads, but we set up the whole campaign within our pool. So yeah, like that’s definitely an option. It can be..

Nikki

41:08
So handholding is one of the services you offer?

Luan

41:11
Yes, yes it is. It says audit, but really, it’s just handholding.

Laura

41:19
I could use a little bit of that, I think

Nikki

41:21
Awesome. Awesome.

Laura

41:23
Um, so I did have another question for you. You know, for people who are just getting started, are there any, any things that they should watch out for that might trip them up in this process? Are there things that you’ve seen that you say up? You know what, you should really avoid that? Is there anything like that, that you can share with our audience?

Luan

41:40
Um, I think just the main thing would be not to rush it. Like, as you’re going through each step, if you don’t understand something, like, don’t be afraid to Google it, like don’t get mad at yourself. Just look it up. There’s so many resources, like I said, that can help you define things. So many people are confused about, like reach versus impressions. And what do all the different objectives mean? Like, what the heck is a cold audience? It’s okay to take your time, Google it, and then set everything up, make sure you feel good about it. And if you have a question about something, Google it or like, ask me or someone else, what it means. And then once you feel good about it, you can hit publish. But yeah, don’t put too much pressure on yourself to do it perfectly the first time. And if you’re super, super concerned about getting a return on investment your first time, then I do suggest consulting with the ad strategist just to make sure you’re spending your money in the right place.

Laura

42:40
Yeah, but what you’re saying is the most important thing is to just get started.

Luan

42:43
Yeah, essentially, get started and be nice to yourself, basically.

Nikki

42:48
Which is pretty much the advice we give on all topics. All right. And just one more thing. I mean, this kind of related to what to what Laura asked you about? What kind of advice do you wish that maybe you had when you first got started? Like, can you think of something that you would tell yourself when you were getting started?

Luan

43:10
Yeah, I think two things is, you’re never stuck in anything. And if something feels wrong, you can either get rid of it or pivot, like you are in control of your business, you are in control of what you do, who you interact with. And all of it is okay, at the end of the day. Just like stay calm. You’re in control. You’re not employed by anyone except yourself. And it’s okay to say no to stuff.

Nikki

43:41
Excellent. I just wanted to thank you so much for being here with us today, Luan. And we appreciate you sharing all of your knowledge about Facebook and Instagram ads, and I can’t wait to try some of these things.

Luan

43:53
Yeah, I’m excited for you to try them. Let me know how everything goes.

Nikki

43:56
Absolutely. I might call for one of those audit, I mean hand holding, I mean audit.

Luan

44:03
You can call it whatever you want.

Laura

44:08
Thank you so much for being here, this has always been a bit of a mystery to me. So it’s always good to, to learn a little bit more and unravel that mystery and know that it’s doesn’t have to be as intimidating and it’s just great to get started and test things out. And you know, and do it on whatever budget you have at the time. So…

Luan

44:27
Thank you, thank you so much for having me.

Laura

44:30
For today’s Startist Society, show notes and links to all things Luan, go to startistsociety.com/luanjardine.

Nikki

44:40
And if you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, we’d love for you to leave us a five star rating and review reviews help us reach more Startists like you and keep us inspired to continue creating new episodes.

Laura

44:50
Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.