Take a pot full of magic. Add a pinch of business, a dash of marketing, and you get the nourishing and highly addictive magician business podcast. Here’s your host, Ken Kelly and Julian Mayfair,

Ken:

A very warm welcome to episode. Number six of the magician business podcast. This is Ken Kelly gratefully speaking to you from the United Kingdom today.

Julian:

And it’s truly in mighta here coming to you, very sheepishly from Australia. And I say sheepishly because we were doing a podcast record only a couple of days ago and my whole sound system on my side failed and in the wonderful world of modern technology, I couldn’t even come to using the chat to tell people that the other Ken and the guests, even though they couldn’t hear me and they knew something was wrong, uh, that are resorted to actually writing things on bits of paper and holding them up to the webcam. So, you know, you know, you’ve got the technological experts here bringing you this podcast.

Ken:

It was comical and we’re pioneering here. Julian, we’ve got to be saying that we’re bringing this information to performing artists to Mugisha. So we’re using all the new technology and Hey, we, we are susceptible to the gremlins that creep in just like anybody else

Julian:

Today. We’re going to be talking to Brian Fulton from bullet point branding and Brian is an expert on Facebook ads and someone might be thinking, well, Hey, it wasn’t that long ago. You brought us an episode back in episode four about AdSense pay-per-click ad words. Yep. And that may seem a bit similar, but the reason is, uh, that they actually work hand in hand together because they’re both examples of what is called direct response advertising. And if you don’t know what direct response advertising is, let’s talk about what it’s not it’s, it’s near cousin, which is image advertising, and that’s something you all know, you might not know what it’s called, but you know, when you see an ad on TV, via chocolate bar, you see a big billboard up there for your favorite soft drink, that image advertising and big companies spend a lot of money on this end. The advertising agencies love using it. They absolutely love doing it because they can’t be held responsible if it doesn’t

Brian:

Work. Yeah. And I guess as performing artists, magicians entertainers, we have limited budgets. And it’s just so important that it’s used wisely, that it’s targeted advertising. We can’t afford to do these mass media massive billboards where you need literally hundreds of thousands of people to see it to, to, to get a measurable response. Cause we don’t have those kinds of budgets. We’ve got to get bang for our buck. And we’ve got to put our adverts in front of the people that are likely to book our services.

Julian:

So a pay-per-click ad or an ad sense ad is this a direct response ad? And you know them because they’ve got a headline or they generally will create some sort of interest, uh, they’ve got a specific offer and they’ve normally got a deadline. And so the short ads that we actually make up for doing your ad sense ads or these Facebook ads are direct ads. But the great thing is, is that you can measure them, you know, uh, who’s clicked them, whether they’ve clicked through and you can get your return on investment from it. And if it doesn’t work, you change and you go somewhere else. So they’re really suited to independent entertainers like ourselves. And that’s one of the things that Brian Forton is going to be talking about, even though he’s a specialist in Facebook ads and will take us right the way through the process. He says, if you’re not comfortable with Facebook ads, but you’re comfortable with ad sense ads, use them. The thing is try them both find out what you’re comfortable with. Then don’t spread yourself thin focus on one of them that works for you and get the results from that. Well,

Ken:

Julian, I know that this is exciting for me because I don’t use Facebook advertising. So I’m really looking forward to today’s episode. And of course that’s Brian Fulton, Facebook advertising.

Julian:

Well, I’m here with Brian Fulton and Brian is a, has a wonderful mix of being a performer, a juggler, a Stuart Walker, a hat juggler, and a whole heap of other things, but he’s also an expert in Facebook advertising. And uh, welcome Brian.

Bryan:

Hey, thanks. Great to be here, Julian.

Julian:

Yeah. Now, Brian, uh, just paint a little bit of a picture of yourself of your, uh, that your mix of performing and, uh, running your own marketing comp company, uh, with Facebook heads. Just tell us how that sort of come about.

Bryan:

Okay. Yeah, no problem. Um, back in 1996, I was a clown with Ringling brothers circus. That’s kind of where I got my professional start in the show business and, uh, did that for about six years, uh, traveled the country, traveled the world, uh, ended up in Las Vegas, began booking, you know, trade shows and, um, different corporate events, special events, casino shows, and things of that nature. Um, did that for a few years and then moved to Myrtle beach, South Carolina and the work wasn’t nearly as plentiful as it was in Las Vegas. So we had to kind of go out and get the work, uh, which, uh, we went through a variety of different marketing tactics until we figured out something that worked. And it was right around the time when digital marketing, uh, and social media marketing started to really take a foothold. Uh, so we were able to leverage a lot of those techniques to, um, get, just increase the brand awareness and increase, um, people’s knowledge of, of what we can do and, and why they should book us.

Bryan:

Um, so from there, uh, I started to really enjoy a lot of the, you know, the ease of using digital marketing and, you know, contacting people through Facebook and being able to promote through YouTube channels and stuff like that. So I really decided to dive into it, um, and started a spinoff company from the agency that we had called a bullet point branding. Um, and then we kind of specialized in everything from brand awareness, uh, email marketing campaigns, a lot of the stuff that’s kind of takes up a lot of time, all the way through Facebook advertising, um, doing your posts for you on Facebook, doing your posts for you on Twitter. Um, and it just was really time-consuming. So I decided to kind of streamline everything and just focus on Facebook ads because Facebook ads seem to be the way to kind of touch everybody, get the exposure that you need. And it takes up a lot less of your time to just focus on one thing than it does to try to do everything and be everything to everybody.

Julian:

So you’ve, you’ve, you’ve been there as a, somebody who’s basically worked for an employer with Ringling brothers circus. Uh, and you know, I say you’ve, you’ve had the work provided for you and now your a, uh, you know, a solo performer and you need to book your own bookings. So you’re saying that, and you’ve also run a marketing company using different forms of marketing. So you’ve now focused and settled on Facebook ads as being probably the easiest way. That’s what you were saying, the easiest and most effective way for you to get bookings for yourself.

Bryan:

Yeah. That’s where I like to concentrate a lot of my energy because, um, it’s one process. Um, we’ll talk about it in a little bit, but, but pretty much you set your ads, you get your targeting down and then the ads run ads, do the work for you when you kind of sit back and then you can, you can tweak and edit as you see things happening. But for the most part, the ads run and they do their job. They generate leads, you know, and you follow up with the leads. So it’s, it’s very automated once, once the process starts, it’s very automated. So that’s what I love about it. Doesn’t take up a lot of your time. Uh, and everybody knows, you know, with the billion billion people that are on Facebook, that, you know, there’s a lot of people out there on Facebook that are using it daily and, uh, agents, producers, and clients everybody’s out there. And so they’re, they’re all right there for you to capture their attention.

Julian:

So let’s go back and we’re going to go up more to the 30,000 foot level here and have a look down is, is why should people advertise in the first place? Because a lot of people don’t like handing over money for advertising. Why should they do that?

Bryan:

It’s true. I mean, a lot of people that, you know, it, it kind of, it kind of boggles my mind. I asked myself that a lot, but I asked the opposite question and why wouldn’t people do it? I, I would spend, you know, a hundred dollars in Facebook ads and book a $5,000 show from it. I mean, that’s, that seems like a no brainer to me. And that’s what can happen. You can, you can generate serious, uh, not just, not just bookings, but you know, leads, you can build your email list. And, and, uh, as we’re finding out in this age, you know, the size of your email list is extremely proportionate to the amount of money that you have potentially sitting, just waiting for you to tap into. So, uh, anybody that’s really serious about their performing business or any business, um, they have a service to offer. They need to be advertising because people don’t know where to find them.

Julian:

Yeah. So who should use Facebook advertising?

Bryan:

I honestly think that anybody that has a service that they’re going to sell, that’s serious about their business, people that are just kind of dabbling, you know, doing things on the side, you got to really ask yourself if you’re going to invest some money, because it’s not, it’s not a free service. You know, you definitely have to do some homework. You have to put a little bit of money up front. It’s not super expensive, but it does take some money. And if you’re serious about your business, if you’re serious about getting your name out there and you’re serious about, um, getting more work, getting more leads, uh, increasing your, your gross revenue for the year. I mean, you have to do something to do that. And I think Facebook ads are a great place to start. Um, they’re not super expensive, but they can generate a huge return on investment.

Julian:

You mentioned before, uh, doing $5,000 corporate shows, but is Facebook advertising, sorry, is Facebook advertising just for people who do $5,000 corporate shows, or can you be doing a $350 birthday party

Bryan:

And use it? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely not. You can, you can do it. I was just kind of giving an example, but you can, you can mark it to exactly who you want to market to. So that’s the, that’s the beauty of it. The targeting opportunities for Facebook are, are endless. Um, so if, if you feel like you just want to do, you know, birthday parties and you’re, you’re in a little bit lower range than a corporate event, you know, 350 to $500 birthday party. There’s plenty of moms and dads out there that are looking for entertainment for their kids’ birthdays. Um, there’s plenty of festivals, uh, and fairs out there looking for entertainment for their festivals and fairs. So in every, um, price group, there are people looking for your services. So, uh, that the key is just being able to find the right targeting and set your bidding so that you’re not overspending and, you know, being able to, to reach those customers.

Julian:

Now, I guess probably the biggest competitor to Facebook ads and maybe other people are more familiar with it is Google ad words. Uh, can you give a comparison between ad words and Facebook ads?

Bryan:

Absolutely. I mean, first off they’re, they’re both extremely effective, uh, both ways. The only thing that I would say about Facebook ads are, uh, you have, you have not nearly as much competition in that. And I say that in a way is that you definitely have competition in both aspects, but on Google, your, the way that their pay structure is set up is that you’re bidding for the same words. As you know, David Copperfield, you know, or, or Lance Burton, or some of the biggest people in the industry, um, on Google, you have to go up against them. And if they have a hundred thousand dollars to spend, you know, to get, to get their ad seen to be the top and be number one on Google, then, then you’re never going to touch them. You’re going to need a serious bank role to get started on Google, to even compete Facebook kind of levels the playing field.

Bryan:

So with Facebook, uh, the targeting opportunities you have, you can spend, you know, a few dollars, you could spend $5, $10 day, and you can target so specifically that you can get your ad seen basically in front of if that person has a Facebook page, or if they, if, if you have, um, just a page or a profile, you can market to one specific profile. So, so if you wanted to get into, you know, in front of an agent, you could get right in front of them and run ads to them all day long, and they’ll be able to see them

Julian:

One thing before we go on, and this is a question a lot of people are going to ask is that there’s, uh, quite a bit of negative press out there towards Facebook ads. And there’s been some high ranking, uh, YouTube videos, uh, from, uh, you know, saying that Facebook ads are being manipulated by Facebook. Can you just talk to that?

Bryan:

Absolutely. Um, and, and, you know, it is, it is a reality that, um, Facebook is a business. Uh, first and foremost, they’re, they’re there to make money. Um, so a lot of people need to realize that, um, a lot of the fine print in Facebook, uh, people don’t read the terms of services and, and, and they’re constantly updating their, their news feeds and their, and their, and the way that everything is kind of displayed. Uh, Facebook wants you to run ads. They, they wanna make money off of you. That’s, that’s the bottom line, but the service they provide and the way that they enable you to get in front of your target audience, I feel is extremely valuable. So it’s worth it to me to, to think that, you know, okay, they might be doing a little bit of kind of crazy things on the backend that not everybody is going to understand, but I know just from using it, that Facebook ads work and I trust in the system that they’ll continue to work.

Bryan:

So there’s been a lot of talk about the click farms, uh, and, and about, you know, the offshore people that pay for the likes and stuff. And unfortunately, it’s, it’s a reality that we have to kind of accept, but, um, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Facebook is driving, you know, the ad costs up and they just want you to spend money and there’s no return. Um, what it means is you’re going to have to get very specific with your targeting, um, and with your, with your goals. So, uh, when you, when you’re able to do that, and you’re able to kind of write that down on paper and really put it, put it into a plan rather than just try to get a, like on a page, um, when you’re really targeting a that’s where Facebook ads, uh, come through in a clutch for you,

Julian:

Between your performing schedule, uh, you run your Facebook advertising company. Uh, you were saying you have about five to 15 clients a month. Do you have any examples or case studies you can share with us how that works for those people?

Bryan:

A lot of speakers and a lot of business coaches, you know, are very successful with, with the lead capture programs, uh, through Facebook ads. And, uh, I use Facebook ads for myself and performing, um, you know, I, I have at least three ads running at all times. I have them going out to agents and producers, and then I’ll have them go on out to, uh, some fairs and festivals that the people that run and book for them. And then I have some, some local ads going to, to people that, you know, are looking for birthday entertainment, or, you know, a family reunion entertainment, something of that sort. So it’s, it’s constantly rotating and updating your ads and fresh adding them up. So people don’t see the same ads and it gets stale, uh, is a good tactic. We use to kind of make sure people are seeing good ads.

Julian:

So, and on your own personal experience here, Brian, uh, you were telling me before, can you just tell me the numbers again, uh, how that’s improved your bookings?

Bryan:

Oh, absolutely. Um, before I really got serious about Facebook ads, I would book anywhere from 70 to 80 shows through for the whole year. And that would include, um, during our peak season where I would, you know, work outdoor street shows a lot and, and everything like that without really using Facebook for what, you know, more than just kind of posting, Hey, check out this video that came from the show today. But when I started doing actually Facebook ads and started targeting to the end clients and to agents and producers, and to, you know, festival unfair organizers and stuff like that, uh, meeting planners and, and, and things of that sort, uh, my bookings, I would say almost doubled, we’ve gone from 70 to 80 a year to about 125 to 150 a year. So it’s been extremely effective for me. And it’s all about just getting the word out. People, not necessarily knowing, you know, who I am before, because, you know, they just know they want a juggler or something, or they just know they want a comedian. And it was about me putting my image and my brand in front of them over and over and over again. And they’re like, oh, this, you know, I keep seeing this ad, let me check this guy, you know, might be, might be worth checking out. So it’s all about creating that brand awareness and Facebook ads are extremely effective for that.

Julian:

And what percentage? So you’ve doubled your, your, your bookings, but what percentage of your income, I mean, how much are you paying? You don’t have to tell us exact figures, but I mean, what percentage of your income are you paying to place these Facebook ads?

Bryan:

Uh, it’s, it’s relatively small still. I don’t set huge ad budgets. I, I probably run ads in the $500 a month range. Um, and that, like I said, that targets at least three different demographics at all times. Um, and I, and I switched them up. I’ll play with them. Uh, if I know that I’m going to be like, if I’m going to have a show in Vegas or something like that, uh, about a month that I’ll switch to maybe start targeting some of the, uh, the agents and producers and, and, uh, you know, production people out in Vegas. So, you know, I I’ll switch it around throughout the year, uh, based upon where I’m going to be. But for the most part, I spend about $500 just on the ads themselves. And, um, that helps me generate, you know, just this year it’s helped me generate at least another $50,000.

Julian:

Well, that’s, um, yeah, that’s pretty impressive because I’m just trying to go through the figures in my head here. So, I mean, obviously if you’re doing corporate bookings for a few thousand dollars, it’s, uh, you know, you’ve made your money back anyway. Uh, even if you were doing, uh, birthday parties for three 50 to $500, uh, you only have to get one booking, uh, to pay for that. And then of course, yeah. And, and, uh, it’s a reality that you can get. I mean, if you’re down at the, you know, the birthday party in there that you could get more than one booking with that.

Bryan:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And, and it also has to do with, um, you have to be creative too. You can’t just put a picture of yourself up and be like, book me, you know, you have to get creative. And that’s where, you know, that’s where I’ve had a lot of, um, time to kind of hone my skills, crafting not just the targeting, but the, actually the, the ad itself. So, um, you have to make sure that you’re, you’re carrying on a conversation with somebody when somebody sees your ad, um, that when they click through you pick up on that conversation, you just don’t take them to a homepage and say, okay, book me, you know, you have to continue the conversation. And that’s where a lot of people kind of get caught up and don’t, don’t get the proper return on investment because they just send them to a homepage or they just send them to something else.

Bryan:

If I’m going to send them a very specific goals in mind for each ad, and you kind of have to work your way backwards, you have to, you have to, um, find out what your goal is going to be. And then you have to find out how you’re going to track that goal. And then you’re gonna have to find out when you get that information, what are you going to do with that data? So what, how’s it going to help you? Is it going to be, you’re going to build your email lists with it, and then you’re going to, you know, market that email list for something bigger, or are you just going to send them right to a, um, a subdomain of your website that’s specifically for festivals and fairs and, and it has your festivals and fairs video, you know, and shows them everything they need to book you right then. Um, so it’s a process that you really have to think through each ad. And that’s what we help people do. I send out, um, a whole, whole packet of information, cause I really want you to be as detailed as possible. Cause I want it, I want you to get results. I don’t want to just, you know, take money and say, okay, you’ve got a Facebook ad because really any, any train monkey can do that. And, um, what we want to do is make sure that it’s effective for you.

Julian:

Uh, can you, uh, share with the magician business audience, uh, some of the steps that you have to take, take us through the process and we’ve a bit of that Brian Fulton magic in there.

Bryan:

Sure. Yeah. Um, it, it, it really just depends on how comfortable you are with doing a Facebook ad, but, uh, if you just want to do the basic, the basic Facebook ads, everybody has the ability to do it. You set your, you set your credit card up to it and, and, um, you know, there’s a settings for that, but basically you go to facebook.com/ads, backslash. I believe it’s manager. Um, I have it saved in my, my cash. I don’t even really type it in anymore. Um, and you’ll go through the whole list that they have, uh, targeting options. They have, um, demographic options. Um, you need to gather a bunch of information before you even sit down and do your first, your first Facebook ad. You’re going to need, um, the exact URL that you’re going to want people to click through, to go to, you’re going to need an image that is, um, sized in the Facebook size standards, um,

Julian:

Which is what Brian, what’s that song. There’s,

Bryan:

There’s several different types. There’s the newsfeed ads, um, which off the top of my head, I think are like 12, 1200 pixels by 600 pixels there, roughly. And then there’s the, uh, the ads on the side, the banner ads on the side, which are the smaller ones. Um, and those ads are a little bit smaller. So I would say about two 50 by two 50 and there’s programs that you can actually go into and, and size them correctly. Um, there’s a program, that’s a freeware program that I use quite often, uh, that does all that hard technical work for you, that all the pixels and everything like that, that I just generally don’t like to mess with. It’s called canva.com. Sorry, can you just, can you just spell that out? [inaudible] C a N V a.com. And if you go on there, you can choose it’s, it’s super easy to use everything is, is kind of drag and drop, uh, upload your images from if you have them stored on your computer. Um, they have several different templates, right, right. On the homepage, you know, that you can, you can use it. Can you do like Facebook header ads? Uh, I’m sorry. Are your, like your Facebook timeline for your actual like pro private profile and pages and stuff like that? Um, or, you know, you scroll along the side, it’ll take you to says Facebook ad and it’s already sized out for you. All you have to do is upload a picture and start going from, and

Julian:

Just while we’re talking about pictures is, I mean, Facebook ads, because it does have pictures. Images are very important. That’s my understanding of Facebook ads.

Bryan:

Oh, absolutely. Cause you want to be able to grab your, grab your prospective client. You want to be able to stand out in your newsfeed. There’s a lot going on in people’s newsfeeds and you want to be able to stand out. Uh, so there’s a lot of tricks, um, to kind of get people’s attention. You want to make sure the image is clean. Um, you know, that when you say clean, what do you mean clean? Uh, just, just crisp. It’s not, not all pixelated. Um, it’s not, you know, kind of distorted in any way, shape or form. Um, you want to make sure that th th th that the sizing is right and you want to make sure Facebook only allows you, uh, which a lot of people don’t realize. They only allow you to have 20% of your, of your picture to be text.

Bryan:

Um, you definitely want to have text on there because that, that indicates a clear call to action. Uh, you definitely want to have like a, if you’re giving them a free report on the top 10, uh, easiest magic tricks to learn, uh, you definitely want to include on your picture somewhere, you know, free report so that people know exactly what they’re, what they’re going to get. You want to be as clear as possible. Um, but you can only use 20% of your image for that. So you can’t make it all texts, which is a lot of people. A lot of people don’t know that Brian, how do they monitor that? Um, w when, when you upload the image and, uh, you have to wait for it to get approved, uh, some, some ads take a couple minutes. And the more ads that you, that you do for people or that you do for yourself, it seems like that the faster the process is for them to approve it.

Bryan:

Um, but that can take up to a couple hours or even a day for your ads to get approved. Initially, especially if you’re, it’s like your first couple of times running ads expect to be, you know, a little bit, it’s expect for it to take a little longer, because Facebook has to go through a process. And when you upload it, they they’re, they’re monkeys behind the scene. They do all that, and they make sure they check and they have, they have a tool actually on Facebook called the power editor though. And they have, I don’t have the exact URL in front of me, but I can get that to you where it’s, it’s a, um, it’s a tool where you can check it’s a grid and you just kind of like click in the, into the grid, wherever there’s text on your picture. And it’ll, it’ll actually tell you if you need to reduce the amount of texts that’s on there, or if it’s fine, if it’ll pass.

Julian:

Right. Okay. So, so there is an approval process that you have to go through this, isn’t just pay your money and do it. Right. Right. Okay. Uh, so yeah,

Bryan:

There are some like terms of service that you have to, you know, like, like Facebook, doesn’t like people to advertise weapons, uh, knives and guns, and then that sort of things. Uh, so you have to make sure you read the terms of service and you’re not violating any of that,

Julian:

Which is why I asked you before, uh, to explain what you meant by a clean image, because I was wondering whether that meant cleaners in non-sexual, because I certainly see many large breasted women on the right-hand side of my Facebook screen all the time.

Bryan:

Yeah. Well, actually, you know, um, Facebook is a little bit easier on that than Google is, but, uh, they definitely, like, they don’t like to have knives and guns and images, and of course, uh, nothing, nothing with the explicit, explicit images or anything like that, that, that stuff will definitely get, uh, unapproved very quickly. Yeah. So

Julian:

With the pictures, uh, can you give us some, uh, do you have any rules of thumb, which you put images are powerful images, which attract attention? Do you have any rules of thumb that you use for selecting those?

Bryan:

Um, w well, I, I like, of course, you know, I use everything I go through Shutterstock and make sure you have the appropriate, um,

Julian:

Rights to use them. You up there from Shutterstock is what

Bryan:

Shutterstock is a, um, online. Um, it’s, it’s, it’s an online software that you can get the rights and you basically rent the rights to a ton of photos. You, you sign up for one of their programs, um, and you’re allowed to download X amount of, uh, of pictures per day. Um, and it gives you, it gives you like the royalties. So you’re renting orientees to use these pictures in your head. You don’t want to go to like a Google image search and just start pulling pictures off the internet, because you don’t know, you’ll get into like privacy issues and you’ll get into, uh, rights issues that when you, when you do that, used to be on a safe side, you want to make sure that you’re doing it. And if you, if you go through a program like Shutterstock, where it’s like an image hosting company, um, then you you’ll be a lot safer.

Julian:

And do you mention Shutterstock because in your personal experience, you found that a really good resource

Bryan:

It is, and they have, they have a, a pretty reasonable, um, they have a pretty reasonable package. I think I pay like $35 a month. Um, and I get like 25 downloads a day. Um, and, and I don’t know what all their packages are, but they’re, they’re very reasonable. And, uh, if you’re going to be running a lot of ads, then it’s definitely, and, but if you have, if you have your own ads as well, if you have your own pictures that you know of, of your show and everything like that, feel free to use them. If they’re of good quality, definitely, you know, use them the more you can put your face and your, your image into an ad and associate your brand with that, you know, people are going to be able to see you and recognize you. That’s great. But if you’re, you’re doing like, I do a lot of different ads for general, just general ads for people that, so not all the time they’re going to have their face in the ad, so I’ll have to go and do some stock images.

Julian:

So, okay. Now back to the images that actually sell and get attention, can you give us some examples?

Bryan:

Oh yeah. A good rule of thumb. Um, one of the kind of ninja tricks that, uh, I’ve found to be very beneficial is that you have to kind of plan like Facebook has a lot of blue and white going on in the newsfeed. There’s a lot of blue and white. So what I like to do is I like to use the complimentary colors to blue, like oranges and reds, and it seemed to pop out more. Um, so whether it’s through text or whether it’s, you know, in a background image, a lot of orange and a lot of red, um, to kind of grab people’s attention, cause it’s such a, such a contrast to the blue. That’s definitely a cool tactic that, that people don’t really realize.

Julian:

And are they, uh, do do faces, uh, is there anything like, you know, devices, cell, uh,

Bryan:

Uh, the face faces are good. I mean, if people can kind of recognize you, of course, if you have a famous face, it definitely is going to sell. But, um, uh, it depends if, if you’re kind of niching down your ad and you really want to, um, kind of focus on a demographic that will know you, or maybe like a local scene or something like that, where, where you have a little bit of clout, um, your face will probably do well. Um, but, but faces in general, if you’re just talking about faces in ads, I mean, they, they do pretty well, especially if they’re like a funny face, people are making a funny face or something like that. They do pretty well.

Julian:

Okay. Let me come in for that. Let, let me come at this from another way, uh, what images don’t work for magicians.

Bryan:

Hmm. Um, I think any image that has a lot going on, like if you had a shot of like, you’re doing a show and you had a bunch of props and there was a, there was a lot going on in the picture, um, you probably would want to stay away from that. I think maybe if you had a closeup, maybe a three-quarter, uh, where people could see you doing a trick and it’s not very busy, maybe it’s, uh, against, uh, you know, uh, a lighter background or a solid background. Uh, you don’t want too much going on. Cause like I said, you only have about 20% of the, of the picture that you can put text in and you definitely want to use that. So if you have texts and you have a bunch of busy stuff going on in the background, then it’s kind of, it’s going to get kind of cluttered.

Julian:

Uh, magician seemed to have, uh, want to put playing cards in, in images like the quintessential image of a magician is a applying card. What do you say to that?

Bryan:

Uh, I think player card, you know, they, they have, uh, it, it just all goes down to like, like how clean it can be if it’s a clean ad and, and the playing card is, you know, there’s a good picture of it. If it’s a good stock image of it. Um, and there’s, you can definitely, there’s a clear call to action. I say, go for it. I mean, it wouldn’t, you’d have to test it. That’s one of the things that that’s good about Facebook, as well as that you can test multiple ads, you can write the same copy for them and just use different images and you can see which one performs better. And after maybe a day or two of collecting data and seeing if they get clicks, if they get, uh, conversions, um, which is to say, uh, people do exactly what you want them to do.

Bryan:

If you have them, you know, going to a website and then filling out, uh, their email, uh, that’s called a conversion. If these things are happening for you, then you definitely want to let that, that, that ad keep running. But if you find that it’s getting a lot of clicks or it’s not getting any clicks or, um, people are, are kind of like they’re looking at it, but they’re not really doing anything, what you want to do. You kind of, you want to pause that ad because obviously something’s wrong in there and you need to go in and you need to adjust it.

Julian:

Uh, now I ha I hijacked your train of thought there before about the process. And we spent a lot of time on, on images, which are, which I think is important. And it sounds like it is important. Uh, so what’s, what’s, what’s the next step.

Bryan:

Um, okay. So yeah. So once you have your image and you’re satisfied, uh, you have it created, uh, whether you use that free service or not, you have your, the URL that you want to take them to, whether it’s, uh, a specific page on your website that, that picks up the conversation, or whether it’s a lead capture page that asks for an email and exchange for a freebie, um, you need to find that URL and then you need to start writing the copy and the copy. You only have about 90 characters that they’re going to show, um, in the, in the ad, um, for, for a newsfeed ad. So you need to be to the point, but you also need to, to, to be able to sell a little bit and you need to get, get their attention. So, um, where it’s like free download or, or, um, click now, things, things of that nature.

Bryan:

You definitely want to Institute those because you want to give them a clear call to action, but you also want to describe as best as you can in the shortest amount of words that you can, what exactly you want them to do. So you have to direct them. Um, people are going to see your ad, and if they don’t know what to do, they’re not going to click on it. So if they just say, oh, that’s an ad of somebody doing a magic trick. That’s cool. But if it’s like, um, click here to find out, uh, to, to find out how, I mean, I know a lot of people don’t expose the secrets, but if you have like a click here to find out how you can use this in your next, you know, birthday party or something like that, or click here to see, uh, the end result of what happens to the bunny or something like that, you have to be kind of clever with the wording and then get, give them a reason to click. Um, and then pick up the conversation.

Julian:

If the person who wants to get a booking, that’s the, the end result that they want, what sort of calls to action would they put,

Bryan:

Uh, to get a booking? That’s I mean, that’s, that’s really, uh, what, what kind of relationship they’re going to have with somebody you don’t want to just take, like Facebook traffic is called cold traffic, because it’s, it’s from people that don’t really know you, uh, they just kind of see an ad and they’re like, oh, this is interesting. So you want to kind of develop a little bit of a rapport with them, a little bit of a relationship. You want to kind of build a little bit of a relationship with them. So I wouldn’t suggest saying click here to book me now and take them right to a booking page. I would, I would give them a little bit of a nurture, uh, somewhere in there, like maybe a testimonial is kind of something to take the risk out of some sh show them a little value.

Bryan:

So wherever you take them, you know, may maybe another step process, you know, give them that, give them a page to download a testimonial of a show that you’ve done. And then, you know, maybe a day later, follow up with an email of, you know, if you’ve liked what you read, blah, blah, blah, let’s continue the conversation. Um, I, I don’t ever encourage anybody to just, okay, click here to book now. I mean, sometimes you can do that if, if it is a smaller gig and people are kind of like, oh, I’m looking for birthday party stuff, and this is perfect, you know, that that could kind of work for you, but you always want to kind of add a little bit more value and, and, and give a little bit of a nurture.

Julian:

Yeah. It’s, uh, I don’t want to take this into the big, broader discussion, but it’s always worth reminding people that, uh, you know, marketing is not an event, it’s a process. And, uh, and I, and I used to make that mistake all the time when I started, it was, you know, if I put something out there, I would cram everything on the one page and it becomes very confusing for people. Uh, but what I would like you to talk about just a little bit more, as you were saying that you, you have to choose an exact U R L can you just talk a little bit more about creating that conversation as an, a lot of people would think that you would, uh, create a Facebook ad that would take them to their home page of their website, which is not necessarily the case

Bryan:

That’s yeah. I mean, that, that is one that is one way that you can, that you can go about, um, promoting brand awareness. If, if that was one of your goals, to just get the word out that you’re a magician and that, you know, you have this amazing show, um, you, you could definitely go that route and it could be effective. Uh, although that’s not going to convert into bookings necessarily very quickly. Um, what it is going to do is it’s going to increase your brand awareness. It’s going to increase the, the, the knowledge that people have of you, which is very effective. So I definitely would recommend doing that sort of campaign in addition to, um, something that’s going to, that’s going to nurture them a little bit because you want it, what they have is I forget what the, what the actual number is, but I think somebody has to see your ad seven to 10 times before they even think about like correlating you with them being a magician.

Bryan:

They have to see you over and over and over again. So that’s an effective strategy, but in order to get people to pick up on the conversation, um, you got to have that dialogue with them. You gotta have, you gotta, you know, bring them in slowly, uh, the URL that you take them to, you have to make sure that that has the conversation. You have to continue the conversation on that page. So I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t necessarily make it a homepage. I would make a separate page on your website. Um, or if you have, you know, you can go to Google and you can do like little mini websites for free. They go to ed, Google sites, uh, dot com, or it’s a sub-domain of Google, I think. Um, but you can create little mini websites and, and do them specifically for each ad. If you wanted to take them there and continue the conversation and have everything they would need, their testimonials have a video, it continue that conversation. And just don’t scream. Book me book, we book me, but really, you know, get involved, have a, have a phone number, let’s have a chat, um, and let’s find out what exactly your needs are. And if I’m not the right person, you know, maybe I know Joe down the street who is doing that and I can refer you. And then you build rapport, you build that trust with them, uh, and they might not book right away, but then they’re going to remember you helped them out and you’re gonna, you’re gonna establish that relationship.

Julian:

So a lot of magicians will, uh, they there’ll be Jack of all trades in a sense. So they might say that I do trade shows and I do corporate events, uh, or you might be, uh, uh, uh, do birthday parties and, uh, school fairs. And so, you know, you’ve got a number of things on your website, which isn’t necessarily the best way to go, but it’s very common with magicians. So if they’re creating a Facebook ad, is it best for them to target one specific area so that they’re doing birthday parties, that they create a page on their website, which is specifically about birthday parties and they make an ad for that page.

Bryan:

Absolutely. That’s going to be, that’s going to be their best bet. Um, and if you have, if you just have a section on your website, that’s devoted to that, you can send them if it has a separate URL or like a sub page, um, definitely send them to that. You want it to be as specific to the ad as possible, because if you’re targeting a birthday party crowd and moms and dads and family reunions and that side, um, and you take them to an ad that lands on a trade show page, it’s going to completely distort, uh, what, what people were searching for, what intrigued them. So you definitely want to make sure that you, you pick up where you left off and make it associate, uh, with the ad

Julian:

And just talk a little bit more towards this creating a conversation. So the ad is like the first, uh, introductory line of, of a conversation,

Bryan:

Right? Yeah. So the ad is going to be, you know, your first rep is representation of you. Um, so you want to put your best foot forward, so to speak, you want to make sure that’s why it’s so important for the ad to be, you know, to be a good looking at the graphic, to be good, the copy to be good. You want to entice people. Um, but it’s not necessarily going to be enough for them to just be like, okay, I want to book this guy, if that happens. Fantastic. That’s great. You, you hit a home run, but, um, you want to make sure that you put your best foot forward and continue that conversation. And it’s, it really is just about building that trust and, and providing a service with them from the, from the minute they see your ad. Um, if you, if you have them opt in for a freebie, um, make that freebie fantastic, make that the best video that you have, um, and show them, uh, the coolest trick. Uh, if you do like some people do balloon, maybe you can teach people balloon trick, or sh or demonstrate your coolest balloon or demonstrate your coolest trick there. So you, you capture them right away and you establish that authority

Julian:

With your Facebook head, a good way to start a conversation just in, in normal human life is to ask a question of somebody who’s at the same with Facebook ads.

Bryan:

Uh, yeah, you can definitely, you can definitely ask, uh, some questions. Uh, like I said, given, given the, uh, the 90 characters, uh, you’re, you’re a bit limited. So if your, if your question’s creative enough, uh, it could entice some people, you know, click here to find out the answer. Those are always, you know, a good tricks to kind of get the conversation started. So, um, we would definitely employ some of those tactics as well.

Julian:

Okay. Now, uh, I’ve successfully hijack the conversation again. Uh, so we’ve, uh, we’ve, uh, got the, uh, the pictures we’ve selected that, and we’ve carefully thought about, uh, what we’re going to say in our 90 characters. We’ve selected a definite a particular URL it’s going to, and what’s next.

Bryan:

Okay. So next is the targeting. The targeting is what you want, um, that how you want, uh, to get in front of the people that, you know, the people that are gonna eventually book you, or eventually going to download your product and get on your list. So the targeting is extremely important and it has, um, a ton of different levels and features. Um, it’s really important to make sure that you write all of the targeting down. You can, you can target geographically. Um, if, if you were just wanting to stay in your, in your little local area, uh, you wanted to become the big fish in a little pond. Uh, geographic targeting is great. Um, you can do, you can target by language. If you have, uh, you know, in, in the United States, we have, uh, several large, um, Hispanic markets. So if you’re maybe bilingual and you speak Spanish, as well as English, um, you can target by language, which is fantastic.

Bryan:

Um, you can target by, uh, age, household income. Um, you can target by, um, the pages that people like on Facebook. A lot of people don’t realize that, um, Facebook’s extremely smart. So when they’re asking you, do you like this page? Do you like this Joe’s plumbing shack? Um, do you like, IBM, do you like Google? Do you like Coca Cola when you select like, um, you’re basically opting into marketing surveys that people can then market to you. So I can market to anybody that likes Coca-Cola because I have this great trick around a Coca-Cola a disappearing Coca-Cola bottle, so it’s extremely effective. And what you want to do is you want to hyper niche that down, um, to kind of get your demographic as, as clear as possible. And so there’s so many different targeting options that we could do a whole, a whole hour on the different, the different varieties of targeting.

Bryan:

But, but that’s one of the, the parts of the packet that I sent over is to identify your target market. And you, you, you really have to think about that. Like, who are you going to be, um, targeting to women? Do women tend to book magicians more? Do men tend to, you know, book magician, but these are all questions you gotta ask yourself. What’s the age group, uh, of the people that are going to book my act. Uh, do I, do I mark it, um, to, to the new moms, to newly engaged people, there are so many different facets to targeting that it’s it’s mind boggling.

Julian:

Does Facebook guide you through that process? Is it like a click physically explain what, what happens when, when, when you’re filling out the, or setting up your ad?

Bryan:

Oh yeah, definitely. They, they, they make it very easy. They have, um, dropdown, um, boxes that, that you can, you can target. It’s a lot of clicking and it’ll drop down or have demographics. It’ll say, um, I’m going to try to try to go through it right now. There’s, there’s so many to, to kind of remember, um, like for

Julian:

The person who hasn’t done this before, this is not something that should be scary to them. This is that it is it’s that the process is explained to them.

Bryan:

Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty simple. Like, if, if you, if you’ve done an ad before, I mean, then, then yeah. You’ll you’ll know exactly where to find the targeting and everything like that. Cause it’s, they’re all dropped down. It goes in a sequential order. Once you have all the information that we talked about, URL and the picture patron you’ve created your post, then it’ll ask you about the targeting just

Julian:

Before we go on. Uh, I guess that’s one of the powers of Facebook ads is that you can, you can hyper target right down to a really small subgroup of, of people. Is that right?

Bryan:

Yeah. And you can keep whittling it down until, I mean, you’ll see, you know, Facebook has the power to market, to a billion people, and then you say, okay, but I don’t want to do women. So that will cut it down to 600 million. And then you say, I want to do women in, uh, age range from 25 to 35. So then it’ll bring it down to maybe 50 million and then okay. That live in this place. And so you can constantly get down. Um, you can keep whittling down and each, each time you can, you can do an estimation of how many, um, how many people that’ll market to it. It’s got a built in a built-in button. That’ll allow you to get an estimate of how many, how many customers, your potential mere potentially gonna reach, right?

Julian:

So we’ve targeted the ads. What do we do next?

Bryan:

Uh, then we, after we target them, we, we make sure that, um, we have the budget in place. So you set that budget. You, you decide how much you’re going to, how much you’re going to spend. Um, and it’ll, it’ll give you an estimation when you do, um, the bidding, you can do it automatically, or you can do a manual bidding. I always like to do manually. Cause I don’t like, uh, a software program to, to do things for me. Like I don’t like as far as spending my money, I like to be in charge of that. So I’ll usually set a price of how much I would like to bid. And it depends. It depends on what you want it to do. There are several different things. You can have your ad do. You can have it. What is called a cost per million or cost per million is what it, what the actual name of it is, but it’s actually cost per thousand impressions.

Bryan:

So every time Facebook shows your ad, a thousand times you’ll get charged a certain amount of money, whatever you agree that, that you’ll pay up to say, if you pay up to a dollar every time they show it, um, 1000 times you’ll get charged a dollar. Um, and then you can also do a cost per click, which is a lot of times you’ll hear people say CPC, it stands for cost per click, and you can set it for, um, it’ll show it, you know, as many times as it needs to. And you only get charged when somebody actually clicks on your ad.

Julian:

So just, just to be clear. So, uh, the thousand impressions is written down as CPM. That’s when people see CPM and CPC is cost per click, and that’s actually the amount of money you will be charged from Facebook, if anyone clicks on your ad.

Bryan:

Right. And, and, and you said that you, you set the bid and say, um, it’ll give you an estimation. And you’ll say, you know, we estimate that it’ll cost anywhere from 25 cents to 50 cents. Uh, every time that somebody clicks on this ad. So if you set the bid a little bit higher than you’re, you’re saying that I’m willing to pay up to 75 cents, whenever somebody does it and they do it on a bidding system. So, um, Facebook takes care of all that. They have an algorithm that, that handles that, that they change, you know, constantly. So nobody really knows the inner workings of how that actually goes down. But, um, as clean as you could be, as you give them a price that you’re willing to pay, um, and then every time it’s, every time it’s clicked, you pay that price and it will do it, do that all the way up until your daily budget is maxed out

Julian:

Right now, they give you a suggested range when, uh, of the, the bid that you could pay for in your experience. Now, common sense would, would, would say that they would want you to pay more than less. I mean, yeah. Basic business for vice book, uh, are those re the ranges they give? Are they realistic, or do you find that you can undercut that and still be effective?

Bryan:

Um, I, I’d never undercut them. Um, the bid seemed to be realistic for me. Uh, I usually always go over as a matter of fact, I’ll go at least 50 cents over what they suggest just to make sure that my ad is optimized and it’s going to be shown, um, the most amount of times. Um, so I’ll, I’ll actually go over. I don’t really ever suggest somebody, um, getting into trying to like underbid or, or try to find, uh, a little loophole and try to, you know, you really don’t want to be extremely cheap. Um, you, you want to make sure that your ads shown. Um, so I wouldn’t go overboard and say, oh, if they’re suggesting 50 cents to $5, but you know, definitely do 75 cents a dollar, just to make sure that you are on the top level of, of, of that pay scale.

Julian:

When would you suggest people, uh, select a paper click or I pay per a thousand impressions?

Bryan:

That’s a great credit. Suggest the pay per thousand impressions. If like we talked earlier about, if you’re going to send somebody to a homepage, you just want to do brand awareness. You just want to get the word out. Hey, you know, I, I have a new act. I have a new show. If you just want to get the word out and create a brand awareness campaign, you want to do that. Um, you have to really be careful too, because you have to realize that if you choose millions of people and this is going to your ads are going to be shown thousands of times, the millions of people, the cost is going to go up, you know, really quickly, you’re going to burn through your budget very quickly. Um, I suggest pretty much every other campaign going cost per click, because the you’re going to get the impressions that your ad is going to be shown in the newsfeed. Um, and, and, and your people are going to see you, and you’re only going to get paid when somebody actually takes the action that you want them to do and click your ad.

Julian:

Right. So for the average person, the average performer out there, uh, wanting to get a booking go cost per click straight first, first up.

Bryan:

Yeah, I would do cost per click and, and like I said, the cost per, per million, um, bids, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s effective when you want to get your name out there. And, and most of the time, uh, if somebody says, okay, well, you know, nobody really knows me. Uh, that’s definitely a strategy they would do, but if you’re just starting out, I would, I would implement the cost per click.

Julian:

Uh, so we’ve targeted the audience we want to send to, uh, we set a budget, uh, what happens next?

Bryan:

Okay. Um, we set the budget, um, but, but going right back to the audience as well, you also get to pick, um, your conversion tracking, which is something that’s a little bit techie. Um, and it’s something that Facebook has really just started doing, uh, within the last year or so. Um, what, what it allows you to do is it creates a pixel, uh, of HTML code that you can have placed, um, on a website and it gets, it gets a little bit, it it’s a little technical, but what that pixel allows, allows you to do is anybody that visits your website, your, it creates a list of, of people that, that have visited your website and you can remarket to them. Um, and that’s what a lot of people don’t realize. You, you start to see the same ads over and over. If you clicked on a website about soap and then like, as you’re, as you’re going throughout the rest of your day, and you’re clicking on different websites, you see little banner ads for soap and for the company that you clicked on, it’s called remarketing.

Bryan:

And Facebook has allowed people to do that as well. So if that’s, it’s extremely powerful, it keeps people top of mind, it gets a bit, a bit annoying from an everyday users perspective, but from a marketer’s perspective and from a performance perspective, who, you know, you have to start thinking like a marketer. Um, so from that perspective, it’s extremely powerful. You want people to say, say if the ad did drive them to your website and they didn’t really take action, um, that, that pixel is going to fire and it’s going to, it’s going to follow them for like 30 days. And, um, it’ll keep showing them your ad when they’re, when they’re, when they go to Facebook, if you have it set up to remarket to them, they’ll keep seeing your ad and they’ll, you’ll stay top of mind. And so they went to your website. So they’ve almost completed the process, think about how powerful that is when, when they didn’t, they didn’t convert Ben, but it automatically reminds them by showing them the ad again, then it’s powerful. You stay top of mind. So that that’s one part that you can do in there. And it’s a bit more techie. And the average user probably wouldn’t be doing that. It’s something that we kind of kind of make sure that we do for, for some of our clients. What’s

Julian:

That service called. And is it an extra cost?

Bryan:

Uh, in, in, in my package, it’s, it’s definitely an extra cost it’s associated with the higher level package. And, um, it’s called retargeting or remarketing. Um, it depends on, so with Google, it’s called remarketing and Facebook calls it retargeting

Julian:

And what happens next.

Bryan:

Okay. So then, so then once, once you’ve figured all that out and you have your budget in mind, um, and you you’ve selected your targeting, you’ve selected the placement of the ad, uh, whether you want it to be in the newsfeed or whether you want it to be on the, on the right hand side, uh, the right hand column ad. Um, I always suggest by the way, people do newsfeed ads because, um, the average, the average Facebook user still isn’t really aware that those are ads inside the newsfeed because they look exactly like a regular post. Um, they look, you know, just like your friend would see in his newsfeed and he’s reading all these cool stories and he sees an ad. He doesn’t even know it’s an ad yet. Um, because it integrates so well, people automatically associate the ads on the right-hand column with, I’m not even clicking over that.

Bryan:

I know it’s an ad. So those, those, I suggest nobody even do that. They, they don’t do very well on the ROI standpoint. So I would stick with just newsfeed ads, just for anybody out there. Just thinking about getting started. Definitely just stick with newsfeed ads. Yeah. Um, but so then you’ve picked all that. Then you go to the optimization or your, you know, your, your pricing, um, you’ve selected your bid, and then you, you, you press create, you create your ad. It goes through an approval process and once it’s approved, it’ll be live. And then you can, you can go back to your dashboard and you can test it and you can see all the metrics. You can see, um, how many impressions it’s going, which means how many, how many times it’s been shown. Um, you can see the amount of clicks that it’s getting that is generating.

Bryan:

So your dashboard will tell you, you know, all the metrics you want to know, and, and if you have that, that code in place on your website, it’ll also show the conversions, um, whether, whether people went all the way through and gave you the email address that they wanted to, because you put that code on the pages after the action you want them to take. So if I wanted somebody’s email address, I would put that code on the thank you page that they got. Thank you for giving me your email address. So I know that they completed that process. Um, and, and so, so, so really from there, it’s all about tracking your ads, performance and doing the, the most you can to optimize it. Um, if you find that it’s not getting a lot of impressions, you might want to up your budget a little bit so that you spend a tiny bit more, um, and you get more impressions, you get it shown more.

Bryan:

Or if you find that maybe it’s getting a lot of impressions, but it’s not really, uh, it’s not really converting. Nobody’s really clicking on it. Then you go in maybe, and you can tweak the copy. You know, you tweak your ad copy and you, you, you tweak your call to action. Maybe, maybe change the graphic a little bit. Maybe nobody’s really digging the picture. So there’s a lot of things that you can do after the fact that it’s already live. You can go in and edit and, and, and whatnot, and make sure that it’s optimized.

Julian:

At what point should people make a decision? Because, I mean, I assume if you do this well, it’s going to work in the majority of cases. When I’m, I’m guessing there are cases where this isn’t going to work is just not going to give people a return. How do they know that they’ve reached that point?

Bryan:

Um, and you would really just have to monitor it. That’s what we do. That’s, that’s really the only part that’s kind of time consuming. You want to monitor every day. You want to give it, um, you want to give it a little bit of time, uh, to actually let it do its job. But if you find that it’s underperforming, it’s great. Cause all you have to do is pause it, you pause the ad and then you generate a new one. Right. As simple as that. Yeah. You can just pause the ad. There’s a little status that goes from active dipause. Um, and then when it’s pause that won’t spend any more money and then, you know, you can even delete it if you want it to, but then you want to learn from it. So, um, keep it, keep it there, keep it pause so that you can see kind of, you can, you can see what to change. Maybe it’s the, maybe it’s the picture. Uh, like I said, maybe it’s the copy or something like that. So just pausing an ad will simply stop it from being shown and won’t charge you anymore.

Julian:

What do people have to think about, uh, in regards to the growing number of mobile, uh, and tablets and that use of those,

Bryan:

Uh, there’s definitely options in there when you’re, when you’re creating your ad and the creative section of it, um, to, to target, excuse me, mobile users. Um, mobile is a huge platform that, you know, in the future, the statistics all point to everybody being mobile and using tablets and mobile devices as the way of everyday life. Uh, as far as ads go there, there are studies that, that kind of show that even though people are using mobile more and more, they’re really not converting, uh, through ads, one mobile. So I tend to stay away from mobile at this point. Um, I usually only you can target, like I said, you can target to mobile, but I usually just target to the desktop, um, which is another option you can target either to desktop computers or to mobile devices. Um, I stick to desktop because the conversion seemed to be a little bit better when they’re in front of a computer, they have a little bit more space, have a little bit more room. They, they kind of have some time to sit down and think through a process when a mobile they’ll click through an ad, they’ll forget about it. Cause they got eight other things to do or they’re on the train or they’re, you know, in the, at a red light. So, so it’s not nearly as effective yet, but I’m sure that in the future, there will be ways to kind of target people mobily and get a better return on investment.

Julian:

Uh, I mean, what you’ve given us here is just, uh, you know, a whole heap to get people out there and get started and to get interested in using this as a, uh, you know, like a definite advertising option, uh, if people wanted, uh, further help and assistance, uh, what can you offer them?

Bryan:

Um, basically that’s what we do is we, we tell people, um, we need the most amount information as possible. We’ll send them a packet of information, um, and, and, and help them get their targeting down that that’s probably the most important part of everything is their targeting. And what are their goals? Like, what do they really want to accomplish? And we’ll work from there? Well, like I said, we worked backwards, we figured out the goal, the end goal, and then we go through the steps backwards. So we get to the beginning and then we put a plan in place. So what we can do for them is we can make sure that they’re targeting the right people and the right areas and making sure that they spend the right amount of money in order to gain the best return on investment.

Julian:

Right. And where can people find you?

Bryan:

Uh, they can, they can find me online at, um, bulletpointbranding.com. That’s B U L L E T P O I N T B R a N D I N g.com.

Julian:

Okay. That’s great. There’ll be a link to that in the show notes. And also in the show notes, there’s going to be links to everything that we’ve talked about here. Uh, some of that free word, uh, uh, freeway, uh, that you talked about, uh, all of the, yeah, all of those links were used. Is there any other, uh, useful tools, uh, websites, anything that, uh, people can go and, and get more information to get started?

Bryan:

Definitely. Um, if people are a little bit more, uh, of an advanced user with a say, maybe they’ve done ads already. Um, Facebook has, um, what’s called the power editor, um, and it’s, it’s basically a step up from the regular ads manager and it’s free to use it’s it’s, it’s included with when you have the ads, the ad manager, which is also free, um, but it allows you to optimize your ads a little bit better, less, a little bit, a little bit more features. And you can find that by going to facebook.com, backslash ads, backslash manage backslash power editor, and, uh, it’s all lowercase it’s case sensitive. So when you type that in, it’ll take you to your ads manager, but it’s, you’ll notice it’s a lot more of a beefed up version has more features and allows you to kind of really dive in a little bit deeper.

Julian:

One thing I didn’t ask you, uh, is what are common mistakes that people make? I mean, the other really obvious mistakes you see people make all the time.

Bryan:

Uh, I think, uh, you know, the biggest mistake that I see time and time again is, is the fact that people don’t pick up on that conversation. They send them to that homepage. And that’s just, if, if you’re not doing the brand awareness campaign where you want the impressions going right to your homepage, if you’re saying, Hey, you know, I have this great birthday show and you’re sending them to you, just your homepage that has a video of maybe you’re doing a trade show, it’s the, it’s going to get lost in translation. So you want to be extremely specific in where you’re sending them and make sure that it continues the conversation. That’s, that’s the number one thing that I see happening all the time where people just don’t get it.

Julian:

Right? Yeah, it’s it, it is. And that’s, it seems to be the whole thing about the power of Facebook ads is about the ability to really niche or hyper target your audience. So, you know, use, I guess what you’re saying is just be smart about the way that you use that, use it effectively.

Bryan:

Exactly. And, uh, there there’s one more too. I was able to kind of, um, go find some notes real quick and get in front of my computer and try to do it as quietly as possible. So that increased my chair. Um, but it’s the, the, the text overlay tool that I was talking to you about where you can, you can, um, see how you can see how much of the, of the Facebook graphic is going to be texting. Cause like they only let you do 20% and it’s, this is a really fun tool. It’s free, it’s included, uh, in Facebook. Um, what you do is you, you design your ad, say if you went to that canva.com, like we talked about earlier and you design an ad and you put, um, and you were giving away a free download of the top 10 coolest magic tricks that you can do at a birthday party, um, you would choose the image that you created with the text on it.

Bryan:

And there’s only just a little file that says choose file and you upload it there, and then it creates a grid for you. And then you just kind of mark off in that grid, uh, all the blocks that have texting and you have to make sure, like, even if it goes a little bit over into another grade, you have to select that grid because they’ll, they’ll disapprove it. If not. And if it’ll tell you right there, if, if it’s more than 20% or if it’s under 20%, so it’s a really fun tool and it allows you to kind of save some time in getting your ads approved.

Julian:

No good stuff. Brian, look, I’m looking at the time here. We’ve got, we’ve already gone over the hour and I could sit here and talk to you for ages on this. Uh, look, thanks so much for coming on. It’s been really, really useful. And, uh, you know, uh, maybe as we go along, if, uh, we want to do some more advanced, uh, discussion on this and some tips and techniques, uh, we could get you back again. Would that be okay?

Bryan:

Absolutely. Definitely. Yeah. I would love to. All right. Thanks Brian Fulton.

Ken:

Well, Julian, after listening to Brian, speak over that, I know I have my work cut out for me. I need to go and take some action and I’m quite excited to actually jump in and give it a whirl. Now it was very frightened, uh, before listening to him, but there’s some really good points there that I look forward to actioning.

Julian:

I’ve I’ve got to jump on and do it as well. I’ve never done a Facebook ad before. Uh, but look, I know it’s not that hard. And look realistically, am I going to jump in and do this this week? Probably not. I’ve just got such a list of things that I need to be doing, but I know it’s a good practice and now I know what the best practices are. Um, it’s look, it’s it’s, it’s on the list and I’m going to put it in the mix and we will get back to it. I want to tell you now about who we’re getting next week, I spoke to Canadian magician, Brian Glo, uh, Brian glow is going to take us on a tour. He’s going to take us on the tour of the highs and the lows of being a corporate magician. What it’s like to actually do this, uh, for your whole working career, which is, you know, pretty much what he’s done.

Julian:

And he’s going to tell all about traveling over to 40 different countries. Doing casino shows, product launches, huge stadium shows, but he’s also going to tell us all the things that happen when it doesn’t go to plan. Now there’s some good stories in there, but he, he talks about things like what’s the financial value and what’s the value to your own health of maybe taking the easy road and doing a CA a couple of comfortable days on the trade show floor or saying yes to huge, spectacular spectaculars, which are anything but comfortable. He talks really honestly about this, and it’s really eyeopening and engaging. And even if you’re someone who aspires to be a corporate performer, or maybe you’re one, now you’re going to benefit from the honesty. Uh, Brian speaks to I honestly, and it’s refreshing and I really appreciated it. So that’s coming up in episode seven.

Ken:

You know, when you’re speaking about this, I just, it just occurs to me what great content it is that we’re, that we’re able to bring. And I know I’m learning so much, so I’m grateful to be part of the interview process and to get to listen back to them. And I guess if you were listening to this and you’re finding value from it as well, then can we ask you to do us a favor pop on over to the magician business.com website, click on the podcast tabs, go down, go and have a look at episode number six today’s episode and go leave us some comments of how you’re finding this, what you’re implementing, what’s working for you and share the stuff that doesn’t work for you as well. We can all learn from your wisdom,

Julian:

And if you’ve got a chance pop on over to iTunes, leave us a rating and a review. It really, really helps. We’ll see you all in episodes.