Digital marketing expert Toccara Karizma joins us to discuss where you should and shouldn't be spending your marketing budget.
Facebook ads are an ever-changing animal, Toccara has made it a point to track the ebs and flows of digital marketing as well as the red flags to watch for when hiring outside agencies.
Listen in to get insights on CPMs, UTFs, and how they can be the difference between dynamic marketing partners and flat out scam artists.
Transcript:
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Laura (01:07):
Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Small Biz Buzz, I am Laura Dolan.
Crystal (01:19):
And I am Crystal Heuft.
Laura (01:23):
And we have a very special guest with us today, Toccara Karizma, who is the CEO of Toccara Karizma. And we're going to be talking about Facebook ads today. Toccara, thank you so much for taking the time to be here. How are you?
Toccara (01:37):
I am good, thank you. So good to be with you, Laura and Crystal.
Crystal (01:41):We're so happy to have you.
Laura (01:42):
Yes, so happy to have you. You guys can't see this because this is audio, but we are on a Zoom call with Toccara, and she is reporting from Hawaii, and she showed us her view a few minutes ago and it is breathtaking. So we are all just living vicariously through you right now.
Crystal (01:58):
For sure.
Laura (01:59):
We are just envying you like crazy. Yes, so do you want to give us a breakdown about your business and your history? Just tell us a little about yourself.
Toccara (02:08):
Yeah, sure. So I'm the CEO of Toccara Karizma, which is where I do my consulting and my digital courses. And I own a digital marketing agency called Karizma Marketing. Karizma is indeed my middle name. It's not like a Madonna thing, right? It's my real middle name. And through the agency, we help serve clients, especially in the e-commerce space, through any digital marketing strategy that would help kind of catapult their business online. So whether it's social media marketing, Google ads, SEO, website convergence rate optimization, email marketing, broader, bigger business concepts and so much more. That's what we do. So our goal is always to partner with the clients, build a really strong relationship, and just skyrocket their sales and their business online.
Crystal (02:59):
That's awesome. Well before we dive into that, I just wanted to tell everyone how I met you because it was a happenstance. [Paige 00:03:08] and myself were representing Keap at Social Media Marketing World trying to learn as much as everyone else there and meet great people and experts to get some advice to bring back to our small business audience. And we were looking, and everyone was like "No," because video is intimidating. We were asking people to take video that we could bring back and make like a compilation. And we were like, "We need to find someone who looks like they're into video as well."
Crystal (03:33):
We saw Toccara. She was also taking video. And I was like, "Oh my god. Let's get Toccara." And we met you there, and you were so great. You had such great advice about authenticity. It was great meeting you. So we've kept in touch since then, but I'm excited we finally have you on the show, so thank you for being here.
Toccara (03:50):
Thank you so much, yeah. And one of our clients who is WeVideo was there too, so it's funny that we're talking about video, WeVideo who provides video solutions for small business owners. And they had a stand there and I ... It was the best conference, and then COVID hit right then, like the next week.
Crystal (04:06):
It was, I know.
Toccara (04:07):
It was so nice to meet you and Paige. We had a lot of fun at that conference.
Crystal (04:11):
We did. It was a great conference.
Laura (04:12):
I envy you guys.
Crystal (04:14):
I know. I'm like trying to get ... I feel like the whole podcast team should be able to go to this thing, so I'm asking our producer [Deucy 00:04:21], like he needs to be at the conference because there's so much on video there.
Toccara (04:26):
There's so much on video and there's so much networking there too.
Crystal (04:28):
For sure.
Laura (04:29):
I'm on the content team so I get to go to all the digital marketing conferences and content marketing conferences, so yeah. Not as much fun, but [crosstalk 00:04:37].
Toccara (04:37):
You get the idea.
Crystal (04:40):
I was going to say, yeah, the content ones are great, but like the social media marketing, it actually kind of combines a little bit of everything. And I'm not going to lie, Laura, I want you to come because it's one of the most fun conferences I've ever been to.
Laura (04:53):
And wasn't it in San Diego earlier this year?
Crystal (04:55):
Yeah.
Laura (04:56):
I grew up there, so it'd be nice to go back.
Crystal (04:58):
Oh, awesome. Yeah, right? We'll have to make that happen.
Laura (05:02):
Yes.
Crystal (05:02):
Well I'm so excited, Laura. As I was telling you before Toccara hopped on today that this is like the best way for me to start a weekend is like we're talking about Facebook ad strategy, which I just love anything to do with social. It's like my sweet spot of excitement in terms of marketing. So I'm so glad we're talking about this, Toccara. If I'm being honest, I might've pushed that we talk about this a little bit because I get excited about it.
Crystal (05:26):
Yeah, I love it. So thank you for being on. One of the things I wanted to bring up first and foremost is like 2020's been quite the year. Lots of challenges for small businesses, a lot of things to conquer. Why would you say it's important to focus on Facebook ads right now more than ever? And why should anyone really want to focus attention and budget to Facebook ads?
Toccara (05:49):
Yeah. So some of my most successful clients made a very quick pivot when COVID hit. And they had to, right? We couldn't just do what we were doing when it wasn't going to have the ability to work. So they transitioned very quickly into more digital marketing and figuring out how to provide their services and their products digitally.
Toccara (06:12):
What's fascinating is some of them learned very quickly that they can make just as much revenue if not more online, which was crazy, without the brick and mortar overhead, without all the employees. And it was this fascinating journey for them, so it was really neat to see.
Toccara (06:27):
So now that we're in a place where people are not shopping brick and mortar as much, right? We're not traveling as much. We're not getting ... We have got to find a way to pivot our skillset, our genius, whatever we're offering online. Now, are Facebook ads for everyone? No. no, they're actually not. You have to have an agency that's actually willing to test a lot of different strategies, because it depends on the way someone's searching for you. If you're a roofer, someone's probably typing into Google "roofing contractor," versus getting into your ecosystem digitally through a Facebook ad. However, if you're the type of company that might work really well on Google ads as a search-intense, you may do really well on retargeting on Facebook ads, right? They already searched you and now [crosstalk 00:07:10] can re-target them. So there's so many strategies where you can use Facebook to your advantage, which some people don't even know that that's also Instagram, right? Facebook owns Instagram.
Crystal (07:17):
Right.
Laura (07:18):
Oh yeah.
Toccara (07:20):
Yeah. And although the CPMs are going up, and what I mean by CPMs is the cost for your ads to reach people, it's going up because there's some more competition, it still remains a great platform if you use it strategically the way it needs to be used.
Crystal (07:35):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Toccara (07:36):
So anyone who has had a business that has suffered for the last, let's say, we're in October now, in the last six months or seven months. My advice for you is, how can you pivot so quickly to something different where your genius and your skillset is? Get it online. Learn Facebook ads. Start investing your time. If you're not able to go into work right now, invest your time in educating yourself on, how can I market my genius, my skillset, my products online? It's such an important time to start doing that.
Crystal (08:09):
For sure.
Laura (08:11):
What do you suggest, how do they go about kind of educating themselves? Should they take like a masterclass? Is there anything out there that is cost-effective that won't really set them back a whole lot in training?
Toccara (08:21):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So total selfish plug, I have a Facebook ads course. It's called Social Savvy. And if you follow me on Instagram, Toccara Karizma, you can always DM me or learn more about it or it's on my website.
Toccara (08:36):
Outside of that, let's say you're really on a budget. There are some awesome, free YouTube videos on just getting the basics. I mean you can do this stuff for free. And then when you want to take it ... I don't think the free education's going to get you to the level where you really need to get yourself. You're going to eventually have to invest in, like anything else, invest in a really solid foundation. But if you need to learn the basics, do it for free. You have time right now, right? A lot of [crosstalk 00:09:04] the time, so do it. [crosstalk 00:09:06] there's some affordable courses too out there.
Toccara (09:11):
But what someone needs, and my background is I have a business economics background and I opened an e-commerce store that was international and 15 different countries back in 2007 before Shopify existed, right? Before [crosstalk 00:09:26] shipping even was a term. It didn't even exist. I was on Zen Cart before WooCommerce existed for WordPress. This is like really dating.
Crystal (09:34):
Yeah.
Laura (09:34):
Wow.
Toccara (09:36):
Yeah. So I was self-taught. I mean I had the background, but a lot of this I had to just get in the weeds and teach myself. So I learned through the years, this is now, we're what, in 2020, so 13 years ago, I had to learn through trial and error and get better and better at my craft over time. So the clients who come to us most of the time in the agency are the kind of clients who have been totally taken advantage of by their ad agency.
Crystal (10:04):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Toccara (10:04):
I could tell you some crazy fun stories that are just wild, would blow your mind. But the point [crosstalk 00:10:10] because they didn't learn the Facebook ads just at the basic level, just at the most basic level so they know whether or not someone's taking advantage of them or whether or not [crosstalk 00:10:19] a good job. And so that's why I encourage, even if you're a bigger business and you can afford an ad agency, you still need to have a basic understanding of getting your hands dirty, of learning some of the basics so that you can look at your data and your reports, which by the way you need to be getting reports from your ad agency.
Crystal (10:37):
Definitely.
Laura (10:37):
Oh yeah.
Toccara (10:38):
Yeah. And you can look at that data and know whether or not someone's doing a good job for you. So 99% of our clients come to us because they've been so burned by their ad agency. So that's what I would encourage someone to do. Just do some free courses, or do Social Savvy, my course, or [crosstalk 00:10:55] ...
Crystal (10:54):
I couldn't agree more.
Toccara (10:56):
Yeah.
Crystal (10:56):
I feel like that's anything I've ever told anyone I've consulted. Or I consulted a friend of mine, her husband, and basically I told him, "Listen. I'm going to teach you at least the basics." Because for me, I was doing it to help him out. He had started a new part of his business and wanted to get the word out. And I told him, "I'm going to help you out. I'm going to make it so that when you hire someone to do this full time for you or when you have a bigger project that you're putting more budget to, you know enough of what to watch for." Because it is so intimidating out there.
Crystal (11:29):
And not every small business is going to do their own social media marketing. Matter of fact, I think plenty shouldn't because it's, as both of us know, Toccara, it's a full time gig on it's own if you're doing it correctly. So you really need to be able to trust the people you're working with. And in order to trust, you need to understand the basics of what you're looking at.
Crystal (11:50):
And any metric can be used to kind of work as if this is blowing everyone's mind. Like I love when people use the word impressions. I'm like, don't talk, that's a vanity metric. Why are we talking about impressions at all when it comes to social media? So I think it's important to understand what you're looking at. It's important to understand how the metrics work together. Because if you're only looking at one metric and that's what the agency's giving you, it's probably because the other ones don't look so hot and it's not really a full funneled strategy. So I love that you're saying that. Such good advice.
Toccara (12:20):
Yes. And even knowing things, just a little touching point on that is I've seen ad agencies that have imported fake revenue into client accounts.
Crystal (12:29):
So crazy.
Toccara (12:29):
I've seen ad agencies that are changing activation windows to make their reporting look better. I mean it just goes on and on. But if you have just a basic understanding, you will not get taken advantage of. So I just feel so strongly about protecting business owners and taking a stance on this because it happens so often. And impressions exactly, knowing what data points to look for or what's really important. Like new customers. You're not going to scale your business if you're not growing new customers. That should be something ...
Crystal (13:00):
Right.
Toccara (13:00):
That's a conversation with your ad agency. "Are we getting new customers, or are we just advertising to our already existing base?" Or we see Google ads managers who are getting all the revenue by branded campaigns from the client's brand name. And you're like, you tell the client, you're like, "Look. You made all that 20 grand that you spent on ads and they told you they made 40 grand back. Well, like 39,500 of that was just on your name."
Crystal (13:29):
Exactly.
Toccara (13:31):
"So you're not getting that revenue anyways and you're not a big enough business to be doing a branded campaign. You're not Nike where you need to ..." you know? So just that basic education is so important. So that for me, with our clients, it's one of the biggest things that we do is we actually have full transparency. We educate them. We talk to them.
Crystal (13:51):
I love that.
Toccara (13:51):
Yeah. It should be that way with an ad agency.
Crystal (13:55):
So while we're on that topic, just because I think what you're saying is so important for small business owners, what would be some red flags if they're working with an agency that they should check in? Doesn't mean it's all going to come back bad, but what are some red flags they should be watching for to have a further conversation?
Toccara (14:11):
Yes. This is a great question. One of the biggest red flags is no reporting. And a lot of our clients never got reporting from their ad agencies.
Crystal (14:20):
Geez.
Laura (14:20):
Wow.
Toccara (14:20):
If an ad agency isn't providing reporting to you on a weekly basis, huge, huge red flag. If your ad agency has not asked for access to your Google Analytics or your Shopify store or to all of your online platforms and assets ...
Crystal (14:36):
Preach!
Toccara (14:37):
Yeah, yeah. That is a huge red flag. If you are an influencer, for example, and they haven't gotten all of your assets as a personal influencer versus your products and what you're also offering on the side, huge red flag. They can't tap into your influence to run ads. If you don't see revenue coming in and you're like, "Hmm, this is weird. They say this revenue is happening but I don't see it," huge red flag. If you're going into your Google Analytics, and I also suggest taking an analytics course. Again, most basic.
Crystal (15:11):
For sure.
Toccara (15:12):
And they should understand analytics. If your agency won't walk you through your Google Analytics, huge red flag. And then this is a little bit more advanced, but I see it about 90% of the time. If your agency isn't using UTM parameters, and I know this sounds like it's a little too technical but what it is is just a tracking code so that Google can talk to your Facebook ads or talk to whatever's happening. And if they're not getting that tracking ... So you can just ask your agency, even if you have no idea what it means. Say "Are you using just UTM codes?" You can see it on the ad level for your Facebook ads. There's an option there, and you can customize your columns and see if someone's using your pixel, number one, which also some agencies aren't using, or your tracking codes. If they're not, that's a huge red flag because we can't track where your marketing dollars are going, so you don't know if what they're doing is helping or hurting you, which is a big deal.
Toccara (16:06):
The other thing, we just had another client come to us and say, "This is weird. My leads are costing like triple what they used to cost and I don't know why." And so we can do a complementary audit. So as we're going through all of their ... immediately within two minutes, we went into their click funnels. I did this call with this, it's a pretty high-level coach. But she didn't have the lead tracking event on there, so her ad agency was running ads for leads but there was no way for Facebook to match where a lead was coming from. So Facebook could never optimize the ads. So where she used to get $5 leads, she was getting like $13 leads.
Crystal (16:41):
Wow.
Toccara (16:43):
And then on top of that, her ad agency had changed her attribution window, which is a big deal. And if you know about attribution windows, it's basically taking more credit than you should for the ads by pulling out the attribution window.
Crystal (16:59):
Geez.
Toccara (17:00):
It was really sad to see. And so when you see things that aren't making sense is when you have to start questioning. Like what's wrong here? And if your ad agency isn't giving you any good answers, or the other red flag ... sorry to go off, I'll be done.
Crystal (17:13):
No, I love it.
Laura (17:14):
No, you're fine.
Toccara (17:15):
Okay. Because this is so, these are all the things that we're so against in our agency. But if you're not getting regular meetings, face-to-face meetings with your ad account manager. If you don't know your ad account manager by name, if you have to constantly correct their work. If you're only seeing one ad or two ads which happens and you don't have a deep relationship with them where you're constantly in connection, that's a huge red flag. You should know your ad account manager. You should know what they look like. You should be on camera in Zoom meetings. Everyone's using Zoom these days, or another meeting platform. If they're not doing that for you, they're not giving you a quality experience that you deserve.
Laura (17:55):
That's fantastic.
Crystal (17:56):
I love it.
Laura (17:57):
It's almost more valuable to know what to avoid than to know what to do, you know? For them not to get metrics. And even we use UTM codes, right Crystal? We put them in our campaign [crosstalk 00:18:08].
Crystal (18:07):
100%.
Laura (18:08):
Yep.
Crystal (18:09):
I was just going to say, I know down to each post where the traffic, the demos, the acquisition is coming from. And we put out probably 50 posts a week at least on organic that we sometimes boost. But I know down to each one of those where the traffic and everything's coming from. I love UTMs. I could geek out on those forever. They give you so much knowledge. Like sounds so nerdy, but it's true.
Laura (18:33):
Crystal's the one who taught me what they are and how to use them, so I owe my knowledge to you, Crystal.
Crystal (18:38):
Well you're killing it.
Laura (18:39):
Thank you.
Crystal (18:39):
She puts them on every podcast. She puts them on every piece of content.
Laura (18:42):
YouTube, blogs ...
Crystal (18:43):
In the YouTube video, yeah. It's awesome. So I'm a big fan. And I think that was such quality info you gave everyone. So to all of our listeners out there, go back and write them down or re-listen over and over again, because I think all of those red flags you gave are so critical. I wouldn't have been able to put it so concise and perfect like that, but that is really such worthwhile knowledge for anyone out there thinking of using a social media agency for their work, and I'm just blown away. That was perfect, concise, bulleted out. I love it. And on the fly. I'm so impressed.
Toccara (19:20):
I was going to ad just one more if you don't mind.
Crystal (19:23):
Yes, please.
Laura (19:23):
Please do.
Toccara (19:23):
Okay, one more is if a potential ad agency has not asked to look at your online assets before they take you on as a client, that's also a really big red flag because they don't have your best interests in mind. So what I mean by that is probably about 70% of the people who come to us to run ads for them, we actually say no to in a really loving way because we want to be really sensitive to their budget and where they are. And so if an ad agency hasn't literally gone in and walked you through what the back end of your Shopify metrics look like as a benchmark. Like does your website look like it's converting? Are you making enough revenue to compensate for the ad agency's services? How about your previous Facebook ads? Did they work? Did they not work? What was the reason why? Your Google Analytics and so much more.
Toccara (20:10):
So if someone tells you right off the bat, "Sure, we'll take you on as a client," and doesn't actually look into your metrics to see whether or not they actually feel like this is a really good investment for you, they definitely can be successful, that's a big red flag that they don't have your best interests in mind. And so I would just make sure that when you're approaching ad agencies, make sure that they ask these questions and want to look at your data first, because I would never take on a client if I saw that their website wasn't converting right, they weren't making enough revenue, they didn't ... All of those things matter.
Toccara (20:44):
So I don't want you to spend money with us. I would rather you spend that money building your foundation. Let's get you a business coach, or let's get you into consulting, or let's get you here. Let's do something that saves your budget. I would never pitch our ad agency to a client that I didn't think was right. So know that. That's a real big red flag if someone's not asking those questions of you and actually physically looking at your data with you.
Laura (21:07):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Crystal (21:08):
Yeah, I love that. It's so important too. One of the things I would say too in addition to everything you just said was, know about their expertise. I am an organic lover. I know how to boost. I know enough about ads that I could get by, but I wouldn't want to be handling a huge ad account because my love and passion is in organic. I want to figure out how to grow your audience and get them engaged, like bonded to the brand type of community. But some people out there are taking money for ads, and they're really an organic lover like myself. Or vice versa, there could be people with ads that say they can do a great organic strategy. The two work together, but they aren't ... If someone's specializing in one versus the other, you really need to make sure you're diving in with the right people that are specializing in the area you need the help.
Toccara (21:56):
Yeah, ask for their results for paid ad campaigns.
Crystal (21:59):
Yep.
Toccara (21:59):
There's a lot of people who say they are "marketers," and it just truly isn't the case. And I know this because we go through a lot of interviews for ad account managers, and it's not what they say they are. So just be careful and cautious.
Crystal (22:13):
For sure. I agree. So what would be some metrics people should look at to see that they have a winning strategy? What would be some things they notice to know their Facebook ad strategy's working and they're seeing success?
Toccara (22:27):
Yes. One of the things that I really like to look at, because a lot of our clients have Shopify, or in any ... your Google Analytics, look at how your new customers are growing actually. See, are you ... If we have tracking online, right? So some businesses will have offline tracking, like if you come in and it's, you know.
Crystal (22:43):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Toccara (22:44):
There's businesses that we can't quite track this digitally because the purchase isn't happening on a computer through a checkout process. But I would look at new customers, because that's a big deal. Are you just wasting money on ... although it's important to re-target and keep your warm audience, stay relevant to them and spend money on them, a good agency will really focus on what's called top of funnel. So your cold audience is trying to bring in new customers for you. So that's one.
Toccara (23:11):
The other one is, have you increased your conversion rate on your website? Now this is a little bit outside of the Facebook ads lane, but as you're going through ... and I should say this with a caveat. As we increase budgets for marketing, we get more traffic on our website and in theory actually our conversion rate would go down, right? Because we're talking to even more people, the conversion rate ... But is your conversion rate in a healthy range in that your ad agency isn't sending so much junk traffic to your website, possibly?
Crystal (23:43):
Yeah.
Toccara (23:43):
Or is sending relevant traffic that we actually are getting conversions. And if they're not getting conversions, are they helping put some tools on and into place to help with that?
Toccara (23:53):
The other metrics is, let's say you see that your ads might not be converting. Ask your ad agency or look yourself, where is the fallout happening? Or what I would say, where is the leak in your funnel? Is it on the ads side? Do you have a low click-through rate on your ads and a very high cost per click? That would indicate that it's either an audience issue or an ad issue.
Crystal (24:15):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Toccara (24:16):
Or, do you have pretty healthy click-through rates, and it's kind of happening where we get low add to carts? Once we get to our website, it's like we're getting great clicks but no one's adding to cart. That would indicate, okay, I need to work on my website. There's something happening on this product page or where I'm taking my traffic. That's a website issue at that point, or a messaging issue. There's no congruency between the ad and the landing page.
Toccara (24:43):
And then from there, it would be from add to cart to purchase, do we have a big fallout? So we would expect about 30% of people who add to cart to really go through with a checkout. If you have a very low percentage, let's say you only have 5 or 10% of people going from add to cart to purchase, there is a big problem in checkout. There's something that's going on. Usually it's the shipping issue is usually number one or requiring them to create an account, but most websites don't do that anymore. Or a pricing objection, or needing social proof, reviews. Going to your Amazon store so your Amazon store can really kill your business on your website if your Amazon store is offering it for cheeper with free shipping, two day Prime shipping and you can't compete with that. There's no competition.
Crystal (25:25):
That's for sure.
Laura (25:26):
Nope.
Toccara (25:26):
So Amazon, yeah, can take out your website. But it's such a powerful just beast in creating revenue, so there's a balance there. So that's where I would look at my metrics. The biggest thing is, again, educating yourself, because I do see, again, a lot of clients who don't understand that their, you know, their click-through rate was like 0.2%, they were paying $15 cost per click. They had no idea. They didn't know. And their ad agency had three ads, and spent thousands of dollars on like three ads.
Crystal (25:54):
Oh geez.
Toccara (25:55):
So those are what I would be looking at very carefully. Now, cost per click actually isn't that important because you're going to pay more for a high-quality audience or a narrower audience, more niche audience, an audience that is very competitive. So it's more like the click-through rate, yeah? I'm trying to think any other metrics, but tell me if that resonates or if you think [crosstalk 00:26:19] ...
Crystal (26:18):
Those are great. For sure those are great. Like I said, I mean for me, we do a lot of boosting for what I do at Keap. We have a whole team that takes care of our Facebook ads. But I feel like it's important to know the difference as well just even in boosting versus the ads manager. A while back when I worked at a different , I did this long manual test. It was so crazy, Toccara, this is how nerdy I get, where I was looking at the difference of ... because at the time people were saying, "Oh, your ads manager is going to get so much more reach than your boosts." And I did this whole, from start to finish, figured out what it got me in terms of sessions, reach, engagement. And I did for two weeks only an ads manager, two weeks in only boost. And then I did two weeks in a mix.
Crystal (27:11):
And what I actually found at the time, I haven't done this in a while because it was like really a manual process, but what I found was that the boost and the ads playing together actually gave me the best outcome as a whole, like driving people to sessions ... So what would you recommend? I'm not sure if that's changed at all in the last four years, but would you recommend a strategy using both or would you recommend them really focusing in an ads manager?
Toccara (27:36):
Yes, okay. So this is, I love that you mentioned that. I think where a lot of small business owners don't believe in Facebook ads and say they don't work is because they don't understand that there actually is an entire interface that you have to learn called the ads manager.
Crystal (27:52):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Toccara (27:52):
So advertising on Facebook is not considered boosting a post, like a high-level advertising, right?
Crystal (27:58):
Right.
Toccara (27:59):
It's a quick way to get reach. It's low-hanging fruit. But it's not set up to convert. It really isn't. It's just like engagements, a boost.
Crystal (28:07):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Toccara (28:07):
I have noticed, Crystal, though too, when I'm in a really tight pinch with my own posts and I want to just get it out very quickly and I don't have time to get into the ads manager, I'll do a very, very tiny boost, like a two dollar boost or something to a very dedicated audience to get the reach out. And I do notice that with those boosts, I actually get more link clicks than when I go into what's called a PPE campaign or an engagement campaign. And it gets a lot of likes or comments, but it's not really getting them to click a link on, let's say, my profile or et cetera, et cetera.
Crystal (28:42):
Right.
Toccara (28:42):
But at the end of the day, you have to understand how to use what's called the ads manager. So if you've set up your mind that Facebook ads don't work and they've lit your money on fire, it's actually because you're not using the ads manager and you're not coming up with a strategy. So when you go into even the ads manager and you don't have a roadmap of how you want to lay the foundation for someone getting to know, like, trust your brand and then pitch them and then going through this whole journey with you like normal human to human relationships work, you're not going to win with Facebook ads. That's why there's agencies who have an expertise in this because they know what needs to happen through this journey. So the biggest mistake I see small business owners make is they're just boosting posts and they think that's advertising. No, that's not, because you wouldn't be paying an agency thousands and thousands of dollars to just boost posts.
Toccara (29:36):
And on top of that, you're just going for the sale right away. Like you're just, "Oh, I want a sale." But that's not how an interaction with a company works. That's where, Crystal, kind of what you touched on about social media marketing world where it's like, being genuine, being a human brand, letting them get to know you and like you and trust you, and then you can talk about taking a journey with you one step further.
Crystal (30:01):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Toccara (30:01):
I always use the guy in the bar type of scenario. But it's the same thing. You wouldn't just, a guy on a bar trying to hit on a woman wouldn't just be like, "Come home with me." You know? It's like ...
Crystal (30:11):
I mean they may. They just don't win.
Toccara (30:14):
They may, yeah, they just don't win. So it might be more like a, "Hey, I really like you. Let's get to know each other. Let's have a conversation. What's your favorite this? What's your favorite ..." like really getting to know each other so you can take this natural journey with them. It's no different with brands and businesses. It's like the most human company wins, as Mark Schaefer would say. That's what it is.
Toccara (30:33):
So I think that would be the difference, for me, in terms of boosting and using the ads manager. If you really want ads to work and actually create revenue, you have to use the ads manager. I've never once in all my years, and thousands or millions of dollars spent, I've only seen one purchase come from boosted campaigns. So it has to happen in the ads manager if you want actual revenue from that.
Crystal (30:59):
Awesome.
Laura (30:59):
Toccara, would you say Facebook ads would be a good lead generation tool for small businesses?
Toccara (31:08):
Yeah, definitely. Especially since prices are rising, right? It's very competitive. It is an auction, and real estate is very limited. It could be a very good strategy. Let's say you have a higher price point product or service. I might first focus on lead generation. And we do that quite a bit for clients. We run certain, you know, fun type of lead generation. Whether it's a lead magnet, meaning some sort of value added, solving a problem very quickly. So a [Slate 00:31:40] file or a webinar or anything like that. Or, getting into giveaways or quizzes. People do kind of a little bit of everything.
Toccara (31:50):
And then we've actually built a Facebook group, now it's got to be 80,000, for one of our clients who, you know, she goes in for two hours and any two hours she'll make 200,000 just in one little two hour, boop, you know? It's really crazy. But that's all lead gen. That was all lead gen getting them into this whole funnel, and then her business has just skyrocketed since then because of nurturing them in her Facebook group. And she has her own e-commerce store outside of that.
Toccara (32:17):
So we use Facebook quite a bit to get them into the ecosystem of the brand through lead gen, getting that email. And then we go further into actually pitching the product to them. So I love Facebook for lead gen. It's actually one of the biggest things we do with Facebook and Instagram for clients to really grow their business and their lists.
Laura (32:38):
Awesome.
Crystal (32:40):
That's great. I love that. I love groups too. It makes me want to ask you, because I've been waiting for it, but do you think ads in groups is coming in 2021?
Toccara (32:53):
Oh gosh, I hope so.
Crystal (32:55):
I do too.
Toccara (32:56):
I know. I can see sometimes in my ads manager, it's not always there, that I can run an ad to a group. Have you seen that on the ad set level? It's not always there for me, but it was just there again yesterday when I was running ads.
Crystal (33:10):
I've seen it one time, and it got me excited that they were testing to finally release ... Because they've been talking about that for probably two years. And yesterday, I was on the Facebook Community Summit, and there's a lot of cool new things coming to groups but they did not say anything about ads. I was like, what's going on? Because I think I've seen that one time, the group come up that I could advertise to a group. And it was in one of my boosts, but I have not seen it again. And we have a user group, and there's sometimes really important customer information that we want to get to all of our users, and it's easier if we can actually target that group to make sure they're seeing the right information. But I'm just counting down days. I hope it's coming up in 2021.
Toccara (33:55):
I hope so. So we found a way around this. Because when you're growing a Facebook group to 80,000 members and you're getting 400 people in the group a day, there's no way to manually do that.
Crystal (34:04):
Yeah.
Toccara (34:04):
So what we do is we have a system where we tie in a lead gen campaign into a Facebook group. So it's this very natural flow of kind of getting some extra entries into, let's say, a giveaway by joining your group, where when you join the group you give your email address, everything's on automation, and we actually import that email address through automation into our email CRM from there, so then we're capturing the emails. Because remember, you don't own your group. Facebook does.
Crystal (34:36):
Yeah.
Laura (34:37):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Toccara (34:37):
The ultimate goal with everything you do on Facebook should be that you get these people onto your own ecosystem.
Crystal (34:43):
Totally.
Toccara (34:43):
Facebook could close shop tomorrow. Look at MySpace, right? We don't want them to own those members. They could charge us to be in these groups eventually, like we don't know. So it's so important for us to try to capture those emails. So that's what we do. We capture the emails. Now they're in their own segment in our email CRM. Now we can market to them differently. It works really well. Probably about 40% or 50, probably even more, maybe more like 60% of the people who join that group at 80,000 members now, we've captured their email. So we don't care, like for us, we can still market to them based on the group, which is really [crosstalk 00:35:18] ...
Crystal (35:17):
I literally don't know why I had not thought of this, but you just blew my mind. We have our user group, and to get in to make sure they're actually users because we don't want to get cluttered traffic in our user group, it's a closed group, but we have them giving us all their emails only for support. Like if they need something, we can email them. But we could totally be using that as a list.
Toccara (35:41):
Yeah, definitely.
Crystal (35:42):
I don't know why.
Laura (35:43):
Duh!
Crystal (35:44):
We have like 4,000 users, and we could be targeting at least those 4,000 in the lists that we already have.
Toccara (35:50):
Yeah.
Crystal (35:50):
Oh my god Toccara, you just blew my mind. And I can't believe I've been sitting on that and we haven't been using it. Oh, geez.
Toccara (35:58):
I know, it's [crosstalk 00:35:58]. So also then in your email CRM, if you're wanting to get your warm audience into your group, now because segmentation, as you know, is so important in email marketing, you can exclude that list and run, in that email, to try to get more of your warm audience into your group where you know you're going to nurture them. So exclude that group, or, again, run an email to them. Whatever it looks like, like exclusive group experience or interviews or sales. Whatever that looks like, you'll want to do that.
Toccara (36:31):
And some other fun things we do to grow those groups is we'll run ads again excluding group members, but running to people who are in our warm audience but not in the group of what goes on in the group. So we have some awesome ... you know, again, if you have 80,000 members in a group, you're going to have some crazy content [crosstalk 00:36:47] from.
Crystal (36:47):
Totally.
Toccara (36:48):
So with the permission of our group members, we might run that post as an ad to kind of show people what the experience is like in the group. And that's what we're doing through our nurture sequence.
Crystal (36:57):
How brilliant.
Toccara (36:57):
Over 30 days, we're just kind of getting them into the group. Because we know once they're in the group, we can nurture them and they'll get to know our brand better. And then they'll take the next step in creating a purchase with us. So that's [crosstalk 00:37:09] ...
Crystal (37:09):
I can't believe I've been sitting on that list. I'm still going back to that. Holy cow! Oh my gosh.
Laura (37:17):
Sorry, really quick. Can you highlight which industries you think would benefit most from this? Because this may not be a conducive strategy for every kind of business out there. So maybe just really quick you can just give like, you know, in your opinion, which industries do you think would benefit most from this?
Toccara (37:32):
Yeah. I think any industry where ... Okay, so everyone, people buy because of either pain or pleasure, or they want a transformation. We're solving a problem, we're getting them from point A to point B. So if you have a product or service, which most of us do, I can't think of one product or service where you do not fall into this category of pain, pleasure, transformation. What you can do is as long as you feel like you can create community around not necessarily your product or service but solving that problem or creating community, that would be a good indication that you could create community.
Toccara (38:11):
What I mean by that is, let's say this particular client sells swimwear. The group is not necessarily about the products. It's about feeling comfortable in the skin you're in. It's about female relationships.
Crystal (38:24):
Love it.
Toccara (38:24):
It's about all these things. So it's like this female empowerment group. And, it works really well for the branding and for kind of pushing, ultimately, her product out. But it's more about community more than anything else.
Toccara (38:39):
We have another client, WeVideo, who has a community based on, how do we ... small business owners who want to learn how to market through video. It's not necessarily about their product. It's more like small business marketing, and if you have questions.
Toccara (38:54):
So my challenge to any business owner is ... It might not be perfect for any business. It really might not. Like again, going back to the roofer. I don't know how that would work in a community. But let's say you're a realtor. I have a realtor in our community who actually, really interesting, I don't even think he realizes he's doing this. He has a Facebook group on long-term rentals. In Hawaii, it's very hard to find rentals, and so he's built a Facebook community where you can list your long-term rental for free, right? And what happens is he'll get rentals listed at 2,500 a month, or XYZ.
Toccara (39:29):
And he'll go in and he'll be like every once in a while, like "Hey guys! My name is Rick. And I've noticed that these rentals are this price. But did you know that you can actually purchase a home, a three bedroom, two bath home, and your monthly payment would actually be 2,100? I can help you do that if ever you want." And that, so not only positioning himself as the expert, he's providing a free helpful resource for everyone by having this group. He had so many responses on that one post where he went in and said, "By the way, you can just purchase a home for cheaper." So he's letting his group work for him and getting so many leads. So think of the way in which you can provide value through a group that might not be directly related to exactly what you do, and then you can go figure out a way that you can kind of monetize that later on.
Crystal (40:16):
Yeah.
Toccara (40:16):
But you have to have that genuine intention there.
Crystal (40:20):
Yep. I was going to say the same thing, Toccara. Basically, if you are actually caring about your audience and you are really in it to win it for them, I think that you'll actually be able to have a group these days. Like there's a community out there that's interested in certain topics. Whatever the problem you're solving for is, if you have a group around that, you can really utilize that to your fullest extent on Facebook groups.
Toccara (40:45):
Yeah. I definitely agree. And then if you can capture their emails, you can run Facebook ads to them, or anything else. Google, whatever you want, you can then actually advertise to them.
Crystal (40:55):
Okay. Well, we're getting close to time already. I'm so bummed out. I could talk to you forever.
Toccara (41:00):
It goes fast.
Crystal (41:02):
I know, it did go fast. I was going to ask one question about, what are some costly mistakes if your Facebook ad strategy's wrong? What are some of the biggest ... the things that I guess could cost you the most money when you put your ad out if you've done it wrong?
Toccara (41:18):
Yes, exactly. This is just what I saw actually in the last couple of weeks, two examples. One is what I told you about, that coach, where we saw that the leads were too high and no one went in. Whenever data is off, you notice data is off, which is why reporting's so important, you have to start getting curious. There's usually a reason why. Peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys. And so if you're seeing a valley and like something isn't adding up, there's almost 90% of the time something hasn't been set up correctly.
Toccara (41:49):
So that's where I'd start to dissect. Don't let ads run so long that you haven't looked back on the data. Immediately, if you're running, let's say, a lead gen campaign or a purchase, whatever that looks like, the next day, check every single part of that funnel. Actually do it in advance, right? Check every single part to make sure it's all working correctly, because I've seen that so many times where someone goes back five, six days later and is like, "Oh, I didn't get any leads." It's like, oh yeah, because you didn't have the lead tag on there. So that's one of them.
Toccara (42:21):
The other costly mistake is again, that just really understanding what your ad, if you are using an ad agency, is doing. Another example I have is I have a client who, let's just say they spent about 20 grand, which is true, about 20 grand on ads over a, I don't know, four month period with one of the world's biggest ad agencies actually. One of the world's biggest ad agencies.
Crystal (42:41):
Wow.
Toccara (42:42):
Well, when we looked into the data of that 20 grand, actually only about 2,500 had been spent on ads.
Crystal (42:49):
That's crazy.
Toccara (42:50):
So that ad agency [crosstalk 00:42:50] had pocketed 17,500 of that money.
Laura (42:52):
My gosh.
Toccara (42:52):
So a very costly mistake is, again, not looking at your reporting and asking and just trusting the ad agency. So of course it wasn't working, right?
Toccara (43:06):
And the other thing is just doing too many boosts and not actually educating yourself and learning how to do this yourself, or hiring someone who truly knows what they're doing. You really will kind of light your money on fire and waste it. So not having a real strategy, a real implementation in the proper interface to run ads.
Toccara (43:28):
And then probably finally I would say, it's a little bit off-topic for Facebook ads, but Google ads, those branded campaigns. To tell you the truth, unless you're a big enough company where you feel like other people are going to be bidding on your name, I'm actually not the biggest fan of branded campaigns. Because what happens is someone's typing in your name and they're clicking on your ad, they would've already gone to your website, right?
Crystal (43:52):
Yeah, exactly.
Toccara (43:52):
So don't waste your money on that. If you're a small company, and let's say you have someone running your Google ads, tell them "Do not run branded campaigns for me." See what type of results they can get you without the branded campaign.
Crystal (44:07):
Such good advice. Because I feel like too with the branded campaign, you could put a small budget to that on your own if you really felt that, and then spend the budget with the agency on the ones that they have to dig a little deeper and find you new people.
Toccara (44:21):
Absolutely. I agree. But like a brand like Keap, you're going to have to do branded campaigns.
Crystal (44:26):
Yeah, we do.
Toccara (44:27):
I mean you're in a space ... Yeah, you have to because you're a big brand. You have a lot of big companies in the same space. You need to be doing branded campaigns. But if you're a small business, you don't need to do that. Or like you said, Crystal, just put the tiniest budget there, and make sure you're separating the branded campaign out from your reporting so that you can truly see the results of the other real campaigns that are actually going to drive you customers and sales.
Crystal (44:53):
So smart. Well Laura, I know I've like hogged most of Toccara's time here.
Laura (44:58):
No worries ...
Crystal (44:59):
Do you have a last question?
Laura (45:01):
Can you tell our audience where they can find you?
Crystal (45:04):
Yeah, that's a great one.
Toccara (45:05):
Yeah, I would love to. You know, I love my Instagram. My Instagram is the same as my website. So you can go to toccarakarizma.com, or Instagram, toccarakarizma. And it's T-O-C-C-A-R-A K-A-R-I-Z-M-A. It's a very interesting name. I wasn't named for about two years actually, believe it or not.
Crystal (45:25):
Oh my goodness!
Toccara (45:27):
Yeah! So that's it. And if you're interested in ad agency services, our ad agency is karizmamarketing.com
Laura (45:34):
Awesome.
Crystal (45:35):
Awesome.
Laura (45:35):
Well I will be sure to hyperlink those in our blog transcription for the podcast and make it easy for everyone to find you. Thank you so much for your time today. It has been a pleasure.
Crystal (45:48):
For sure. Toccara, also if you want to send us the Facebook learning course that you have, we can put that in there too because I think that will be really helpful to our audience as they start learning about this and possibly doing it on their own. So I would love to be able to link that as well.
Toccara (46:04):
Thank you so much. Yeah, so that's Social Savvy, and that is on the toccarakarizma.com website. There is a link there for Social Savvy, and I'll also give you that link.
Crystal (46:14):
Awesome. Well thank you so much, Toccara. It was great catching up. And thank you for sharing your view as well, because that's bringing me right into this weekend vibe I'm feeling. But I loved having you on. We'll have to also have you on our Facebook Live sometime in the near future here.
Toccara (46:29):
That would be so fun. I could jam out about this stuff all day. Thank you so much for having me. It was so good seeing you again, Crystal, and everyone.
Crystal (46:37):
Awesome.
Laura (46:37):
It was very nice to meet you. Thank you so much for your time.
Toccara (46:40):
Of course.
Crystal (46:42):
Okay. Well that's a wrap for Small Biz Buzz.
Laura (46:45):
Thank you all. See you next time.
Voiceover (46:56):Thanks for listening to Small Biz Buzz. Please take a second to subscribe to the show and leave a five-star rating. It helps keep the show going. And, if you need a hand with growing your small business, head over to keap.com. That's K-E-A-P .com, and get started. More business, less work. That's Keap.