Ep. 98 Leah Mazur from Carousel Creative

Barb

Our guest today has been working in digital marketing for about 11 years already. So I’m convinced just having had some conversations with her means she started when she was about 14. But six of those years were totally focused on paid social media advertising.

And you know, if there’s one thing that we all have in common as local business owners, there’s times where you just can’t get that algorithm to work. So hopefully, Leah is going to give us some real insight today.

She used to work at one of Canada’s largest Facebook advertisers, and spent her days analyzing millions of dollars in ad spend. And she also worked as the director of paid social at one of the large Toronto advertising firms. She’s got some real experience behind her in terms of what works, what doesn’t work. And I know she’s got some great information that she’s gonna share with us today, if you’re with us today. She started her own business back in 2017, and her businesses called Loop Digital. And all they do is paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram. Welcome to the show. Welcome to First Page.

Leah
Thanks, Barb. Thanks for the great intro. I’m really happy to be here.

Barb
It’s so cool to have you here. Now, I didn’t tell anyone before, but you and I have actually known each other for about let’s see my son’s 13. So about 13 years, because that’s when we first met when you’re at the university here.

Leah
Yeah, it was a bit less than that. 2013 was when I was in your class. I checked back on the date. So yeah. Oh, really? Nine years ago? Yeah.

Barb
Oh, so I was still teaching that. Yeah. It’s all just a blur when your kids are literal. It’s just a blur. So, let’s start with you, and Luke digital. So tell us a little bit about what you do in your business? And how do you support other businesses in growing?

Leah
Sure. So yeah, you’re correct. The only thing that we do is paid social advertising. So we do Facebook, Instagram. And we also do Tik Tok now as well. So basically, only the paid side of those platforms, though. So we don’t do any kind of organic posting for businesses or anything like that. Just when a business is ready to put some advertising budget behind their message, we will help them with planning their campaigns, setting them up creating ads, and then monitoring and optimizing and doing all the ongoing testing that comes with that as well.

Barb
Okay, so I think that right away brings up the question, do Facebook ads still work? We all heard the stories after Apple made the changes to their operating system. So does it still work? And what has changed?

Leah
Definitely, yeah. So most of my clients like they’re, you know, they’re all still succeeding with Facebook ads is definitely still possible. Ad costs have been rising. As long as I’ve been doing it, I think just every year more people get into it, and more people realize what a great opportunity it is. And of course, it’s an auction based system, which means that the more people there are bidding for those spots in, in, you know, in the feed and everything, the more the cost is going to go up.

Leah
So, costs have been rising over time, they’re going to continue to rise. And then with iOS 14, what happened was Apple made some changes to the operating system and how they allow Facebook to track people’s behavior after they click on an ad and so that reduced Facebook’s ability to be able to track and report on the campaigns as effectively.

Leah
And so that did cause a bit of a hiccup in a lot of people’s ad campaigns. It was kind of like, you know, q3 q4. Last year, a lot of people were kind of struggling with their ad campaigns. But Facebook seems to kind of have things under control now and it seems like things are back to normal. So that’s pretty good, but costs are definitely always going up. So that is definitely a concern but they still work.

Barb
So, you know, one of the things that I saw as an advertiser is the messages that I got from Facebook and Instagram were quite alarming. Like, they really wanted me to get worked up to get upset about these changes. And I mean, there’s two sides, right? Because the advertiser side, sure I was gonna be missing out on some potential customers. But then the consumer side, there was a bit of safety and security in there knowing I’m not going to be tracked and pixelated and followed everywhere I go. Right. And so what is the reaction that you’ve heard from most of your business owners or most of your clients around the changes?

Leah
Yeah, yeah, you’re right, there’s two sides. And Apple has really kind of positioned themselves as like, you know, protecting the consumer and, and considering the privacy for, for all of its customers, but it I mean, I’m, I’m sure that Apple is going to be rolling out their own, they’ve announced they’re going to be rolling out their own advertising. So really, like, I think that they’re probably going to be using a lot of the same data that they’re restricting Facebook from tracking, I think they just kind of position it as a privacy protection for their customers.

Leah
But I think it’s all just a kind of politics. But yeah, in terms of reaction. For our business owners, they’ve, you know, most of them are not super happy about it, we aren’t able to track our data as accurately in Facebook. Now, there are like, external tools that have popped up that have helped to add additional tracking for business owners. And now Facebook’s got like the conversions API, which makes things more accurate and everything but it’s definitely not as seamless as it used to be.

Barb
Yeah, absolutely. So when you’re talking to a local business owner, who, you know, they’re really just trying to get started, maybe they’ve never even done an ad before? Where would you suggest that they need to start?

Leah
Um, definitely start with a creative message. And what you want to say, this is really the most important part about advertising, I think a lot of people get really caught up in the targeting or the way, the settings on the campaign, or using CBO, or abo are different, like tactics like that. But really, the best place to start is just making a really good ad making something that people that your audience wants to see that they’re going to engage in.

Leah
So think about it from their perspective, what would be something that would be interesting for them and engaging for them? To that they’re going to want to click on like, how can you take your message and make it interesting to people and think about it from their perspective and make something that they are really going to resonate with?

Barb You have a really good quote on your website, and I forget how exactly it goes. But it said something to the effect of, you know, people will read a message because it’s of interest to them. Sometimes it’s an ad, sometimes it’s just a post. And it doesn’t have to be online, like we as human beings actually engage with content that’s offline as well, right now.

Barb
So it kind of walked me through that process. Because I do think that that’s a little bit different for a lot of advertising agencies, they tend to focus on you know, your audience and their age and this and that, where you’re really focused on the creative. So walk me through your process, how do you, how do you go about creating that? That great creative, and how would a business owner do that?

Leah
Mm hmm. Yeah. That’s really, yeah, what you said about, you know, people read what interests them. And I think that with paid social advertising, that is even more true than ever, because when your ad is showing up on social media, it’s going to be showing up like in the Instagram news feed in the Facebook newsfeed or on Tik Tok or whatever. It’s an interruption to people’s entertainment, right?

Leah
And so when you think about the context of where your ad is showing up, your ad is going to perform best if you make it blend into the rest of the content. So your ad should be, you should think of your ad like an entertaining Tik Tok video or like, Instagram reel or something like that.

Leah
And so thinking about making your content, like a piece of organic social media content, or making it similar to that kind of style is what really works well.

Leah
And yeah, yeah, you mentioned you know, traditional advertisers think about the demographics and everything. And I think we’re really, I’m really noticing a shift in marketing away from demographics and more towards psychographics. And thinking more about what is my audience interested in? What problems are they having? What desires do they have? Where do they want to be?

Leah
And speaking to those, rather than speaking to the demographics, and when you can do that you are actually creating ads that are going to really resonate with the audience, as opposed to previously, a lot of people thought of their targeting is happening, like, okay, let’s target, you know, 30 year old women in New York or something like that.

Leah
But now you can make an ad that targets someone who has a specific problem that speaks to that specific problem. And the algorithm will actually figure out who has that problem and show the ad to them itself. So as advertisers, we need to think less about those specific demographics and more just about making ads that speak to the right people.

Barb
At the right time. Exactly. And, you know, that’s something that we talk a lot about in order to find the problem. What problem do you solve for your customers, and, you know, problem or reward doesn’t matter which perspective you look at. Customers want something when they spend money, if they go for supper, the problem they want to solve is the fridge is empty, and they’re hungry. Or it’s Friday night, I’m way too tired to cook. And so I just want to go out and grab something.

Barb
So when you start to think about defining that problem, are you able to help businesses define their problem? Or do you find that by the time they come to you, they’re like, this is the problem we solve? How does someone you know wrap their head around? What problem can they solve, and then get that broader voice to folks?

Leah
Mm hmm. Yeah, I think a lot of business owners do have an idea of this. But I do like to really do a lot of research into it as well, because I think it’s so important to really understand it from the customer’s perspective.

Leah
So I think the best way to do this research is to look at customer reviews, testimonials, and find out what you know what the customers are saying, what did they get out of it? What was that process like, of going from not having whatever the business offers, to then having it? And how did that change their life? Yeah, so definitely going to the customers and getting the problem from them, as opposed to from the business owner and what the business owner thinks the problem is, because it’s not always in alignment.

Barb
You know, and I would even argue, in a lot of cases, I don’t think it’s in alignment, right? I use something as simple as you know, buying groceries. So it doesn’t matter where you buy your groceries, we don’t go and buy groceries, because we want to spend money on food, we go and buy groceries, because we have teenage kids that are eating us out of house and home, the fridge is constantly empty, and it’s too expensive to go out all the time. Right.

Barb
And so our motivations to buy groceries aren’t based on I want to, it’s a need to. And I think when we can start to think about our solution from that perspective, it really helps us get into the customer’s mind.

Barb
I like what you’ve said about you know, going read your customer reviews, what did they appreciate the most? For some of them, it’s you know, the ease if you’re a plumber, oh, goodness, they made it so easy. One phone call, they came, you know, they did everything.

Barb
And so sometimes it’s as simple as just making it easy for your customers to do business with you, the less friction there is the better, right?

Barb
So when you’re working with a local business or with a business who wants to advertise online, how do you counsel them in like, what’s the right time to start? So if Catherines with us today live? So Katherine called you up and said, Hey, Leah, we want to think about working with you. What questions would you ask Katherine first to see if she’s ready? Um,

Leah
I would start by asking like, where, like how customers are currently finding the business. And I always, I always want to make sure that the offer itself in the first place is attractive to people. Because advertising really only amplifies what you have already. Like if you have a business and an offer that people just aren’t interested in, and you haven’t tested and proven like the validation of your market, then advertising is only going to amplify what you already have, which is nothing so you’re going to get nothing from advertising.

Leah
So I always really like to make sure that the business has a good foundation already, that they’re able to get customers organically. That people are happy with the service and everything. Just to make sure that they have kind of like that foundation set. And then and then after that, it’s great if they have good assets, like, you know, testimonial videos, we could use anything like that for, for creating the campaigns. And then I think that’s pretty much it. I mean, advertising, you know, you can start early, even just with like a small budget. Yep.

Barb
And so would there be a different approach, let’s say for a local restaurant that relies 100% on foot traffic, versus maybe a dog trainer who works with clients online? So is there a different approach that you take? Or would, you know, maybe recommend a business?

Leah
Yeah, definitely. So a local business? I mean, you know, obviously, the targeting is going to be different, you’re going to want to target you know, locally in that region, because those are the people that are going to be able to, to go into it. And so in that case, I feel like our message needs to be a little bit broader and appeal to more people, because you’ve got kind of a smaller audience, right? You’re only targeting like one city or one neighborhood as opposed to targeting all of Canada or something. And yeah, and then it, if you’re, if you’re the dog trainer that can help anyone, then you can have more, I would recommend, like niching, a bit more so that you can figure out like, how you can really speak directly to one type of customer?

Barb
Yep, no, that makes perfect sense to me. And when you’re working with a client, depending on whether they are that online, online dog trainer, or you know, the local business, do you help them find the budget that might be, you know, the right budget? Or how do you determine that?

Leah
Yeah, um, budget. So for a budget, you want to work backwards from your numbers. So ideally, you want to understand what your target CPA would be. So the CPA is the cost per acquisition, or how much you want to spend to acquire a new customer.

Leah
So say the dog trainer, charges $500, for their, you know, dog training package, and they have a certain amount of costs, you know, software they have to spend, or whatever, in order to do that. Maybe it’s $100. So then, you know, they’ve got $400 profit, and for their time, they want to be compensated, like, say, 250. So then you’ve got $150 left to work with, that you can, you know, if they can acquire a customer for $150, then they know that they’re, they’re going to be hitting the numbers that they want to hit and get, get the margins that they want to get.

Leah
So then starting from that, $150, and you can work backwards from that you can run a test with data, you can see what your, what you know, cost per click is like what your conversion rate is like, and figure out what that CPA actually is. And then if it’s reasonable to be able to kind of do some testing and optimize and get it to that point.

Barb
Can you just say that one more time for me Leah? So walk me through that process? Because I think that was a fantastic explanation. Just walk me through that one more time, if you would.

Leah
Sure. So, um, so you need to figure out what, what is the price point that makes sense for you to acquire a new customer for on Facebook.

Leah
So once you figure out what that price point is, then you can have kind of like a goal that you want to get to, right. And so from there, when you start running ads, you can, you can, you can start collecting some data.

Leah
So for example, you’ll start learning what your, what your costs are on Facebook, what your cost per click is, if you’re getting say you’re getting like 100 clicks on Facebook for $1 a click, so you spend $100 and get 100 people clicking through and say you have a 1% conversion rate, so why not have 100 people actually purchases, then your CPA is going to be $100.

Leah
Because you’re getting you’re spending $100 to get 100 people to click through and one of those is purchasing, so you know that your CPA is $100. Right. So that’s kind of how you can look at the numbers and, and, and work backwards from where you need to be. And that’s how you can know if you’re successful.

Barb
Exactly. Do you find that the conversion rate for folks coming from either Facebook or Instagram are quite a bit lower than traffic that hits the website on an organic basis?

Leah
It depends and um, yeah, it really depends, I would say that it kind of depends on how long the customer has been nurtured for often, you know, someone might come from Facebook, and they’re not going to convert at that point. But maybe another month later they go and they Google the website, and then they go to it. And then they convert at that point. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s really from like, it’s really from the Facebook ads originally, right? So Facebook ad traffic, it? Yeah, it can be. It can seem like it’s not as engaged. Yeah, exactly. But you’re often like building up those relationships to nurture later as well.

Barb
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you mentioned psychographics earlier, and I think about the dog trainer, psychographics would be a fantastic targeting tool, because we know who’s interested in you know, pets, and dogs and behavior and right, like, we can really pick those things, you’re a local restaurant psychographics probably have less influence.

Barb
And that might be where physical location, and even age fall into a little bit more. Because for some restaurants, you know, kids can’t even be there. So you have to be 19 and over things like that. And so is that how you differentiate when you look at a local business, the plumber, the restaurant, okay, it’s location based. Now we’re going to use more demographics, because, you know, even think about the plumber? Well, psychographics aren’t gonna matter, because we all have furnaces in our houses. Right? And so is that how you differentiate? Um,

Leah
I would actually say, no, like, the more and more I think that, I really feel like psychographics is just almost always the better way to go. Because even for that restaurant, I wouldn’t recommend limiting your demographic targeting any further, because you’re already limited by geographic, you’ve already got like, just only a neighborhood or a city that you can target.

Leah
And when the more that you limit, and the more that you restrict Facebook, the higher your costs are going to be. So if you’re targeting, say, you know, Regina, and I, in that case, I wouldn’t recommend, you know, targeting only people of a certain age group or something like that, because you’re going to limit your targeting even further.

Leah
And the Facebook algorithm, it’s, it’s very smart, it’s got billions of data points from, you know, the past decade. And so it really knows who, who’s resonating with that ad. And what happens is, as people start to click on the ad, engage with the ad, even it notices who’s like stopping there, scroll to look at the ad and read it. And it’s learning who’s engaging with that ad, and it will figure out the demographics on its own.

Leah
And if you limit your demographics, then, you know, Facebook might say, Okay, this restaurant mostly appeals to people in their 30s. But maybe there are some people in their 20s, that Facebook knows that they’re going to really like that restaurant just because of other certain interests that they have in common with those people in their 30s. So Facebook is able to find those outliers that might not necessarily fit into that demographic group. But in that way, you’re not restricting the algorithm from even being able to reach out to those people,

Barb
Right. So you might actually be able to target if you’re the plumber, you target based on maybe home ownership or something related to house and home. And the restaurant might look at interest, like sports bar, pool, those sorts of topics. So we could you and I have no idea what’s from that perspective, what’s available in Facebook ads, like if those psychographics would even be available. I did notice the other day, when we were in there for a client that they’re removing some of the demographic targeting, which I presume is just targeting that isn’t being used actively.

Leah
Um, yeah, actually. So in this case, with any local business, I really wouldn’t recommend any interest targeting. So I wouldn’t even recommend targeting, you know, based on, you know, like you said, sports bar homeownership, I would go totally broad. And this is something that I’m seeing working better and better and more and more broad targeting is what I would recommend, especially for a local business, again, because the location is so small.

Leah
You don’t want to restrict the algorithm any further than it already is. And so when I say psychographics, I’m thinking less of the targeting and more of like in your ad creative, really making sure that your ad speaks to the type of person that you want to speak to. So if you’re a plumber, you can speak to a problem that someone might have with their plumbing. And in that way, the ad will find the people that resonate with that problem.

Leah
So, the targeting more and more is happening at the actual ad level, because Facebook knows who’s responding to the ad and who’s resonating with it. And, then they’re able to find more people like that for you. So that’s why they’re removing a lot of the damage or a lot of the interest targeting. Because it’s, it’s just becoming less and less important to have that kind of targeting.

Barb
Okay, no, that makes perfect sense to me.

And that’s it. We’re out of time.

Thank you, Leah, for joining us today to talk about Facebook and Instagram and what’s working today and what’s not anymore.

If you’d like to be a guest on the show, you can email me at Barb@abovethefold.live, or just reach out on our Facebook and Instagram page at Above the fold.ca.

You can even submit questions in advance of our show just on our Facebook page.

I’m your host Barb McGrath, local business owner and Googlegirl. Remember you worked hard for your success. Don’t keep it a secret. Bye for now.