Oh, Derek, the pleasure is all mine. I can’t believe two years has passed already.

But I’m looking forward to having this other conversation here.

I wish I could say it was planned and this was my intentions from day one and I have this beautiful four-step plan for it to all happened. But between me and you, and hopefully no one catches on to this, I think half of it was strictly by mistake or by luck, literally being in the right place at the right time.

In short, when I was a teen,I grew up in a family as an only child where money didn’t come easy. I remember days where I would ask for like Mcdonald’s hamburgers and my parents were like, “Yeah, we can’t do that for you today, son. I’m sorry.”That coupled with the fact that I was an only child, also put on me this burden of saying, “I’ve got to take responsibility for my family.” That plus my father got sick. I saw him have his first heart attack when I was four years old. We spent a lot of time in hospital up until I was 17 when he suffered his third stroke. The third stroke essentially took him out of business.

Him and my mom had this small convenience store, a local business. It was enough to pay the bills, not enough to go any further than that, but that third stroke definitely took him out of commission. Which meant mom had to find a job for the first time in her life.

Immigrant mother from Seoul, Korea, going out to get job interviews, can’t speak the language all that well. And I just remember days where she would come home crying because the interview didn’t go so well because she couldn’t speak English all that well. I think I was about 17 or 18 when I just made that commitment. I’m like, “Enough is enough. I’m not going to see my parents go through this any longer.” And I said, “I’m going to jump into the world of internet marketing, or at least trying to figure out how to make ends meet for my family.”

Fast forward a little bit, internet marketing kind of made its way available to me through various leaders, including Mr. Coy, which we’re both familiar with, introduced me to this world. And I thought, “Wow. There really is a world out here where I think if the potential is what it seems it could be, could be my ticket to make this all work.”

Now, simultaneously with that, when I was in high school, I felt like I was … I guess everybody has this inkling, but I translated this inkling in my soul to basically say “I am supposed to do something that helps people in the world.”

My world view at the time told me that that would be through my faith practice. So simultaneously with all this other stuff going on, at 17 years old, I started my first church. At 19, I got officially ordained, and I pastored a church for 14 years here in the local Toronto area.

Technically. I was brought on to take care of this amalgamation of a church body that had split off from its original body. It was just right time, again, where they’re like, “We’re looking for a leader.” I’m like, “I’m looking for a home.” One thing led to another and it was the dawning of a new church in a new location and us having to like figure out how to make this work from scratch.

One of the things I did want to commit to throughout the process was to not necessarily take a salary from the church.There’s just so much baggage in and ill perception connected to that, that I said, “You know what? I’ll serve this church on my own dollar,” but that meant I needed the side hustle.

Hence, the world of internet marketing made itself available to me. And of course, after massive failure after failure, after failure, after failure, after failure, after failure, after failure, I know I’m the only one who’s ever experienced failure on the internet.

I think two things happened simultaneously: One, because of unforeseen circumstances, we had made the decision for me to, at that time I thought was going to be a sabbatical, just one year away from the church, not involved at the capacity that I was, where I could just take a breather. And so, I made that decision to step away, and I found myself at that time saying, “Okay, I need to figure out how to really make this internet stuff work.”

Long and short of it is, again, I think right place, right time, a little bit of luck, a lot of grace, Facebook was introduced to me. This was way back in beta when there wasn’t much going on. Google was 800 pound gorilla. That’s really the main PPC engine that was out there. And so I just, I’m like, “Facebook, great, let’s dive two feet in.” And very quickly did I start to get good results. But my assumption was, so was everybody else.

So I didn’t have anything special going on, I was just like one of many other people. I found that that wasn’t actually the case. The more conversations I had with people, the more I realized, “Well, wait a second, I think I understand something here that maybe other people don’t understand.” And all of this, like a year of failures or failures of studying direct response marketing marketers and what works on the internet.

All of a sudden this opportunity to execute it on this brand new platform called Facebook made itself available, so I jumped two feet in. Fast forward now, a few years, we focus strictly Facebook as a platform, and as you mentioned, we work with some amazing brands, amazing personalities in the world where through some of the work that we do, we’re able to impact tons and tons of people and I think the most rewarding thing of it all is just the ability to take people’s messages.

Messages that I know people’s products, services messages. Messages that I know that can literally change someone’s life for the better and be like the conduit.

The bridge that says, “Well, there are people out there who need to hear this message. You have a great message. I can build that bridge on Facebook. Let’s make that happen.” And to see the testimonials of the lives that are changed as a result of those connections, it’s just been a phenomenal experience, and what gets me up every day.

I don’t wake up jonesing about jumping into the Facebook ads platform, but I do wake up jonesing, thinking like, “Who can we reach that’s going to have a better impact by hearing these messages or seeing these products or getting engaged with these services?”

Yeah. Our business was originally built around just agency work. We built this agency or essentially a done for you. We will take on clients and perform this for people. What we realized quite quickly was that, that was isolating 99% of the people that we couldn’t work with.

So the questions kept coming up, like how can you help us in some way, shape or form? So we pondered on various ways and then about maybe two and a half years ago now, maybe three, we opened what I would call the consultancy arm of the business.

And that includes two day intensive trainings where we bring business owners and we build out systems for them right there in place. It includes a book that we’ve written, it includes speaking, it includes we have a membership program called The Council.

We have products like courses and whatnot, just to teach the people who say, “You know what, I do want to do this myself, I want to figure out how to make this work.” And so we opened up that whole arm of the business to be able to help those people as well.

Yeah, great question. So when we first started building the agency, things were moving so quickly and people are like, “Hey, can you help us?” And of course, as a newer entrepreneur, the automatic answer is, “Yes, I can help you, and you, and you.” And the next thing I know, I’m like, “Oh, I’ve gone from a solopreneur to now having to build this team out.” And we had staff and we built the agency, and we had more staff have very quickly.

I don’t know if any of the listeners have gone through this, but very quickly I went from like being a practitioner who is more of a consultant and had my hands in the weeds, to now being the owner and ‘CEO’ of a multi employee business. And frankly, I don’t think I have the DNA for that. And it happened so quick that I started dropping the ball and we started hurting clients, the results weren’t there and all this stuff started to happen.

So I have to make a quick decision as to, “What are we going to do?” And we made the decision to, to ‘scale down’, I call it netting up. But some people perceive that as scaling down where we said, “You know what, we’re going to go back to boutique, we’re going to have a handful of people who work with us,” and maybe it was because of that experience of having so many full time staff that jarred me a little bit. Right now, we have a team across both businesses, the consultancy and the agency, we have a team of about 10 or 11, 100% remote, 100% contractors who work with us to fulfill what we need to do.

My wife is a partner in the business, but both her and I aren’t even employees ourselves. So we run essentially a zero-employee business.

Yeah. There is that perception because obviously, especially in the circles that me and you run in, like everybody is talking about growth and numbers and all this stuff. And so we feel like if we don’t have like this multinational, multi employee, gazillion dollar business, we’re dropping the ball.

And I felt like that for the longest time so I thought that was the only path to go. and then I just had to sit down and ask myself a question, like, “Am I building a lifestyle around my business or a business around my lifestyle?”

A lot of people harp on these ‘lifestyle businesses’, and will I have $100 million company at the pace that I’m going now? Probably not, but is that okay with me? 100% yes. I realized I have a young family right now, I have two kids under two, they are my priority.

Structuring a business that can best serve our clients and our customers while simultaneously serving my family, I had to find what that looked like and I think we’re getting closer. We may not be perfectly there yet, but with technology these days and with capabilities these days, it’s amazing what you can do without having to have a 100 employees in an actual location and try to run things that way.

And nothing has changed on nothing on Facebook.

You know what? The funny thing is … Like, have there been a lot of changes? The answer is an obvious yes, They’ve been in the news, and Zuck was talking to Congressmen and you’re trying to get issues solved, and all this stuff was going on. But how does that relate to the actual business owner?

The truth is not all that much. And here’s what I mean by that. Most of the rhetoric and the craziness that we see going on lately, is as the media does, in my opinion, was generally noise.And what it did was it scared a lot of business owners, it scared a lot of advertisers, it had people freaking out and now I’m thinking, “What do I do next?” And that sort of thing.

But what I think business owners need to realize is that Facebook is in it for the long haul. I don’t think Zuck and the company’s going anywhere anytime soon. And number two, we have to realize that their revenue is 100% based on advertisers like you and me.

And so they are constantly evolving and doing everything they can, finding a balance between, “A, how do we make sure that the Facebook community is protected and treated well and feel like they want to stay on the platform. And B, how do we ensure that the advertisers get the best bang for their buck so we can appease our investors and continue to grow as a company?”

So despite a lot of the stuff, what I tend to tell entrepreneurs most of the time is that don’t get lost in the noise. Direct marketing has always worked and will continue to work regardless of the platform that you’re on.

Yes, maybe you need to make a couple of tweaks here and there when it comes to stuff like targeting for example, because right now, Facebook is taking away Axiom Data which is a third party data that they purchased. So no longer will you be able to target, let’s say job titles, or no longer will you be able to target net income or annual income or liquid investable assets and stuff like that. Which some people are freaking out about.

But frankly, and we can even get into this, by removing those things, I do not believe by any means it is a detriment to anybody’s business. In fact, I think it’s actually a bonus to remove those things because there’s better ways to do it.

I don’t know if it’s so much an alternative that is equal to or better, but it’s just getting a little bit creative. For example, if you were targeting income, and I know a lot of people do this because they’ve been told that you got to sell high ticket. Or maybe they’re a professional service business that works with, they’re looking for investable assets of people over 65 or whatever. So they’re looking for income ranges.

Now, the reality is, the income range thing is a third party data, so that’s public record data.So, the information is like semi accurate but not fully accurate. And here’s what by this, Derek, you and I, as entrepreneurs, we would probably be listed as like low income people.

If we are structured accordingly, we would actually be listed as low income people. Yet, we’d probably be the most qualified for any high ticket type offer. So immediately, what people don’t realize is, especially if you’re in the B2B-ish entrepreneurial world, like you’re looking to get people who are self made, if you will, in part of that term I just see a lot of this like Kelsey Jenner thing or Kelly, whatever her name is, who’s gone on to run the self made stuff.

If you’re a business owner, the likelihood of you being qualified as a high income earner is naught. So, you’re wiping out a whole segment of people that you should be reaching that you’re probably not.

Secondly, anytime you have like ultra specific targeting, like let’s say people who make over $100,000 a year, all Facebook says is, “Wow, that person wants to get pretty narrow.” Your CPMs go up automatically. You could be paying a lot less for automatically by means of you choosing that specific type targeting, your CPMs are going up, which makes it that much harder to actually get a positive ROAS depending on where your numbers fall. So, that’s another thing.

Thirdly, I think the sustainability of any kind of Facebook campaign relies on your ability to actually target broad, but still have an intelligent enough campaign so that the broad targeting still gets the people that you want, but it has the size you need to be able to scale with it, if that makes sense. If I was targeting, let’s say, people who are high income earners but I couldn’t target those who, let’s say had $100,000 income anymore because Facebook is taking that way, I would, let’s say for example look at, the targeting trifecta.

It is one of the frameworks I’ve created so people can start thinking towards, “How do I find my ideal prospects?”

The targeting trifecta essentially asked three questions and there are three F questions: Who Does my ideal target Follow? Where do they Frequent? And what do they Fund? If I can answer those three questions about my ideal target, for example, that’s going to give me some creative ways to be able to target those exact people.

Let’s say, where do they frequent? If I’m looking for a high net worth individual, where do they frequent? Well, maybe they frequent a trade association that they’re a part of, maybe they’re part of a country club, maybe they own a second home or a cottage or something like that.

That would all be indicators of higher net worth individuals. Like, If I’m asking the three Fs. So what do they follow, frequent and fund? Where do they buy their groceries? Are they buying it at Whole Foods or are they buying it at the other store? What may have they may have purchased in the last month as a high net worth individual? What are some of the purchase behaviors?

And so just by doing stuff like that will still allow you to target the higher net worth individuals without necessarily having an Axiom data that says, “Hey, do they make $100,000 or more?”

Secondly though, I would say some of our the issues that a lot of people who are targeting these types of people have is, “Well, I just want qualified leads. I don’t want the other people sneaking through who maybe don’t meet a certain criteria.” You can actually qualify through your copy. If your ad could, let’s say you’re in the professional services space and you’re looking for people who are just about to retire, you could just say, “Hey, are you ready to retire in the next year or so?”

That would be a blanketing statement, and maybe will get some who come through or maybe some who don’t, but if you say, “Hey, are you looking to retire next year and you’re wondering what to do with your second and third home?” Just by adding that one clause in your copy, all of a sudden that self qualifies the person to say, “Yeah, I am actually wondering what should I do with my second and third home upon retirement?” Somebody who’s not a high net worth individual most likely doesn’t have a second or a third home and wouldn’t qualify themselves in that situation.

So I just think marketers and entrepreneurs and marketing people just need to be a little less, let’s say lazy. I don’t know if that’s the proper term.

A little more creative to think that there are alternatives, if you just put your mind to it, of how can I find where these people are hanging out, and how can I just strategically change my copy just a little bit to ensure that the right people are coming through my funnels.

Absolutely. For the sake of a lack of better words, it means nothing, but it also means everything. Here’s what I mean by that, it’s my P90x muscle confusion terminology. When P90x came out, they said, “Hey, we do this thing called muscle confusion.” Everyone’s like, “What’s that?” And then they’re like, “Nothing, but everything. Let me show you.” That’s my version of it.

But contextual congruence in short is understanding this, in order for your ads to be effective, in order for your whole buyer customer experience to be effective, it needs to be congruent to the context of the platform that you’re on.I first came across this is because what happened early on with Facebook is that you had this whole heap of direct response marketers come onto the Facebook platform who were traditionally accustomed to writing stuff for like postcards or newspapers or sales letters on physical paper.

The reality is, when you write ads for that sort of stuff, you can, in fact, you are encouraged to make sensationalized claims, make overbearing promises that may or may not be true and show images of people who you most likely won’t get that result, but you’ll show it anyways because that’s just what you think your ideal prospect wants.

So you had this slew of direct response marketers come onto Facebook with that same mentality, hundreds of thousands of them losing their ad account and they’re scratching their head like, “What, what did you do?” What you did is you didn’t realize that the context of the platform that you were going on, ie, Facebook, is that it’s a social media platform. It’s not a commerce driven platform. No one’s coming on a Facebook with buyer’s intent. So that poses a very interesting scenario for the business owner.

Because you can’t come onto Facebook saying, “Hey, I got this thing, come buy it.” Because nobody goes onto Facebook to buy anything. But, you are a business owner whose very livelihood depends on transactions.

So then how do you bridge the gap of, “I can’t really sell on Facebook, but my customers are on there. How do I craft a customer journey with that experience?” That’s what contextual congruence is and frankly, it falls into what I call for ROAS or return on ads spent or for ROI accelerators.

And I’ll mention them now, and then, Derek, if we want to deep dive into any one of them or all of them for that matter, we can. But the four ROAS accelerators are number one, clearly identifying who your market is. I’m not just talking about your customer avatar. I’m talking about what I would call the 4%, and we can talk further about that. But the mentality one should have on Facebook is not to be all things to all people, it should be a big fish in a small pond, i.e., a very targeted group in a niche.

You want to be a big fish in a small pond, and it doesn’t mean you want to be one big fish in one small pond, you could be multiple big fishes in multiple small ponds, but the more targeted you are and the more your offers are designed for a particular segment of a market place, the more you don’t blend in with the noise. Then you become perceived as a trusted authority. So the first thing is your market. The second thing is what I will call, for the sake of alliteration and staying with the M thing, your magnet.

So my fundamental belief on Facebook is this, you must give before you ask, hence the title of my book is called Give. And the idea is, you can’t sell without first providing value to somebody, and the more value you can provide, you are thus earning the right to ever ask for a transaction.

The idea is, if Facebook is not a platform by which you could sell directly on, although some people do it, your greatest return on ad spend will come when you can engage in a conversation and potentially pull them off of the Facebook platform for the transaction itself to happen.

Why do I say magnet is essentially a great piece? Now, that platform could be an email list, which we would always recommend, but it could be putting them on a Facebook group, it could be a subscriber to a YouTube channel or a podcast or whatever. I define a platform as anything that with a push of a button, you can communicate to those who want to be communicated to.

Facebook is not a sales generator per se, it’s a platform builder. And we do that through offering magnets. That’s the second the profit or ROI accelerator. The third one, is your message. Most people I find just use generic messaging out there. Let’s just come right down to the level of the ad. It’s how you structure an ad, how you communicate with your 4% that allows what you have to offer that stands out from what everybody else has to offer. And we can talk about some things that help with the messaging of that.

Then lastly, I’ll call it like movement if you will. It’s how or what process do you need to have in place that get someone who is literally scrolling through their newsfeed to stop, to then read your ad, to then click your ad, to then go to a page, to then fill in their information. At that point, what steps do you need to have in place to accommodate?

I believe that there’s three types of buyers for the sake of simplicity, let’s say slow, medium, and fast buyers. How do we accompany the fast buyers, the people who want to buy and buy now, without upsetting the medium buyers, the people who need seven to 12 touch points typically, or a traditional sales funnel before they buy, and without discounting the slow buyers. People who just need nurture before they’re ever going to buy anything from you ever again.

And if you have a system in place that creates that movement, I think if you have all four of these systems in place, you will always, and I say that not tongue in cheek, I mean that literally, you will always be able to see a return on ad spending from your Facebook to ensure that every experience on Facebook is in fact profitable for you.

Movement.

I love this question because we’ve actually done extensive research and split tested every potential form of magnet. Well, not every, as many as are the common ones. What I mean by that is typically, there’s a variation of like a free report or an ebook that people tend to offer, or a physical book like a free plus shipping type thing. The second thing we noticed is people straight out will ask for ‘strategy session’, an aka, sales call. And folks, just by calling it a strategy session, people know it is a sales call, you’re duping nobody on that.

Thirdly, what’s quite common, especially in our space, is either like a four part video series made famous by Jeff Walker for example in a product launch formula type setting or a webinar is a third type of offer. And then lastly, and the one we actually found to work hands down best. And I think there’s reasons why this is the best, both practically, logistically and psychologically, which we can deep dive into if we need to.

But what I would say is, if you can offer somebody a one to two page downloadable PDF, so a one to two page downloadable PDF in the form of a template, a blueprint, a checklist, a recipe, a guide, a script, an execution plan, any of those types of frameworks.We’ve seen the cheapest leads ever as a result of offering these things.

And two, and here’s what I really like about those things, is consumption time. We have two currencies in which we transact with. One is money, the other is time. I would argue that time is more valuable than money. And so often times, that’s why we see, and you’d probably know that just maybe even better than I. Whenever I’m speaking to a public audience, I’d say, “Okay, well, how many people in this room have registered for a webinar before? Almost every hand goes up.

And I say, “Well, how many of you have showed up to the webinar, every single webinar you’ve ever registered for, you showed up, when was the date and time?” Maybe, one or two hands go up. I don’t think that’s because people just can’t fulfill their commitments or maybe it is, but for the most part people are time strapped and life gets in the way.

To ask someone right out of the gate, someone you’ve never met before for 90 minutes of their time, or let’s call it 60 minutes of their time, it’s a pretty big ask. And although people may want it in the moment, the likelihood of them showing up …

Let’s say you’re paying $10 per webinar registrant, that really is like a 40 or $50 a lead when you actually factor in who actually shows up to attend that. So yeah, the PDF. And here’s what I like about it. It’s very short, it’s short to consume, but if you do it in the way that I tell you, it’s also short to implement.

And I think that’s one of the key differences from most lead magnets out there, is that the faster someone can implement something and actually get a result from it, there’s so many psychological benefits to that, where they’re thinking, “Well, I haven’t gotten a result in this ever before. Now, I have.”

Number two, they’re going to ask, “Well, who got me this result? Oh, that’s right, it was Derek.” And the third thing is then, the question they ask after they typically get a minor result like that is, “Well, Derek, what’s next?” Which is like beauty to our ears, “Well, let me show you what’s next.” Then you walk him down a process.”

I would say the number one lead magnet that one can offer to their industry is in fact, I get a one to two page downloadable PDF in a form of anything I just mentioned there, but, here’s one clincher that I will say. I do believe that rather than just giving them content, and here’s what’s different about my lead magnets and the people that we work with. There’s a very particular opening that introduces an intro which pre-frames the content and a very particular outro or conclusion that tees up a call to action.

Mostly, magnets that I see out there are just like, “Here’s the content you asked for, bye.” That’s not what you want. The lead magnet is one part of a bigger process that starts something, doesn’t end it. And I think that’s a key thing that people oftentimes forget.

Yes.

Here’s our general premise about, because I take a lot of heat from the webinar guys, they’re like, “Come on man.” I’m like, “Man, I’m not dogging your webinars.” Here’s what we found. Webinars are amazing conversion events. They’re just not the greatest lead magnets and no one can argue with that. When you pin them up side by side, how much did you pay for a webinar registrant? 10 to 12 bucks? How much did you pay for PDF download guy? One to two bucks. And the quality of them is the same.

So I’m not saying don’t do the webinar, I’m just saying, watch where you put that in your sequence and get the people in first and then offer the webinar.

Here’s the dichotomy of the webinar. Live webinars convert higher than automated webinars, but they’re very difficult to run, if you want to run them every minute of every day. So you run the evergreen webinar. Again, it’s a pretty big time ask, let’s call it a 60 minute webinar. And if the conversion rates workout and the numbers work out, I’m going to continue to say, by all means, do it. But I would say that the appreciating value of a lead, a qualified lead over time is worth more than the immediate transactional value.

So I’m always looking at leads from the perspective of, yes, there’s going to be a percentage of them that transact with me within the first 72 hours and maybe the first seven days if I have a’funnel in place’, but statistics, consumer statistic show that the vast majority of the people who ever transact with you are going to transact with you between day 91 and two years. The vast majority of people who are going to buy from you, will buy from you between day 91 and two years.

You know what most of the internet world calls those leads? Dead.

That’s 80% of your revenue sitting there. That’s why also I do like the idea of the lead magnet upfront as the main kind of lead magnet, the downloadable PDF because again, I see my lead pool as an appreciating asset over time if you take care of them well, which is where the majority of my revenue will come from and I have proof of that all day long with our business. So do not discard the webinar, but just maybe move it in your sequence just a little bit to not be the first thing they see, maybe the second thing they see.

I have a great framework, I don’t know if we talked about this last time. I have a great framework for ad writing. I have a 10 stage ad writing framework that we can give away as a gift if anyone wants that, but I would just want people to think in three categories, I call it look, hook, took. If you can understand those three kinds of frameworks, it essentially sets you up to think about your ads in a better way.

Now, we all know, in fact, I was having a conversation with Dean Jackson. He told me that one in five post in the newsfeed are in fact an ad. And I’m like, “There’s no way one in five.”And I started scrolling on my phone and I’m like, “Oh, one in five are an ad.” Obviously, people are scrolling, they’re scrolling fast, they’re scrolling just to find something that immediately catches their attention.

The look portion of this is, how do you use your image or your video? And I’m going to lean towards image right now just because I know videos are higher barrier to entry. Like if I told everybody, “Hey, go create videos.” They’d be like, “Screw you, Nick, I’m not going to do this.” But if I’m, “Okay, you just got to create a great image,” that’s a different story.

The first thing is, how do we capture attention in the newsfeed? The age-old saying is, where’s the best place to hide a tree? The answer is in a forest. Why? Because it blends in. So I want you to think about the Facebook newsfeed as a forest and your image as a tree. How then can we make your image, as long as it’s relevant to stand out in the newsfeed?

I think there’s multiple ways to do that, but I’ll give you like two of my favorite. Number one, if someone’s scrolling through their newsfeed and all they see is color image after color image after color image, one of the things you can simply do is change it to grayscale. Automatically, that image in a fast scroll will stand out.

It will just catch someone’s attention and we have testimonial after testimonial, after testimonial of people how they did nothing with their copy, but simply changed their ad image to black and white and all of a sudden, started to get results with that. I would say everyone just test it and go side by side, do a split test and watch and see what happens.

I’m going to assure that like at least eight times out of 10, you’re black and white image is going to stand out further. Now, the second thing I will also say about your images. And people know this, yet they violate all the time.

We all know that we make transactional type decisions based on emotion and not on logic. Most of the images that I see a lot of bad people take are in fact like logic. It’s like a computer on a desk with a pen beside it or whatever.

I want you to think about when you’re creating, or not creating, but selecting images that you go in with the mindset of like, “Look, if I didn’t have the capability of Facebook, did not allow me to use words in this ad, and I had to do it 100% with an image. What image would I choose? What image tells a story and evokes the emotion that I’m trying to accomplish here with what I’m trying to do?”

Now, all of a sudden, you have maybe a gray scale image that tells a story that draws someone in on more than just a head level, but the soul or the heart level because like, “Man, that speaks to me,” then you’re going to have to stop their tracks. And essentially, that is the purpose of the image. So that’s the look. The hook then is, how do we create connection? Facebook is a social platform. People are on there to feel like they’re connecting with another human being. So how do we do that?

Well, one of the ways that we can create connection is by building rapport in our ads. You’ll notice that most of the ads that we write tend to be longer form copy than most other people. And that’s because the second part of all of our ads is, we’re looking to create a connection.

Now, a copy sequence that I learned, I can’t remember who taught it to me, so I can’t give credit, certainly not mine is, feel, felt, found. And it’s this idea of like, if I’m writing copy, how do I have this idea of, “I know how you feel, I felt the same way too until I have found this result.”

If I were to do this in the Facebook ad space, it could sound something like, “Hey, when I first got started with Facebook ads, I remember donating to what I call Facebook philanthropy. This is where I’m just spending a bunch of money on Facebook ads and getting zero return. Can you relate?” “Hey, I know how you feel. I felt the same way too because I’ve done this over and over and over, but never thinking that Facebook ads would actually work for me. That is until I discovered a simple 10 stage ad writing formula that every time I use it, I actually got an even better result. And today, blah, blah blah, I want to offer that to you.”

The idea is like, you want to create a connection with a person on the other side who’s reading this, who’s just basically in your mental mind is nodding their heads saying, “Man, yeah, actually that’s exactly how I feel. That’s exactly what I’ve encountered. This person gets me, let’s see if we can go further with them.” That’s the look and then the hook. And then lastly, took.

You always want to give a call to action in your ads. You never want to assume that people know what to do in order to get the thing that you’re offering. Most people just kind of leave their ads and say, “Great,” and hope that someone’s going to click on the ad to get what they want.

We blatantly, straight up in the copy say, “Click here to get your, blank.” And then we also provide a hyperlink, so they click that thing as well. We have found actually, Derek, that 30% of our ads clickers, are actually the hyperlink in the copy.

Now, I don’t know if that means, if it wasn’t there that we wouldn’t get those 30% clicks. Maybe we would, maybe we wouldn’t, but that’s enough metric for me to say, “Golly, I’ve got to include a hyperlink and a call to action in every single one of my ads because if 30% are clicking it, it’s obviously bearing its weight. ”

So look, hook, took. It’s capture the attention, create a connection, give a call to action. And if you can just remember that framework every time you’re crafting an ad, I think you’re going to get even better results than you’re getting right now.

And hopefully, it makes it memorable enough that people can actually do something with it.

Way lower.

It’s a great question and I think it has to do with A, your personality, because we definitely find like the people that we work with who have like really spunky personalities, whose audience like really loves that about them, videos tend to do well.

But here’s my basic premise is that, anybody’s cold, now, this is not warm traffic. We’re talking about the cold traffic. Anybody who’s cold, remember their BS radar is at an all time high, remember their trust level is at an all time low. So they are looking for any reason to say no to you.And I think for the most part, video gives more reason to say no. Like if your audio cracks or if they don’t like that background or if you stumble or it’s too shaky or whatever, like someone is just looking for any reason to say no.

But, if you’ve got a fun personality, if you feel confident on a video, if you’re doing face to camera video, what we do find if you’re in the eCommerce space however, that is like product demonstration videos, crush it. I’ve never seen a static image outperform a video where the product itself is being demonstrated, those do exceptionally well.

Again, if you have the capabilities to do video, if your kind of the personality of your business, if you have a spunky personality, keep your video short, of course, teach them content in it, a lot of moving images obviously to capture and keep attention, pattern interrupts, that sort of thing, do exceptionally well. And then if you’re in the eCommerce space, anything like unboxing and or demonstration type videos, just do very, very well.

I love this question because everybody’s got to start somewhere and the fact that for some people, if you get started on the right foot, you’re just not going to have to go through some of the turmoil that everyone else’s going or the wrong foot do.

First and foremost, and again, I’ll probably reiterate some of the four ROI accelerators in the description of this. But first and foremost, I want to be very clear about who it is that you can actually help. Now, I know as entrepreneurs we get this illusion that we can help everybody, which may be true, but I want you to think about like, if there’s only a very small … who’s your favorite client to work with? Or who is being your absolute best customer? And if you could build a personality around that person, do that.

Because what we look for … In fact, this is probably the number one mistake or one of the mistakes that many people make on Facebook is, what I would call like generality. It’s what you’re offering is general, what you communicate in your ads is general, who’s it for, well, it’s generally for everybody. Anything that kind of just blends in is not going to be as effective as something that even if it’s just surface appearance, seems to be different.

I want you to be specific about who it is you’re trying to reach. I want you to be specific about the language you use to communicate to them, languaging that they are familiar with, that they know, that’s jargon to them to make them feel like they’re inside the fold, specific about the problems that they have and specific about the exact specific solutions that you can offer via lead magnet.

I think avoid generality, move towards specificity. And that’s the first thing. Second thing is, and we kind of alluded to this already, but it’s don’t sell. Don’t be in the mindset of, “I’m a business owner, I need to make a transaction on Facebook and if I don’t, it’ll all comes downhill.”

I want you, at least from the brain standpoint, to approach Facebook to say like, “How can I be the highest value contributor in my industry? How can I build trusted authority status in my industry by providing the most value?” And you can do that by being specific of course. If you realize that people in your industry have a question about X, go ahead and in a lead magnet or in some content or in a video, provide answer about X. The more you can see yourself and Facebook as the means for you to get value to your industry, the better off you’re going to be.

Thirdly, I would probably say, don’t see Facebook as pixie dust. A lot of people think, “Oh, if I just have a great Facebook ad and I sprinkle it on my little system here, gosh, it’s going to blow up my business and everything’s going to be great.” Facebook ads is not pixie dust, it’s an accelerator. If you have a great system in place, it will accelerate the results of that, but if you don’t, it’s just going to burn money through your pocket. Think about that system, what is a lead magnet you can offer? What happens?

Think about like what happens once you generate a lead? What do you do with that person? What are the next three or four steps going to look like? What are the next three or four days going to look like? And by thinking about that as a system, you could just know, like, “I have an objective, I’m going to reverse engineer that objective and build all the pieces in place to make that happen.

Okay. The last thing I would just say is, and I see this all the time on Facebook, it’s, don’t get distracted with all the bells and the whistles and the shiny things that people are saying, “Oh, well you need to have lead ads. Oh, and you need to have a chat bot. Oh, and don’t forget you need to do this. And video’s the way to go, video with captions ”

Look, Facebook is always going to come out with new things and is it valuable at some point to look into that? Yes, but let me just kind of be upfront and honest with you.

I’ve built multiple, multiple seven figure businesses without ever once having a chat bot, without once ever using a lead ad, without to this point, actually never running any video ads for that matter until more recently or any other like hypey thing that people are saying, “This is the thing, you need to make this work.”

You just don’t. Those are nice add-ons. But by golly, I see so many people getting started so frustrated because they’re like, “I just need to know this, that and the other and all these new … ” You don’t. Understand the core, understand what really you need to make this work.

And then later, if you want to add those on, by all means, go ahead, but just stay focused with the fundamentals and I think you’ll be well on your way.

Well, I appreciate that question. In a couple of different ways. I think whenever people are ready to engage with me, there’s probably three, maybe four ways that I can help them best.

Number one, if you’re looking to get started or you’re already writing Facebook ads, we have a great ad writing template. We just hear so many amazing things of people, because the worst thing in the world is like to sit in front of your computer and you have your ads manager is staring at you, basically taunting you and saying, “Hey, write some good ad copy. Come on buddy, write some good ad copy.” I want to take away at least and alleviate that fear from you.

If you go to Nicholaskusmich.com/perfectadtemplate, we have this amazing 10 stage ad writing formula. I use it every single day that I write ads. We’ve had many of the other people use it, and it’s just going to get you started. It’s not going to be the end all, fix all of all things Facebook, but at least it’s going to get you in the position of crafting great winning ads.

Secondly, we have a book out called Give. It’s kind of everything I know to be true about Facebook ads in a fundamental kind of easy to understand, short read.

You can get that on Amazon. It’s just called Give I think it’s a few bucks for the ebook version or a little bit more than that for the softcover, if you want to do that.

If you’re already running Facebook ads and you’re like, “Man, I need someone to have an eye on what I do. I want direct access to Nick and some other great community leaders on what I’m doing and how to overcome these types of issues.” I have a program called The Councils. It’s a membership community. It’s Nicholaskusmich.com/thecouncil. And essentially, this is where we believe that information is good, but access is even better.

So rather than buying another course or a training and getting all caught up in that, I say, run your ads, whenever you get stuck, jump in to group and say, “Hey man, I kind of got stuck here. I don’t know what to do about bidding or budget or, what do I do about this ad copy? Or can people look at this.”

Just a fundamental place of great people who are there doing that. I invite you to join us there. And then lastly, our highest level experience is something called Our Intensive, Nicholaskusmich.com/intensive.

And that’s where literally 20 business owners are locked together in a room with me and my team and rather than teaching you anything we say, “Forget it, we’re going to teach you a little bit, but then we’re just going to build all your systems for you right there on the spot.”

So rather than you leaving with a to do list, you leave with a done system, so you can literally just turn it on and start seeing leads come in and then converting those leads into sales, which is kind of our ultimate highest level way to serve you that way.

Hey Derek, again the pleasure, the honor was all mine and I hope the next time won’t be two years from now.

I appreciate you. Thank you.