TTE Q&A Call #3, Module 5

Questions & Answers

1. Question: Shawn, can you go deeper on e-commerce on the call? Do you make long-form Facebook posts to pre-qualify, to product page kind of ad or what is best practice with e-commerce? I’ve never done any Facebook ads, so slightly confused when I look in Ads Manager to see what I need to do to optimize. I’ve read Facebook Blueprint, but then I love how strategic you think, but I would love some examples to see over your shoulder if possible, to better implement myself. I’ve looked at Ads Manager a few times, and I’m looking at an empty hole of losing money. Really hope you can make a guide of best practice to start and set it up inside Facebook for someone like me. When I read threads in the forum, I get the feeling other people know so much more and have done ads, and I don’t feel comfortable to ask silly questions.

Question (2:38-3:33) | Answer (5:21-10:28)

2. Question: I’m running a number of Facebook campaigns, but I wanted to focus on just one of them for my question. It is a broad Facebook campaign to cold traffic. No layering, no interests, no lookalikes, no custom audiences. I excluded all previous customers and subscribers. I uploaded their emails as lists in Facebook to [inaudible 00:15:16] rather than use the pixel data. My reasoning for doing this is what you referred to in module five as Facebook’s black box data. When you advertise on Facebook, you’re getting black box access to this vast amount of data. You can’t interact with it directly, but it informs the ways in which Facebook identifies prospects and how the Facebook algorithm optimizes advertising on your behalf. As I have run numerous past campaigns, I reasoned my conversion pixel has already been primed with the correct profile data for Facebook to figure out the correct people to show my ad to, people likely to buy what I offer. I know it breaks the rules, but the AI appears really, really smart. Going broad seems to be the way moving forward, providing you have primed the conversion pixel. Thoughts on priming the pixel. Am I deluded?

I only target the UK, mobile devices, male female age between 35 to 64. I optimize for offsite conversions. I pay for impressions. My been strategy is lowest cost without cap. Since May 1st until May 18th, I have spent 1,637 pounds and grossed 4,005 pounds selling a collection of 15 PDFs for 10 pounds each, netting me 2,368 pounds in profit. Don’t laugh. I know that’s chicken feed to you guys. Since May 1st, I have sold 248 front end and 61 upsells. The upsell costs an extra 25 pounds, 25.6% take rate for the up-sale. Question. It currently has a frequency of just over two and conversions, which are purchases, are slowing down. How do I scale the campaign? I can’t figure out how to ramp this up. I’m also currently using layered targeting, which is working okay. I have three layered interests, also burn through the lookalikes. 1% lookalike was great. One to 2% was okay. Two to 3% broke even. What is your advice? Many thanks as always.

Question (14:58-17:17) | Answer (19:44-28:25)

3. Question: In the Facebook overview part, Loren talks about step number one, pre-qualifying. Can you tell us what the best way to assign specific events like add to cart, purchase, et cetera, to the same pixel. Should we use a Google Tag Manager or is there another way? How do we set the pixel so that for a page view it triggers after 10 seconds?

Question (28:58-29:15) | Answer (30:20-30:46)

4. Question: Suggested audience size of 500,000 to 2 million with the slight differences mentioned by Loren is valid. Is it valid also for non US markets? In my case, what about the Italian market? Do those numbers change? What are your thoughts about audience targeting in general? Is that country-specific or are those numbers that you feel comfortable with are country agnostic?

Question & Answer (30:49-33:06)

5. Question: When choosing the target audience, does it make any sense to check the box detailed targeting expansion? As per Facebook explanation, reaching people beyond detailed targeting selection is most likely to improve performance. Loren, do you think you should check the box that says this is likely to improve performance?

Question & Answer (33:26-35:15)

6. Question: Loren said that we can try to broaden the original audience targeting and wait for a few days to see how it goes. Are there any specific rules to know when the algorithm has already done its best, like waiting for a certain amount of days or until a certain percentage of the new audience has been covered, or any thoughts on this?

Question & Answer (35:22-36:22)

7. Question: It’s been said that we cannot use emojis to replace words in copy. How can Facebook know if an emoji replaces or just accentuates another word? Furthermore, is it a good idea to use emojis at all? If so, how many of them should be used? In which parts of the copy? Beginning, middle, end, et cetera?

Question & Answer (36:30-40:26)

8. Question: (Regarding module five, part two where Shawn mentioned process transparency) You suggest to weave into the ad, copy all the actions a prospect needs to take after she clicks on the ad. What would you write in an ad redirecting to a multi- page pre-sell site set up where the prospect can access plenty of information for free, but needs to give his or her email address at the end to continue the journey?

Question (40:46-41:08) | Answer (41:39-44:25)

9. Question: (Regarding strategic Intent) Your example number one is based on the free plus shipping offer with one upsell followed by an email sequence that leads to the core offer. You also said that it’s important to build a case for the core offer early enough. Otherwise, we may acquire people interested only in the front end offer. Does it mean that it’s okay to write a Facebook ad, which talks about both the front end and the backend offer? Otherwise, which parts of the funnel ad multi-page pre-sell site email sequence? Let’s talk about the front end offer in which one’s about the backend offer.

Question (45:44 -46:12) | Answer (46:28-53:57)

10. Question: I have a client who sells solar panel systems to a competitive market. They don’t have a front end offer like a $200 solar panel system for a camper, as an example, although maybe I should suggest something like that. They sell a complete system for your house at 30 to $40,000 per project. I actually have a number of questions around this regards to numbers and showing them they’re getting a return for their ad spend in both Google ads and Facebook, but I’m struggling with how to articulate the question to you. I’m essentially calling for leads from both Google ads and Facebook and relying on them to close the deal, relying on them being the client.

I’ve set up a MailChimp account in late January to begin a soap opera sequence. I can see from the MailChimp account how many leads have signed up from the website since I started, and I could see where the majority of the traffic is coming from with Google Analytics, but I don’t know how many of those leads have become customers. Does that make sense? How do I measure success? Spitballing here, but you’ve given me so many ideas and maybe I’ve been in my house alone for too long.

Question (57:28 -58:29) | Answer (58:37-1:06:05)

11. Question: What are your thoughts and experiences on long form ads for prequalifying for local businesses, specifically for a healthcare clinic that sells IV nutritional therapy as in IV hangover bags and IV vitamins?

Question & Answer (1:17:38-1:22:36)

12. Question: How do you promote network marketing funnels in compliance with Facebook policy?

Question & Answer (1:22:46-1:27:28)

13. Question: Do you know how to prevent my accounts from having problems when I promote drop shipping products?

Question & Answer (1:27:37-1:34:43)

14. Question: Our frequency on one ad hit two after just two days on a new campaign. It’s only been shown to 23 people. Is that just because the audience is too small? We’ve never had an ad do that so quickly and I’m not sure that new creative will solve the problem?

Question & Answer (1:34:47-1:37:04)

15. Question: Do you recommend using any kind of interest targeting when advertising for local brick and mortar businesses?

Question & Answer (1:37:18-1:39:49)

16. Question for André: André, can you please elaborate further on what you said about how you view your various products in terms of back end and front end? It sounded very helpful, but please elaborate. Would you do it differently if you had a $97 product? Most of your products cost the same. I currently only have one product at $497. I am considering adding a cheaper, say $97, for a front end offer.

Question & Answer (1:40:29-1:47:46)

17. Question: When we are setting up our first campaign, do we need to exclude Google partner sites?

Question & Answer (1:48:48-1:49:04)

18. Question: If I’m running an ad for a local business, do I need to specify that the language is English? It’s for a local business and people who don’t speak English locally might still need the service.

Question & Answer (1:49:05-1:49:51)

19. Question: You said to try to get 10 clicks a day. Most of the local keywords have less than 200 clicks a day. What do I do?

Question & Answer (1:49:51-1:53:38)

20. Question: So how would you guys start an agency from scratch? What would be your first step you would make to create a very organized business and closing the first client? I’m actually working with the company’s processes. I want to have clients in the US but I don’t have a clear niche I want to work with but I know I want to people that work with professional services, like psychology…

Question & Answer (1:54:29-1:56:45)

21. Question: I know we’re supposed to have process transparency in the Facebook ad. If I have a three page multi-page presale site with a goal of getting their email address, do I still need to warn them in the Facebook ad about the actions that I have to take? For example, right now I’ve written, ‘Follow the link below to read a 3,500 word expanded version of my thesis.’ Is that sufficient? I don’t have an offer yet

Question & Answer (1:56:49-2:01:38)

22. Question: If the Facebook ad policies apply to the landing page, does that mean we can’t use the words you or your on the first page of a multi-page presale site? If so, should we send them to a different page first that follows of Facebook’s restrictions where they can then click to continue on to the multi-page presale site? If so, how much content does it need to have, can it be very simple?

Question & Answer (2:01:39-2:06:39)

23. Question: Would you recommend sending traffic to an SOI-style funnel for brick and mortar business, or would a long-form ad likely be enough?

Question & Answer (2:08:00-2:12:45)

24. Question: Online programs question. Urgency versus available when people need it most. Always available to buy, versus strict open-close dates for enrollment dates like SOI / ARM seem to be now. What are your thoughts on this?

Question & Answer (2:12:57-2:18:04)

25. Question: For people in certain tracks, it may be helpful to show the type of funnels and how to set it up for the traffic engine. Is it coming, or share some resources?

Question & Answer (2:18:18-2:19:30)

26. Question: I’m running a highly targeted Facebook group, hair salon owners, that have 9,000 members. And I have a marketing product that’s subscription-based, that helps get them new clients. What approach would you take to advertising on Facebook?

Question & Answer (2:19:33-2:22:53)

27. Question: Does a long form Facebook ad connect to direct e-commerce page for a low value offer rather than a multi page pre-sale site? Does long form Facebook ad multi page pre-sale site, is that more suitable for medium to high value offers?

Question & Answer (2:22:54-2:26:41)

28. Question: I have one foundational question, I have what I think is good content on a soap opera sequence from TLB content. I am now building an ad and two times multi page pre-sale content. How do I use that content over three contact touch points? Do I spread it out across all three, one in ad, another in a multi-page pre-sale site and the rest in…(voice trails off) and do I use the ideas three times and overlap the ad and multi-page pre-sale site and the soap opera sequence, reiterating the idea three times. So maybe reinforcing it?

Question & Answer (2:27:39-2:39:06)

29. Question: When are you going to share your offer that you were running paid traffic to?

Question & Answer (2:39:10-02:41:50)

Transcript

Shawn (00:00:00):
All right. Well, as people start to continue to show up, I’m going to give a quick overview of the format today. So joining me on the call, obviously it’s André and I, and then Loren will be joining as well. Loren ,and as I’ve mentioned several times in comments, prior to the traffic engine in the manifesto and then within the comments in the Academy, Loren has worked with me for a long time. He is far closer to the tactical side, the implementation side of Facebook than I am. Really knows the buttons to push, the levers to pull. And Loren is that rare combination of people who can do all three skills that Facebook requires really well. The strategy side, the button pushing side, sort of set up side, and also in the copywriting side, the ad copy creation. And it’s rare to find someone who does all three, so I feel very fortunate to have Loren on the team. And he’s just a great guy too.

Shawn (00:00:54):
So we’re going to have a lot of fun today. We’ll start the same way we’ve started in the past. I have a list of questions that people have submitted. We will go through the questions. Some of them have been asked specifically to either one of us, others have been asked in general. So in the general questions, and I think overall, what we’ll probably do is I’ll read the question. I might refine it a little bit. I’ll ask Loren some specific parts, but I really want everyone to have an opportunity to hear Loren’s insights as well. So we’ll do our best to go back and forth. I will go through, I have, it looks like about two pages of questions that have been submitted in advance. We’ll tackle those first, but then any questions that anyone asks at the end after we get through that, we’ll just start going through those one by one until we finish them. Same thing we’ve done each time.

Shawn (00:01:45):
The focus today will be primarily on Facebook, but as we get through the Facebook questions, if there are other questions that are anything up to where we are in the traffic engine, then feel free to ask and we’ll fit those in. Anything to add André, before we jump in? We’ll get you involved here too. Just throw stuff out there. Who cares?

André (00:02:07):
I mean, you guys are going to teach us how to turn Facebook into an ATM machine, right?

Shawn (00:02:12):
Sure, right. [crosstalk 00:02:14] What are we promising today, even? Like 40 X return on ad spend? Is that [crosstalk 00:02:18] Is that in three days, yeah.

Loren Pinilis (00:02:20):
And the money comes running out.

Shawn (00:02:22):
All right, I’m going to start with, this is a set of questions all from one person. And I will not read the person’s name, just for their privacy and so I don’t make a fool of myself and mispronounce some of the names. So this is a series of questions from one person. So, “Shawn, can you go deeper on e-commerce on the call? Do you make long-form Facebook posts to pre-qualify, to product page kind of ad or what is best practice with e-commerce? I’ve never done any Facebook ads, so slightly confused when I look in Ads Manager to see what I need to do to optimize. I’ve read Facebook Blueprint, but then I love how strategic you think, but I would love some examples to see over your shoulder if possible, to better implement myself.”

Shawn (00:03:07):
This is my favorite part. “I’ve looked at Ads Manager a few times, and I’m looking at an empty hole of losing money.” You’re not the only person who’s had that sense staring into the abyss of Facebook advertising. “Really hope you can make a guide of best practice to start and set it up inside Facebook for someone like me. When I read threads in the forum, I get the feeling other people know so much more and have done ads, and I don’t feel comfortable to ask silly questions.” So I’ll dive in with a few thoughts here, and then I’m going to hand it off to Loren. I’m going to work in reverse order, just because. So please don’t feel uncomfortable asking any questions. The traffic engine, my goal for it, my dream, vision for it is that it it is useful for someone who has not advertised before and is just getting started, giving you a 10 or 12 year headstart on avoiding a lot of mistakes and knowing what to focus on.

Shawn (00:04:03):
And then for people who have already run traffic, it’s a way to think about doing that differently without the need to focus on the mechanics. So please don’t ever feel bad about asking questions. This is complicated stuff. So I appreciate the courage to raise your hand and ask a question that seemed uncomfortable, but I’m asking you as a friend, please don’t feel uncomfortable to ask questions. You are far more representative of more people in this first cohort than you recognize, and it takes courage for someone to raise his or her hand and say, “I’m one of the people that has this question.” A lot of us aren’t really asking it. So thank you for that.

Shawn (00:04:45):
One of the challenges with any how-to course in tech is that it changes so quickly. So there will be an over my shoulder, and probably if I haven’t asked them to do this yet, but hey Loren. Probably an over Loren’s shoulder at some parts as well. We want to be careful about those. Whenever possible, we show the how-to stuff by linking to Facebook-specific and Google-specific instructions, just because when things change and they change very quickly, we want to not have something confusing in the screencast or anything else. So we’ll find a balance there. Now getting all the way back to the original question, e-commerce, and I’m curious to hear Loren’s take on this too. My take on e-commerce is pretty straightforward. If you’re selling a commodity that somebody can get anywhere, anytime, and there’s no real story behind the product, I think it’s very difficult to sell it on Facebook, because why? I mean, why? I mean, unless you’re the absolute cheapest or there’s some comparative advantage, sure. But where I think Facebook excels is where you can begin to tell the story of a product.

Shawn (00:05:54):
So it wouldn’t be the same kind of long-form ad and I don’t think you need to try to fit it into that, but you could tell that you can tell the story of how the product came to be. What was the inspiration? “I was hiking on this mountain and my gear broke and I knew I was frustrated or whatever, and that started a three year journey to create the ultimate XYZ,” whatever. Something to engage somebody’s interest, not just a, “Hey, here’s this thing,” because again, Facebook traffic, they’re not actively looking. No one searched. No one’s trying to find your thing. So when they see it, we need to kind of come in sideways in a way that seems conversational and is interesting and it’s attractive, but what makes it attractive about the product is the story around the product or the story of how you found the product.

Shawn (00:06:44):
Have lots of ways to come at this, but the common denominator on all of them, from my perspective for e-commerce, is that there is a story worth reading that a prospect could become interested in, and that pulls them toward the product to be a little bit more interested in it. Sometimes it can be about a founder story, sure. But a lot of the times it’s more of a, “Here’s something unique about the product,” like one of the examples I gave early on was Away Travel, their bags. The thing that resonated for me in their advertising is they talked about the lifetime warranty on wheels, which those are the things that break. And I thought that was interesting, and then I read more about the story of how they developed the product and it was fascinating, but I couldn’t just go buy that thing anywhere. I could buy a travel bag anywhere, but I was brought into their world because of the story of how they came up with this product. And I think for e-commerce, that’s a foundational concept. Now having said that, Loren, what’s your take on e-commerce?

Loren Pinilis (00:07:52):
Yeah, I think a lot of it depends on the product, and I’m very utilitarian with Facebook, so if something works, it works. If you’re selling t-shirts, you may be all right just putting out a very image-based ad of, “Hey, I’ve got a t-shirt that baseball fans will love,” and that’s all you’ve got to do. That may work best. It may not. To Shawn’s point, a story that talks about what is different about this t-shirt. The creator’s story, creation of the product, the benefits, whatever you can talk about to just incite some engagement and some interest, that may be a better way to go. One thing too is video. So there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and I don’t want to represent that there’s one be all and end all way for e-commerce or really for anything.

Loren Pinilis (00:08:47):
But the more complicated a product is, the more that you really want to differentiate your product, as Shawn was saying, so that it’s not like a commodity. If you’re talking about mushroom coffee, for instance, that may be a great time to have a story. A great time to have a long format which informs people about the benefits and what exactly mushroom coffee is. The same philosophy and the same principle of long-form copy can be applied in video. It could be the same kind of pre-qualifying principle, it just happens in the medium of video. Those may be very effective for products that might not be visual. An image of mushroom coffee would probably not do as well as a long format explaining it.

Loren Pinilis (00:09:37):
So I would encourage you to try whatever you think in your gut will work and tweak as needed. Particularly if it’s a visual product, you may be okay doing a little more image-related ads. And then to the earlier question about what to optimize for, purchases. You would want to ideally optimize for purchases. That may not be feasible depending on your budget and your cost per purchase. You may not be getting enough purchases on a daily or weekly basis so that Facebook has enough data to optimize properly, but if you can, purchases is where I would start and what I would envision being your most effective optimization.

Shawn (00:10:27):
Thanks, Loren. Loren mentioned mushroom coffee. André and I were talking about that earlier, and it made me think of a way to approach this. So there’s a company called Four Sigmatic, they’re sort of pioneers in this medicinal mushroom consumable space. Fascinating story. But I didn’t know their story. I heard tertiarily and consumed the product, but I happened to listen to a podcast with the founder. It’s a strange name, Four Sigmatic. It’s odd. It’s sort of one of those things you wonder, “Where did that come from?” But when the founder explained it, it was such a fascinating story that I’m like, “Why don’t you tell this story in your ads?” Because Four Sigmatic is based on this four sigmas of data that gets you to the point at which you find the 50 most studied, I guess foods. Most studied foods in history.

Shawn (00:11:25):
So among them are mushrooms, certain types of mushrooms. Things like red ginseng and green tea extract. And there’s a small group of 50 of the most studied compounds, or I guess it’s just foods, we’ll say. Studied foods over time. And that’s what the company focuses on. And I thought, “Well, that’s a really interesting story. That would be a great ad.” Like, “Our company was founded on this idea that there are 50 of the most studied foods in history over thousands of years, and that can’t be an accident. So that’s what we focus on.” That’s a wonderful story for sort of a weird product. So I like the story part.

Shawn (00:12:05):
To Loren’s point, which I think is always important to remember, it starts simply. Don’t try to imagine a 1,500 word journey of a story to a product that you could just sell by saying, “Hey, I have this thing and it’s great for these three reasons. You might be interested.” If you can sell doing that, just do that. Don’t make it more complicated than it needs to be. So there’s a spectrum. And start simply, and then if simple isn’t quite working, then layer on what you think might be working. It’s much easier to layer on and see the impact that it is to start huge and then pull things away and try to judge what happened. It’s just a very different experience. Much harder to assess that.

Loren Pinilis (00:12:47):
One way you can do that too is to pay attention to the comments. The comments made on the ad. People may have specific questions, they may have specific objections, they may occasionally just insult your product for some reason. And part of long-form copy might be that you address those specific objections. Mushroom coffee, is it safe? Well, okay, is it legal? I mean, these may be … is it related to the magical mushrooms, as we talked about. These may be questions that your prospect has, as you can answer with a copy as well. It’s not only just telling a story, but you have the chance to create a well rounded sales argument.

Shawn (00:13:32):
All right. Let’s move on to the next one. Actually, before we move on, you open the door to comments Loren. I wrote about this in one of the modules, but I really want to draw everybody’s attention to this just because. I don’t know what happens to people when they’re in Facebook, but some percentage of people turn into monsters and when you put yourself out there with advertising on Facebook, you’re going to see comments that are mind-numbing. It never ceases to amaze me, the depths of depravity that people will go through in their comments about things that they just seem viscerally offended by an ad showing up in their newsfeed. Loren has mentioned how to handle that as far as not deleting them, but just steal yourself for the possibility that you’re going to read things in comments that you’re going to take very personally. Don’t. It’s a weird phenomenon. I don’t get it. I think Facebook would benefit from having some mechanisms to address that, but until they do just let it roll off your back.

Shawn (00:14:38):
All right, let’s move on to the next question. This is a long series of questions. So I think I’m going to go through all of it and then we’ll come back to it. So Loren, when we do that, I might come back and ask you some specific parts just because I’m reading. And you have this question too, so you can refer to it. All right, “I’m running a number of Facebook campaigns, but I wanted to focus on just one of them for my question. It is a broad Facebook campaign to cold traffic. No layering, no interests, no lookalikes, no custom audiences. I excluded all previous customers and subscribers. I uploaded their emails as lists in Facebook to [inaudible 00:15:16] rather than use the pixel data. My reasoning for doing this is what you referred to in module five as Facebook’s black box data.” So quoting me from module five.

Shawn (00:15:27):
“When you advertise on Facebook, you’re getting black box access to this vast amount of data. You can’t interact with it directly, but it informs the ways in which Facebook identifies prospects and how the Facebook algorithm optimizes advertising on your behalf. As I have run numerous past campaigns, I reasoned my conversion pixel has already been primed with the correct profile data for Facebook to figure out the correct people to show my ad to, people likely to buy what I offer. I know it breaks the rules, but the AI appears really, really smart. Going broad seems to be the way moving forward, providing you have primed the conversion pixel. Thoughts on priming the pixel. Am I deluded?”

Shawn (00:16:07):
“I only target the UK, mobile devices, male female age between 35 to 64. I optimize for offsite conversions. I pay for impressions. My been strategy is lowest cost without cap. Since May 1st until May 18th, I have spent,” Is that pounds? “1,637 pounds and grossed 4,005 pounds selling a collection of 15 PDFs for 10 pounds each, netting me 2,368 pounds in profit. Don’t laugh. I know that’s chicken feed to you guys. Since May 1st, I have sold 248 front end and 61 upsells. The upsell costs an extra 25 pounds, 25.6% take rate for the up-sale. Question. It currently has a frequency of just over two and conversions, which are purchases, are slowing down. How do I scale the campaign? I can’t figure out how to ramp this up. I’m also currently using layered targeting, which is working okay. I have three layered interests, also burn through the lookalikes. 1% lookalike was great. One to 2% was okay. Two to 3% broke even. What is your advice? Many thanks as always.”

Shawn (00:17:18):
So before we get into this, this is very detailed questions. Loren, we can sort of approach this a couple of ways. You can riff on it as much as you want. I’ll start with a couple of high level things that I’m interested in. And I think we can bring some of this into an actual module and maybe build on some of this. We’ll figure out how best to do that. The one place where I want to start is the line, “Don’t laugh. I know that’s chicken feed to you guys.” I everybody to hear the sentence before that. From May 1st to May 18th, he spent 1,637 pounds and grossed 4,005 pounds, netting a profit of 2,368. In no world is that chicken feed. In no world is that something to be diminished. That is the game. That is the game that we’re playing. You sent money out into the universe and it came back soon with lots of friends.

Shawn (00:18:19):
That is a success by any definition. And so when you have a success like that, that is never laughable. That is to be celebrated. I hope you are incredibly proud of yourself for that because you’ve done the thing that is incredibly hard to do. You made a profit. You made a profit on Facebook advertising. Despite all the hoopla that you read about how easy it is, it is not easy. It’s exceptionally difficult and you did it. So please celebrate that. Never diminish a success. And that’s for all of us. It doesn’t matter. If you want to put a zero on the end of that for your results. great. You want to put a decimal place in there for your results? That’s great too. Just realize that you’re playing the game and you’re winning the game that you’re playing and that’s it. That’s the whole thing. And congratulations, seriously. That’s amazing. Hearing that success is absolutely amazing.

Shawn (00:19:12):
So having said that and ignoring all of the really difficult questions in here, Loren, do you want to come at this at different angles? How do you want to approach answering this? There’s a lot of detail in here.

Loren Pinilis (00:19:23):
Yeah, I can go ahead and answer a lot of these questions. So first of all to echo Shawn, I totally 100% agree. 1,000 pounds a week is nothing to laugh at. That’s amazing. Particularly too, it was PDFs you’re selling to cold traffic? Man, yeah. I should be taking lessons from you. That’s awesome. To answer your question about broad audience targeting, yes. That can be very effective targeting. Just broad audience, no targeting. Sometimes people select demographics, but just go broad. That can be very effective. As you mentioned, that happens once your pixel has enough data that it can do that, that it understands the profile of the person who purchases. So you mentioned priming the pixel. Yeah. I don’t think of it as priming or there’s some threshold you have to get to to make it work. It is just a continual stream of data that comes into the pixel, and the more, the better. At what point are you able to go broad? No idea. It’s really just one of those things you’re going to have to try and see what happens.

Loren Pinilis (00:20:39):
As far as, you mentioned uploading customer lists and email signups as opposed to using your pixel data. There’s pros and cons to either of those approaches. The advantage of using an uploaded list is that you can create a custom audience that is durable, so you can create an audience of purchasers and that audience will stick around for years. That’s not going to change. You’d be able to continually use that audience. When you use pixel data, it has a time limit on it. So I think it’s a maximum of 180 days. If the purchase pixel is fired, you can put them in an audience for a maximum of 180 days, which means you could exclude them for 180 days. Once they get to 181 days, they’re no longer excluded based on that pixel data. So that’s the advantage of uploaded lists.

Loren Pinilis (00:21:38):
The disadvantage of the uploaded lists is that what Facebook is going to do is they’re going to look at the first name and the last name and the phone number and the email and all the information that you give them from your customer list, and they’re going to attempt to match that to a profile in order to exclude that Facebook profile from your ads. That process is imperfect, and sometimes depending on the quality of data that you’ve received, you may match 90%. You may match 80%. You may match as little as 50%. So that is the disadvantage of those lists. The pixel data is perfect. The pixel data, you will get that one to one matching. So use both. I mean, there’s really no reason why you couldn’t use both and I, in fact, often do.

Loren Pinilis (00:22:26):
You mentioned a frequency over two. In the upcoming module actually, which Shawn and I are working on now, we get a little more into the metrics and the specific reporting numbers, but frequency is one to watch. And you’re right. Once you get to about two, over a certain time period, you’ll notice that a lot of times your performance will drop off. Again, there’s no magic threshold. It’s not like 1.9 is going to work and all of a sudden you get to 2.0 and it falls apart. But once you start to get there, keep your eyes open and you may notice that performance dips, and it sounds like it has for you.

Loren Pinilis (00:23:04):
The cure for that is just to refresh your creative. New copy, new images. You can do that with a minimum of effort by changing your images and changing your copy that is above where the see more click, the intro copy, because that’s what people are seeing when they’re scrolling through their feed. So you could real quickly just take your long copy and adjust the intro paragraph, put it in a new image and have a new ad ready to go. So refreshing your creative is hopefully not that difficult.

Loren Pinilis (00:23:40):
As far as how to scale, you mentioned that you had burned through your lookalikes. That’s really something you burn through. If you’re refreshing your creative, you can keep going back to the well. You can run ads indefinitely to your lookalike 1% audience because you are refreshing your creative and they’re seeing different ads every single time. The same with any audience, not just lookalikes. As far as how to scale, one simple way is just to add budget. And that’s what most people think that’s minimally effective because what’s going to happen is as you add budget, your cost per acquisition inevitably it’s going to go up. So that can get you a little ways, and it’s a tool in your toolbox, but it’s not everything.

Loren Pinilis (00:24:24):
Most people, what I would recommend is just going to different audiences. You mentioned broad targeting. If you’re already there, it’s kind of difficult to get a different audience from that. But if you’re running a lookalike 1% of purchasers, maybe you’re going to a 1% lookalike of your leads or people who have visited your website in the last 30 days, or maybe instead of a 1%, you run a 2% or a 3%, 5%, 8%, 10%. You can go up to 10%. Try different audiences. You can target different interests. You can select different layers. Lots of ways that you can creatively go find different pools of people to put your ad in front of.

Loren Pinilis (00:25:03):
Audience Insights, I think I talked about that in module, but Audience Insights is a great tool for doing that because you’ll notice some strange things. If I’m running an ad for testosterone supplementation or for male anti-aging, a lot of those guys are into motorcycles, which kind of makes sense if you think about it, but that would not be your first intuitive targeting option. But through Audience Insights you can discover that and then plop that in as an audience and use that. And that’s the way to scale.

Shawn (00:25:38):
So I want to draw attention to the one thing you said, Loren. Obviously all of it was brilliant, but I really want to hone in on one part of that. It’s easy to think in terms that are very complicated. So like, okay, we have an ad that’s hit a certain frequency and now that we’re there, that ad is no longer the resource that we thought it was. We don’t want to keep showing it, so the complicated thing is We got to go back to the beginning and create a new ad. And to Loren’s point, no you don’t. We know that those first two lines of an ad, that’s the high leverage point. So simply changing those out, swapping out an image, those two things that take maybe 15 minutes, you got a new ad. You’ve sort of reset the clock. And if you’re thinking in terms of, “Well, how did the ad that I have been running, what fears, what needs, what desires was that directed towards or what emotions was I trying to elicit with that?”

Shawn (00:26:34):
Now let me come at it a little bit differently, because this is a large audience and the thing that you came at it with one way got you a certain result, but now you have this opportunity, and this speaks to scale as well, that when you’re within that sort of finite audience size that to come at it from a different way, because a Facebook audience is interesting in that it can be enormous, but at any given point in time, really somewhere between five, seven, maybe 10% of that audience is even remotely likely to engage with what you have the way you’ve described it. But the beauty of it is that that five to 10% changes over time, and you can also affect that change by coming at things with a little bit different approach, and you don’t have to reinvent a 1,500 word or 1,000 word, or 650 word ad and start over. You just take what was working and change it a little bit come at a different type of argument or a different approach that gets somebody’s attention.

Shawn (00:27:33):
You can do this lots of ways. You can use visual language in your first couple of lines and sort of attract the people who that’s how they process information. That’s how they see the world. You could use auditory language, you could use visceral kinesthetic language later. You can use logic versus emotion, questions, and dialogue. And there’s so many ways that you can do this with the same core ad that you’re just making minor changes to. So don’t feel like when you’re hearing this, “Wow, I went through this whole process and it was hard to write this ad and now I have to do that one every three weeks.” No. Spend the time to craft a wonderful ad. Really get to it. Really figure out the things you want to say, and then just make little changes that have big leverage over time. That’s really, really, really high value.

Shawn (00:28:26):
All right, I’m going to move on. Loren, this next set of questions are the ones that I emailed to you this morning. A lot of these are super tactical and very specific, I think to this individual. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to read each question quickly, and then the ones that need to be covered sort of in different ways, like we just need to put some resources into the Academy, I’ll mention that. And then anything that really pops out, Loren, you and I can riff on just for a second.

Shawn (00:28:58):
So first question, “In the Facebook overview part, Loren talks about step number one, pre-qualifying. Can you tell us what the best way to assign specific events like add to cart, purchase, et cetera, to the same pixel. Should we use a Google Tag Manager or is there another way? How do we set the pixel so that for a page view it triggers after 10 seconds?” All super tactical stuff. All things that we will put in some sort of resources section in the Academy, because these are things that the how-to may change over time. And it’s one of those things that from a Q and A perspective, this isn’t going to be broadly useful, but from a, “How do I, when I need to,” perspective, it will. So we’ll put together a resources section for that.

Shawn (00:29:39):
Also, and I don’t want sound like a jerk by saying this, I’m going to be very clear I’m saying this with positive intent. A lot of these things you can Google and find out or you can go to Facebook and find out. “How do I do this? Do that?” Especially in this case, You can do this in your own native language, if that’s more appropriate. We will do our best to cover all of these things and point you to resources, and I appreciate knowing things that think people are thinking about, but always feel free to start with Google. This information is made available by each platform. They show all the how-to stuff. What you won’t hear, and I’ll just speak to briefly, is Tag Manager versus a different way.

Shawn (00:30:20):
In general, when you can, use Google Tag Manager. That’s the rule. Don’t make Tag Manager and excuse for procrastination if it scares you, if you don’t want to learn how to use it. But if you’re familiar enough with it to ask the question and you’re okay with deploying code that way, which is a very simple way to deploy code, you can find resources that show you how to do it. I would recommend Tag Manager. It centralizes everything. It gives you some additional capabilities. It’s just worth the time.

Shawn (00:30:46):
All right, next question, “Suggested audience size of 500,000 to 2 million with the slight differences mentioned by Loren is valid. Is it valid also for non US markets? In my case, what about the Italian market? Do those numbers change?” Loren, what are your thoughts about audience targeting in general? Is that country-specific or are those numbers that you feel comfortable with are country agnostic?

Loren Pinilis (00:31:13):
I would find out what a 1% lookalike is for your country, and that is probably a safe place to mostly be, unless that is very small. If you’re talking a 100, 000, you might want to go for more. For instance, Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is a very small country. Very small. Whereas I would normally start with a 1% lookalike that in the US would be like 2 million, in Puerto Rico that may be a 100,000. So you may want to bump it up to a 5%. I guess the long story short is that I’m comfortable with smaller audience sizes if that’s all that you can do. If you’re running a local business, for instance, I mean, even if it’s in the US, your audience size is going to be limited. So do the best you can. The 500 to 2 million, that range is for specifically the US, so feel free to be okay with smaller audiences in countries that don’t have the population.

Shawn (00:32:24):
Yeah, we’ve had a client, I think it was pre you, Loren, but we had a client where the audience was 36,000 people total in the United States. That was just a very specific audience of a particular type of practitioner. And the person continues to have a very successful business on that audience. It’s a very captive audience. So it really depends a lot on what it is that you’re selling. If it’s broadly interesting, your market is sort of a larger consumer market, then you can go much broader. But if it’s very specific to a segment of the population, then that’s the segment of the population you need to be-

Shawn (00:33:03):
… population, then that’s the segment of the population you need to be marketing to and advertising to. That’s just the reality of it. I think I have this person who submitted these questions. I do have additional information, Loren, about the specifics of the business, so you and I can talk about that offline and we can maybe go back to him with some more specific thoughts on his particular situation. All right. Let’s see. Same step. Audience targeting. When choosing the target audience, does it make any sense to check the box detailed targeting expansion? As per Facebook explanation, reach people beyond detailed targeting selection is most likely to improve performance. Loren, do you think you should check the box that says this is likely to improve performance?

Loren Pinilis (00:33:44):
In the beginning, I would not. Because in the beginning, what we want to do, new pixel, new product, everything like that. In the beginning, what we want to do is we want to train the pixel. We want to go to an audience that we’ve defined, that’s very tight and that’s who we want seeing our ads. As the pixel on your account gets more and more data, you may be able to go to increasingly broad audiences. At that point, you may try out clicking that. I’ve heard of people having good results. I’ve also heard of people hating it. I generally don’t do it. The only time I have done that is… This may factor in to the Italian audience as well. The only time I have done that was when I was going to a local audience. You’re talking very limited and I specified some interests, but I also clicked that button.

Loren Pinilis (00:34:37):
My logic was, I’m kind of giving Facebook in this small audience, a clear picture of, “I pretty much want you to going after these people, but you take the reins and drift over into other interests within this local audience if you think that’ll work.” That seemed to work for that local business. Generally I would not, but there may be some cases where you can try it. It’s one of those things that… Just try it out once you got some pixel data. I definitely wouldn’t do it until you had a pixel that had a lot of data on it, but once you’ve got some, try it out and see if you like the results.

Shawn (00:35:14):
Great advice for everything. Paid advertising related, who knows? Try something, and see what happens. All right. Next question. Loren said that we can try to broaden the original audience targeting and wait for a few days to see how it goes. Are there any specific rules to know when the algorithm has already done its best, like waiting for a certain amount of days or until a certain percentage of the new audience has been covered, or any thoughts on this?

Loren Pinilis (00:35:40):
Oh, its not like a threshold where you reach a certain point and everything clicks. I definitely think you want to give it a couple of days. I would give it probably at least three days, maybe three or four. Then, just once you feel… You’ll particularly have a feeling for how your other campaigns have performed, so you’ll have a benchmark of what you’re expecting to see and after giving it three or four days at an acceptable level of budget, so you’re getting an acceptable level of impressions, if the results aren’t there relative to what you would expect from your other benchmarks. At that point, you can be like, “Okay. Let me drop back and maybe try this again another day.”

Shawn (00:36:23):
All right. We’ll jump onto the next question. This is super tactical, but we’d have some fun with it. It’s been said that we cannot use emojis to replace words in copy. This was under top compliance mistakes. How can Facebook know if an emoji replaces or just accentuates another word? Furthermore, is it a good idea to use emojis at all? If so, how many of them should be used? In which parts of the copy? Beginning, middle, end, et cetera? I’ll tackle this quickly just because I want to be clear about something with everyone.

Shawn (00:36:57):
There is no template. There’s no thing that we know works despite when everybody tells you on Facebook about the ways that you can get 40X return on ad spend by doing this one little trick. It’s all nonsense. Don’t think in terms of… This is such a tactical level thinking. Don’t think in these terms, right? Whether or not you use emojis in your ad copy is going to be infant testimony impactful on what you accomplish. Right. I think this was under a compliance mistakes or something to draw your attention to as a, “Don’t try to get around using swear words or other things by trying to be funny and replace a word?” Right? With a whatever. Don’t try to be communicative in ways that are likely to make Facebook unhappy and think you’ll get away with it because you used an emoji.

Shawn (00:37:54):
There is no… It would be really funny if Loren completely contradicts me after I say this, but I am not aware. I’d be willing to bet a fair amount of money that there is no data available that there is a precise number of emojis in locations that will improve Facebook advertising performance. I can imagine scenarios where if you’re advertising to a professional audience and you use emojis, to me, that would be incredibly incongruent and would most likely to press results. If I go see an ad about how to 10X my business performance, and it’s followed by a winking emoji, I’m out. I’m not paying somebody, big box to show me how to scale my business if they’re throwing emojis my way, whereas a consumer product that’s geared for a different audience, maybe.

Shawn (00:38:48):
Maybe that’s part of the communication. Does your audience communicate with emojis? That’s a big question to ask a younger audience maybe, or I’m very of myself for never having used an emoji in my entire life. I’m not the emoji guy, but this question is sort of… It’s funny to me. Funny in a learning way, right? When we get the feedback back with some of the questions, I wonder how could we have positioned our… What we said a little bit better to make it clear that don’t get caught up thinking about emojis. Having said that, Loren, what’s your take on emojis? What’s the magic emoji formula? Don’t give it away in case we want to sell it as a product later.

Loren Pinilis (00:39:28):
Oh, okay. Well, I’ll hold that back then. That’s the real key. No. Yeah. To your question about how does Facebook know if an emoji is replacing a word or not? Well, they have human reviewers. If in that human reviewers, very quick opinion, that may be totally wrong. If they just think that you’re trying to get around their policies, they’ll reject the ad. Yeah. Definitely, don’t try to get cute with the emojis and try to replace something. Try to replace a word. In terms of using them, try it out. It’s a very minor thing like Shawn was saying., I’ve had some that seemed to work. I’ve heard of other people that really did well with using emojis and actually tested a copy with emojis and without emojis and with emojis did significantly better. Just try it out, but it is a very, very tactical case by case basis.

Shawn (00:40:27):
There is a product that we can put together on emojis. Excellent. I’m joking. [crosstalk 00:00:40:32].

Loren Pinilis (00:40:32):
They’re going to have to use one then.

Shawn (00:40:34):
That’s true. I’d have to violate my rules all. All right. Let’s move on to the next question. These are two questions that were directed at me specifically, so I’ll answer. Then, if you feel like jumping in. Regarding module five, part two where I mentioned process transparency. It says you suggest to weave into the ad, copy all the actions a prospect needs to take after she clicks on the ad. What would you write in an ad redirecting to a multi- page pre-sell sites set up where the prospect can access plenty of information for free, but needs to give his or her email address at the end to continue the journey? This is a really, really, really good question. All questions are good. This is a great question, right?

Shawn (00:41:14):
It’s great because I love how this person is thinking way ahead and really internalizing one of the ideas from module five and applying it broadly. It’s just a really, really excellent example of that where this starts to seep into your thinking. Thank you for that. As a teacher, that makes me very excited. The answer… Excuse me. The answer to the question, really it’s because the multi-page pre-sell site provides so much value in advance and because it’s pulling people forward, I am far less inclined to mention that eventually there’s going to have to be an email address shared. That’s not really on my radar because we’re not asking them to do something before they can get something. If you think about… Some of the examples I use like a webinar, if you make a lot of promises in an ad about what they’re going to learn, but they’re not actually going to learn it or experience it or have access to it until they do a couple of things, they provide their email address. They show up, they sit for 45 minutes on a Thursday night.

Shawn (00:42:31):
That, to me, is a little disingenuous and you will get people who… They click on the ad. They’re interested in the promises that were made, but they’re like, “Wait a minute. I’m not going through all these hoops to get that.” If you compare that to a sphere of influence inspired multi-page pre-sell site, what you’re talking about in the ad, a lot of that is going to be discussed in the multiple pages of the multi-page pre-sell site. You’re going to give them a lot of value in advance. Now, they make, at the end of that process, three pages, four pages, one long page, however you structure that. You are going to ask of them to continue the journey for them to provide an email address.

Shawn (00:43:14):
To me, that’s set up by the multi-page pre-sell site. I’m far more comfortable with… Actually, I really liked the idea of a multi-page pre-sell site with a first page is essentially the long form copy itself in the ad. Then, it transitions to the multi-page pre-sell site for additional pages. Then, it gets eventually to an opt-in. I love that. I think that that’s just a nice sequence of events for Facebook. Loren, any thoughts on that at all just from a transparency perspective?

Loren Pinilis (00:43:47):
Yeah. I like for an MPPS, I really liked going to the first page, just having the ad built around what pay off am I going to get on that first page? Because then they immediately receive that hit of promises have been kept. I’m not teased around and I have to click around to find out what I want to find out. I have the payoff on this first page, but in the process of receiving that payoff, they’re hooked into clicking through the rest of the multi-page pre-sell. That’s how I personally like to handle those.

Shawn (00:44:24):
Yeah. That’s such a great insight. We are opening and closing loops in that first. One of the things I’ve said in the past, and I don’t know how I articulate this as much now, but it is important to open and close loops in a long form Facebook ad. But I like to open and close loops within the ad and not leave one so open and curiosity based that somebody has to click to get the answer, but I liked this idea that you just described, Loren of like does the ad… In page one of the multi-page, is the ad congruent with the first page of a multi-page pre-sell site so that we could look at those two things and feel like our promises were kept? However, page one also has introduced some new things to pull people forward.

Shawn (00:45:14):
In the introduction of those new things, it’s congruent with the ad, but we haven’t played any trickery and we’ve been true to our word. We’ve been congruent. We have said, “This is what it’s about.” Then, that actually was what it was about, but we also started building a world for them and bringing them forward. It’s a really interesting insight that I like how you frame that. All right. Let’s move on to the next one. Strategic intent by Shawn. That guy, you never know what he’s up to. Your example number one is based on the free plus shipping offer with one upsell followed by an email sequence that leads to the core offer. You also said that it’s important to build a case for the core offer early enough. Otherwise, we may acquire people interested only in the front end offer. Does it mean that it’s okay to write a Facebook ad, which talks about both the front end and the backend offer? Otherwise, which parts of the funnel ad multi-page pre-sell site email sequence?

Shawn (00:46:09):
Let’s talk about the front end offer in which one’s about the backend offer. Again, this is a really insightful question. There’s a lot in this question and there’s a lot for me to expand upon in the original content on this idea. I appreciate you drawing my attention to that because to me, this is an important idea. I realized this, I don’t know, years ago, but what really brought it to my conscious awareness was seeing an ad from a guy named Mike Gillette. I don’t know Mike Gillette from the [inaudible 00:46:42] industry. I’ve never met him. I have no idea anything other than what I’ve seen.

Shawn (00:46:45):
He had a… It wasn’t necessarily free plus shipping, but it needs still running. You can see it on Facebook, very successful clearly, but it was weird. When I looked at the front end of the funnel, it was really strange because he has the quality and quantity of testimonials, the quality and quantity of the content, the enormity of that front end. Then, you get to like, “What does it cost?” It’s like 10 bucks. There was this moment like why… That’s the hardest anybody’s working to send a $10 thing I’ve ever seen. It was that moment of like, “Well, of course.” Complete naivety like of course, it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever said because he’s not selling the $10 thing. He’s selling the big thing.

Shawn (00:47:39):
That’s why he’s done so much work on the front end to sell the $10 thing, because that’s just the thing to get your attention to sell you the big thing. I don’t know what the big thing is for him. I don’t know what the core offer is. That got me thinking about this idea that any good front end product always is selling the backend. That’s how the game works. Your front end, like the big financial newsletter publications, their front ends, Motley Fool, Agora Financial, others, their front ends are $49 newsletters. That’s their front end. You never see an offer from them that says, “Hey, buy a $49 financial newsletter.” That’s not what people are buying on the front end. What they’re buying is a really big idea about some report or some thing that just happened or something that’s about to happen or an opportunity.

Shawn (00:48:35):
You’re interested in the opportunity and the way that you satisfy that interest in the opportunity is that you buy this $49 front end, which then tees up all of the back ends that follow that. They’re all congruent and they’re not congruent… This is, to me, the central insight. They’re not congruent necessarily about the product like the product does the same thing functionally just more bigger, better. They’re congruent. This is what will inform your ads. They’re congruent around the underlying need, desire, true deep desire of your audience. Now, if you’re selling a financial newsletter, you’re selling into either fear or greed. That’s it. People are fearful that they’re going to lose the money that they have, or they’re motivated by greed that they want to accumulate more money. Those are the two driving forces. Overwhelmingly, of the two, greed is the primary driver in the financial newsletter market.

Shawn (00:49:40):
Knowing that, when you’re thinking about congruence from advertise, from front end ad to the initial offer to a core offer to other offers, what you’re tapping into… The thread that ties them all together is greed, right? That sounds callous, right? It sounded like, “What do you mean?” The ad copy is all about greed. No, it’s informed by the… You know that what the person, the primary driving motivator for this person is they want to make more money. They want to accumulate money. The tie that connects them all, so it would be incongruent to have an ad that was focused on how much money could be made if you caught this opportunity at just the right time and you spent $50, you could’ve made a million dollars.

Shawn (00:50:28):
Now, I have the next offer that’s just like that, that the next $50 to a million dollar opportunity is about to happen. Here’s why, and you buy the special report that tells you that. It’s $49. You also get access to this newsletter that is about how to find opportunities like this. Then, the next offer you get on the backend is, “The world’s going to collapse. You should invest in gold and protect all your money.” That is completely incongruent because the front end, ad and the front end were all based on greed and now we’re based on fear like that. We’re not connecting the dots. Instead, that same scenario would be an ad that focuses on greed. There’s the money to be made and people have needed to turn $50 into a million.

Shawn (00:51:13):
There’s another opportunity that’s coming up to turn $50 into a million, and I can show you how to do that. Then, you buy the thing that talks about how to do that. Then, the core offer is how to get daily access to other ways in which you can turn $50 in the millions of dollars. That’s perfectly congruent. You’ve now connected the dots. Then, the next offer is the same and the next offer is the same. That’s the thread that binds them. It’s the emotion, the desire, the need of the audience is really what connects all the dots. Anything to contribute on here, Loren? I’m kind of ranting on this one. This really excites me because I think this is a game changer for a lot of people in their thinking.

Loren Pinilis (00:51:54):
I totally agree. I think that a lot of what you’re trying to do in that original ad in your Facebook ad, you’re not going to explicitly mention the core offer, but you’re beginning to paint a picture about what your business does? What your product can do? As long as your front end and your core offer kind of congruence, then you’ve compounded the effects, so that pitching the front end offer will lead into the core offer.

André (00:52:27):
It’s worth mentioning…

Shawn (00:52:28):
Oh, go ahead.

André (00:52:30):
It’s worth mentioning that…

Shawn (00:52:31):
Hey, André is on the line.

André (00:52:32):
Yeah, it’s me. Absolutely. Yes.

Shawn (00:52:35):
What’s up, man?

André (00:52:36):
Yeah. I was just going to say that it’s worth mentioning that a backend offer doesn’t necessarily need to be a backend… In how you think that something costs one times and then the backend offer costs three, four, five, 10 times of that. The backend offer can be a front end offer, but just a different one, which was how we’ve built TLB. We’ve got a whole bunch of front end offers, but all those front end offers are essentially backend offers for the front end. They’re all front ends and they’re all back ends. It’s just worth making that distinction.

Shawn (00:53:18):
Yeah. That’s a great point. There’s the traditional direct response front end and backend. There’s also front end plus continuity, which is just more of the front end. There’s so many ways to think about this. Oftentimes… Certainly with TLB. TLB is a complimentary set of products that all… Or Complimentary set of trainings that all contribute. They’re based on the same foundational principles. Then, they all deal with the specific challenges for those of us who are marketing our businesses, right? And building businesses in a certain way. If you come in through one of those, at some point, it’s likely that your need will be for another one there, but it’s not a traditional… There’s no $50 front end that leads to a $500 core offer.

Shawn (00:54:15):
That model is just one model. You can imagine a product where you sell… This is very common, like in the supplement space where you buy what might be, say $100 for two months worth of a product, you get it for $60. That’s breakeven. The idea is that if you can get somebody to take the product for 60 days, they’ll see the positive impact and they will want to continue on the money that’s to be made in continuity. It’s not you get two jars of the product for a discounted price, and then we’re going to sell you a new product. That’s just a different way.

Shawn (00:55:02):
Lots of ways to come at this from the question on the strategic intent. What’s important in the paid advertising side of it is, is what you’re talking about in the ad going to be congruent for everything in that the person’s experience that follows? Loren and I have both… We’ve done a project, I’m thinking about right now, where this was a little weird in that the front end… We’ve seen front ends that are so… I’m thinking about free plus shipping front end that was so focused on the front end, this free plus shipping thing that you’ve got, that it just did a very poor job of selling everything that followed because the free plus shipping, if you think about it, people don’t want to buy a free book, right?

Shawn (00:55:55):
They want what’s in the book. They want how their life has changed by the information. When you get really hyper focused on selling the book or whatever, the low cost thing is, it’s easy to take your eye off the ball, but we are in the business of we sell emotion. That’s really what, as marketers, what we do. We are not so much sell emotion, but emotion feeds everything that we do. Now, you’ve heard the phrase that, “We buy with emotion and we justify with logic.”

Shawn (00:56:28):
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. People have different ways of approaching things, but it’s important not to deny either of those and not to deny the fact that we are emotional creatures affected by our emotions and the emotions of people around us. When people speak to our deep… This real felt emotional needs, that changes the conversation. Facebook is a conversational, primarily emotional environment because there’s no active intent. Long and circuitous. All right. This next question was actually from the comments in the module, but to me, it was, it was interesting enough that I want to… They’re all interesting. Be aware when I say that, but this was the one that I thought it fit nicely into today’s questions. This will be the last question that we have that was prepared for today. Then, we’ll turn over to the Q&A question.

Shawn (00:57:19):
If you’ve been on the fence about adding your question to get your question in there, we’re going to work through them. Here, I’ll read the whole thing. Then Loren, you and I can jump on this. Oh, okay. I have a client who sells solar panel systems to competitive market. They don’t have a front end offer like a $200 solar panel system for a camper, as an example, although maybe I should suggest something like that. They sell a complete system for your house at 30 to $40,000 per project. I actually have a number of questions around this regards to numbers and showing them they’re getting a return for their ad spend in both Google ads and Facebook, but I’m struggling with how to articulate the question to you. I’m essentially calling for leads from both Google ads and Facebook and relying on them to close the deal, relying on them being the client.

Shawn (00:58:07):
I’ve set up a MailChimp account in late January to begin a soap opera sequence. I can see from the MailChimp account how many leads have signed up from the website since I started, and I could see where the majority of the traffic is coming from with Google Analytics, but I don’t know how many of those leads have become customers. Does that make sense? How do I measure success? Spit balling here, but you’ve given me so many ideas and maybe I’ve been in my house alone for too long. Preach, brother. We’ve all been our houses too long. All right. I’ll go through this and then Loren, I’m going to turn it over to you and then we’ll riff a little bit. The first paragraph I found very interesting and it speaks to what we were just talking about. I think this is why it really jumped out at me when I was reviewing comments this morning.

Shawn (00:58:45):
A client had sell solar panels. Those solar panels are 30 to $40,000 per installation. This question around… Maybe I don’t have a front end offer. Maybe I need to sell like a solar panel system for camper. Absolutely not. The camper… That’ll be a tiny minority of people also have a camper and a home. Don’t worry about a front end offer. This is a great example of the, “You don’t always need a front end offer” conversation. Right? The thing that you’re selling is 30 to $40,000 project, photovoltaic installations at a home. I went through this process about a year ago, where someone came in and heard the whole sales pitch and had to consider this. I’m at least familiar with the mentality of this. At no point would I have ever had any interest in a $200 solar panel system for a camper because A, I don’t know the camper, and that’s just not congruent with the need that’s filled by the 30 to $40,000 project.

Shawn (00:59:41):
What I would ask on the front end is what is it that the market is trying to satisfy with the purchase of this installation? Because on the emotional side versus rational side, rationally yes, over time when you amortize the cost of the installation and tax rebates in the United States, and a few other factors, you do actually… It is a net positive financially. However, it takes a really long time to get that payoff. The rational side of it is more of a justification later. This makes a lot of sense financially. Check that box and here’s why. Okay. Great. This is more of an emotional decision, right? People who do this, this is a way to value signal that you care about the environment. It’s a big project. Everybody gets to see it. If the environment’s your thing, it’s a way also of self satisfaction where you can feel good about moving a step forward, getting yourself away from dependence on fossil fuels. There are lots of reasons people will do this that are more emotionally based. You don’t need a transaction on the front end to get that buy in. I would, on the front end be more interested in, “Could I get consultative calls, like set up site visits? How can I do that on the front end?” I would want to do some sort of application though. You want to make sure your people are talking to the right people. That’s how I would handle the front end. Don’t worry about having a front end offer. When you get into these questions about… Others have asked these questions too like, “How do I track all this stuff?”

Shawn (01:01:18):
Especially when it’s a long buying cycle, I think the simplest solution is that you need to capture in whatever you’re using for a CRM where the lead came from. Okay. This is actually… Thanks for posting a comment, Lucy. This was inspired by the conversation we had in the last Q&A call where you mentioned with your audience that we just have to… Because the question we want to be able to answer, a couple of questions, is my paid advertising working? Yes or no? How do I know if it’s working? We also need to know what part of my paid advertising is working. Is it Facebook? Is it Google? Where’s the impact coming from? To do that with a long cycle of tracking that we can’t just use something like Google Analytics to say, “Okay. This person came in this way. Then, they monetized at this amount later.”

Shawn (01:02:07):
What we need to capture instead is when somebody becomes a lead, we need to know where they became a lead, like what got the lead? Then, when that person monetize it, when they become a customer, we can then assign… It doesn’t have to be… Yeah. We don’t have to get super sophisticated, but we just need to know that… Let’s just, for the sake of argument, say that we know it costs $5 per lead to get leads from Facebook. In that Facebook leads, there’s a certain monetization that happens. Really, the two numbers that I would care about is cost per lead and value per lead. Average cost per lead and average value per lead. I don’t love averages in general. This is just a really easy metric to have. You just need to know the timeframe too.

Shawn (01:02:56):
On average, it costs, let’s say $5 to get a lead and over whatever an appropriate time period is, the average value of those leads is whatever it is. Then, the numbers are very simple. On average, you’re paying $5 for a lead and on average, leads are worth a 2,500 because it’s such a high volume. It doesn’t take a lot to have a big impact financially. When you capture those two numbers, you really understand the business. Then, I would do that for Facebook and Google separately. I don’t think I would get much more sophisticated than that. Sort of keep it simple at the beginning. Then, you can just say, “Listen, for every dollar you spend on Google, you get X number of dollars in return within whatever, six months, 12 months, 18 months, whatever your timeframe is.” Same thing with Facebook, then you can answer the big questions. Is my paid advertising working? Yes or no? Is Google working for me? Yes or no? Is Facebook working? Yes or no?

Shawn (01:03:53):
Is Facebook better or worse than Google if I have additional money to spend? You can answer those questions. Those are the questions that a business owner wants to be able to answer. To do that functionally, you need to capture on the front end when somebody becomes a lead where they became a lead from. Then, when that lead becomes a customer, there needs to be some indication there too. Even if you just have to do this in a spreadsheet to see that, “Okay. This person came in and six months later, they became a customer for this amount.” Then, you can start calculating these numbers. They’re small numbers, unless this is a high volume business, which I sense it’s not, but this will tell you… It will tell you in very accurate terms, if they spend $500 to get leads, just to say for the sake of our investment, $500 on Facebook and a month later, they get their first conversion and it’s for a $40,000 project.

Shawn (01:04:45):
You now know the economics of their ad spend. Now, is it statistically significant? Who cares? They spent 500, they’ve got a $40,000 job. Do you know if it’s repeatable? No. You have no idea, but you know the economics. You know what they spent, and what they got. That’s the name of the game. You’re just putting in place the mechanisms to do that. Loren, any thoughts to add to this?

Loren Pinilis (01:05:07):
Yeah. Just tracking [inaudible 01:05:09]. It is difficult to track this type of business in Facebook. You’re very limited in terms of your ability to attribute stuff after 28 days. You can’t, after 28 days. Pretty much as Shawn suggested, that’s the way to go. Other times too, we’ve worked with businesses that were small enough that they might not have even had a very sophisticated CRM or they’re using UTM parameters to tag people from certain ads. It might’ve just been a general feel of, “Hey, we’re comfortable spending $20 a day, $50 a day, just getting our name out there,” because when people purchase these high ticket services, we ask them, “Hey, how did you hear about us?” They say, “Oh, yeah. We saw you on Facebook.” That’s very imperfect, very inaccurate. But for a business that doesn’t have the technological resources, sometimes that may be adequate.

Loren Pinilis (01:06:03):
… It doesn’t have the technological resources, sometimes that may be adequate.

Shawn (01:06:06):
Yeah, we’ve run into this. I’m just thinking of a recent example too where… And it’s funny, and I’ll just tell a very short story, but it’s indicative of how clients sense when things are working or not working. So it’s a client with a new marketing person who came in, had worked with previous companies and worked in a certain way and expecting to see certain things in a dashboard and just had a way of approaching things. And one of the questions was around data. It was very clear data was not being reported into Google Analytics correctly. And we were trying to troubleshoot that, but the person, the new marketing person was just looking at the data saying, “We need to stop doing all these things.” And the things they wanted to stop doing, I knew, I’ve worked with this client for a very long time, very clearly drivers of performance.

Shawn (01:06:52):
So the conversation that ensued, what I threw out there, I said, “Here’s my position, all of the data I have looking at everything holistically I am confident that this ad spend is driving in excess of 10 X return on ad spend. Even though the spreadsheet doesn’t show it, I’ve come at this enough different ways that I believe that’s minimum, but it’s returning. However, if we have any doubt, let’s turn it off for 30 days and See what happens.” And when a client starts thinking in those terms, like, “Ah, I’m not really sure if this is working,” you say, “Okay. Are you willing to turn it off to find out?” And they immediately viscerally are like, “Whoa, no, I don’t think we should do that.” Well then on some level you do believe it’s working, so let’s unpack that belief. So for your own business, that’s a very valid way to do things.

Shawn (01:07:42):
Now, if you’re buying cycles like 18 months, that’s miserable. That doesn’t work. But when you’re buying a cycle and you’re 30-day buying so that you can sort of see business performance, number of calls, a couple of years ago, I had a client in the real estate space where no amount of data convinced them that what they were doing was working. And the only thing that finally convinced them, and it really didn’t convince them, it was an odd experience, is they turned off all Google search, and their phone volume plummeted, every element of their business plummeted in direct correlation with that. It was crystal clear what was happening.

Shawn (01:08:19):
We had the data to know how many leads it was driving, but somebody in the office just… It was one of the things like, “I just don’t think that really works and we should save it.” And it was not a lot of money. “We should just save that money.” And that was my point. I said, “Then there’s a really easy solution here. Turn it off, see what happens.” And we check in 30 days later, like, “Oh, what happened?” And it was a fascinating conversation. Like, “I don’t know, it’s been a really bad month. Nothing seemed to… Phone’s not ringing or whatever.” I’m like, “Do you see? Say it out loud? Do you see what’s happening here?” But sometimes clients don’t, and this is not a client call specifically, but just be aware that if you were working with clients, you will run into this issue.

Shawn (01:09:03):
If you’re not and it’s your business, you know, right? You have a sense, like, “Oh, I started spending more money last month and nothing really seemed to change.” Well, guess what? You don’t need a dashboard to tell you that what you were spending the money on, either one of two things was happening, either everything that was successful before started to fail and the new thing that you did took off, which would be a pretty unlikely event. Or the thing that you added really hasn’t had a meaningful impact in your business. Trust that judgment. Just be willing to, “Okay, I sense what’s going on here.” It’s not always about the dashboard. It’s about what the dashboard gets you to think about. All right, that’s all the questions that were prepared in advance.

André (01:09:45):
I’ve got something to add so I’m just going to think out loud here for a moment. So you could give a coupon, that’s obviously trackable. I understand that obviously the ads have been shown to everybody so you can’t display a coupon in an ad that’s unique to that person therefore you can type back in some way. I don’t know the answer to this, but I’m just thinking, again, I’m just thinking out loud, looking at various dynamic parameters that are available to you within Facebook, ad ID, ad set ID, campaign ID. There’s all these weird IDs, and again, I don’t know if this is even possible, but some way where you can pass through some unique IDs using ad ID, ad set ID, that you can tie back. And then when they click on it and it goes to a landing page, it just passes that number out onto the screen, which is obviously unique to them.

André (01:10:54):
They then scribble that down because it’s written as a coupon code valid for one year or whatever. But then they get to keep that little coupon that then identifies them downstream somewhere. Again, I don’t know if this is possible, but-

Shawn (01:11:12):
Yeah, I mean, there are things that do that. That’s an interesting idea, right? It an interesting in the idea itself functionally, but also conceptually. What could you do for somebody at a point of first contact that gives them a token, like an artifact, a physical thing or a reminder thing that is beneficial to them and beneficial to you? I mean, traditionally this is a coupon code, this is all kinds of different things and technology has automated that in many ways. I think there’s also an opportunity to like, how can we make it more meaningful? How can we… And especially a $30,00, $40,000 project like this. What could you get that would serve the business’ interest, but also be useful to the customer? And that’s just something to think about.

Shawn (01:12:09):
Oftentimes in the site visit, you’re brought some collateral or whatever, but it would be interesting to have something that connected all the dots, that told you things like aging, how long did it take for someone to become a customer, that you can really rely on. You could go back and actually see, like, “This person became a lead on this day and 18 months later they became a customer.” And then when we look at this data, that seems to be the norm. That’s a fascinating. It’s a fascinating thought. All right, let’s… Go on, André.

André (01:12:47):
There’s a whole page on Facebook for Business saying upload unique promo codes and barcodes to your ad. So it seems like there is native support for some mechanism where it can rotate through offers, through codes and it will uniquely display it to somebody.

Shawn (01:13:08):
Yeah. I mean, there is that functionality for offline tracking. It just doesn’t… What is it? 28 days, Loren? Is that… it’s not-

Loren Pinilis (01:13:16):
Yeah, it’s 28 days to be attributed to the ad.

Shawn (01:13:19):
Right. And there are tools that do this too, third party tools. Wicked Reports has a way that they approach this very similar, just knowing what character… Bundle of characteristics is somebody when they become a lead, and then what do they do over time? And then when they purchase, in what quantities, and it goes back. I mean, the beauty of Wicked Reports is that it’s always going back and assigning revenue to things that happened in the past based on what happens over time. It’s just a foundationally interesting idea, that if somebody became a lead six months ago and over the course of those six months they’ve purchased eight or nine times from maybe other ads or emails or other things, that data is still fed back into the original lead acquisition to let you know, like, “Sure, it cost you this to acquire this customer, but now six months in, this customer has generated this.”

Shawn (01:14:22):
The economics of that ad from six months ago are fundamentally different. It’s interesting. This is a really interesting thing to think about from a metrics perspective is… And I’m not suggesting you go out and buy a tool. I’m just thinking that it’s the thinking behind the tools that’s really fascinating. How would you… If you own the business, what questions would you ask? And then how would you answer those questions? And that starts… And then that changes your thinking about how you do things. What motivates behavior and little things like on the front end to André’s point, if we gave somebody a code and we know that an inflection point where people are really… Maybe we know that most conversions happen within five months, but that others convert… Or maybe that let’s say there’s an inflection point, between four and six months is when a lot of the magic happens, that the 80% or so of the conversions happen in that window.

Shawn (01:15:22):
Well, knowing that, and knowing that they had a code in the beginning, that creates us opportunity to send them back the code and have a sequence of things, and then to assign to that code some sort of financial benefit or some sort of extra benefits. Say that, “When you first signed up, you got this code. I just want to remember it’s still active. And not only that, now that code will get you the following three or four benefits should you choose to buy this installation in the next 30 days,” or whatever. It doesn’t have to be time bound. But then you draw their attention to, and you’re restarting the conversation but you’re doing it around this thing that’s unique to them. And that thing then takes on some value.

Shawn (01:16:02):
And one of the things we know, André and I have been talking a lot about a book that I just finished recently, The Undoing Project about Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky, but part of their research into behavioral economics and the psychology behind it is that we have a lot greater aversion to loss than we do to gain. So if you say, “Click here to get this thing that will give you these three benefits,” we treat that psychologically very differently than saying, “Hey, you got this code six months ago and this code has the following value. You already have this, you get X off, you get this in your installation, you get whatever, and that you will lose that at some point in the future. That code expires. We just want to let you know that code expires in 90 days.”

Shawn (01:16:53):
Well, now you’re about to lose something that’s valuable, that changes… I’m not suggesting we trick people in any way. This is just how our brains think. So it’s a way to understand how we can use our advertising and our tracking to motivate the behavior, in good ways, in positive ways to motivate the behavior that we ultimately want that’s beneficial for us and beneficial for the right people. We’re not going to trick somebody into buying a $40,000 solar installation because we used insights from behavioral economics, but we’re more likely to move along to say all that was going to happen anyway. So that’s the idea behind this.

Shawn (01:17:32):
All right. It looks like we have seven questions so far. So first question, “What are your thoughts and experiences on long form ads for prequalifying for local businesses, specifically for a healthcare clinic that sells IV nutritional therapy as in IV hangover bags and IV vitamins?” I’ll start, Loren and then… Actually, you go first, Loren, and I’ll jump in. That way I won’t have you disagree with me if I say something stupid.

Loren Pinilis (01:18:02):
No. I think prequalifying long form ads work great with local businesses, particularly because what you’re going to be doing is, with a local business, you’re only targeting a local region. Your audience is much smaller, which means you’re going to have to go much more broad in your targeting. So prequalifying, you can make an argument, it’s even more important when you have that type of a broad, local audience. So, absolutely. It sounds like your products would be one that would benefit from prequalifying and some long form explanation, maybe answering objections, all of the benefits. The exact process, what does it all entail? I think that sounds like a good strategy for your particular business.

Shawn (01:18:49):
And this is… I just took a little extra time to think about this one because I actually, I do. I have 150 grams of IV vitamin C every month. I’ve done that for years so I understand this particular example that you’re giving. Before I knew that was available in my area, that was to me was search based on some health issues so I don’t have the same experience with seeing it in Facebook, but that certainly would have peaked my curiosity. I think the hangover bag idea, that’s a little bit different because that’s really something that you want to let people know. I’m thinking of an area nearby, which is a big college town, that’s something that you want people to be aware of before they need it. And because they’re unlikely when they’re in the moment of needing it, it’s unlikely that they’re going to be in the best frame of mind to be scrolling through Facebook and hope they stumble on it.

Shawn (01:19:41):
So that would be something where you would build up this… You would let people know in advance that this thing exists in their community. But it is a good example of where, prequalifying, I think for this particular thing, to let people know things like the person who is doing the IV is trained, either a phlebotomist or maybe you have everybody there, nurses, whatever the deal is. Answer the potential objections in there because this in particular, people don’t like needles jammed into their veins. It’s just not something we love as a species. So even though the benefits are extreme, need to be very clear that they’re going to go in and sit down and have something put in one of their veins, that the person who’s doing is professional and all care is taken, whatever. So there is some prequalifying.

Shawn (01:20:28):
Like my wife is terrified of needles. She’s not going to do this. The prequalifying for her, if you’ve diminished the IV part and focused on the nutritional therapy and got her really excited about the benefits of nutritional therapy, and then she showed up for either a consultation call or in person and found out there was an IV, you would have wasted your money. She would have found that out on the front and she would have asked the question. But you’re not trying to get people excited about the benefit of the therapy first and then tell them later, “By the way, we’re going to stick a needle in your arm.” You got to deal with that right up front. There’s a significant percentage of the population that that is a nonstarter. They’re not going to do it because of that, so don’t try to convince them to.

Shawn (01:21:16):
Now, there are people on the fence too, so you could in the end, and don’t just assume you can’t change anybody’s mind. In my experience, and I’ve probably had in excessive 25, maybe closer to 30 different IV treatments, vitamin focused IV treatments so I do know that it doesn’t really hurt. Very rare that it hurts. So you could include some of that, like common objections and, “These are the fears.” But there’re also people who have very different experiences, small veins, veins that collapse, who knows? So this is an example where I would just be right up front with, “These are the benefits, but this is what you need to do to get the benefits.” And don’t try to diminish that because you’re just wasting your time and their time in this particular audience.

Shawn (01:22:05):
So in general terms and prequalifying for local businesses, yes. I mean, what is unique to your business? Is there a long drive? Is it not in an urban area? They’ve got to drive an hour and a half outside of town, but it’s worth it because this incredible selection or the experience? Tell them that. Some people aren’t going to drive 90 minutes, some people don’t have a car, just be up front about that. Where you are, what you do, answer those questions as much as possible. Don’t dwell on them, but answer them. All right, done.

Shawn (01:22:38):
Next couple of questions, I’ll have you start with these, Loren. I’m very curious about this, to hear your take on this. So, “Hello, Loren and Shawn, how to promote network marketing funnels and compliance with Facebook policy?” Loren?

Loren Pinilis (01:22:53):
Oh, man. I mean, I think the technical answer is you can’t. The ads, it is against policy to advertise multilevel marketing networks. So that being said, could you have some intermediate thing like a newsletter you sign up for, and then later on down the funnel it mentions the MLM? You may be able to do that, but it’s kind of a gray area. And unfortunately, I mean, I think it’s just, you can’t advertise MLM at all on Facebook. So it can be very problematic. Facebook might not be the best medium.

Shawn (01:23:41):
There are two answers to this question, one, straight forward, and one, a little nuanced. Straightforward answer, how do you promote a product on Facebook that Facebook says you can’t promote? The answer is in the question. You can’t, and you shouldn’t try. That’s the real answer here. Don’t try to break Facebook’s policies. I can’t stress this enough to anyone. If you are in a business vertical that Facebook doesn’t like and you’re trying to trick Facebook into liking it, you are setting yourself up for heartache and headache and misery and pain. Period. You are pushing a rock uphill for the rest of your professional life. That’s the short answer. That’s the answer I hope you internalize. You cannot trick the platform. Those days are over. And Facebook in particular is tied to you as an individual so that creates all kinds of excitement.

Shawn (01:24:43):
Now, if you give me 10 minutes, I’ll have like 20 answers here. So there’s three, I’m up to three answers now. That’s answer number one. That’s the answer answer. Number two is use YouTube or the GDN. Right? I mean, just go someplace else where it’s less problematic. The third answer is yes, there are scenarios, this is the nuanced answer. There are scenarios where you can promote something on Facebook that gets people into your world. And that world, the front end of that world, the world that’s visible to Facebook does not promote network marketing, but later through email, other touch points, however you do it, you then lead somebody to that door.

Shawn (01:25:35):
In the past that was okay. In the past, Facebook had this interesting phrase that Facebook used to care about what happened between the ad and the landing page. And they said that anything after the landing page and their words was of the user’s volition, meaning that was a choice the user made at the landing page and it was not Facebook’s concern. Facebook is deep, deep in the funnel now. They’re much more like Google on that. They’re looking at entire domains, entire processes, funnels, so it’s going to get more and more difficult to push out the thing that you’re really doing.

Shawn (01:26:09):
I mean, I know someone who… And I don’t know if this is still true, but very recently was selling gun lasers on Facebook. How do you sell gun lasers on Facebook? You can’t. Right? But it was exactly that. There was a front end lead acquisition that later turned into lots of things sold by email. So you can do that, just be aware that the clock is probably taking on how successful that’s going to be and there will be a morning where you wake up and you see zeros in a column that you don’t want to see zeros in. And if this is one of many things that you’re doing, and you can, in six months of this working or six days is worth it, okay. Figure out a way to bring somebody into your world for the underlying need that they’re trying to satisfy, and then later you reveal… Reveal is the wrong word, but you eventually lead them to the place that how they do that.

Shawn (01:27:05):
So, the Facebook ad, the lead acquisition is about the why, it’s about the emotion. You’re bringing them into your world, and then later you’re showing the mechanism, which is network marketing. That’s the nuanced answer. I prefer the first answer though, which is just don’t try to do it. It’s heartache that you’re not going to be happy. Next question, same person, similar vein. Loren, start with this. I’m not as familiar with dropshipping. So the question is, “Do you know how to prevent my accounts from having problems when I promote dropshipping products?” Loren, what’s the deal with dropshipping on Facebook

Loren Pinilis (01:27:45):
Dropshipping is compliant but Facebook doesn’t seem to like it. And Facebook has a lot of suspicion around dropshipping so it is a difficult industry to be in. What you can do is Facebook likes to see brands that are good citizens of Facebook, that have positive interactions. You’ve got to a page that has lots of organic content on it, you function like a real business would, like a real brick and mortar business would. They like to see that positivity and they also like to see good reviews. So one of the things that Facebook does is they will follow up with people who have purchased products off of your Facebook ads, they’ll follow up with them and they’ll ask, “Are you pleased? Please rate this advertiser.” And if you get a lot of negative feedback, that is bad and you can get pages, accounts, all sorts of stuff banned.

Loren Pinilis (01:28:50):
There was kind of a rash of a lot of problems around the time that the coronavirus hit originally in China, because what happened was a lot of drop shippers who were using Chinese fulfillment centers, those fulfillment centers were shut down. They couldn’t mail out and people were seeing significant delays on the products that they purchased so they gave significant negative reviews, so lots of dropshippers had problems. But the basic gist of your question is how to prevent your accounts from having problems. Just act like a real business, not like a fly by night, kind of come in and let me just put up a Facebook ad and send it off to some Chinese fulfillment center. Have a brand, interact with people, post organic content, make sure that your customers are really, really, really happy. That’s the best way to approach it.

Shawn (01:29:45):
Yeah, I’ll add one thing to that, which I hope is a deeper resource to consider. There is a podcast, Tim Ferriss did a podcast. I don’t have the link where I drop it in, but it was with two young men. One was in Dartmouth. I don’t think he even finished his degree. I can’t remember where his partner was from, but two young college kids, actually I think they were both from Dartmouth. Two young college guys met, realized they had some interests in common, built I think a multimillion dollar business. It’s like a chair cushion or something. Go find that podcast and listen to it, because they’re not dropshippers, but they did the thing that is kind of common now that you see it’s happening because of Fulfillment by Amazon and some other things.

Shawn (01:30:31):
But what the model that’s out there now that’s dropshipping is kind of a corollary to, is you go find a product on Amazon that’s doing really, really well, that’s got a lot of sales volume, and then you have someone in China make a product that’s the same, except a little bit better based on what some comments in the reviews, right? So you just make something that’s already selling well, but you make it just better enough and different enough that it’s a new product. And that’s what these guys did. And of course, over time, this is a race to the bottom, right? I mean, it’s probably one of the downsides of the… The systemic effects of Fulfillment by Amazon is creating this environment that enables some things that we probably don’t want as a society. We certainly don’t want a business. This is kind of a challenge. But dropshipping is a variant of that. You’re just saying, “I don’t make the thing, I advertise the thing.” But there’s a lot to be learned from their story.

Shawn (01:31:36):
So if you’re willing to accept some homework, and this is anyone who’s interested in the FBA or dropshipping or other things, if you’re just interested in a good business story, go listen to that podcast interview. Tim Ferris, couple of guys, Dartmouth grads. I think they had back pain and it’s like a chair cushion is the thing, but it was fascinating. I assigned it to my entrepreneurship class, and many of them are interested in FBA Fulfillment by Amazon. So it’s a really good look at how that works. You just have to ask if that’s the business you want to be in. Do you want to be in the advertising somebody else’s product business, or do you want to be in the continually trying to stay ahead of everybody else who’s trying to make your product better too?

Shawn (01:32:23):
It’s a tough world to be in. And they’ve been very successful. That business, I have no interest in, but that doesn’t mean it’s a great business. It’s not a great business. I mean, it just means I don’t have interest in it, some people are fascinated by that, and it’s a great way to go add value to the world. So that’s not the direct answer to the specific question that you’re answering, but I think that will give you a lot of context and nuance well beyond the answer. And of course I echo what Loren said as well. The one thing I would add, I am debating whether or not to add this, but I want to add this and I want you to know that I’m telling you this with positive intent, not to be dismissive. But both of these questions have something in common, which is you’re putting yourself in a position to have challenges with advertising the business.

Shawn (01:33:15):
Don’t overlook that, right? Ask yourself, why not make it easier for yourself? How could you make business easier for yourself? If it’s hard to advertise what you’re selling, there’s a reason for that. And it’s not going to change. It’s not going to get easier to do MLM stuff with paid advertising. That is a business model that Facebook and Google and others are desperately trying to eradicate from their platforms. What is the opportunity cost to you of the time that you’re investing pursuing business models that are less likely to produce the positive result that you want? If you took that same available time and applied it in business models that are far easier, I suspect you would get a much greater result with far less frustration.

Shawn (01:34:16):
So if you and I were sitting next to each other having a beer or ice tea, whatever your deal is, and we were having this conversation as friends, after I answered your technical questions, what I would then say to you friend to friend is maybe make this a little easier on yourself. Let’s go find something fun to do that is not as hard. You park at a downhill slope versus trying to push a rock uphill. So I say that as, although we’re not formal friends, but I say that as a friend.

Shawn (01:34:45):
All right, next question. Hi, Lizzie. “Our frequency on one ad hit two after just two days on a new campaign. It’s only been shown to 23 people. Is that just because the audience is too small? We’ve never had an ad do that so quickly and I’m not sure that new creative will solve the problem? And you’re probably right. Loren, what do you think? Frequency of two, two days, tiny audience?

Loren Pinilis (01:35:07):
Well, it’s mainly that it’s been shown to 23 people. I’m curious if, is that just some bug in the reporting or is that actually accurate? I’m guessing it’s a retargeting audience that’s really, really, really small. And in that case, if after two days it’s only been shown to 23 people and you’re already at a frequency of two, it’s probably just not going to be a longterm successfully good audience to go for. If it is retargeting, it may be like a time-based thing. And in that case, frequency of two might be okay, because maybe I’m seeing the ad over the course of three days, but then I’m moving out of that and I’m no longer part of that retargeting audience. So in that case, ad fatigue isn’t as big of a deal because you’re constantly cycling through audiences.

Loren Pinilis (01:36:01):
Also, sometimes frequency of two, as long as it’s working, it’s working. So if you are doing, if you had a webinar funnel, for instance, and people who watched the webinar, you’re retargeting them to a high ticket program, a frequency of over two, three, four, five, you may be able to hit that and still have a positive return on ad spend and still not have a lot of negative feedback on the ads, just because it’s such a high ticket item to a relatively small audience that it’s worth it. And then it looks like you said, “It’s a targeted local audience for dentists but for a specific treatment.” Yeah, then if it’s only been shown to 23 people over two days, I don’t think that’s going to work longterm, if that is accurate. That’s like a strange number. So I think you would probably need to broaden the audience at that point.

Shawn (01:37:08):
I have zero to contribute to that, so thank you, Loren. Thank God you’re on the call. This would be a way worse call. All right, next question. “Do you recommend using any kind of interest targeting when advertising for local brick and mortar businesses?” I’ll do this one first just because I’m not really being fair to you having you answer each one first and then just nodding like I knew what you were talking about. I guess nobody can see me nodding, but… I think the question becomes, first of all, how big is the local? Local in New York City is different than local where I live, and is interest targeting appropriate to your business? So one of my best friend of 34 years runs a [inaudible 01:38:02] middle school in a geographic area probably of 55,000 people. Does he need to interest target people who are interested in martial arts? No. He just helps parents see it. So interest targeting doesn’t really make sense there.

Shawn (01:38:20):
If you own a Porsche dealership… And is Nick on the call? Nick, if you want a Porsche dealership and you’re in the city the size of Boston, I would use interest targeting. I would start thinking about to narrowing that audience down. I don’t know. So, Loren, you run this one. I don’t think I’m contributing a whole lot of thinking here other than it depends, and it really depends on the business and the size of the geography. [Crosstalk 01:38:47] something better than that.

Loren Pinilis (01:38:48):
That’s exactly what I would say, that local from New York City is going to be different for a local city in nowhere, Wyoming. So obviously, the more people packed into your local in your-

Loren Pinilis (01:39:03):
… obviously the more people packed into your local metropolis there, then you could still put on some interest targeting and have a decent size audience. It also depends on the interest targeting, if you’re targeting something super, super, super specific, that might take the audience so small that it doesn’t work, where if you’re targeting something much more of a broad interest, it may still be an audience of a different size. Really, there’s no… It’s not a cut and dry thing like it’s not going to work with an audience of 90,000, but you get up to a 100,000 and suddenly it’ll work. It’s one of those things where just give it a shot, try it with the interest targeting and watch to see if you’re getting an acceptable result and then try it without the interest targeting.

Shawn (01:39:49):
Cool. All right, next question from James. “Not sure if you guys saw the email I sent yesterday with a couple of questions for today’s call.” I did not, James, I notice you mentioned this earlier, so I don’t know why I haven’t seen that yet. It just may be a processing thing to get that, so if you want to put your questions, just drop them into the Q&A here. As always, we’re going to go through all the questions. So we set this as a two hour time limit. We do that laughing the whole time, knowing we’ll go longer.

Shawn (01:40:18):
The goal here is to get you as participants what you need. So drop those questions in and I will answer them and Loren will answer them. All right, this is a question for André, who I assume is still on the call. André, can you please elaborate further on what you said about how you view your various products in terms of back end and front end? It sounded very helpful, but please elaborate. Would you do it differently if you had a $97 product, most of your products cost the same. I currently only have one product at $497. I am considering adding a cheaper, say $97, for a front end offer. Take it away.

André (01:40:56):
Well, all of ours are essentially the same price. So a $500, $495, and there’s nothing before that. Now the way that we’ve chosen to rig our system is unique to us maybe, but conceptually for us, our front end product is free. So it’s all of our presale pages, all the free content that we work really hard to make compelling and amazing and that is our front end. Our back end essentially is all of our courses that happen to cost $500. For us, it would make no sense at all to stick something or engineer it in a way that we now are going to have something for $97, just so there’s a stepping stone because that would devalue all the free stuff that is essentially our front end.

André (01:42:01):
So I think traditionally, this is how things are being taught, is if you’re studying something for $500, well, maybe you could sell something for $97 as a stepping stone or even 10 bucks. Well, you can’t sell something for $10 if you do an amazing job of putting free stuff out there. If you’ve got no free stuff, where it’s essentially just whole bunch of opt-in pages everywhere and some articles, well then maybe you can sell something for $10. So again, it just depends on how you want to design the experience for the prospects and customers.

André (01:42:45):
There’s a customer journey for us and all of our products are front ends, they’re all back ends, because they’re all slot into different part of the customer journey. There’s no real overlaps, they all eventually solve one big problem, which is the system of business. So again, there’s no right or wrong way. That’s not to say that anybody that does have a $10, that then goes to something higher, or $97 that’s goes to something higher. I’m not suggesting that it’s incorrect, it’s just a different way of doing it. I don’t know, Shawn, do you have anything else to add?

Shawn (01:43:24):
Yeah, I dropped a link in the chat to the fourth email in the traffic engine series, where we talked about pricing and how we both think about pricing, and I think there’s a lot of nuance in that, that contribute to this question. As André hasn’t had a front end offer. What I think something worth drawing attention to though is conceptually there is a front end and sort of an André’s world and that front end is the requirement of attention, so instead of paying with currency, like here’s 10 bucks, give me the thing. If you’ve ever tried to sign up to become a lead in tiny little businesses, it’s hard, it’s work. You’ve got to read, you’ve got to engage. That’s a front end. It’s just, it’s not a front end people pay for with dollars. They pay for it with time.

Shawn (01:44:22):
So it’s important to think about what are you asking of your audience because traditional direct response, certainly scaled straight to offer business models, try to grease the wheels. They try to make the process from awareness to customer as slick and as fast … and when I say slick, I mean, frictionless, not slick like design, but frictionless to get somebody to go from ad to sales copy, to purchase as quickly as possible. So you lower the price point, you load on the bonuses. You do all of these things. You turn the dial up because what you’re trying to do, the conceptual framework here, is that you’re trying to make it easier for somebody to become a customer. Well, the only difference between that and saying, you can come into my world, but the price of entry is that you need your worldview changed and you need to internalize and accept these ideas and really know what it’s all about here, that’s a front end. It’s just paid for with a currency of time and attention versus a currency of dollars.

Shawn (01:45:37):
So I think André has had probably one of the greatest front ends any businesses had of all time, you pay for it differently and that’s what I think creates systemic emergent effects too, which we’re talking about in a different email series, that’s going on for Sphere Of Influence and Autoresponder Madness now, so it’s fresh on my mind, but that’s an emergent effect. You get a very different kind of prospect when you say, “You can be part of my tribe for 10 bucks, or you can be part of my tribe by spending an hour or two consuming and thinking about this content,” we don’t have to spend a lot of time thinking about what the differences in those two prospects.

Shawn (01:46:18):
I can spend 10 bucks and I can get the thing that says, “Now I’ve done the thing. I can check the box. I never have to open the thing. I scratched the itch, off I go.” That’s a very different experience and is likely to produce a very different type of customer than saying, “Before you can even become a lead. You need to internalize some of these ideas. This is what we’re about here and if this sounds good to you, keep giving us your attention for a while and at some point you will have an opportunity to be part of the list, the tribe, but not until you’ve consumed all this content and nodded your head up and down a lot.” That’s a really different front end that produces a very different overall effect.

André (01:47:03):
Yeah, Shawn mentioned something worth highlighting there, that you, or people can … They’ll sell a lower front end product just so they can generate a customer and then they think that the customer suddenly becomes magical and you can sell other stuff to, and fair enough, that is true to an extent, but it’s also possible to make customers selling them nothing. So, we make lots of customers before they become our customer. So our customers start off as prospects, but in their mind, they’re customers already, they just haven’t had the opportunity to make a purchase yet, that just comes downstream. Maybe the doors are closed, but don’t think that a customer becomes a customer when they make that transaction with you, it can happen way before that.

Shawn (01:47:58):
God, that’s such a profound insight. I’m sitting here just immersed in that answer, what an amazing idea, of thinking about people as customers who have not spent money yet, I mean, obviously if nobody ever spends money, that’s not the right business. But if people spend money eventually and you treat them as customers because of their investment of attention, again everything downstream changes, everything … That’s not really the topic of the call, but we need to continue that conversation because that’s fascinating.

Shawn (01:48:35):
All right, let’s stay on track. I want to riff on that more, but let’s stay on track. We have two more, no there are more questions, no, yeah there are more questions. All right, next couple of questions, few questions in one.

Shawn (01:48:48):
“When we are setting up our first campaign, do we need to exclude Google partner sites?” Yes, do that, exclude those in general. You can add them back later, just compare, but you’re most likely going to see a depression performance. So in general, in Google Ads, turn off Google partner sites.

Shawn (01:49:05):
“If I’m running an ad for a local business, do I need to specify that the language is English? It’s for a local business and people who don’t speak English locally might still need the service.” I would specify in English, that might have some … I mean, if you’re in a bilingual area, then have separate ads for English and the other language, but if the ad’s written in English, if the nuance of language is important, I would still specify English, just tiny little … I mean, it may make it create no benefit, but it may eliminate just a tiny little bit of drag, so yes.

Shawn (01:49:52):
“You said to try to get 10 clicks a day. Most of the local keywords have less than 200 clicks a day.” I’m not sure I understand what the question was [inaudible 00:11:01]. So I’ll just explain what 10 clicks a day is. There are a few reasons that for Google Ads, I like this metric of 10 clicks a day plus or minus, because it does a couple of things. One, it keeps you out of the one click a day territory. This is a perfect search term and every week I get somewhere around five to eight clicks. You can optimize that, you might have those later, they might be worth it, but you’re not going to learn how to do Google Ads that way. The way to learn, and that’s what this program really is about, is to get a result and to learn and to have those two things working in tandem with each other. You’re learning by getting results and optimizing results and iterating your way to success with a core set of skills, that’s the goal for this course.

Shawn (01:50:50):
So 10 clicks a day is a sweet spot where you’re not going to spend so much money that … Hopefully, I mean, there are some markets where you can spend a fortune 10 clicks a day, but you’re not going to spend so much money you’re going to put yourself out of business. You’re going to get data in a reasonable period of time that you can act on and you’re going to get a result. Now, I also use that because it concentrates ad spend. What I’ve seen happen, this is probably among the most common mistakes I’ve seen people make, is they have X amount of dollars to spend and let’s just assume you have $500 a month to spend and you could put all of that $500 into a single keyword phrase and get a result to know if it was profitable in four or five days, or you could spread that money out across five or six keyword phrases and you wouldn’t get a result for all of those until days 25 or 30.

Shawn (01:51:46):
Overwhelmingly people spread their ad spend out across keyword phrases, hoping … whether it’s specifically like one ad group and then one keyword, or one keyword phrase, or just conceptually, they put five or six phrases into an ad and off they go, same result. What happens is you dilute your results and you don’t know what’s working for a really long period of time. Most of the time things don’t work, so you’re burning cash at an accelerated rate to find out that 80% of what you were burning cash on was not going to be positive, but you didn’t find that out for three weeks.

Shawn (01:52:24):
What I like to do is say, focus all of my ad spend on one thing to get a result as fast as possible to know if that thing stays or goes and it’s sort of binary, it’s red, yellow, green. Red, it didn’t perform. I’ve spent whatever, I’ve got 75, 80, 90 clicks, a hundred clicks, nothing. There’s no indicator this is going to work. I turn it off, it’s red. Green, I’ve spent money, I make money. Excellent. I consistently spend money, make money. Perfect, that stays. That’s making me money. So it’s not a cost anymore. I don’t have to think about it in terms of ad budget. Then yellow is this isn’t really working great, but I think it has potential. I could do some work and make it better. Okay, well then spend your time there but if you have a couple of reds and one green and a few yellows and just, you extend the amount of time it takes to figure that out and then you shorten, or you make it take forever to optimize, all of that is not in your best interest.

Shawn (01:53:23):
So that 10 clicks a day metric is really supposed to be the number that will get you enough results daily, that you can optimize with some reasonable frequency without burning cash unnecessarily. That’s a long answer to a short question. Hey, Loren, you want to chime in on the Google Ads questions, that’d be kind of fun. The one who doesn’t do any Google Ads stuff [crosstalk 00:14:45], you want to just jump in?

Loren Pinilis (01:53:46):
No, I’m going to stay in my lane there.

Shawn (01:53:48):
All right, next question. These are all agency questions. I think I’ve answered this already in the content for the agency upgrade. So if for some reason, you didn’t get the agency upgrade, you haven’t seen, this is anonymous person. If you want to reach out by email, we can do that. I don’t want to spend too much ground and this call and agency stuff because we have separate content, separate calls, for that. I mean, if you are in the client services agency [inaudible 01:54:20], then go read the content because I’ve answered it there. I’ll read the questions and if something jumps out as being broadly useful in a way that I can answer it for everyone, then I’ll do that and if not, we’ll [inaudible 01:54:30].

Shawn (01:54:29):
“So how would you guys starting an agency from scratch? What would be your first step you would make to create a very organized business and closing the first client? I’m actually working with company’s processes. I want to have clients in the US but I don’t have a clear niche I want to work with but I know I want to people that work with professional services, like psychology [inaudible 00:01:54:48].” All right. So overall, this content, the how do I approach agency stuff, is covered in client services. I just want put all of that in that thing, if you weren’t, for some reason, aware of that, if you just have access to the core things, you weren’t aware of that reach out by email and we’ll try to figure that out.

Shawn (01:55:08):
If you have access to it, please go read it because I cover a lot of this ground. The thing I think is broadly useful as an answer to this question is in my experience, the way to do the agency side of things, which is also a way to do the business in general well, is to figure out what you do really, really well, and put that adjacent to people who value what you do really well more than others. That’s the magic formula because that increases the frequency of those interactions, you get all these compounding effects.

Shawn (01:55:42):
So when you do something exceptionally well, there are lots of people who will benefit from that. That’s just the name of the game. I do paid traffic pretty well. Lots of people could benefit from that, but within that group of people who could benefit from it, there are a much smaller subset who overvalue the things that I do well and those are the people that I want to work with. They’re more fun to work with. They pay more because it’s worth more to them. I can create far more value, everything is better about it. So, that’s the framework I would use. It’s a framework I think about a business in general, you can think about this framework for writing ad copy, the framework permeates everything. What few things do you do exceptionally well and to whom are those few things exceptionally valuable? They overvalue your expertise, go find those people and build an incredible business from those people. Don’t try to find the people who could benefit, but don’t overvalue, that’s a recipe for frustration, ask me how I know.

Shawn (01:56:46):
Okay, next question. “I know we’re supposed to have process transparency in the Facebook ad. If I have a three page multi-page presale site with a goal of getting their email address, do I still need to warn them in the Facebook ad about the actions that I have to take? For example, right now I’ve written, ‘Follow the link below to read a 3,500 word expanded version of my thesis.’ Is that sufficient? I don’t have an offer yet.” So this was answered earlier, a multi-page presale site don’t feel as compelled to mention that they’re going to have to opt in. Loren stated this really well, that the ad is selling the first page content. Just other suggestion, I like that you mentioned 3,500 words. I might change that to read time instead, “Follow the link to read, whatever, X amount of minutes.”

Shawn (01:57:33):
I don’t know that it’s as important to mention that. I don’t know, I would try with it. I would play with that. I don’t think you’re going to turn anybody … if the content’s good and you’re drawing people through it, I don’t know that telling them how long it is … I see exactly how you got there from, from what I wrote in that module, but I’d be less concerned about that, make the problem … I love what Lauren said earlier. I’m just fascinated by that. It’s such a brilliant thought, that the ad sells the first page. So make sure the ad in the first page, the promises made in the ad are fulfilled by the first page and the requirements in the first page are mentioned in the ad. That’s a really good framework.

André (01:58:18):
I think perhaps a mental model, or conceptually thinking that you want to leave people not feeling as if they’ve been been a recipient of a bait and switch. If they’re close to that line, well then, that’s not a good experience and you want them feeling that they’ve had at least one amazing insight, or ah-ha that they didn’t know before, or it’s been said in a way that they’ve never thought of before, and that needs to happen, I would have thought before any opt-in. Som so long as you’re giving them that, and there’s not that sense of a bait and switch, you’re probably safe, that will be my response.

Shawn (01:59:04):
Yeah, and that idea of … Which I think that was my first experience with sphere of influence. That was the thing that really just lit me up with it, was it’s that moment when somebody’s world completely changes because you’ve given them a lens. We all know the metaphor is red pill versus blue pill from The Matrix, pick your metaphor, rose-colored glasses, anything. But the insight is, I think, a really good multi-page presale site take somebody from the world that they currently occupy to a world that they hope exists, they want to exist, but the time in between is showing them that that world has always been there for them to see, they just haven’t known how to look for it. You shifted their perspectives and once that perspective shifts, it’s like then they can’t not see it. They’re like, “Well, of course.”

Shawn (02:00:08):
That was like, for me, when I read Eli Goldratt’s book, The Goal, where he introduces the theory of constraints, it’s a novel, it’s written as a novel, so it’s a phenomenally interesting read but once you read the goal and understand the theory of constraints, as it’s described in a novel, in a wonderful story, you can’t see the world the same way again. You just can’t, you can’t unsee that perspective. That’s a long book, it’s on a three page multi-page presale site, but a really good sphere of influence front end, I think does that same thing, maybe not the same scale, but you can’t unsee what you’ve seen and layered into that is the emotion of hope and excitement and, “I knew that this was possible, but I just couldn’t quite see it, but now I see it.”

Shawn (02:01:01):
To me, that’s a great Facebook ad too, a long-form Facebook ad, that is a beautiful model. You could compress all of sphere of influence into a Facebook ad conceptually and say, “For the next thousand words, how can I create for somebody this sense of hope that this thing that they desire most has existed the whole time, yet they just couldn’t see it. How can I show them how to see it?” Not to riff too much on SOI here, but that to me, there’s just a lot there That’s beautiful.

Shawn (02:01:38):
All right, next part of the question. “If the Facebook ad policies apply to the landing page, does that mean we can’t use the words you or your on the first page of a multi-page presale site? If so, should we send them to a different page first that follows of Facebook’s restrictions where they can then click to continue on to the multi-page presale site? If so, how much content does it need to have, can it be very simple.”

Shawn (02:01:59):
I will answer this, and then I’m going to have Loren answer this. I’m doing that because I think my answer might be far less accurate than Loren’s and I don’t want to then just nod and say, “Oh, this is how I would run with Loren.” So I like doing it this way, just because I’m very comfortable with beginner’s mind. And this is, this is kind of a beginner’s mind question for me. I have had a conversation with a Facebook ad rep, and if I interpreted what he said correctly, the you, your thing, it’s far less important on the landing page, but it is important in that initial headline first experience of the page, that you don’t want that to be too direct, but that’s more of a language of directness, that you’re not … I think that’s really Facebook’s underlying problem, is they don’t want in your face directness and you and your is just the way that that shows up a lot.

Shawn (02:02:54):
So I remember very specific feedback about a landing page we were getting approved. That actually went to a multi-page presale site and the rep did work with me to change the content on the first page, but it was really the first quarter of the page. He just wanted the intro into that page to be a little softer. So yeah, I don’t think you need to do separate entry points, everything else. I think just make sure that the transition from ad to headline, to first few paragraphs, if you don’t have a really well-written compliant Facebook ad that lands on a page that’s just …

André (02:03:40):
Oops.

Loren Pinilis (02:03:43):
Did we lose somebody?

André (02:03:47):
Lost sound, yeah, I think we lost Shawn.

Loren Pinilis (02:03:52):
Well, while he’s getting on, I’ll go ahead and answer, but no, to answer the question. Yes, the Facebook compliance, the issue is that you’re not allowed to call out personal characteristics of someone. So you can’t imply that they’re a certain race, a certain age, any defining personal characteristics. Now that’s the policy, but it morphs over time to now they’re saying don’t imply anything about the person reading the ad and then that has come to where we’re hearing now, don’t even say the word you, don’t even say the word your. Now, I used to write ads and I mean, there was no problems saying something like, “Let me tell you about this.” Because I’m not making any claim about that person’s characteristics, I’m just referencing them as the reader of the ad, because they’re reading the ad. That’s fine. That’s technically compliant. We’re just being told by reps, “Don’t even say you, don’t even say your.” That’s for the ad.

Loren Pinilis (02:05:11):
Now for the landing page, the same rules don’t necessarily apply for the you and your. I think you can push it a little more and maybe have some more personal characteristics that are mentioned because they’ve taken an action to click over to that landing page, so in a sense, they’ve raised their hand somehow. So you may be able to reference personal characteristics a little more. That being said, sometimes Facebook is just … they go by gut feel, they go by it’s not necessarily what’s cut and dry, it’s not necessarily what makes sense, what’s logical, what’s reasonable. It is a human Facebook reviewer somewhere who quite frankly, is a low level employee. This is probably their first job. Maybe they’re hung over, they got in a fight with their girlfriend the night before, and they’re going to make a snap judgment on the landing page. So it’s not always going to be reasonable, or consistent, or rational. You’re probably all right. I mean, you’d be all right using you and your, just as Shawn was saying, don’t really come hard at it and be a little wary of personal characteristics, calling out sensitive characteristics, particularly if it’s a fat loss product, calling someone out for being overweight, or some medical type of product, or race, gender, that type stuff Facebook might be a little leery about it. Looks like Shawn’s back now.

Shawn (02:06:43):
Yeah. Power flashed, good timing. Excellent timing. Now I can’t see the questions for some reason when I logged back in. So André, read the next question. Can you guys hear me? Yes, no?

Loren Pinilis (02:07:08):
Yeah. I got you. I’ll go ahead and read it.

André (02:07:10):
Sorry. I was talking to my … I muted my microphone.

Shawn (02:07:12):
Yeah, right, I’m glad I’m not the only one who does that. I’m sure it was the smartest thing ever too, ever.

André (02:07:24):
Yeah. Joseph said, “Most of the keywords have less than 200 clicks a month,” that wasn’t referenced, must’ve been in reference to something else.

Shawn (02:07:38):
Loren, you want to jump on the next question? I think it was Facebook related, right? It seemed like it was? I’m trying to remember what it was.

Loren Pinilis (02:07:45):
The 200 clicks a month, I think was in reference to Google Ads, way back but I think you hopefully already answered that one.

André (02:07:57):
Okay, so let’s see what the next one is. Next one, “Would you recommend sending traffic to an SOI-style funnel for brick and mortar business, or would a long-form ad likely be enough?”

Shawn (02:08:11):
What do you think about that one?

Loren Pinilis (02:08:17):
I think that the business … I mean, what is the product you’re selling? What’s the price point? That may define the amount of world building that you have to do to pull someone in. If you’re selling something that’s … If you’re a restaurant, you may not need to really go hardcore with a SOI-style funnel. I would say for the lower your price and the simpler your product is to, I guess, understand and to engage someone, a long-form ad might be enough and then play with a play with an SOI-style front end later. The good thing is, what I would recommend doing is just getting up a long-form ad and taking it from there, always you can add later.

Shawn (02:09:18):
Yeah and I think this is a great opportunity to talk about sphere of influence conceptually. So you can go in and take it literally, three or four pages of content and it’s a certain sequence and you’re building a world but if you take a step back 30,000 feet, ask what is it that you’re actually doing? A lot of it is world building. So I wasn’t actually thinking about a restaurant, although I think I could pull it off for that, but there’s a place near me, that it’s a … I’ve never been in there it’s a woman’s boutique, which probably is why I’ve never been in there, but it’s got a different vibe.

Shawn (02:09:59):
It’s higher end clothes, it’s very much curated by the owner. It just has a very different vibe to it. So, they don’t need a three to four page, multi-page presale site of written content about the owner’s experience and why she does what she does but I think it would be a really interesting maybe single page, somewhat long, much different than a traditional website, where it would be text plus photo, big photos, because the store is really neat, I’ve seen it, I’ve seen photos of it, that it’s eclectic, the owner has a great eye for how the layouts are, all that stuff. So conceptually, that is a multi-page presale site. You’re building a world and you’re building desire in somebody to go visit this place because of the story that you’re telling.

Shawn (02:10:53):
I only think that this needs to be three or four pages. They don’t have to go from page to page, but if you can do five photos and maybe weave in a little history of the store and how and why she curates the collection and who she talks to and how she gets things, that would be … Talking about amping up the desire to go to that store. That’s far different than an online shopping cart, where it’s very sterile. So I think there are scenarios like that, where it fits, where it fits conceptually.

Shawn (02:11:21):
I think there are restaurants too, that could do that. I’m thinking of another local restaurant, it’s a much of different vibe and it’s got a unique look, the service is excellent. They’ve real focus on Vermont craft beers. I could very easily imagine in my mind, a pictorial which would effectively be the same idea as a multi-page presale site, where it could be some copy, some imagery, copy, imagery, it would build a very different type of desire. So I think there is room for this idea. Maybe it’s really not exactly as written, but the way it was written is to train you how to think about something different and when I say …

Shawn (02:12:03):
… written, is to train you how to think about something different. When I say it, the sphere of influence, it changes how you think about things. And this is just a way to take that new-found thinking and apply it with some different tools, some more visuals, some other things, but to get the same effect, which is to amplify desire for the right prospects, and send the wrong prospects away. If that restaurant is primarily for a vegan audience, you want to have that woven into the narrative, that’s important to include, and it would amplify desire for your core audience, and dismiss those people who are not your core audience. So it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. So I think there’s plenty of room to use that philosophically, and use it creatively.

Shawn (02:12:46):
All right, next question. Loren, you want to read the next one, we can jump in?

Loren Pinilis (02:12:52):
Sure. It says, “Online programs question. Urgency…” Next heading. Okay. Yes. “Online programs question. Urgency versus available when people need it most. Always available to buy, versus strict open-close dates for enrollment dates like SOI / ARM seem to be now. What are your thoughts on this?” That’s more of an André and you question, Shaun.

Shawn (02:13:19):
Yeah. André, want to jump on that for a second?

André (02:13:24):
Yeah, I think it’s, clearly both models work and each one comes with its own pros and cons and constraints and issues. I think it just depends on what sort of business, in a way, that you want. Seth Godin does the open-close thing, hard open and close for all of his stuff. And I think it works really well, because then he doesn’t have to use fake scarcity, and at the same time, as he knows that scarcity and urgency is a trait that he wants to use, but he wants to use it in a way that’s congruent with how he thinks and what he teaches. So I guess he’s chosen to do the hard open and close, and that works perfectly fine. He’s got a team that can help him execute on that. Other people just want to have that evergreen thing, so you need to engineer some level of scarcity in different ways. There’s certainly no right or wrong way.

Shawn (02:14:39):
Yeah. The way I would think about this, how does you answering that question affect your audience? Will they get a much greater benefit if there is a time-bound closed system, or if it’s open enrollment? So, I just enrolled in something 48 hours ago that I wanted, it’s a group environment and at any given point, there are 50 or 60 people in a quasi, similar, within one or two weeks of each other, cohort. This is something that, for me, as the user, I’m going to get benefit from that because I can start and go through all eight weeks at my pace, the way I want to, and there really is an enormous benefit to me, and I think there might be some distraction to me if I had to wait to do that with a group of people.

Shawn (02:15:43):
Now, I’ve done a very similar, same topic, same timeframe, same everything, same people, version of this in the past where it was a cohort that started and ended in a specific time. And that annoyed the hell out of me, because I had to wait three weeks to start, and by the time the three weeks got there, I was mad that I had to wait. So, is the benefit to you, as the provider, or is the benefit to the audience. Right? Now within the thing that I just signed up for, there might be some significant percentage of people in that, that just really want to have more of that group vibe.

Shawn (02:16:19):
So I don’t have, and this may be not a definitive answer, but I think asking, we tend to come at this question from our perspective as the creator, the business owner, ” What makes the most sense? How do I want to do this? What will maximize revenue?” Well, good ask those questions, but start with a question, “Is there anything about what I’m sharing, teaching, selling, providing, that is more beneficial, significantly more beneficial, when it is delivered in a time-bound format that begins and ends, opens and closes, or is there a benefit to an open-ended, or some combination?”

Shawn (02:16:59):
And then you could also give people the choice, “Both, and,” right. I live in a, “Both, and,” world, not, “Either, or,” right. If you have something that you could say, “Oh, about a solid third of the people want to do this beginning to end by themselves, but most want to do it as part of a group, and there’s this interaction,” great, give somebody a choice on the front end. “You can start this course today, and your experience will be X, Y, and Z. If you’re more interested in the content, you’re an individual solo learner. You want to go step by step through it, and you are not as interested in the group work, then this is a perfect solution. However, if you get a lot of benefit working through these things with others and you want to be part of a larger group, our next group starts on X date.” Excellent. Now the audience, everybody can be happy. Now, can you just build that in a day? No, but you can do both. There’s no reason you can’t do both. So I would say ” Both, and,” is a effective approach.

Shawn (02:18:04):
Thanks to André for copying the questions so I can now see them now. When I replied to everyone, I was replying to André, so there’s my tech skill in action right there on the chat. So thank you, André.

Shawn (02:18:18):
Next question. “For people in certain tracks, it may be helpful to show the type of funnels and how to set it up for the traffic engine. Is it coming, or share some resources?” So this is something, I don’t want to go too far down this road. This is something André and I have been talking about, I think there’s a body of content around audiences, offers, and funnel slash business models that really excites me.

Shawn (02:18:47):
I want to be very clear. This does not yet exist. This is not foreshadowing some big plan. It is just, as I am working through answering questions and thinking about ways to add value to this cohort of people in the traffic engine, and to contribute more to the community at large, I’m running into these three categories of questions that I have put loosely in my mind into buckets of, audience, offer, and business model. So there will be some of that in the traffic engine. I just don’t want that to distract from it, and I don’t want the traffic engine to become a Magnum Opus that is so massive that nobody can ever finish the thing. I want to keep it focused. So something’s brewing. More on that later.

Shawn (02:19:31):
Hey, there was an open loop. Awesome. Okay. Next question. “I’m running a highly targeted Facebook group, hair salon owners, that have 9,000 members.” Wow. “And I have a marketing product that’s subscription-based, that helps get them new clients. What approach would you take to advertising on Facebook?” I’m going to have Loren answer this in a second, but Facebook should be advertising this group for you already on your behalf. 9,000 members, if it’s active, there’s a lot of engagement. Facebook should be promoting your group. So I would let Facebook promote my group. Loren? And I’m sure there are ways to augment that. So, Loren, what do you think on this one?

Loren Pinilis (02:20:11):
Yeah, well, it looks like your goal is to sell the product, and not necessarily to get people into the group. So what I would do is post organically, make sure you’ve got your funnel setup, all your pixels firing, everything else like that. Go ahead and post organically into your group several times, and hopefully get some sales that way. That way the pixel data can begin to be accumulated that way. And then you just advertise, like you’d advertise for any other hair salon owner type of product. Having that group, although that’s a great asset to help you get sales, it might not necessarily be any tremendous use in helping you with targeting, or helping you run ads. The only real benefit it could be was that those people may help give your pixel data. But you pretty much handle it the same way that you’d handle any other ads.

Shawn (02:21:18):
Yeah. I love this business model by the way, André, I think there’s a lot of potential here. And 9,000 members, that’s huge. That’s a huge group and it’s excellent. So I think your opportunity is in the group itself, that if you’re active in there and you’re really, and I’m sure you are, I’m just thinking out loud. If you’re active in there, you’re contributing value, and you’re really showing people how to get the things that matter most to them, give a lot there, and then at some frequency that’s not contrived, but at some frequency, make sure that they know that there’s more that they can get from you outside of the group.

Shawn (02:21:54):
And then, what that looks like and what the entry point is. And that can be anything, it can be a couple thousand dollars. It can be a thousand dollars a month. What’s the value to your audience, and what value can you create for them? And a price point that makes sense with all of those variables, and it feels good to you and feels right to them. So in that, you’d want to do higher volume, lower costs, higher cost, lower volume, answer all those questions, but you’ve built up a very valuable asset that you can monetize as is. And I would be far less concerned about getting more people into the group, than I would be about monetizing the attention that you already have. I would really figure that out and I would really engage and find out what those 9,000 members want. And I would spend the next years giving it to them, in every conceivable way that creates value for them and for you. I would be far less concerned about adding more.

Shawn (02:22:54):
All right, next question. “Does a long form Facebook ad connect to direct e-commerce page for a low value offer rather than multi page pre-sale site? Does long form Facebook ad multi page pre-sale site, is that more suitable for medium to high value offers?”

Shawn (02:23:07):
So there’s no clear answer to this. The couple of the key things that pop out for me, e-commerce page and low value offer. I’m not sure what that means, right? So I don’t know what a low value offer, if that’s an inexpensive, commodity product, and really the direct, a long Facebook ad, you need something to talk about, and you need differentiators. You’re giving people reasons to be interested and to buy. So if it’s a $2 flashlight, well, I don’t know, you can do it, the tactical flashlight guys are doing it, it’s their front end product, and I had no idea you could say as much as you can say about a flashlight. So it really comes down to, how many words do you need to sell the thing that you’re selling, to explain the benefits? I’m guessing you don’t need a multi page pre-sale site. So it’s just going direct to e-commerce.

Shawn (02:24:10):
But be creative, too. There’s that story, which he’s confirmed, Mike Rowe, the guy from, Dirty Jobs, really fascinating guy, Mike Rowe started his career as a sales guy, late night sales guy in QVC, and his interview was to sell a pencil. He just sat across the table from somebody, they handed him regular number two pencil, and said, “Sell the pencil.” So, you can get pretty creative in your writing, but the ad really should be a reflection of what there is to talk about the product, without getting into the micro, selling a pencil, thing. It’s an interesting exercise, but it’s not going to take your audience long to figure out if you’re selling a $2 flashlight in crazy, complicated ways.

Shawn (02:24:55):
So, not knowing the product makes this hard to answer, but the broader answer is, the amount of copy in your ad should be reflective of what it takes to pre qualify a good candidate. And if you are selling a $2 flashlight and it appeals to a tactical audience, it’s got the cool clip that does the thing, and the light that does the other thing, and you can bash somebody in the head with it because it’s pointed, you can probably cover that in 250, 300 words. Don’t talk about bashing somebody in the head with the flashlight on Facebook. Loren will probably tell you that too, but it just needs to reflect what would make somebody realize, “Hey, this thing is for me,” or, “I have no interest in that. I want my flashlights to be friendlier.” I don’t know. Loren, thoughts on this?

Loren Pinilis (02:25:45):
I think if speed of implementation is an issue, if just climbing that hill is an issue, start with the minimal viable funnel, and move from there. And that sounds like it may be pretty easy for you to do a long form Facebook ad, to go to the page, see how that works. And then later implement in via MPPS, and then test and see which one performs better.

Shawn (02:26:15):
Yeah. That’s always the answer. Test, test, test, test, right? We don’t know, nobody knows, the data knows, and you just try stuff, and understand what you tried, and understands the differences between the things you tried, and then let the data tell you what works. And it might not work the same in a month. It might not work the same in a week. Just testing is a part of the deal. And that’s module six, working on, that’ll be out this week, is about that, how you think about that.

Shawn (02:26:41):
All right, next question. Sorry that you sent this email, Jonathan. I haven’t seen it yet. I apologize for that. I will look at that. And for all of you who have sent emails that, you either have been partially answered or it hasn’t been completely answered, I will answer your questions. Many of you, I appreciate the depth and breadth of questions that you sent. Just realize that yours is one of 50 or so similar length questions in there, and I want to give you really thorough answers. What I’m moving toward has been, I’ve been recording answers, and just whatever can get you the information as quickly as possible. So you will get answers, just that time is related to the depth of questions and breadth of questions, and volume. And volume being the biggest. Okay. So having said that little side public service announcement.

Shawn (02:27:39):
“I have one foundational question, I have what I think is good content on a soap opera sequence from TLB content. I am now building an ad and two times multi page pre-sale content. So two pages maybe, to sit before the…” Okay, so if I’m reading this correctly, you’ve got two page, multi page resell site and a soap opera sequence. Those two are connected.

Shawn (02:28:08):
“How do I use that content over three contact touch points? Do I spread it out across all three, one in ad, another in a multi page pre-sale site and the rest in…” Okay. I see where we’re going. “And do I use the ideas three times and overlap the ad and multi page pre-sale site and the soap opera sequence, reiterating the idea three times. So maybe reinforcing it?”

Shawn (02:28:29):
So really interesting questions embedded in this, right? If we think about an ad, a multi page pre-sale site, and a soap opera sequence, those three things are all part of one large narrative arc. All right. So if we were looking at it from the proper perspective, we would see that it’s all really one long thing, and that one long thing leads to the sale at the end. Right?

Shawn (02:28:56):
So the way I would approach this, and I think this will be interesting for all three of us to answer, but here’s how I would approach it, and when I say, “Would approach it,” this is how I have done exactly this dozens of times, working with clients. I go to the end, borrow a page from Stephen Covey, begin with the end in mind. And I ask myself, what does somebody need to believe in order to make this, whatever the offer is, at the end? Now, of course, those of you who have purchased, Sphere of Influence, know that this is directly from, Sphere of Influence, this chain of beliefs. But I go all the way to the end, when I have revealed that there is something for sale, and I then ask myself, just brainstorm, I go through the exact process that André listed in, Sphere of Influence. And I say, “Okay, what are all the beliefs?” And I just get them out of my head, and what I find, after I get them all out of my head, is that I have the same belief three or four different ways, often.

Shawn (02:29:52):
So my next part of the process is I go through, what I think is 20 beliefs, to find it’s usually nine or something. So I combine the right things and I get the language right, I don’t spend a ton of time word smithing this, but I get so that I know that these are discreet sets of beliefs. I get them all on a page. Once I have them all on the page, I then sequence them. What I’m looking for is the primary belief, the thing that, others call this a marketing thesis, for me, it’s that turning point belief, what does this all need to roll up, into that somebody needs to accept, before they can make this purchase? That I know I’m going to reveal because I can see the whole narrative arc from 10,000 feet.

Shawn (02:30:38):
So once I have that list and I have it sequenced, and I then go and look across the breadth of the ad. The ad is covering more ground because it’s hinting at several of these beliefs. It’s opening up lots of these ideas that gets them engaged in it. So it’s not just a linear, one belief in the ad, one belief in the first page of the pre-sale site, you have to, on the front, create a little intro, a little act, one overview, set the stage of what’s to come. It’s like any good movie that does this, you introduce the idea and you give a sense of, with the music and some other things, where’s this thing going? Is it comedy? Is it drama? Is it horror? What’s the vibe here, right? So the ad does that, the ad gets them to the multi page pre-sale site. The multi page pre-sale site and autoresponder madness and inspired soap opera sequence are building chains of beliefs in approximately the order that I have identified, so that when the person has consumed all of that, I know they have been exposed to, that I have reinforced, I’ve created a world that has answered, and established and helped them internalize the beliefs that they need to have, so that when the product is revealed, the right person believes what he or she needs to believe to accept the offer that I’ve made. And if they’re not, then I know I haven’t covered all the beliefs. But that’s what I’m looking for in that process. So, André, thoughts on that? Same idea how you approach that?

André (02:32:25):
Yeah. That’s pretty much it. I think there’s some ideas that’s also worth bearing in mind, that if somebody clicks on an ad, and reads the two or three pages of a multi page, and then they opt in for the email sequence, well, you’ve really done many things, right? Because you’ve got their attention, you’ve intrigued them enough and you’ve given them enough value, and you have the attention to the point where they’ve, willing and able to opt in and to continue this journey. So that’s the one thing. The other thing is, as we know, you can’t convert everybody. So there’s going to be the majority of people that just don’t [inaudible 02:33:10]. And then you can just have fun with the email sequence, right? So there’s so many different ways to talk about ideas and to frame concepts, and email’s perfect, because it’s very conversational, one-to-one, and you get to play around with that a bit.

André (02:33:34):
So, you could test one idea across two or three emails and see how that works. You could then write another sequence and then just bolt that on, so at the point where somebody ups, and it’s almost like an AB split test, where some go into the one sequence and the others go into the other sequence, and then you see which sequence does a better job. If you wanted to create, make it longer, you could then certainly have these storylines that play out through one sequence. Obviously, when somebody makes a purchase, they’re removed from the sequence entirely.

André (02:34:15):
There’s no hard and fast rule, other than if you can’t get somebody to opt in, there’s something broken or not right further upstream. Could be the ad, could be the targeting, could be all the way, right at the very top. And then you’ve just got to figure it out. As each point in the process, you get people, or enough people at macro scale or whatever you feel is a win, and then you can just keep moving further, further downstream. But as Shaun said, it’s important to figure out what those beliefs are, what somebody needs to believe in order to accept whatever you’re selling. And then you just get to tell different stories within the narrative arc, because there’s no one story that’s going to rule them all. Everybody responds to different things. Everybody’s intrigued by different ideas and yeah, so you’ve just got to play with it.

Shawn (02:35:21):
Hey, Loren, did you notice there when André went to the blame game, the first thing he blamed was the ad? I felt that, that stung a little bit. [crosstalk 02:35:32] Yeah. Right, exactly. So this is outside of specific to Facebook, Loren, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on this too, because you’ve written a lot of long form Facebook copy, there’s an art to it, a little bit of science, but far more art. So when you sit down to create that initial entry into a longer, broader world, how do you think about that? So I think having you discuss how you approach it would be very valuable to people listening.

Loren Pinilis (02:36:05):
I place a big emphasis on transitions, and the key to good long form Facebook ad is probably very similar to the entire funnel, from ad to the multi page pre-sale, to the soap opera sequence. Every point should just flow naturally to where people get to the end, and they’re like, “Oh, well I was just reading this entire time because this was great. I don’t even realize what beliefs I have accepted now, along this journey. It’s a journey that is pleasurable.” And I spent a lot of time making sure that every single part of that Facebook ad flows.

Loren Pinilis (02:36:49):
There’s going to be some natural times when the transition might be more difficult. When you start, you may start off telling an emotionally gripping story, and then maybe you move into describing how your product works. Maybe you transition into a call to action, maybe that’s direct to sale or, “Click over to this,” whatever it is you’re selling on page one of the multi page pre-sale, whatever you want the payoff to be there. But just smoothing out, as much as possible, those transition points. That can be very tactical, sometimes, it could be even little tricks, like a two word phrase that just says, “Now, look,” and then you move into the rest of your ad, whatever you can do to arrest people’s attention again, to keep them moving, to keep things flowing, to keep it conversational. And I think that philosophy could extend over the course of your entire funnel setup.

Loren Pinilis (02:37:59):
There’s going to be natural points at which that transition is difficult. Going from the Facebook ad over to the first page of the multi page pre-sale, that’s going to be a difficult transition point. So, what can you do to make that smooth? What can you do to entice people to take that leap? And then what payoff are they getting, quickly, to justify them taking that action, so that they continue to take actions? And just think about that for every single transition point. Of course, clicking to that next page in the multi page pre-sale, entering in your contact information at the end, opening up each email and moving on.

Loren Pinilis (02:38:40):
Just think of, what are your transition points, and what can do to maximize the flow through your entire funnel. Because if someone just reads your Facebook ad, and they never click over, you just wasted everything. If they read your ad and they only make it to the second page of your multi page pre-sale, and they never put in their information, then what was the point of it all? So you’ve got to just keep them flowing the whole time.

Shawn (02:39:07):
I just appreciate that, Loren. So, the last question, Francis, the question is, “When are you going to share your offer that you were running paid traffic to?” So the process for the remainder of the traffic engine is going to finish all content, all core content, and all the client upsell content. I’m imagining that’s going to be wrapped up by next Friday or so. Then, my original plan was to just put the offer stuff contextually, where it made sense, and that’s been dissonant and jarring to me, it’s driving me crazy.

Shawn (02:39:44):
So what I’ve decided to do instead is there will be a separate heading in the traffic engine, that’s going to be for the IO, so the way content is broken out, it will be a separate place where there will be the intro to the offer. Because there’s recorded things on how, the agonizingly painful birthing process of it, figuring out what it is, and then realizing I was wrong a few times, and how I got there. So that’ll be a little mini thing, and then there will be that part by part of the inflection points will be added after. So that there’s one place you can find everything in some sort of linear fashion, so that when you see beginning initial advertising testing, and then ongoing, both for Google and for Facebook, and then ongoing will change over time, because there’s short term ongoing, initial optimization to get things up and going. And then there’s, what are the inflection points that, when you look at weekly, when you look at monthly, and then how do you do evaluations every 90 days? So those will get built, added on, in a standalone place.

Shawn (02:40:50):
Then I will include them contextually where relevant, but when I refer to them contextually, I’ll refer to that other, so there’ll be a canonical source of where they exist. That solves all the problem, that structural problem, in my mind. So, and that will be the first thing that starts to happen after all of the core content is created. I really want to stay as close as possible to getting the core content released in its initial form. Then it will be the offer, then I’m going back to the very beginning of the traffic engine content and reviewing everything, start to finish, and making improvements, and that’s where the weekly digest will let you know what things have been improved.

Shawn (02:41:35):
So it’s very much a living document, a living thing for 54,000 words or so, now, not including screen casts or Q and A call. So we’re probably going to be somewhere north of a hundred thousand without the offer, which is just ludicrous to think about. Good times. Anything else? André, Loren?

Shawn (02:41:53):
Loren, before we wrap up here, I just want to thank Loren. Loren is a dear friend. He’s just a wonderful, wonderful person, incredibly talented Facebook advertising specialist, very rare combination of somebody who can do all three things exceptionally well on Facebook, and I’m most grateful every day to have Loren on the team. I am grateful to call him my friend. And thank you, Loren, so much for your contributions in the comments, and in the content of the traffic engine. All that is good in the Facebook content in the traffic engine is attributable to Loren. I’m the guy that I hope inspires Loren, and you certainly have inspired me with your content. So with that, anything to wrap up? André? Loren? Before we leave?

Loren Pinilis (02:42:43):
No, I’ll slip you a $20 bill for that, that we agreed on.

Shawn (02:42:46):
I thought we just said five-

Loren Pinilis (02:42:51):
For that ringing endorsement. I hope this call was good for everyone, and hit us up in the comments of the modules. And we’re happy to answer any questions and thank you, Shaun and André, for the opportunity just to geek out on Facebook.

André (02:43:04):
Thanks, Loren. Thanks everybody else for your attention. And this has been a lot of fun.

Shawn (02:43:09):
Cool. Thanks guys. See everybody on the next call.

END Of Facebook Module