TCC Podcast #425: What You Should Know about Facebook Ads with Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie

Wondering how copywriters could be using Facebook and Instagram ads to grow their business? Our guest for the 425th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie. Kwadwo had to reinvent his business during the pandemic. And today he helps businesses grow with ads on Meta. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

Stuff to check out:

The Accelerator FastTrack

The Art of Online Business Podcast

The Copywriter Club Facebook Group

The Copywriter Underground

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh: Facebook ads. Copywriters write them. Some copywriters run them. All of us see and click on them. And yet, most of us don’t have a deep understanding of how to use them for our clients or our own businesses. It’s not a skill you can easily pick up by listening to a podcast, but we can get a deeper understanding of them with the help of an expert.

Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my guest is Facebook Ads Manager Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie. Kwadwo’s business collapsed during the pandemic and he had to create an entirely new means for supporting his family. So he began a business helping others use Facebook to promote their products.  

That’s not all we talked about. Kwadwo talked about the value of learning a new language and how that can change your perspective on the world. And the challenges of starting over. I think you’re going to like this episode.

Before we get to that… I’ve been telling you about The Copywriter Accelerator FastTrack— that’s our business foundations program used by more than 350 copywriters to start, build and scale their own writing business. Graduates include six-figure writers like Justin Blackman, Kirsty Fanton, Michal Eisik, Dani Paige, Krystal Church and hundreds of others.

The only way to get the business changing strategies and proven ideas we share in The Accelerator is with the Fast Track edition. And it will be going away sometime in the new year.  So if you’ve been thinking of joining the accelerator, this is just about your last chance to get that game-changing program. I’m working on a new program that will replace it… something that will be more concise and immediately applicable. It’s too soon to reveal the details but if you join The Accelerator FastTrack before we launch this new program, you’ll get The Accelerator and free access to the new program when it launches. That includes all of the content, the 8 modules and blueprints and several bonuses that will help you find and land the high-paying clients you want. If you get started with the FastTrack now, when the new year is here you’ll be ready with a steady flow of clients and a signature service you’re proud to offer them. Visit thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack to learn more today.

And now, let’s go to our interview with Kwadwo…

Kwadwo welcome to the podcast. I’m excited. First of all, as I said, as we were starting to chat just to meet you, but also to have you on to tell us your story, how you became a Facebook ads manager, a strategy partner, host of a very popular podcast. How did you get here?

Kwadwo: Let’s go back to when I was sitting in Beijing, China, the capital of China, with my wife at a Mediterranean restaurant. And we were enjoying our hummus and naan and we’re sitting and we’re overlooking like a popular shopping strip. And so we’re chatting and just relating about China life because I’ve lived there for 12 years. And the next thing that happened was It’s very typical for me, but my wife had never experienced before. And so a couple of tables down, there’s two Russian girls. They had spotted me, and they had started giggling like they saw somebody famous. And the thing is, I was famous, and I’ll go into that in a moment. they made their way over to the table and, you know, say, excuse me, introduce themselves and wanted to take a selfie with me. So I introduced them to my wife and then did the selfie thing and they went away. And my wife was like, wow, you weren’t joking. Like this happens. People recognize you as the elementary Chinese guy. And elementary Chinese was my prior business that got decimated by the pandemic where I taught Mandarin Chinese. 

I’m going to go into the story a little bit, but I taught Mandarin Chinese to expats, expatriates, people who are not Chinese, but living and working professionally in China. And that was going quite well. I have this desire now as a Facebook ad manager, and I’m skipping forward, but we’ll get back to that previous business and what happened and why I’m not doing that anymore. But I have the desire to help people run their ads profitably and not make the mistakes that I made back then that got me famous for that previous business, but did not fill up my courses with a bunch of students who were the right fit for me to serve. 

And so here’s what happened. I was basically on the Hollywood B-lister level of fame. Conservatively, three out of ten people, expats, in China would recognize me on the street. And that happened because one timing, it’s some sort of success that usually has to do with like luck and chance. And so one was timing. I was showing ads at a time in China, a market that’s walled off. So like all of the good social media, you know, the YouTubes, the Pinterest, the Twitters, X now, Facebook and Instagram, you can’t access in China without a VPN, virtual private network that helps you tunnel under what they call the great firewall of China to keep out all the Western influence. And so I was showing Facebook ads for that business in China and getting my funny videos about speaking Chinese were showing up for super cheap all over everyone, at least the expats, like iPhones and Android devices. And that grew my Instagram account. I don’t know, 27, almost 30,000 folks like back in 2017, 2018, which is not a huge account, but decent. And lots of people knew me, but because Instagram is all about showing your ads. And this is why I say, constantly do not boost your post. Instagram loves it. I know you’ve seen it on your Instagram, right? This post is reaching more people than usual. Let’s go ahead and show it to more. Hit that boost button now. And it’s like, don’t do it. Don’t do it. They want to show your post to people who like to interact. But if only all of our Instagram followers or even 80% of them, 70% I’ll take that turned into customers. What happened was is since I have two kids and my wife and I like to speak foreign languages to our kids, I was speaking Mandarin to them. Their nanny in China was speaking Mandarin to them. My wife speaks fluent Spanish. 

We decided to take a vacation to Mexico and it happens to be on January 13th, 2020. And so a couple of weeks after that, people start looking at us sideways and saying, uh, where did you say you came from again? And we’re like, uh, we’ve been out of China for 14 days. We’re good to go. And then we were quarantining in Mexico. We extended our Airbnb into like a three month long-term stay because why not? It’s Mexico, chips and guac everywhere. A bit less so during the quarantine and then China shut down their border. So. And I think they gave us seven days to fly back. And well, who wants to buy one-way tickets with less than seven day notice for four people? And because my business was incorporated in China at the time, teaching Chinese, and our visas were tied to that business, we ended up not being able to return to China, having to get our cell phones, hop on FaceTime, because we’re Apple users, and get rid of everything in our apartment when our apartment lease was up. And so imagine four, four bedrooms of stuff, some good friends going over there and we got reunited with six luggages later on. And that was how the previous business ended. And the current, I guess the genesis of the current business where I, I coach and help with funnel strategy for online course creators and I run their Facebook and Instagram ads. That’s how that started.

Rob Marsh: That is nuts. Just the being locked out of your home, your place, everything. That’s crazy.

Kwadwo: Yeah. I think it technically was a midlife crisis. Hopefully I live longer than the half life that I had lived up to that point.

Rob Marsh: It might be your first midlife crisis. I hope to never have one nearly as bad as that. Before we talk about, you know, Facebook and the things you’re doing in your business, let’s talk about learning languages. So I am, I am one of those people who I love to travel, love to travel. Yes. But. I am also terrible in that I cannot speak another language fluently. I know a little bit of Spanish. I can read a little bit of French if I’m really focused on it, a little bit of Italian. But yeah, I don’t know. All my kids speak French. My youngest daughter speaks a little bit of Spanish. She’s not all the way there yet, but my wife speaks French fluently. She also happens to speak Italian and Spanish. So I’m surrounded by it, but I’m that awful American who’s never bothered to go out and learn the language. Let’s talk about why, why this is such an important skill set for some of us who, certainly if we love to travel, but why it can add other things, even if we’re not traveling.

Kwadwo: Okay. First of all, we got to dispel the guilt. Awful American. It’s something that people will say from other countries. I don’t feel that awful about it actually. The context is important though. We’re born in the US, like many people would say, like the most powerful country in the world. And in the States, the context, you don’t necessarily need to learn another language. It’s not like we’re in Europe. And so like I just say, don’t beat yourself up about it, but it’s cool that you want to learn another language. So language learning, huh?

Rob Marsh: Yeah, let’s, let’s, why? I mean, what, what does that add to? I mean, again, it’s really easy to see why we should maybe learn things about copywriting or learn things about marketing or business skills. Why language?

Kwadwo: I always go like this, I hold my hands together with my fingers kind of interlocked. I think people do this when they talk about the word synergy, but one hand is language and one hand is culture. And language cannot be separated from culture and culture is always carried through language via communication. And so what happens when we start to venture out and well, one of the benefits, and learn language is we’re learning other cultures. And the way I like to see it is that we are beginning to pick up a new lens by which we can view the world. And it’s usually a lens that we didn’t grow up with. And the amazing thing about it is it’s challenging. It allows us to see ourselves the way other folks from other countries and cultures see ourselves, it allows us to begin to rub up against concepts that we’ve never been exposed to or challenged by, especially if they differ from our own, in a disturbing way, the more the better, because it just, I believe, makes us better people. When we go through struggling feeling vulnerable, learning a language, having to make the mistakes, having to be seen as somebody that’s a learner, you know, like it’s hard to be an expert when you’re stumbling through a foreign language, even within like a subject matter that you’re normally very well versed at in your native language. Like all these things change how you see the world in a better way. And I thoroughly believe like if, more folks took on the task or the challenge or the fun or the joy even of learning a foreign language, that the world would be a better place because there’d be a heck of a lot more understanding.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, we could use a little more understanding in the world today, I think. Yeah. So this is maybe an odd question, but a lot of times we think about that second language. Speakers of a second language are at some kind of a disadvantage because they don’t know the proper way to conjugate the verbs, or maybe they mix up certainly gendered words within the romantic languages, that kind of thing. But what are some of the advantages that new speakers of a language might have that people who already speak it don’t?

Kwadwo: When you speak or are learning a foreign language, people will listen to you because you’re struggling with the language. And so for a moment, if you approach it right, you have more attention than you normally would because you’re this anomaly. Anomaly. Anomaly! And also… when you speak correctly, as in you set up a new conversation, you, I, I love just apologizing and saying, look, I don’t know how to say this a fancy way, but I need this, or I think this, and I’m sorry if this offends you, but I don’t have a way to doctor it up. And people are like, Oh, thank you for saying that. But then you can speak very, um, directly to folks. And I think that is a benefit of learning a language. Another very obvious benefit is if you’re learning a language from a people group where nobody really looks like you, then you also get the added benefit of being special and getting to meet basically whoever you want. That’s something I taught when I was in China is using the fact that If you’re a non-Asian learner, then you don’t really look anything similar to what somebody would see in China, and you can use that to your advantage to meet some of the best people and have the coolest novel conversations.

Rob Marsh: As much as I love thinking and talking about this, language isn’t really why you’re here on this podcast, where we do talk about a lot of words, but your new business is all about Facebook, Facebook ads, helping clients get exposure. There are a lot of copywriters who would love to be more involved in writing ads and solving these kinds of problems for their clients. Tell us how you basically got connected in with Rick and what you’ve learned and done since.

Kwadwo: Sure. When it comes to Facebook ads, I feel like copywriters are at an advantage and I can say that myself because as a Facebook ad manager, I believe the ad copy is the most important thing to converting somebody who’s out there and face on Facebook and Instagram into somebody who becomes a lead for the business and ultimately somebody who can be served by the business. Um, I rely heavily on really good ad copy and as somebody who, I openly say this, I am not well-versed when it comes to the written word. I think copywriters are at an advantage and here’s how a copywriter can best serve your clients if they’re running Facebook ads. You’re already good at taking your client’s voice and putting that in written form in an engaging way. Wonderful. If you specialize in conversion copywriting or you could call yourself a sales page strategist or you’re decent at writing those emails that are designed to sell, then you also know a thing or 18 about taking somebody’s voice, their expertise, but also combining that with your research or their research on who they serve so that you can make sure the writing communicates how somebody can solve their problems and tying that in with like the ideal customer’s ideal outcome, right?

So when it comes to Facebook ads, it’s not that much different. Sure, there’s a structure or, you know, three or four that really work well for Facebook ads, but a lot of it comes down to the top three lines of Facebook ad copy. And those are those ones that peek out above the, um, inside of the Facebook feed or Instagram feed above the visual that you’re using. And lots of people call those the hook. And if you can get good at writing hooks, which I like to break down just as speaking to someone’s frustration in a different way or kind of outlining in a intriguing way, the possibility, that’s wrapped up in downloading this lead magnet, then you can pretty much master having good Facebook ads because the right people will see that hook and be intrigued and then expand the ad copy, read the rest of the well-written research words and head on over to the landing page, which you’ve had a hand in writing as a copywriter and you’re off to the races.

But I feel like copywriters are a big advantage when it comes to running Facebook ads. How I got into Facebook ads. Did you ask that to Rob? Yes. Yes, for sure. Okay. So, um, when my previous business failed, I needed a job. And since I had been involved in an online business that was successful, I just couldn’t pivot it. I taught a method of learning language via social interaction. And during the pandemic, people were trying not to interact socially. And I couldn’t pivot to just teaching Chinese to everyone around the world who was learning Chinese. And so I had paid for a mastermind that I was a part of. and that I saw good growth because of the strategies I learned from. And so it was that very mastermind, a really good guy named Rick Mulready, the owner of it, who had offered me a job coaching inside of that mastermind when I had nothing else going for me because my business had failed. And that was in the fall of 2020. And at that same time, I had picked up another part-time job inside of a Facebook and Instagram ads agency managing Facebook and Instagram ads. Because again, I was familiar with running my ads incorrectly for my previous business, and I was familiar with the online space. And so I held those two jobs and then leveraged the strengths I’d built and the skill sets I built from those two jobs into doing the same exact thing for clients now.

Rob Marsh: So before we started talking, and I definitely want to talk all things Facebook ads, but before we started talking, you mentioned that one of the things you’ve noticed is that copywriters do not use ads, Facebook, Instagram, or anywhere, with maybe a few exceptions. but they don’t use ads to build their own business to find clients. Uh, and my first response to that is, well, maybe it’s because we don’t know how to do it, which I’m not sure is true because we oftentimes we’re helping our clients do this stuff. So like walk us through why you think more of us should be doing this for our businesses, what the opportunity is and how we should get started.

Kwadwo: Sure. And the disclaimer is that it could just be the niche and the people that I’ve been blessed to meet with haven’t been running Facebook ads. I do actually have a client who is a copywriter and has a very successful direct-to-offer, self-liquidating offer funnel. I think that Facebook ads is a very worthwhile pursuit. if there is already a profitable offer being sold. And one big mistake that people make is they think that We just need more eyeballs on our offer and that will make it sell. So we’re going to run Facebook ads to it. And I always say like Jesus saves Facebook ads do not.

The offer needs to be profitable first. And if we have like a profitable launch mechanism or if like we’re routinely selling to our email list and offers the program, the membership, the coaching service is just selling like hotcakes, so to speak. And we can just do some simple number crunching and look at the revenue and then look at the number of leads that it took us to get that revenue and establish an amount of profit per that lead. Then we can start to play with Facebook ads because Facebook ads have a cost to them. And the name of the game is, as long as the profit is quite a bit higher than the cost, then let’s go ahead and add that Facebook and Instagram ad fuel to the fire. But it takes a bit, a bit of time in a spreadsheet just to look at those numbers. But I believe that time is well spent. And for many of us, we could grow quicker. If we turned on Facebook ads sooner, once our offers, our programs, our coaching, our courses, our memberships are profitable.

Rob Marsh: So as you talk about that, it seems like, okay, it definitely makes sense for digital type projects or products, memberships, courses, that kind of stuff. What about services? Can copywriters profit? I mean, you know, most of the services that we offer, copywriters are charging, I don’t know, anywhere from say $500 to multiple thousands, sometimes even tens of thousands of dollars. So you don’t need that many leads to get, you know, a couple of clients doing that to be profitable. But also, I don’t see services being sold through ads on Instagram, Facebook very often. And you’re right. Maybe it’s just the people that I follow, the people that I see. I’m not seeing that out there. But what about that?

Kwadwo: Well, it’s a service. So naturally, to show an ad to a service that’s multiple thousands of dollars and expect somebody to buy that, well, we’re not going to run ads to a sales page because that would never, ever, ever work. But here’s the thing. If you’re a service provider, I’m a service provider, right? A lot of my referrals are coming from a certain place. And so it’s my responsibility just to look at the funnel that either I’ve purposefully put in place, but many times there’s an organic funnel there that I just haven’t quite discovered yet. And this is where I don’t 100% preach Facebook ads.

For example, if somebody, let’s say is in masterminds and they realize that a lot of their leads are coming from there, well then join more masterminds. Like if you’re being a guest on podcasts and you’ve done the tracking, IE maybe made a podcast specific lead magnet, you know, that only is given out when you’re on podcasts and that’s, it’s connected to your email. CRM so to speak and people are tagged as having come from another podcast and you can see leads coming in because of your guest podcast speaking opportunities and then you can track like every quarter you’re looking at revenue and seeing if there’s like a podcast tag Associated with any of those clients will then lean into being a guest on a podcast where Facebook ads though does wonders is for the copywriter the service provider that also has other things to sell well, that’s a a really easy thing to do with Facebook ads because I’ve had the privilege of meeting copywriters who have thousands and thousands and thousands of people either visiting their website a month or in followers on Instagram. And the algorithm just doesn’t give that reach. Um, but specifically for like a service provider funnel, if I’m looking and tracking the numbers, then I want to know what action, how many actions am I doing that gets a discovery call and what percentage of discovery calls am I closing? And if I happen to be in a situation where I have a decent social media following or a decent readership on my website and ads can help that initial interaction where somebody might get onto my email list and then I send an email, a sales email or a sales email sequence that results in discovery calls. That’s kind of where ads fits in for a service provider.

Rob Marsh: That makes sense. So I’m a copywriter. I’m listening to the podcast. I’m listening to you, Kwejo, talk about all this stuff. And I’m thinking, all right, I at least want to give this a try. I’ve got some stuff that I can offer. Maybe I’ve got a template pack or something. Or maybe I just want to attract some attention to my podcast or to something else that I’m doing. Maybe I can do some retargeting afterwards, whatever. How do I get started? What are some of the steps short of you know, calling up you and say, Hey, fix this stuff for me.

Kwadwo: So where do I start? Sure. Start with the messaging. That’s usually the part that’s the hardest. But luckily, if you’re active on Instagram, then you already know what messaging is working. And if you’re not sure, you can dive into it like this by going to your Instagram reels, because those are pretty popular right now. But if you’re if carousels are your jam then look at your Instagram stats and you’ll be looking for the posts Let’s say over the past six months that have the most reach or that are reaching the most amounts of unique accounts and when you look on a reel and you go into the stats setting, there’s like a little pie, a circle chart, and I think it has like blue and purple on it. And so when you find a reel, one easy way is just to look at your Instagram feed and look at the reels that have the most plays, right? But then dive into those and look at the stats to see which one of those is reaching the most new accounts. You’ve kind of looked and discovered a reel where Instagram has decided because the engagement is good that the algorithm will push that reel out to new people. All right, so that’s step one. Now you’re going to start to focus on once you find five of those reels, look for the commonalities in what you’re saying. They all might be talking about the same thing, if you’re lucky, or maybe they’re talking about, you know, two or three things. Then look at what you’re writing in the caption of those reels, because it’s not just the content of the reel. It’s also, you know, the amount of time that people spend reading the caption and what they happen to do after they read the caption.

Meta, you know, the owner of Facebook and Instagram tracks all of that stuff. So you’re just reverse engineering because success leaves clues and start with that. It could be as easy as taking a popular reel that’s lined or that’s well aligned with a lead magnet and running that reel as the visual for your ad and then looking at the copy from that reel and adding that into your ad copy And then just remembering that this just comes down to testing. So like if I have one piece of ad copy on a reel that’s been doing well, I’m just going to look at that top section of the ad copy and see if I can rework it a little bit. The first one or two sentences to speak to a couple of different frustrations or to tease a couple of very, you know, attractive outcomes. And then I put it into ad manager and here’s where most people, Stop. And it’s, it’s leaving money on the table in the form of you could be paying too high for a sale or too high for a lead, but just test, take three different pieces of ad copy and pair them with the same visual. Give it five days. Give it a week. See which one comes out on top, so to speak. And then now you’ve got a great piece of ad copy. Come up with some other graphics or some visuals. Put those with the same ad copy. Let those run for another week. See what’s working.

And if you keep being faithful to that process, then you’ll end up with hopefully a handful of ads. Three is what I usually like to go for that are working for you and that Yes, it’s simplified. Yes, meta seems to offer up at every turn chances to make mistakes in running ads. But if you stick to those concepts of look organically for what’s working, use the copywriter skills, I wish I had those skills personally, to make some variations of the written word that’s already working, and then just go through the basic testing process, you’ll be surprised at what you can achieve in a decent lead cost for the right kind of person downloading your lead magnet. and even coming into your launch or just decent costs for folks that are buying your email template. I have a client that her SLO funnel, her funnel direct to offer $37 offer for email templates that sell. It does very well, you know, because people need that and selling is serving. So test right so that you can serve more people.

Rob Marsh: So I think everybody knows this. You mentioned it. Meta owns both Facebook and Instagram. What are the differences between the two platforms as far as audience and the different things that we should be doing on them? Or is there no difference?

Kwadwo: From my ads perspective, I don’t see a big difference. I like to let the algorithm decide where it’s going to show the ad, and then I work from there. And here’s what I mean. Meta collects 52,000, I believe is what you can Google, data points on every user. And they have been doing so for over a decade. So what that means is they know me and you, like they know you, Rob, better than you know yourself.

Rob Marsh: They know us better than we know ourselves.

Kwadwo: Yeah, it’s nuts. 52,000. It’s way beyond what you like, what you don’t like, what you watch, what you don’t watch. Like they know like how much time you spend on a post. If you slow down, like how much are you slowing down? You know, like what are you doing seven posts later? Like what makes you exit the platform? And can they, they, they know so much. Right. And so I, I honestly don’t worry about different, but like leave that to the social media growth strategists, like about how you should definitely show up on Instagram versus Facebook. But as long as you have a presence there and, and for those of you with small Facebook and Instagram accounts, even if you don’t, you can just rely on the algorithm to find the best people for you.

And from there we can tweak, you know, like if we see for some reason that like Lots of your leads are coming from Facebook and not Instagram. Well, maybe you can post more to Instagram or we can just stop showing ads on the Instagram platform and your lead costs will come down because we’re focusing the algorithm over there on Facebook. It’s more of a, it’s less of a, how should I show up differently on Facebook and Instagram and more of a, what am I going to do with the data about where my leads are coming from?

Rob Marsh: Makes sense. So let’s say again, I’m a copywriter and I want to break into this. I want to do more Facebook ad writing. Okay. What are some of the steps that I want to do, you know, short of taking all of the courses and figuring out how to do all the backend Facebook stuff? How do I get in front of a person like you, Kwaijo, and say, hey, you know, we should be working together or here’s some of the stuff that I can help you do? like find me or yeah, well you are somebody that does what you do basically a Facebook strategist ad strategist that kind of thing.

Kwadwo: I say go with who you know. I’ve heard too many times and this is just me speaking from the heart like I would love for lots of people to come work with me but not everybody knows me but you probably know via your client or one of your clients Facebook ad manager with a repute with a good reputation go to them because a lot of this comes down to trust as soon as you involve like your hard-earned money going into Facebook ads and There, you just want to be able to not have to have as little anxiety as possible. So by going with somebody, you know, who has a proven track record, that’s going to happen. Also though, educate yourself. There’s a lot of free content out there on the internet. There’s content on my podcast that talks about like good fundamentals for running Facebook ads too many times. I have a new client who says, somebody ran my ads and I just didn’t understand their reports.

They would send me a report every two weeks. I didn’t really know what they’re doing. And when I say, well, why? Well, okay, so let’s hold the Facebook ad manager accountable to give me metrics So I know what’s really working what’s not working, but then also as the business owner I want to learn the basics of Facebook ads That way you pay the ignorant tax in advance with your time and your research rather than paying it later Because of a lack of results or lack of accountability on the ad managers part. That’s what I would say Would you like a simple ad formula that a copywriter could use to best serve their client if their client’s like, hey, we’re going to do ads. Help me write some ad copy.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, let’s hear it. I mean, obviously, if I’m going to pitch you as a writer or pitch another Facebook ad specialist that I know, I want to send you something that shows off my ability. So if you’ve got a couple of formulas that help, let’s do it.

Kwadwo: Take an ad and let’s demystify it. It’s just like other copies. So you got to have a good hook, right? And following that hook is probably time. Let’s say that your hook skews towards the negative side of the coin, meaning it focuses on a frustration in a non-triggering way because we don’t want to trigger people. Like right after that, it’s probably time to empathize a quick bit. you know, um, so that somebody feels like you’re not just calling them out, but you’ve been there too, or other clients that the person frequently serves have been in that exact same situation. And that’s where you transition to say, well, that’s why we created this solution and then download it. Right? So your download link goes there. And then under that for the, logical reader, if you will, who has gone through the hook and the empathy part. Let’s call it the emotional part. And this has to sound really, really familiar to a copywriter. But after that, you know, you might have a one or two or three very simple bullet points. I like to make sure that if it’s a feature, it’s also a benefit, but talking about a lead magnet. And then again, I like to end an ad with a bit of hope, you know, as much negativity as we see, like, let’s give some hope that you can do this. And if you just follow, I’ve given a very general framework, but if you just follow that, that’s a good place to start for ads.

Rob Marsh: Let me throw some letters at that. That sounds like problem, empathize, solve, hope, PESH. It’s very similar to the PAS framework, but yeah. So I like the addition of hope because ultimately we’re selling solutions, but without hope, nobody gets to the solution portion. So it’s a really important addition. Agreed. Okay. So you mentioned one of the things we need to educate ourselves on are these metrics that make a difference. And there are a ton of metrics, a lot of stuff that really doesn’t matter, but it seems important. Things like views, that kind of stuff. What should we be looking for? What are the top maybe three or four metrics that we just have to pay attention to?

Kwadwo: All right. Cost per result, that’s the most important one. If it’s a lead campaign, cost per lead. If it’s a sales campaign, cost per sell. Now hopefully on the back end, we’re doing the math. So if I know that I’m bringing in $3 leads for a launch, hopefully I also know how much those leads over the past launches have been worth to me. So then I can say, ah, Launch leads are worth $15 to me. I’m only paying $3 a lead. Let’s go. And bonus points if I know that launch lead, cold traffic launch leads are worth $15 versus warm traffic launch leads, but I won’t get into the weeds. We want to know how much profit we can have, right? Same thing for cost per sale. Now the next metric that I’m looking at if I’m troubleshooting my ads is what’s called link click through rate and some people, you may have heard the term like outbound link click-through rate.

I’m going to consider those the same and that would be the percentage of people that have viewed your ad that have also clicked on a link to go to wherever you’re sending them. The lead magnet opt-in page, the sales page, the registration page. the book a call consultation page what have you and the numbers you’re looking for here is 1% or above and you’re good to go 1% is good like 1.25% it’s great 0.75% link click-through rate horrible so think like hockey stick or like a logarithmic curve and You’ll be fine. So 1% or above Now you’re starting to get into more of a nuance, but let’s say you have ads that are running and your ads aren’t performing as well.

Well, I would ask, did you have multiple ad copy versions? Did you have multiple visuals? And if not, this is where you want to test because people, we, we’re just inundated with a bunch of media and so if I’ve seen your ad before and I see it again and I see it too many times I’m probably like I’ve seen this before and I just filter it out and keep scrolling on my doom scroll right and so just by changing up the way an ad looks by adding in another visual taking a graphic doing something as simple as picking another background color then like you don’t get filtered out as easily and it looks fresh and a higher percentage of people will click on that ad. And so the last metric I’ll mention here, because we’re just going to keep it simple, right, is keep an eye on the frequency column. So we started off with cost per result, we went to link click-through rate, and now we’re looking at frequency. Just keep an eye on that frequency column and make sure that people aren’t seeing your ad too often. And if they are, then add some new ad creative in there.

Rob Marsh: And you should… What’s a good number for that? So, you know, is it like And it’s been a long time since I looked at this, so I can’t remember if it’s by week or how it measures, but is it three times a day, three times a week, five times a month, what is a good number?

Kwadwo: Okay, so in that frequency column, you’ll see a number, and it could be one, it could be 1.7, but that number is the number of times that somebody in the audience you’re targeting has seen an ad within the timeframe that you have selected inside of Meta Ad Manager. So if I select, last month, and then I see a three, that means on average, within the audience that I’m targeting, somebody has seen an ad three times. So if I see a one, that means only one time.

If you’re showing ads to cold traffic, which I define as people who have yet to enter or encounter your business ecosphere, they haven’t visited your website yet, they don’t follow you on Facebook or Instagram, they’re not on your email list for sure, they haven’t watched any of your videos, then one to two is a decent frequency. If I’m showing ads for a launch, which we’ve definitely seen this year, 2024, at the time of recording this video, that you’ve really got to make sure you’re showing ads to your warm audiences. Maybe I can tolerate a frequency up to four. But in general, lower frequency is better. I can tolerate a frequency up to four for warm audiences, but I’m always thinking I need more ad creative. I need more ad copy variations because for sure your ads are going to work better at a frequency of like two than four because of that whole, I’ve seen this before thing. And you don’t want, you want as few people to think they’ve seen this before as possible. And so always show up prepared with extra graphics, you know, text on pictures, maybe even like a picture of yourself.

Just try different visuals. Not every test, and I want to kind of set this expectation, not every test goes well, you know. In fact, most tests don’t work. That’s the name of the ads management game. But if you are faithful to the test, you will encounter that one out of 20 tests or that 1 out of 20 graphics that works better than the other 19, in which case you’ve got yourself a winner and better results. And if you can keep going to find the 1 out of 50 that works better than the other 49, then guaranteed, just because statistics, then your ads are going to work better. So that’s what I would say.

Rob Marsh: It feels like all three of those are indicators that you need new ad ideas, right? If your click-through rates are going down, you need some other thing that’s gonna get attention. If they’re seeing the ads too often, then you need more ads. If the cost has gone up, you probably need more creative. So in my brain, it feels like these are all moving towards the same kind of a thing. Okay, how are you keeping everything fresh? How are you getting more people to respond, which is the name of the game.

Kwadwo: I mean, that’s why people hire an ad manager, right? Like, because there comes a point on your success to like, or on your journey to business success, where like, because you’ve hit a certain revenue, and you’re doing certain types of things in your business where it doesn’t make sense, because your time is more valuable than spending it looking inside an ad manager all day long.

Rob Marsh: So yeah, that makes sense. Anything else I should be asking about Facebook ads, Instagram ads that I just don’t even have the background to know about that you think, man, it’d be great if everybody knew this?

Kwadwo: It would be great if the listener understands as a copywriter that the ad is just, I know they get it, the ad is just the top of the funnel. Right. Let’s look at the landing page. Let’s make sure the landing page conversion rates are on point Otherwise, we’re going to change how the landing page is being presented change add copy there I personally speaking to Speaking from the viewpoint of a service provider would say like if you’re a copywriter and listening which I know many of you are then The moment you can add value to not just the Facebook and Instagram ad, but to the landing page, obviously you’re probably already adding value to the sales page and the email and look at the funnel as a whole and even be able to jump into a spreadsheet, which I’ve gotten used to, but I didn’t like it in the beginning and be able to say, okay, like these are the crucial conversion steps. This is where it should be. Here’s what we can tweak to get that opt in page conversion rate higher or that sales page conversion rate higher. You’re so valuable to your client and you’re able to make sure that like you’re duly compensated, but you also can sleep well knowing that you’re helping somebody very significantly serve more of the people who they were meant to serve with like their passion or their skill. Like it’s great. And so dig on in, dive on in, help with all those conversion steps.

Rob Marsh: With a few minutes that we have remaining, I would love to dive into some of the challenges that you faced in basically switching over your business, not just shutting down the business that failed for all kinds of crazy reasons, but then moving into a job and then taking over at least some portions of the business for Rick. Maybe I don’t know, but maybe you’ve got the entire business or it’s just the podcast. I don’t know. Yeah, I’ll clarify that. I’ll tell you some challenges too.

Kwadwo: Yeah, please. I am the host of The Art of Online Business Podcast and this was a podcast owned by Rick Mulready. He was the host for the longest and I worked with him and it made point at a point where it made sense at a point where he was transitioning to he’s doing great things in the AI space. helping the same online course creators, coaches, and membership owners use AI so they can increase their impact and reduce their overwhelm. Still the same thing, the guy is brilliant, but when he was moving in that direction, it just became clear that the podcast wasn’t going to serve his business the same way it had. And so, me having worked with him and known him over the years, I decided I would acquire it. And I did, and I became the host. Big challenge here because lots of the listeners were used to Rick and I am no Rick. That guy is a genius. He really knows how to think. I’m a thinker too but his unique way of looking at businesses and doing the coaching thing and helping them generate more revenue and he’s done that for like 12, 13 years I think. from meta and Facebook ads back before it was called meta and then into coaching online course creators and beyond. So I had to be comfortable with myself and who I was. I had to navigate. It was a challenge kind of bridging the gap between how Rick delivered value and being true to how I would deliver value. And finding my own voice, but easing the listener into my own voice over the past year, that’s been a challenge. Let’s just talk about like whenever there’s a transition. there’s going to be an exodus of certain folks because they might not like me as much as they like him. So seeing the numbers and still showing up, and then seeing the numbers of more people coming because they like me. So that was a challenge. When I had to shift businesses, or even from a business to a job, and then to a business again. The biggest challenge was my identity. And so me accepting a new identity or realizing I was more than this previous identity I’d built up as the Chinese guy, the elementary Chinese guy who taught Chinese, that was so hard, Rob.

Rob Marsh: Especially if you’re famous and being recognized in restaurants everywhere. Right. Yeah.

Kwadwo: And so here I am in a country where I didn’t speak Spanish. So I was in Mexico in the middle of the pandemic, trying my hardest to figure out how I could just get back to China. Cause I was trying to speak on stages there and host events, you know, um, and nobody here knew me as an elementary Chinese guy. It wasn’t like it was helping my business at all. And I’m like wanting that past me. But having to realize, and I’m a Christian, so for me, a lot of the process was just crying in prayer. But having to realize that I am not that previous identity. I am Kwadwo, and I have value outside of just this little part of me that happened to be famous in China. And so to kind of like There was a point where I just had to leave that behind. As much as I wanted to go back, and as much as I wanted to have that kind of business and that kind of, you know, a little bit of fame, I had to look forward and say, all right, well, where are we going here? What is the new identity? Who am I now? And and take these brave steps. And they were painful, honestly. It was very painful. Lots of tears and crying, and so much support from my wife. She’s raising two kids. We got stuck out with a nine-month-old and a three-year-old. So she’s going through her own battles, right? But she’s not earning the money. I am. And I had a lot of support from her at that time. And that was a very, very big challenge. But here I am. I’ve made it and I’m doing okay by the grace of God.

Rob Marsh: Forward, ever forward, right? Speaking of ever forward, and you mentioned that Rick’s been looking into AI, but where do you see AI impacting Facebook ads, Instagram ads, the stuff that we’re doing there? Obviously, in the back end, Facebook is doing all kinds of stuff that is finding audience and they’re applying AI in ways that we can’t even see. But on the front end, the stuff that we can see, where is that all going?

Kwadwo: I believe it is going towards a place of simpler ads management, where the AI does a lot more and the ads manager does less. I frequently talk about Ads management, kind of like a Latin dance. Since I’m down here in Mexico, I think of salsa and bachata and merengue, you know, tango. It takes two to tango, right? And the person managing the ads, be that somebody hired or yourself, is the lead and the algorithm will follow, right? But it’s going towards a point, because I can see the changes daily. Meta is always rolling out new features. And anyone who’s looked inside of Meta Ad Manager can see that they’re rolling out a lot more suggestions, or they’re taking away certain methods of targeting in favor of letting the algorithm Figure it out for you, you know, whereas you used to really want to test years ago a bunch of detailed Audiences and break everything out into a bunch of ad sets like now frequently the best ad sets that are working are these big ones with like Two to five million people in it and just a broad wide open ad set where you only tell it the country the algorithm tell tell the country and maybe the gender and the age range and it just Finds everything else out for you we’re seeing a lot of new like what they call advantage plus creative where it’s like we do spend our time. Graphic designers are still important, but meta can do like eight different kinds of things to the, to the image at its whim based on what it sees people responding to, you know? And so definitely there’s this trend towards letting the algorithm do more for the ad. And so I see that as, kind of leveling the playing field, you know, over the upcoming years, it should hopefully, uh, get easier for somebody to hop into ad manager right now. It’s still a minefield of mistakes waiting to happen because you, you just have to test things and know what does what. And, um, but yeah, that’s where I see AI going right now. I feel like there’s a stigma to AI. And so we definitely bring our expertise. And I say we, me as an ad manager, you as a copywriter, we bring our expertise to that. But I feel like eventually AI will get to the point where it does do a better job than we can do at writing, provided we do a great job of feeding it with results from the research that we’re doing. I don’t know when AI figures out how to do the kind of research that’s necessary to produce good ad copy. But it can’t be, it can’t be far. It can’t be far down the line. Not like in this year right now where they’re developing like, you know, GPTs or let’s call them AI agents that specialize at one task and you can call on it to do one thing specifically. Well, it can’t be that many more years before you have like the agents working together and communicating with each other. And then after that, at a certain point when they start communicating in a way that we can’t just peer into the code and figure out what they’re saying, We’ve got the matrix.

Rob Marsh: So yeah, hopefully it’s the result is us all sitting on beaches and enjoying drinks with umbrellas in them rather than hooked up to life support and providing the energy to the matrix. Yeah.

Kwadwo: You know, when Henry Ford came out with the Model T and that started to become super popular, let’s just say motorized vehicles. I mean, he was laughed and ridiculed at. People had plenty of arguments, so they say, at least in the books, as to like, why would you do this over a horse? And well, now horses are mainly like ridden in sport. You know, it’s like an equestrianism. It’s an art form. And so I wonder if that’s where it’s going with AI, where there will still be value for somebody who’s riding themselves, producing out of only their own creativity, But for the business world and everything else, it’s like, we’re going to use AI, but we appreciate the artists who still come up with their own writing.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think authenticity is one of those make or break things with AI. Once it can fake authenticity, we might be in trouble. But until then, there’s a need for a lot of creators still. So we’ll see. So Kwadwo, this has been really interesting, fascinating for me. If people want to be part of your world, and they should, your podcast is excellent, the ideas that you share. Oftentimes, you know, bite size or can be consumed very quickly. Where should they go and how do they get on your list? All of those things.

Kwadwo: So my podcast is The Art of Online Business and we’re serving online course creators and to an extent service providers who just want to level up their income, say from mid four figure months to high six figure years. And you’re going to be on the podcast too. And so I teach on Facebook ads there, but I’m also inviting folks with a wealth of knowledge like yourself to speak every week. And so that’s The Art of Online Business on Apple podcasts, we have a decent and growing presence on YouTube. And look, if you’re wanting meta Facebook and Instagram ads help, but you’re at the point where you want to manage it yourself, I do one on one coaching, I find that that is serving more and more people who know that their business is ready for ads, but they haven’t quite hit that revenue point in the business where they can hire out ads management. The perfect solution is coach with me for a month and I’ll show you everything I know to run your ads so that at the end of that time you’re running your ads, you know how to do the testing, you know the things because you had like unlimited access to me while we were coaching, you know the things to do and how to troubleshoot all the various issues that can show up. And that is a good way to go forward.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. That sounds like a really good solution for a lot of people, especially if you’re just starting out and trying to figure this stuff out. Cool. Well, I’ll give you that link. Yeah. We’ll link to it in the show notes. Thank you for your time, Kwadwo. Really appreciate it. And looking forward to talking to you again on your podcast in the near future. Thanks, Rob. Thanks for sharing so much about Facebook ads and reels and how we can use them more effectively for both our clients and in our own businesses, knowing what works and what doesn’t work when you should use Facebook ads. And when you absolutely shouldn’t, this stuff is important and it’s so easy to get caught up in what other business owners are doing. Things like Facebook ads and copying them rather than taking the time to figure out what’s going to work for your business. Knowing the numbers, which actions lead to discussions with prospects and how those convert. We all need to be tracking this stuff. And if ads fit into that flow in your business, you should definitely be using them. Given how much data Facebook has about each of us, this is a goldmine just waiting to be used to connect you with the people that you can help. Maybe my favorite part of this interview is quite Kwadwo’s story and how he had to find a new identity in both his business and his personal life after his old business crashed or in the pandemic. And sometimes you just need to reinvent what you’re doing and it’s never easy. You just need to push through, keep on going until what you’re doing succeeds. If you’d like my help as you push through and reinvent your business, go to the copyrighted club.com forward slash fast track. and sign up for that program while it’s still available. And if you wanna connect with Kwadwo or follow him and learn more about using Facebook and Instagram ads to grow your business, there are a few places that you can go. He hosts the Art of Online Business podcast and we’ll link to that in the show notes. And if you visit his Instagram page, you’ll find a link there in his bio to get his short email series, Seven Biggest Facebook Ad Mistakes That Kill Results. It’s a great place to start with him. Be sure to look for him on YouTube as well.