324: Molly Pittman On Happiness, Relationships And Facebook Ads

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wipe Quitter Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. Now today I have my friend Molly Pittman back on the show for the second time. And in this episode, we’re going to talk about a combination of happiness and entrepreneurship, relationships, and a little bit of Facebook ads all in a single episode. But before we begin, I want to thank Klavia for sponsoring this episode. It’s safe to say that most of us have been doing more online shopping lately. If you’re an e-commerce brand, that means you might be seeing more first-time customers.

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00:59
Klaviyo can help you get growing faster. And it’s free to get started. So visit klaviyo.com slash my wife to create your free account. That’s K-L-A-V-I-Y-O dot com slash my wife. I also want to thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode. If you run an e-commerce business of any kind, you know how important it is to own your own customer contact list. And this is why I’m focusing a significant amount of my efforts on SMS marketing. SMS or text message marketing is already a top five revenue source for my e-commerce store.

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01:53
That’s P O S T S C R I P T dot IO slash Steve. Now onto the show. Welcome to the My Wife, Quitter Job podcast, where we’ll teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here’s your host, Steve Chu.

02:16
Welcome to the My Wife, Quitter, Job podcast. Today I am thrilled to have Molly Pittman back on the show. And Molly is someone who I met at Traffic and Conversions and Social Media Marketing World. And she has actually spoken at my annual e-commerce conference over at the Seller Summit back in 2019. And she was the VP of Marketing for Digital Marketer for many years. And then she recently became the CEO of Smart Marketer, a teaching company that was founded by Ezra Firestone, who has also been on the show several times.

02:42
Anyway, over the years, Molly has spent millions of dollars on paid traffic while achieving a positive ROI. And recently, she just released a brand new book called Click Happy, which I finished a couple nights ago. So it was actually very fresh in my mind. But the real reason I invited Molly back on the show is because I needed to hear her laugh once again. So what up, Molly? How are you doing today? There it is. I’m great. Thank you for having me. I love that that was the real reason for the show.

03:11
So I know that you’re in the Netherlands right now. Can you just kind of quickly catch the audience back up to how you ended up there and what you’ve been up to since the last time you were on, which I believe was in 2018? Oh, yeah, a lot has changed. So I came to Amsterdam last June, so June of 2019. When I was on your show, I was living in Telluride, Colorado, which was beautiful, relaxing. I loved it, but

03:38
Yeah, I needed a little bit higher energy place for the next step in my life. So I’ve always loved Europe. studied in Italy about 10 years ago and I decided to come to Amsterdam for three months because that’s how long tourists are allowed to be here and Airbnb and kind of feel out the city and just, you know, see, see what happened. And I fell in love with it. I figured out a pretty easy way to get a visa.

04:07
as a business owner, happy to go deeper into that at any point for anybody that’s interested. And yeah, about 13 months later, I’m still here. And yeah, I don’t see myself leaving anytime soon. So really grateful to be here. And it’s something that that just kind of happened. Yeah. So so as far as you’re concerned, this could be like a permanent move.

04:28
Yeah, it could. So my visa right now is for two years. If all is well and I’m paying my taxes and haven’t gotten in trouble, then after two years, I’ll receive a five year visa. And then after those five years, if I want to stay, then I would need to pass like a pretty basic Dutch language test.

04:48
which at that point I should know Dutch. And then I would be able to stay as long as I wanted. So yeah, I don’t know, I could stay here another year. I could be here the rest of my life. But that’s also what’s fun about this internet thing. know, where we live isn’t where we always have to be. you know, outside of COVID times, I’m definitely more of a seasonal traveler. I like to be in multiple places throughout the year. So I do think that Holland will always be a place that I’m spending time.

05:17
So being the CEO of SmartMarketer, it doesn’t matter that you’re over there at all. Like, do you have to travel back and forth a lot or? I mean, the company is remote and always has been. So we are built to function in these times. The only change which I was already used to is just working pretty much US hours because of the time change. you know, like right now I’m just kind of starting my work day and you know, it’s after 4 p.m. So I just…

05:45
have a different schedule here than in the US. So it’s not really difficult in regards to being the CEO of Smart Marketer. We’ve got good systems and communication structures in place so that, yeah, it’s good and it works well. So what I wanted to do today, since you just released your book, I wanted to start out by kind of talking about happiness in general, because you’re well regarded in the community and you’re very successful. Yet what was really nice and refreshing about reading your book is that

06:14
You weren’t happy, which is why you were moving around. And you actually spend the first half of your book talking about how you were burned out. So can you just kind of go into how you got burned out, even though you were so successful and what are some of the things that you did to overcome this? Yeah, I mean, first off, I wanted to tell those stories in the book because I do think that’s an issue in our industry or just in the world of social media in general is that you’re mostly seeing

06:42
the positive aspects of somebody’s life. And so, you know, when you go through those darker times, sometimes you can feel like something’s wrong with you or you’re alone because you aren’t really seeing the full picture from the people that you’re following. So I want to make sure that in my book and throughout my career, I’m always showing the other side because, you know, that’s life is a dichotomy, you know, life and death. There are so many dichotomies really when you look at how we live.

07:11
And light and dark is the same happiness and sadness. So we all experience both sides of the coin to some regard. And yeah, I think that’s important to talk about. you know, for me, I mean, I really felt burned out as I was leaving digital marketer at the end of 2017. And I think a lot of that was an addiction to the success, an addiction to the hustle and a lack of

07:40
time or attention actually spent on myself. So it was really that simple. It was an imbalance that I was also addicted to in some way because I thought that that’s what success was. And I thought that, you know, you had to leave it all on the court or you weren’t going to succeed. So yeah, that that led to a pretty significant burnout for me in 2017.

08:08
it’s really taken me two to three years to fully bounce back from. it the hours or was it just like the mental aspects of it? I think both, you know, people think of burnout as a result of, you know, constantly working, which that can definitely be part of it. And I did go through seasons where I was working 16 to 20 hours a day all the time. But I think most of it goes back to your mental states. And for me, it’s

08:37
It was, and it still is sort of a battle of making sure that it’s not just about me taking space from work and saying, okay, Molly, know, here’s where you’re going to take time off. It’s making sure that mentally I’m allowing myself to take time off from the business. Because I think that’s really what does the biggest damage. So is that why you’re such good friends with the hippie? I think.

09:02
I think that’s a big reason that, uh, that Ezra and I have definitely been drawn to each other. You know, it’s crazy. I met Ezra back in 2012 when I was an intern at digital marketer and they were publishing his first information product in the marketing industry called Brown Box Formula. And you know, what’s crazy is that at that time, my boss was Colleen Taylor, who is now our COO. Yeah. boom, and you know, the three of us really clicked.

09:32
even back then, we immediately became friends. And yeah, it’s crazy that we now, I mean, it’s not that we’re working together. But yeah, I’ve always been drawn to Ezra’s energy and just what he has to say. And you know, what he brings to the table for sure. So it seems like you’re a lot happier now. What are some of the things that you did to kind of get over that burnout? Yeah, I think that a lot of it is

09:58
just adjusting my priorities and how I look at success and figuring out what are my values and then making sure that my work aligns with those values. So the first step was figuring out, you know, what does Molly want or need? Like, what do I value? And I think before I was valuing money and success and the way things look on the outside, but that’s not truly what I cared about.

10:27
So I was working really hard and running myself into the ground for something that wasn’t really my highest value. So that is an issue in itself. What is highest value, if I might ask? Well, now is happiness, fulfillment, mean, serving the world. Those are my highest values for sure. Money and success are not even in the top five. So relationships, communication.

10:55
Adventure, travel, all of those are more valuable to me. Obviously we need the money to make those things happen. you know, money and outward success and fame and vanity metrics, because I was optimizing for things that I actually didn’t care about, not only did I feel like crap because I was working too hard, but I really felt like crap because I wasn’t being true to myself. So the first thing I had to do is figure out

11:22
exactly who I am, which is always evolving. I don’t think there’s ever one moment where you’re like, ah, I know who Molly is now. But doing things like moving to Colorado, as I discussed earlier, that peace and quiet really helped me get in tune with what I wanted. And then from there, it was making sure that those values were aligned with whatever work projects I was going to do moving forward.

11:49
And you mentioned when you were burned out that you weren’t taking care of your physical self either. And I know you’re a very athletic person, right? You were playing, you used to play soccer. Were you professional? No, no, Almost professional, right? Something like that. I vaguely remember that in the book. How has your lifestyle changed after you discovered all this stuff when you left digital market? Yeah, you know, what’s crazy is that after

12:15
I quit being an athlete, I had a knee injury and multiple things really went into me deciding I wasn’t going to be an athlete. It’s almost like I completely disregarded my body in general. Like, oh, you aren’t of value anymore because you’re not scoring goals on the soccer field. And so I handled that transition really poorly. And especially when I got into my professional career and that’s where I was starting to get momentum.

12:44
I even abandoned it, abandoned my body even more and just not making it a priority, right? Not valuing that that was a part of my health that I really needed to pay attention to. And it was something that I looked back eight or nine years later and I was like, wow, this is not good. This is very much contributing to my unhappiness and this is a part of me I should be more intentional about. So I know the audience wants to know about

13:14
kind of your habits to prevent burnout. So what are some changes that you’ve actually made to your lifestyle and what you do now to prevent this from happening ever again? Yeah, I mean, first and foremost is looking at time spent. And so being a lot more intentional, I mean, that’s one reason that I love living in Amsterdam because I’m six hours ahead of the East Coast. So when I wake up in the morning, I have, you know, six to eight hours to do whatever I need to do for myself.

13:42
before the team wakes up or before most of our customers wake up. And that’s been huge because it almost forces me, it’s like built into my calendar for me to do whatever I need for me, whether that’s working out, whether that’s, know, whatever it is, reading, actually writing or doing work in the business that doesn’t have to do with talking to other humans. So that built in time, whether it’s from the time change or whether it’s me intentionally going in and putting it on my calendar.

14:12
that’s really important. like for example, with Smart Marketer right now, we have half day Fridays. So, you we want to make sure that the team is also taking care of themselves. So, you know, on Friday we only work half days. And then our hope is that the rest of their Friday is spent doing something for them. So a lot of it is just being aware of how you’re spending your time. But I do think there are other factors. I mean, I’ve gone deep into nutrition,

14:41
and figuring out what I need for my body, not just what the internet tells you is the latest fad diet. And I also realized that I had a lot of mental blocks around exercising. And I think that comes from being an athlete and where exercise for me used to make so much sense because it made me better at the sport that I was playing. It made me a better athlete. So of course it was something that I was going to do.

15:08
And when you don’t have that motivation, that can be a bit tough. So, you I have really worked to build exercise into my day to day. So a lot of calls that I take that don’t have to be done on a microphone like this or with video, I will do so walking around town just to get more steps in. And I found things like Pilates that I actually enjoy.

15:33
where before I was really trying to force myself to exercise and it was something that I didn’t want to do. Now it’s something that I look at as pleasurable and exciting and something that helps me feel better but also really builds that self-love which is now the reason that I do it to make myself better not just to be a better athlete on the field. So in terms of your hours right now, are you like a vampire right now where you kind of stay up late or are you

16:03
essentially living Netherlands hours. So I’m in a transition right now. The first year that I was here, it was more so vampire Molly. And the reason for that was our classes and you the live classes that I teach through train my traffic person, those were already set the times for those were already set. So the last year, I’ve been teaching class on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10pm at night here.

16:33
which definitely turned me into a night owl because those lasted till midnight. And then of course I’m not asleep till two or three and you know, sleeping till 10, 11, get up, have free time till four or five and do it all again. Um, but actually a month or six weeks ago that ended and we changed the time moving forward to be more Europe friendly. And I’m already pretty much on.

17:00
you know, normal hours here now, which feels a lot better to be synced up with the sun. Going against that can be kind of tough. So yeah, I’m more so on normal hours now, but I still do work later in the day than your average person just because, you know, of the time change with the US. Because I know my most productive hours are in the morning. And like when 430 rolls around, I don’t want to be doing anything. So I guess, has it been some sort of adjustment for you?

17:31
Yeah, you just have to train yourself. I think it’s all about what you get used to. mean, that definitely used to be my cadence too. But once I got here and, you know, I had to change my schedule. Of course, by 10 PM, I’m getting tired, but my body was pretty much used to it. It’s like training your traffic person, for example. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, it’s wild here because we are so far north. You know, right now the sun’s starting to come up.

18:00
sometime between four and five and it doesn’t go down till, you know, 1030 till 11 ish. So, you know, yeah, lots, of lightness here. And, you know, during the winter that dichotomy is that well, the sun starts to go down at 330, which is a bit tough, but yeah, that’s, that’s made it a lot easier making this transition during the summertime where there’s a lot of sunshine and lightness here. Molly, what I found interesting about your book is that

18:30
you somehow combined happiness with media buying. So let’s switch gears a little bit and kind of start talking about ads. I’ve actually seen some of your lectures, because my friend and I were kind of both in that group. And some of the campaigns I’ve seen you do, you literally are spending thousands of dollars per day. And I know a lot of people who are listening to this can’t even fathom spending that much money. So I guess if you’re just starting from scratch,

19:00
What does it take to get to that point? And if you’re a business starting with ad buys from complete scratch, let’s say you’re a business, like what are some of the questions that you need to ask yourself first before you even start buying any ads in the first place? Yeah, I mean, it really always comes down to the fundamentals. That of course starts with a great offer. So that’s not just having a product or service that the market wants. It’s also coming up with an offer that you can take to cold traffic.

19:29
that’s going to resonate with that market and seamlessly convert them into a customer. you know, depending on your business type, if you’re selling physical products, that could look like a pre-sell article. If you’re selling information, that could look like a great lead magnet or a webinar. Same for services and local businesses. So, you know, the first thing is always the offer, which is more than the product or service that you’re selling. It’s making sure that you have something that’s going to really appeal to cold traffic.

19:58
And it’s not you just showing up in the newsfeed saying, hey, my product’s great. You should buy it. That doesn’t really work any longer. that’s step one. scale, right? A lot of people see, like with Boom, Ezra’s e-commerce brand that we’re selling makeup and skincare, we’re spending about $30,000 a day right now on paid traffic. And a lot of that is because we have been able to really nail and repeat

20:27
these fundamentals that I’m laying out here for you. So with boom, you know, we don’t just have one great pre-sell article. We have many, and we use lead magnets and we use, you know, all different types of cold traffic offers because we know that’s going to allow us to scale and reach more of the market than if we were just relying on one offer. But if you’re just getting started, it’s about getting one thing to work, right? Really getting proof of concept. So everything always goes back to the offer.

20:57
And then from there, the second step is avatar and targeting. So making sure you’re knowing exactly who your audience is and not just who they are, but where to find them on Facebook. You know, there’s so many amazing targeting options on Facebook, especially via interests. But the mistake that people mostly make is they don’t do their research to find the least competitive and most like niche specific interests that are in Facebook’s platform. So.

21:26
Second for us. take it slowly here. Let’s go back to the offer. Edsor’s product and boom. What is the offer that has worked best for you guys? And can you kind of talk about, well, number one, what it is and how you arrived at that offer? Yeah. So again, the products are makeup and skincare for women over the age of 50. And our messaging is very much pro-age. So, you know, hey,

21:50
most of the market and other skincare companies and makeup brands are trying to tell you that wrinkles are bad and that aging is bad and we’re anti-aging. And we think that’s bull crap, right? Like we believe in pro-age and we believe that aging is beautiful and therefore our products are, you know, that our products are a reflection of that. So that’s really like the core business. And then

22:17
An example of a cold traffic offer that works really well is a pre-sell article which is five makeup tips for women over the age of 50. And we give them five tips that are educational, right? That explain different things about makeup. Like if you’re older, powdered makeup can actually really seep into your wrinkles and doesn’t look as great.

22:46
Right? Like that’s one of the tips and we don’t say it doesn’t look as great, but you get what I’m saying. Right? So we’re giving them specific information for where they are in regards to what we’re selling, but we’re giving value first. I’ve makeup tips for women over the age of 50. And then the article starts to then sort of transform more into a pitch for the product. But we didn’t first say, Hey, we have makeup for women over the age of 50 hop over to our product page and buy.

23:15
it’ll be great. You know, we’re starting with those five tips. We give them a little bit of value first, and then we start to transition into the pitch for, for the products.

23:28
If you sell on Amazon or run any online business for that matter, the most important aspect of your long-term success will be your brand. And this is why I work with Steven Weigler and his team from Emerge Council to protect my brand over at Bumblebee Linens. Now, what’s unique about Emerge Council is that Steve focuses his legal practice on e-commerce and provides strategic and legal representation to entrepreneurs to protect their IP. So for example, if you’ve ever been ripped off or knocked off on Amazon, then Steve can help you fight back and protect yourself.

23:57
Now, first and foremost, protecting our IP starts with a solid trademark and Emerge Council provides attorney-advised strategic trademark prosecution, both in the United States and abroad for a very low price. And furthermore, the students in my course have used Steve for copyrighting their designs, policing against counterfeits and knockoffs, agreements with co-founders and employees, website and social media policies, privacy policies, vendor agreements, brand registry, you name it. So if you need IP protection services, go to EmergeCouncil.com and get a free consult.

24:26
And if you tell Steve that I sent you, you’ll get a hundred dollar discount. That’s E-M-E-R-G-E-C-O-U-N-S-E-L dot com. Now back to the show. So for that product, I remember I’ve talked to Ezra a lot about this. So that product that you’re trying to sell in that advertorial, what are your metrics for that? you trying, you’re obviously trying to get some sort of sale, but what are you going for? Like what is your target cost per action? How do you determine that actually? How do you know what’s good?

24:56
Yeah, so for Boom, mean, your target metrics, I call it a success metric, that’s always going to depend on your business and the mechanics of your business. For this particular situation, we are going to a pre-sell article, but we are optimizing in Facebook for purchases because that’s what we want. And because people do buy right off of this article. And so for Boom, our target CPA, cost per acquisition of a customer,

25:25
is $75 or lower. If we can hang out in like the 45, $55 range, then we are in heaven. know, 55 to 65 is good. 65 to 75 is okay. More than 75 really isn’t going to work for us. And that number has changed over the years. You know, we are able to pay more to acquire a customer now for multiple reasons.

25:50
One being the upsells and cross-sells that we have on the back end after someone purchases to increase that average order value. It also comes because we know and trust the lifetime value of a customer. We know because the business is older, because we do a great job with monetization and regular promotions, we know that most likely that person is going to make another purchase from us in the future. And so we know our lifetime value. And so now it’s $75, but

26:20
you know, when Ezra started buying ads, I’m sure the the appropriate CPA was was much lower than that. Before you came on board. Wait, so 75 bucks, how do you come up with that number? So how much profit are you making at 75 or 75 the breakeven point? So we’re actually losing a little bit of money on the $75 CPA. But that’s why I said that now we’re able to scale to that place because we do have confidence and

26:48
Like we’re able to lose a bit on the front end, right? 45, 55, 60 ish is where we’re actually profitable. Okay, is that that’s based on like a lifetime value of the customer? Well, the CPA is based. Yeah, I mean, we’re factoring in the lifetime value, especially when we’re willing to lose money on the front end. We got to know the lifetime. But you know, if you were just getting started, it of course depends on your business. Ecommerce obviously has

27:17
lower profit margins, but we are able to take our average order value essentially because we do want to calculate in any upsell revenue that’s coming from those immediate customers that we’re acquiring. But it’s basically a function of how much profit that we have and we’re willing to break even to acquire that customer. And I think Boom has the luxury of being a product that sells over and over and over again, right? With recurring revenue.

27:45
Yeah. And other other products, right? Like it’s not just makeup. They can buy skincare. You’ll notice if you, if you Google five makeup tips for women over 50, you’ll probably find this article and you’ll see at the bottom of the pre-sale article, we have, they have the ability to buy these makeup sticks is what we call them individually. We also have some bundles where they can buy the sticks as a three pack. We also have some bundles where they can add on skincare.

28:12
Once they actually purchase, like I said, there are upsells and down sells there. So that is all there to increase AOV. And then of course, over time, makeup and skincare is inherently purchased. going to repeat itself, hopefully if they enjoy the product or service. But this is very different than like smart marketer, for example, when we’re selling our admin mentorship, trade my traffic person that I mentioned earlier, you know, that’s a $3,000 purchase. So.

28:40
Number one, it’s different because the margins are a lot higher because we’re selling information and because of the cost of the product. But to acquire a customer via Facebook ads, you know, sometimes we’ll spend $750 up to $1,000 to do so, which is very different from, you know, the $75 threshold with, with boom. just to add some context in there about how different this could be depending on your business.

29:09
Would you find it a lot more difficult if let’s say you only sold a single product and it was one off? Like, is that something that you’ve made work before? Have you ever had a customer like that? Yeah, I have twice. It’s interesting. I think that especially where we are with 2020 with ad costs, it can be tough. If it is a more expensive product, it can work. But if you’re selling like, let’s say

29:37
one-off notebooks or planners for like 40 bucks, right? And let’s say your margin is 20. Well, I know we’re going to spend probably at least $20 to acquire the customer on Facebook. So, you know, that leaves you with no profit and, you know, a low likelihood that they’re going to purchase again. It’s just tough to make that work if you don’t have something else to sell. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

30:04
I was just wanting to ask that question because I know for my store when I run Facebook ads, like I’m just going for like a 1.5 or 2. I’m just trying to break even or make a little bit of money and I know I can sell them more linens later on down the line. So I was just kind of curious whether what would you say would be like the minimum AOV for you to be able to get Facebook ads to work? Assuming there’s no like cross sells later on down the line. I would say that

30:32
I won’t give you an AOV because that’s going to depend. Like it really depends on your margins. But I will say that of course it depends on the product, but it’s really tough to see a CPA to cold traffic lower than like $20 these days. Now I do see sometimes where there’s like a viral t-shirt or a free plus shipping offer.

30:58
And there’s a CPA between like five to 10 bucks maybe. Like I do still see that, but consistently at scale, it’s just tough to see anything below 20 bucks. But prove me wrong. If you are doing that, let me know. Oh no, I’m not. I’m just asking. Or anybody that’s listening because that’s just my experience. And then selling courses. I think we’re in similar, like I’m like a Asian version of Ezra, I guess.

31:23
because I sell courses and physical products. For the courses, seems like it’s much easier to run the ad, right? You can almost spend as much money as you want and still at least break even or make money because the ticket price is so much more. Well, and it’s a different ballgame because usually with e-commerce, you aren’t doing a lot of Legion. Like now we do Legion at Boom because of where they are at scale. Like we have a…

31:49
10 minute makeup guide for older women, you where someone actually opts in first and, then we take them down the journey. But for most of us selling information, that really has to start with some sort of lead gen offer. Like it’s so tough to just come out even with a pre-sell article and say, hey, buy my course. And there are lots of reasons for that. One is just the nature of the product. Like with a physical product, I don’t have to explain to someone,

32:18
makeup, you know, they know what they’re going to do with it. They know, you know, they’ve held makeup in their hand before. Like there’s just, I don’t really have to explain it. Like I need to sell it, but I don’t need to explain it. Whereas with information, it’s not tangible and it can be really hard for people to even first understand what they’re buying. So you got to keep that in mind and then you add on the authority part, right? Which is so much more important when it, with information.

32:48
you know, buying your expertise. Well, they need to trust you a lot more than they need to trust Ezra to buy makeup from him. You know, I mean, there are ways with boom where we say this isn’t tested on animals. Like this is organic. Like, of course we’re speaking to the product quality. I’m not saying people don’t care about that, but it’s just a whole different ball game with info. And so when you’re selling info or consulting or events or whatever we want to call this industry or thing that we do,

33:16
It’s a different ball game because really all of those funnels need to lead with a lead gen effort. And so that’s interesting because number one, the market is smaller, at least for what we do. Like the reason we’re able to spend 30 to 40 K a day with boom is we’re marketing to women over the age of 50. There are millions of those people where with what you and I are doing, our market is much, much smaller. So that’s a hurdle.

33:45
But on the other hand, I do find it a bit easier to scale because like I said earlier, it’s much more about Legion on the front end. So instead of saying, okay, you I’m looking to acquire customers for less than $75 today, the conversation between our marketing team and our media buyer, you know, we are looking at return on ad spend, of course, but the conversations are more like, Hey, we generated

34:11
you know, a thousand leads today at $2 a piece. That’s good or that’s bad. you know, so those are, I I’m going down a rabbit hole here, but those are the biggest differences I see between the two. It’s, very different actually. I was going to ask you when you, it comes to cost per lead for like a digital product, for example, how do you determine like what you’re going for? So you threw out some numbers. Yeah. Well, depends on the offer. So, you know, it’s very specific to our

34:41
lead magnets and their purpose and kind of what they do. So let me give you an example. Like one of our lead magnets is a seven day free Facebook ad class. And so that is a really attractive offer because it’s not a webinar that someone has to wait for a certain amount of time. Like it’s immediate access, seven day class that feels really valuable just to give an exchange for your email address. Right. And so

35:11
That and it’s a really attractive topic in our market, Facebook ads. So our target cost per lead for that offer is between like 150 and 350. And that’s just, just all based off of historically us running that offer to cold traffic and setting those parameters. We’re of course, that also sells an evergreen version of train my traffic person, which is $1,500. So of course the goal is to break even on that.

35:39
But the goal really is break even and acquire as many leads as we can. you know, we’re adding two to 3000 people a day to our email list via ads to that offer. And, you know, if the cost per leads around a dollar to if the cost per lead is around a dollar to $2, then we really only need about four or five of those people to actually purchase the product to break even.

36:05
Most of those people opted in two to three weeks ago because it’s a dripped out class and then we run a flash sale. You know, it’s not just right in that moment. So for that offer, we, you know, set our cost for lead goals where on the other hand, we have offers like webinars, for example, that we do a few times a year. Those offers are very much more built to sell in that

36:35
moment. Like for example, when we have our train my traffic person mentorship classes, and that’s $3,000. Of course, we do a sales webinar at least one right before we’re about to open that class. Now for that webinar, number one, it’s not as applicable to cold traffic as the seven day class. We know it’s not as scalable. We also know the cost per lead is more like we usually pay between five to $10 to acquire a webinar registration. But

37:05
that offer is much more of like a sales mechanism than the seven day class. So we’re paying much more for the lead and we’re not generating as many leads, but it’s more of the middle of the funnel offer that generates a bunch of $3,000 customers for us. So I don’t know if that’s helpful, but we just have to look at like number one, you never know until you run ads to an offer, right? Like it’s hard, like just through my experience now,

37:34
If you threw out like a type of lead magnet and a market, I could probably tell you what to expect cost per lead wise, but you always have to test it first just to see, you know, get the data back. But you also have to keep in mind the scalability of the offer and what is its purpose in your business? Because a lot of people would say, well, Molly, you’re getting leads for a dollar 50 to three 50 on the seven day class. Why would you ever pay five to 10 for a webinar signup?

38:03
You know, but they’re completely different funnels at different steps of the journey and they play different roles. So they can’t be measured. It’s not apples to apples. Yeah. I mean, I can actually talk about that since I run ads to webinars also. You’re going to get money sooner because there’s a sense of urgency with the webinar. And so you kind of immediately know what your returns are. I don’t know if that’s the case for you or that that’s why you might be willing to pay a little bit more for that. Whereas with the

38:32
I guess the drip sequence that you have, it’s more of like a long-term thing. At least for me, some people might not even sign up for months or even years in some case. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, depending on the webinar topic, webinars just usually do better to warm traffic. Not that they can’t work to cold traffic, but you know, you’re asking someone to show up at a certain place at a certain time. If you have a bit of relational equity with them,

39:00
they’re more likely to do that than if they’re someone that’s cold, that’s never engaged with you before. Yeah. So I also want to kind of touch on targeting and you had some really good tips in your book about, I kind of interrupted you before when you were going down this road, what are some of your tips in terms of interest-based targeting? Yeah. mean, interest-based targeting is important for proof of concept. It’s also important for scale.

39:28
So I see still in 2020, a real lack of attention to avatars and targeting in our industry. And I think a lot of it is that number one, people feel like the, excuse me, the avatar discussion is like marketing 101. It’s boring. So they skip right over it or they,

39:57
have just a really broad understanding of their avatar and that’s doing them a real disservice in terms of finding those people and actually reaching them. I also think that, especially in regards to Facebook ads, you you hear a lot of gurus and people talking about Facebook’s getting smarter. So just use broad targeting and just use lookalikes. And you know, you don’t have to give Facebook as much direction as you used to.

40:25
And that is absolutely true in a lot of ways. But as I said earlier, there are lots of us that are either not getting it right from the beginning or are unable to scale because of lack of avatar understanding and lack of interest research. So let me give you an example of this that actually goes back to boom. So in 2018, and really before then,

40:55
Booms ad account had solely relied on lookalike and broad targeting. They had really never used any interest targeting, especially because they started with Facebook ads back in 2012 when you could basically do anything you wanted and get results. And so I met with them at the end of 2018 and they were like, hey, we’re having trouble scaling. I think they were spending like 15,000 a day at that point.

41:21
And the first thing that I saw was they were not using any interest targeting and Ezra and Boris, Boris is the CMO. They’re like, well, we don’t need to, know, Facebook knows who our customer is. Like we can just target every woman over the age of 50 in the, in the world in this ad set and look, it works. And it’s like, yeah, of course it works. And that is good. I’m not saying it’s bad. I’m just saying that

41:49
you are missing out on a lot of scale because you are not utilizing interest targeting. And so this is a really big misconception. Most people think scaling with media buying is all about spending more money and all about creating new copy and creative to overcome fatigue. But what’s just as important is constantly finding new interests to target to allow you to scale out to more people.

42:17
And so with boom, what I did, I sat down, I spent five or six hours really diving into this woman over the age of 50. I called my mom, I got on Amazon, I was in forums, know, everything that I talk about in my book, really diving into this audience. And by the end of it, I had, you know, I think 150 or 200 brand new interests for Boris to use.

42:44
And because of this, was a reason that 2019 was their best year ever. I did it again last year in 2020, the first few months of this year, we ran a campaign that generated 35,000 new customers. Insane. Like one of the biggest campaigns I’ve ever seen. And there were lots of factors in that, but a big part of it was this interest targeting because

43:09
we were still using the broad targeting. We were still using the lookalikes. know, those were still working, but we had 10 other ad sets, you know, and by the end, 30 other ad sets that were utilizing interest targeting. you know, different clothing companies that spoke to women of this age, we were targeting different interests around retirement, different interests around being a grandmother. I mean, the list goes on and on.

43:35
and actresses that that generation would resonate with, movies, books, blogs, know, anything that would say, hey, I’m of this generation or of these generations. And so I’m going down another rabbit hole here, but it’s just so important whether you are just getting started or whether you are in the position where boom was, if you are not utilizing the interest targeting, you’re absolutely missing out because

44:03
a lot of those people you are able to show ads to, Facebook just wouldn’t have shown them that ad, right? For some reason, they just didn’t look enough like the people that had already taken that action that you’re telling Facebook you want for them to show the ad. So this is what I call horizontal scaling. It also really helps you because targeting is a huge factor in where you’re ranking in the auction. So when you hit confirm on a Facebook campaign, you are entering an auction.

44:32
and the people who are at the top of the auction pay the least amount and get the most reach. And the people that are towards the bottom pay the most and get the least amount of reach. And the people that you are competing against in this auction are the people that are targeting the same audiences that you are on Facebook, which makes sense. And so because most advertisers don’t do this research, most advertisers don’t know that are

44:59
that there are hundreds of thousands, probably even millions of interests inside of that detailed targeting box that you can only find by starting to type them in. There’s no list of them anywhere. That’s why the research is so important. By finding those interests that can really help you because I guarantee that most of your competition or the people that are trying to reach this audience aren’t targeting these interests. And so that’s where you can also find a lot of cheap traffic. So it’s more than just,

45:29
getting in front of the right person at the right time, it’s more than just knowing your audience. This is also a functionality of scale. And it’s also a function of like, this is a great way for you to pay less and just do the work that your competition isn’t doing. So what you’re saying, and let me just try to summarize. Let’s say you had a hundred thousand dollars a day to spend. Instead of putting a hundred thousand dollars on wide open broad targeting in Ezra’s case, you should divide that up into interests and grow horizontally.

45:57
and you’ll get better results that way. Yeah, and it’s even more like, let’s go back to before, as we’re spending 15K, great, he can keep doing that. But now we’re spending double that amount every day. And a big part of that is that, yeah, we’ve got all of these new audiences that we can target. So it’s opening up your bandwidth to scale. And this is also one of the issues in our industry is that we are so hardwired, like A-B testing, test, test, test.

46:26
which one is doing better, turn off everything that’s not doing the best, right? That is a huge issue that is hurting people that isn’t allowing them to scale. A great example of this is let’s look at boom, you know, okay, let’s take for example, the broad targeting or the lookalikes, they might be generating, these are just random numbers I’m throwing up. They might generate, let’s say they generate a thousand customers a day between the two.

46:56
and the CPA is $50. Great, that’s awesome. We’re generating a thousand customers well below our CPA target. We are happy. Then let’s say we’ve got these other ad sets and we’re generating another thousand customers through these interests that we’re targeting, but the CPA is $65. A lot of people would look at that and say, oh, the broad targeting, look likes, they work best.

47:25
So we’re going to turn everything else off, right? Like for some reason that’s where our mind goes. But the issue is, yeah, the others are more expensive and I’m not saying they’re always more expensive. Out of the top 10 ad sets from that 35,000 customer campaign I mentioned, eight of them were interest based in terms of volume of customers acquired. But most people would look at that and say, oh, we’ve got to turn the interest off because they’re more expensive.

47:52
Well, with scale, it’s not always about which one is the cheapest. It’s not always about which one is the best. It’s are we able to acquire more volume of people over here in this area? So we would look at that and say, cool, it’s 65, this other is 50. We don’t really care because we acquired 2000 people and in aggregate, we are well below our CPA threshold. If you looked at it the other way, you would have only acquired a thousand dollars today.

48:21
or a thousand customers today, right? And you would be cutting your scale in half. Basically, if it’s working, may as well maximize it. Absolutely. And it’s not always about, you know, which one is working best, right? Like that is a real issue with mindset when it comes to Facebook ads. But that’s not the case in terms of creative though, right? Well, it is in terms of

48:49
I mean, of course I want to look at what’s working best, but you know, I’m allowing as many ads as possible to continue running, even if they don’t look as profitable as the others, because I know that they’re working together, like within each ad set, all of those ads are working together. We’ve rarely turn an ad off because you don’t know someone might see one of the ads first, another one second, and then finally convert on the third one.

49:14
Right? So if you’ve turned everything off, but your one best converting ad, you’ve just given Facebook way less to work with and your fatigue, like fatigue is going to happen so quickly. Right. So for me, of course I’m always paying attention to it because I want to create more ads that are like the ones that are working best, but kind of the same mindset with ads as audiences too.

49:41
There’s one thing that you mentioned in the book that I wanted to ask you. said that lookalike audiences don’t work as well anymore. Can you elaborate on that? You mentioned something based on the information that Facebook allocates to it. Yeah, I mean, they still work okay for most brands. The issue is that during the Cambridge Analytica stuff a few years ago, Facebook made a lot of changes to the platform. And part of that was the data that is given to lookalikes. So since that,

50:10
I’ve really seen lookalikes not work as great, but like I said, with Boom, we still use them. There are lots of scenarios where they still work. I just don’t find them as powerful as they used to be. Compared to interest targeting. Right. Okay.

50:27
Well, Molly, we’ve been chatting for about 50 minutes now. I wanted to give everyone the opportunity to read your book. So where can they find it? And I know you have some bonuses also that you’re offering as well, right? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So Molly Pittman, M-O-L-L-Y P-I-T-T-M-A-N dot com forward slash book. More details on the book there. Also where you can learn more about the bonuses. One is actually

50:55
a free class that Ezra and I put together called Balanced Being, which is a lot about what we were chatting about early in this episode, how to make sure that you’re doing well in business, but that you’re also living and not going through burnout like we have. But yeah, the book is also on Amazon. So if you just search Click Happy on Amazon, you can find the book. And then once you purchase, you can just take that confirmation number.

51:21
and put that at mollipibbin.com forward slash book and that’s where you can get the freebies. Awesome. Well, Molly, it’s always a pleasure to talk to you and I missed the laugh, I must say. So thank you for that. Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. Thanks to everybody who’s listening. This flew by. But yeah, I really appreciate it, All right, Molly, take care.

51:45
Hope you enjoy that episode. Now I love having Molly on the show because she’s so energetic and positive and she knows her stuff when it comes to media buying. For more information about this episode, go to mywebquaterjob.com slash episode 324. And once again, I want to thank Postscript.io, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big own marketing platform and you can sign up for free over at Postscript.io slash Steve.

52:12
That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. I also want to thank Clivio, which is my email marketing platform of choice for eCommerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned card sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign, basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Now I talk about how I use these tools on my blog, and if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store,

52:41
Head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.