391: Apple Destroyed Facebook Ads. Now What? With Nick Shackleford

00:00
You’re listening to the MyWifeQuarterJob podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. Today, I’m thrilled to have my friend Nick Shackelford back on the show. And Nick is my go-to guy when it comes to running Facebook ads for e-commerce stores. Now that the Apple iOS updates have had several months to settle down, we are going to discuss the current state of Facebook advertising. But before we begin, I want to thank Clayview for sponsoring this episode.

00:25
Always excited to talk about Klaviyo because they’re the email marketing platform that I personally use for my e-commerce store and I depend on them for over 30 % of my revenue. Now you’re probably wondering why Klaviyo and not another provider. Well Klaviyo is the only email platform out there that is specifically built for e-commerce stores and here’s why it’s so powerful. Klaviyo can track every single customer who is shopping in your store and exactly what they bought. So let’s say I want to send an email to everyone who purchased a red handkerchief in the last week, easy. Let’s say I want to set up a special autoresponder sequence to my customers depending on what they bought.

00:55
Piece of cake and there’s full revenue tracking on every email sent. Klaviyo is the most powerful email platform that I’ve ever used. You can try them for free over at klaviyo.com slash my wife. 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 customer contact list. And this is why I’m focusing a significant amount of my efforts on SMS marketing.

01:21
SMS or text message marketing is already a top five revenue source in my ecommerce store and I couldn’t have done it without Postscript which is my text message provider. Now why did I choose Postscript? It’s because they specialize in ecommerce stores and ecommerce is their primary focus. Not only is it easy to use but you can quickly segment your audience based on your exact sales data and implement automated flows like an abandoned cart at the push of a button. Not only that but it’s price well too and SMS is the perfect way to engage with your customers.

01:49
So head on over to postscope.io slash Steve and try it for free. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. And then finally, I wanted to mention my other podcast that I released with my partner, Tony. And unlike this podcast where I interview successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the profitable audience podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience. No topic is off the table and we tell it like how it is in a raw and entertaining way. So be sure to check out the profitable audience podcast on your favorite podcast app.

02:18
Now onto the show.

02:27
Welcome to the My Wife, Quitter, Job podcast. Today, I’m happy to have Nick Shackelford back on the show. And Nick spoke at my conference, The Seller Summit in 2020, and he’s going to be a speaker again in 2022. He runs Structured Agency, which is a company that specializes in the growth of e-commerce brands. And he is a master of paid media. He spent over 85 million on Facebook, probably more at this point. And he pioneered well-known products like the fidget spinner, which we covered in the last episode, the last time he was on.

02:55
Now besides this agency, Nick also runs an event called Geek Out, which I had the pleasure of attending about a couple months ago, and once again, it had some of the best content that I’ve seen at an event. Anyway, today we are going to talk about Facebook advertising. Now that things have settled down a tiny bit in the wake of iOS 14 and 15, future iOS, we’re just gonna cover everything related to what’s going on in the current landscape. And with that, welcome to show Nick, how are you doing today?

03:21
It’s good to be back and I it seems so long ago 2020 on that on that talk and I think that was one of your guys first Virtual one and I honestly we’ve done a couple virtual ones here I’ve been a part of them and it is a beast in itself So I’m very appreciative that hopefully we get everybody back in person again if that’s what the plan is gonna be Oh, yeah, I can say that’s probably gonna be my last virtual event like We had to throw it together last minute. I think we had like two or three weeks It was very stressful and it’s not nearly as fun as in person event. Like I had

03:50
way more fun and geek out San Diego than any virtual men for sure. Well, I appreciate that. mean, you know, you and I both know that this, let’s put it this way, this world, this e-commerce world, this online world has really changed our lives. I know I can speak for myself and I’ve seen your growth on this. So if anything to do to get great people in a room talking about the things that they love the most, I’m never gonna stop doing that. I just told you off this and before we get into like the what’s happening in the landscape of all things social.

04:18
We’re doing nine events next year. We’re going to go as hard as we can because we just saw it. Like we saw from the sponsorship side to the to attendee side, to the agency side, to the marketing side. People really miss people. And if we can be that that that wifi router, if I may, of connecting everybody together in that one room, then we’re going to do it. Yeah. I mean, you’re going all in on events and my buddy, Andrew Udarian, who you have you met, Andrew? Yeah. I mean, I know of him.

04:46
Okay, yeah, I he’s going all in on events too. I think he’s doing 11 events next year, is nuts. I’m sure both your events are gonna be amazing. by the way, I’ll link to Geek Out in the show notes in case you guys are interested. So Nick, you know what’s funny is after talking to our mutual friend Chase, I feel like you have a bajillion businesses at this point. I actually have no idea how you manage everything. What’s going on right now? Like, what are you actively working on right now? And what are all your businesses?

05:16
I appreciate the candor and the question because I at times feel like what am I doing? Um, but I, I’ll, I’ll break it down very real quick. So we have, there’s three core businesses and you mentioned two of them. So you have structured, you have geek out, and then you have constant constant, which is short for constant creative is our version of on demand ads. And it’s our version of this is again, I’m an early entrepreneur. I haven’t, I haven’t done this for, for, for very long. I’ve maybe been two and a half years into this being your own boss.

05:45
thing. I’ve always worked for other companies, always worked for other agencies, to be specific. And I didn’t know if I was going to be able to honestly make it through the pandemic. I haven’t I’m 31. I just turned 31. I didn’t know what this would look like or what this would feel like. And I had at the time, 40 employees were now pushing about 70, 72 employees right now. And so was like, Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I need to make sure that we have food on the the plate. So at the time, we could have never predicted this is when it really popped off in about 2020.

06:15
The Constance has been a business since 2019, but we didn’t really lean into it until 2020 when we realized, oh, well, I need to diversify income streams for the overall business. Fast forward, biggest year in the world in 2020. Took off again in 2021. It’s a little bit more difficult, obviously, with the updates, but that allowed us to have way more access because at times a brand or a team, they don’t need to hire a full-time agency. They just need someone to provide them more assets or they just need to provide

06:44
more variations of what’s already working, but they can’t go find a designer, they can’t go find an editor. It’s one of the hardest things in the industry to find, even us. We have at any time 20 to 35 designers that sit on staff because as people come on or people leave, we add or subtract and we fire designers often based upon the score that we’ve created in the backend. So now you have the full deal now, right? You do the creative as well as the media buying. Yes, and we’ve always done that, but we

07:14
We never offer just edits off the side for you guys to use on demand. You either had to do the full service or you had to buy a large package. At this point, we’re not shooting anything. You’ve already shot it, you’ve already edited it. It might be ads that are working. You just need more of it. And that’s when we’ve come in because at 300 bucks a month, 700 bucks a month, depending on the volume, you’re really gonna get what you can put into it. I see. So you’re just taking the raw footage and you’re creating really good creatives out of it. Exactly. It’d be as if.

07:43
And internal, the internal workflow that I try to say that mimics is you have your creative team. go, they have a shoot plan, they have a new product release and they go shoot the quality product and content and they deliver all that raw, all those, all those pieces of content that you shot to your in-house editing team where they go like, Oh cool. You want me to structure the hook here? You want me to put the transitions there? You want me put the call to action there? That’s what we do. We’re that, we’re that part of that takes it all as soon as you’re done with it.

08:09
And listen, it’s not the easiest thing to build. We have on average a 22 % churn of brands coming in. means we call it, it’s a thing that the design people actually coin, it’s called happy churn. So when you get too much assets and what we’ve seen in the landscape of paid social right now is the retraction of overall budgets being put online, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, whatever you hear, people are reducing budgets across the board. What does that mean?

08:37
Oftentimes that means they’re going to reduce the amount of creative that they need. So we’ve, we’ve seen that on the creative side of it, which was something that I was trying to hedge against, but it really is some of that we, we as the industry people, we as, um, I’m very active in the space, whether it’s with the event or whether it’s with the agency or whether it’s content, we’re seeing this overall pullback for various reasons. And I know you talked a bit, a bunch of people in the space. I love to throw it back over to your side and be like, what, what are the other founders in your world? You as a founder.

09:06
In your world, are you feeling with the uncertainty of the platforms? So right now I’m just having problems trusting the reporting. And I’ve spoken to many colleagues. It seems like it’s a roller coaster ride one day, like it might be okay. And then the next day I’ve spent all this money without any conversions. Something’s still up. I wouldn’t say things have settled down yet, but I mean, you obviously see a lot more accounts. What are you seeing? Yeah, this is funny because I have a couple of things to actually share.

09:36
At any time I have 160 to 275 accounts. Why I have this now I’m not running all these. We’re not managing all these, but whether it’s a consultant, whether it’s someone, Hey, I need a second opinion. need somebody to audit my, my, my thing and tell me if my team is doing right or wrong. I do that all the time. I have a bunch of friends in the space. I’m like, Hey, you probably could be doing this, this and this. It’s not to take the business or critique it. Listen, there’s, there’s so much business around. There’s enough for everybody to eat. So it’s a mantra that I live by. So when we get access to accounts, I go, Hey, I would love.

10:06
selfishly as someone that’s a mouthpiece in the space. I want access to your content or I want access to your brand just so I can talk about it. I’ll give you my opinions. I’ll give you my time. Just give me access. So that’s kind of why I’ve been fortunate enough to get a lot of pieces here. And it is so we’re seeing overall and I’m pulling it up on my screen right now. We’re seeing an overall reduction from January to June of a 30 % reduced budget. So January of this year to June of this year, we saw a 30 % reduction in overall ad spend. Now,

10:36
You touched on one briefly. I’m having a hard time trusting the data. That’s what you feel as someone that’s in this space and doing it. That’s how we feel as someone that’s managing this and having to explain to brands what’s going on. Now, if you go on Twitter, you’re going to see everyone go like, well, you should have diversified. Well, you should have done this. Where are you diversifying? Who’s going to go and run to Pinterest and go to YouTube without knowing the platform and being like, oh my gosh, yeah, I’m diversified. These are not easy.

11:05
that easy of content or easy it’s not a light switch that you can just flip. No! See, you can’t just go, oh cool, okay, space is my work, I’m gonna just go jump on this platform right here. Facebook, the reason why Facebook was lion’s share and still lion’s share budgets is because it’s so damn easy to get going. Actually, let’s talk about iOS 14. mean, during Geek Out San Diego, I would say 90 % of the talks were with iOS 14. And what I found strange about that event, Nick, is that I wish you got up there.

11:34
and gave a talk yourself. So what I was hoping to do is actually making this episode like the missing bonus talk that everyone was waiting for a geek out, right? Let’s do it dude, I’m ready. All right, so you mentioned that people are cutting back on their budgets. it because just everyone has, let’s just set the stage here. I remember a couple of talks, I think Jordan talked about MER. Maybe you wanna explain what that is as a different way to measure. Because I know as an agency also,

12:02
You’re probably getting shafted too because you’re not able to show the conversions that you might actually be getting but is not being reported, right? So how are you dealing with all that stuff? That’s great question. So MER, I’ll start there. there’s a reason why I don’t talk a geek out is because I’m so overly stressed about how it’s going to go for everyone. But that should be fixed next year. I’m excited to jump back on the stage. Let’s put it this way.

12:26
So MER is not a new thing. It’s something that’s been around for quite a while. MER stands for Marketing Efficiency Ratio. Essentially, it’s total dollars spent to total dollars returned. We as a marketing partner, you as a brand should be measuring total dollars spent to total dollars net return. What goes into this? Not your employees overhead, not your shipping costs, not salaries.

12:53
not your vehicles. This is just total dollars in advertising spent to total dollars returned. Actually, your shipping costs would go into this and your product costs would go into this, but all the extracurricular around your businesses doesn’t. It’s just your total spend to total net return. That gives us an idea because what the main problem is, is everyone’s trying to figure out exactly how accurate these platforms are reporting. Facebook has never been extremely accurate.

13:19
It’s a first touch platform. have Google that’s going to probably play on the second touch or last touch platform. You have Pinterest that’s going to pull on another platform, snapchat on another. So they’re never going to be as accurate, but what we’re trying to do is triangulate. We’re trying to have an idea of like, I can count on Facebook to provide at least 15 or 20 % of overall sales and my other platforms, organic Snapchat, Google can provide the rest. Some variation of this. So when we talk about MER and we’re talking about like understanding what is the total impact of

13:47
spending on a platform like Facebook or spending on a platform like Google. And how does it impact my total profitability, my total revenue coming in? That is where and how a lot of these channels should have been measured. And if I was going to do a talk, my talk would be called you lazy ass marketers. And here’s why, here’s why Steve, because we, we built a, we, we built a fidget spinner company into a multimillion dollar brand and got into Bed Bath and Beyond, Target and Best Buy. And that should never have happened.

14:18
I was not smarter, Jake was not better, we did not have a cool product. We arbitraged a cheap product around a viral thing and we branded it and it worked. That’s not a real business. That’s someone taking advantage of a very easy to use platform and cheap CPMs. That is it. That literally is it. There’s a reason why that company doesn’t exist anymore, right? Because we didn’t build other things around it. We didn’t build a community.

14:46
We didn’t build a brand. didn’t build a business. Facebook, any platform, Facebook, Google, Snapchat, TikTok, you talk about it, any platform made it easy for brands to have an idea, to get it live and to make a bunch of money. So what that means is I’m using the platform to judge the success of my business. And that’s what everybody’s been trained to do because maybe you were been live in 2018, 2019, early 2020 when you’re like, whoa, I can see that one purchase came from Facebook and that one purchases in my Shopify store.

15:15
So you didn’t need to have an understanding of what the overall journey or the customer path was going to be. So when we, as marketers here go ahead, and this is a lot of transparency, a lot of agencies bill you on a percentage of spend at a ROAS target. That had to change. There’s no way that you can take confidence in the platform telling you you’re at a 0.1, but yet you’re spending more money into this platform or you’re still keeping the same budget.

15:43
yet you’re not seeing the overall, you’re seeing different numbers in your Shopify store. So you can’t bill off of that model anymore. You have to do a flat rate and a percentage revenue, or you have to do just a flat rate and a longer contract size. Those are the ways that we’re trying to combat it as an agency here. But the brand, the more, it’s more on the brand side because a lot of these people don’t actually understand what the true impact of the platform usage is having across the other platforms. Let me explain that again.

16:11
I spend $100 on Facebook and I might not get a single conversion. Yet now we have brand recognition and we might see a little bit of bump in our organic, a little bit of bump in our branded search. Where do you think that’s coming from? Yeah, it’s the halo effect from the ads, right? Absolutely. Where do you think your Amazon growth is going to be coming from? If they’re going to find a discovery, you might not feel comfortable purchasing on the website, but you might like it to purchase that on Amazon. They’re not just searching your brand name on Amazon or on Google. You’ve been around for less than a year.

16:41
How often are you searching for something that you’ve seen unless you’ve been prompted to search that thing? So it’s hard to quantify. hard to put a dollar amount behind like what that impact is. So all of the conversations is like, well, Nick, how do I actually read it? Okay. You can go get a high roast. You can go get a, get a L of R. You can go get a wicked report. You can go get a triple whale. You can go get these tools to try and look in the data in the back and you can look at a better UTM string. But guess what? At the end of the day.

17:09
You’ve still got to get a correlation on the platform. You still got to make decisions on the platform. And even if, and what the cool thing about HiROS when we were using it, when HiROS was putting it on, they would basically have in Chrome, would like hyperimpose all the metrics onto the platform. It would actually give you like a version of a fully updated ads manner dashboard, which as you lose the metrics, like, oh my gosh, this is really helpful. It’s not, you can’t make decisions because that’s not data that Facebook can use.

17:38
So if Facebook can’t use the data that these third-party tools are putting back quote unquote into their platform, which they can’t use it because it’s opted out users, what are you really making optimizations on? Isn’t there a roundabout way to export that data back into Facebook somehow? Offline conversions is a way of doing this with an integration with Zapier. But again, if it is opted out users, it cannot be used. It won’t be used. Okay. So you might be able to capture the only way that

18:06
I see this getting fixed and it’s something that why, why, if I would have put my tin foil hat on right now and transitioned into, okay, Shaq, I get what you’re talking about. It’s, it’s tough right now. Steve CPMs. And I’m looking at across, have 116 brands right now that I’m hooked onto. I’m looking at the average CPM raise is 48 % from January to today. 40 that’s a 50 % increase in CPM. How accurate is this? I think it’s more accurate knowing that it’s not revenue numbers being reported.

18:35
and just on platform impressions numbers being reported on. So I believe that this is a little bit more accurate than most. We just saw Facebook release their most profitable quarter ever. Right? I wonder why. Interesting. why. How does Facebook and Q3 report the most revenue they’ve ever done with the majority of advertisers pulling off the platform? I always thought it was based on bidding. So you think it’s artificial?

19:05
This is again, this is someone that spent you gave me the intro about 85 million this year alone. We’ve already spent 45 million On a quote-unquote down month and we’re spending across Content we’re spending across and what a content like like ass calm like our like articles, We’re spending across econ. We’re spending across Legion. We were we were doing PPP loans beginning so we have a lot of a lot of things to pull from and we’re still we’re still seeing

19:34
this artificial bump in CPMs because if you have a pull off of people on the platform or people going like, where is Facebook going to get their revenue? No, can’t. How do I prove this? It’s yeah, I agree. Yes, I don’t have data or numbers on this, but for someone that’s been on the platform for over eight years, I’ve never in my life seen this happen before. And it’s not even just that it’s the quality of people coming off this platform. So it’s not be all, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, what do we do? How do we combat this? This can’t be sustainable on their part.

20:04
It won’t be. it’s the saddest thing because when we have conversations with the rep or we have conversations with internal Facebook people, they’re very optimistic. Like they have as if they have stuff that they want to tell us, but they’re like, I can’t tell you yet. Huh. Okay. we had the CEO of Snapchat actually did an art or had a news release of based upon the changes on platform, based upon the changes that they try to release like a data.

20:33
they tried at least a data ads tool for, for understanding or getting better attribution. And he was like, it failed. Like we, we try to launch this to help you guys. And it actually failed because of, of Apple’s Apple’s iOS 14 plus whatever issues. I’m like, this is something that’s widespread. if the smart, arguably the smartest people in the world working at Facebook’s and the Google’s and these other spaces, and they’re not able to provide an immediate solution. What do we do?

21:02
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.

21:30
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.

22:00
And if you tell Steve that I sent you, you’ll get a $100 discount. That’s E-M-E-R-G-E-C-O-U-N-S-E-L.com. Now back to the show.

22:11
So what you’re saying, I’m just trying to interpret some of the small pieces of what you just said, the conversion API where you’re sending offline conversions to Facebook or in real time through the API, that doesn’t help your data. It only helps Facebook report that a conversion has actually taken place. Correct. Because it’s not getting put back into the ad account. not putting it back into the… So anything related to targeting, lookalikes and all that stuff is not affected by the conversions API? Like the data does not improve?

22:40
Correct. Now what we what we’re trying to combat against this like Facebook said CAPI integrations would be the most important thing. Now it hasn’t. It hasn’t impacted anything. It hasn’t changed the way that we’re optimizing against our platforms. There might be people out there that are going to listen to this and be like, well, we’re feeding back offline conversions and we’re getting just enough just enough information to make decisions off of it. I think that is a better solution than just CAPI integration. think CAPI integration and uploading offline conversions will

23:10
post back as much information as you can get, but it’s still not going to be the full story. So what would you suggest for a Facebook advertiser that has suddenly seen a loss in performance? What would you recommend? So two things. We recommend having a tool that measures first-time customer acquisition. we’ve changed a lot of… There’s a lot of different businesses that are… I’ll give two answers. One, how they should look at the business and what’s an easier way to making decisions off of…

23:39
impact of platform and two, like what to actually do in platform right now. The first one is I would implement two things. One, a tool to measure first time customer acquisition. The two tools that we use is either lifetime Lee or, uh, or triple whale. Lifetime Lee is very, very cheap and it’ll give you like that first time customer acquisition and courts. A triple whale is kind of like, uh, it’s kind of like a lifetime Lee, but a little bit more metric. There’s a little bit deeper stuff. It is more expensive. Of course.

24:08
And that way you’re able to see if this consumer came in, what is that? Was it a first time customer? Am I still conquesting? Am I still getting new people into my brand and purchasing? And then I would do a post purchase survey. That main question is, how did you hear about us? Where did you come from? And that’s immediately after they make that purchase. And that way you can triangulate a little bit of where a lot of this revenue is going to be coming from. Now you’re not going to get those people that are hitting product pages or homepage, but those are actually converting or buying from you.

24:38
you will get a little bit of information back on that end. And that would be on the business side of things to understand how impactful each platform is truly for you. And again, that’s not new. People should have been doing that from day one, but they never had to, right? Can I ask you this? Why are these tools able to track people whereas Apple’s preventing Facebook from tracking these people? So it’s not necessarily tracking. Well, it is a form of tracking, but it isn’t, it’s not going to feed me back. So if I implement a

25:05
tool that’s going to give me a questionnaire at the end at the back of a purchase that after I made the purchase and the questionnaire asks like, where did you hear from us? And it’s Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Google. And I collect Facebook and I, and me, there’s a consumer touches Facebook. There’s no like data feedback that goes into my ads manager. That’s, that’s a report that I get going like out of a hundred people that came through of that purchase, 25 of them said they came from Facebook.

25:35
So that’s how we’re getting that information. That’s not gonna give me information or feedback into my ads manager to make decisions. Sure, but why can’t Facebook get the reporting right and just not feed that back into the ads information? Are they just much more restrictive because it’s the…

25:53
It is because of the it’s illegal. if you have a consumer that opted out for no for no tracking, no ads tracking, right? The survey by definition, if you’re volunteering information and I’m saying like, hey, I’m giving you the information to know where I came from. You don’t have to fill the survey out. You don’t have to do any of that. But the tools like lifetime Lee or whatever, that’s technically they didn’t opt in for that. So lifetime Lee wouldn’t be.

26:22
Correct. Lifetimely again is not a user information tool that is used for marketing purposes. It is a business analytics tool similar to like a similar analytics, right? Google analytics. Exactly. So it’s not, it’s not a tool that it’s not a third party tool that’s being used to inform like marketing decisions. Right. I’m going to gather information and I might get like an email address that I can potentially put in the Clavio.

26:52
but I’m not gonna be able to upload all that back into Facebook. In theory, even when you use Triple Whale or even when you use it lifetimely, you’re just getting these batches of cohorts of like, hey, that’s a first-time customer, that’s a repeat customer. Okay, let’s try and build a segment and get some learning from it on the back end. Right, okay, so that’s the distinction. Like Facebook’s a lot more restrictive. In theory, they could say, hey, we’re just doing this as a reporting tool, which isn’t feeding back into the ad system, but they probably just can’t get away with that, because they’re the…

27:20
They’re the first line of defense. They’re the front end app. yeah. Yeah. I mean, they have it. They have all the info. They have all the info. Yeah. Okay. All right. So we got sidetracked. Okay. So you recommend using some of those tools to figure out what’s going on and then what? And then the last one I would say is when you’re in the ad account and this is, this is actually, can share a sheet on this. It’s a correlation of what is, what is your Facebook dashboard actually telling you in terms of a performance spend purchases cost per purchase and what your

27:50
actual Shopify store, whatever you’re building on, Magento is telling you. And that’s, it’s just a simple calculator to show the difference between who’s purchasing and where, where your current spend is. I can get an understanding of if, if the platform is showing me a 30 % drop in what is being reported on Facebook or sorry, what is being ported on Shopify versus the next week where it’s a 50 or 60 % drop off, then you know, like, Hey, that’s not actually accurate. You’re going to start gathering information week over week.

28:19
And can actually backdate it of going on average, I’m losing 20, 25, 30 % of my overall purchases conversion value and CPA on Facebook. That’s, that’s, and you get a one, you get one week where it’s like a 50 % or a 60 % drop off. You know that like, that’s not actually as accurate as what it’s telling me. So you’re going to have to triangulate through that way. So it’s just a simple correlation sheet that we use on our side that we can inform the brands of like, Hey,

28:46
It’s the ad account might look even worse than it has before, but that’s not actually accurate. Here’s why our average correlation is usually a 20 % or 25 % drop off this week. It’s 50 plus, and then you’re able to make a couple of decisions that way. But there’s nothing that’s going to give you a full picture as it once was. Right. And it’s, it’s generally lower reporting, right? It’s, it’s not, it’s rarely higher reporting. Like it will never tell you more conversions than you actually have. Is that accurate?

29:14
That is 100 % accurate. All right. So here’s the dilemma then. So with the reporting crappy, let’s say you’re a brand new advertiser today with no data. What do you suggest? Like if you have nothing to correlate back upon, like you have no sales history. I actually think you’re in a better position. Interesting. Okay. And here’s why. When you’re at a break, when you’re at a, you’re at the 1 million, 5 million, $10 million mark.

29:44
You’re usually on more than one platform. Like you’re usually on a, you’re on a Facebook, you’re, you’re probably playing with a little bit of Google and you’re probably dabbling in like a Snap or TikTok, right? You’re still probably spending Corley or wanting to spend Corley on Facebook, but you have more channels that you have to actually build some triangulation or some attribution or some, baseline metrics around what that platform is doing for your business. If you’re just starting out, if you start spending on any platform, whether it’s Google, whether it’s Facebook, whether it’s Snap or whether it’s TikTok,

30:13
That is the only channel that is driving revenue for you.

30:18
So if you don’t have other things that are gonna confuse where these purchases and sales coming from, and you have a Facebook that you’re spending your $100 a day, $300 a day, $500 a day, then you have better get your UTM codes correct so that you’re able to understand which campaign, understand which ad set and understand which ad. You might not get that first click data, but you’ll understand where it’s coming from. You understand what type of content needs to be there, what content is working, right? Cause you’re labeling of UTMs.

30:48
But that’s, that’s it. think you’re in a better position to feel more confident in what and where that revenue is coming from. If you are just starting out. Now, okay. Why, why I think the argument is really difficult to see it because like, dude, I’m just starting. I don’t even know what to look at it. I can’t even look at this anyways. Why are you crying? You don’t know. You don’t even know how good it used to be. The people that like us were going, we’re sitting here going like, Oh man, this, used to be amazing. We were making millions and we’re going, wow, that’s really struggling.

31:18
You don’t have that context. This is, this is as good as it is right now for you because look, you’re getting people to your website, you’re going to figure it out and you’re going to be a better marketer, a better business person, generally overall. If you can get through this period of time right now, then those that are going to like, wow, I used to use these tactics and they’re not working anymore. It’s hard to train a new dog, a target train old dog and give him new tricks. Even myself, when I feel like I’m like, guys, we need new ideas. Like, Oh, let’s go back to what we did in 2019, 2018. I’m like, no, we can’t.

31:47
It’s different times. We don’t have that ability.

31:51
I guess so loss aversion, right? It really is because it is it’s I’m sure what you were searching for like, no, tell me like, tell me how we want new brands to start and launch. I will tell you, it’s it’s going to be an investment in content. It’s going to be a clear determination of what your avatar, your customers are, stuff that you never necessarily had to do before. You could have put a product up of what it was with a couple of colored backgrounds and it’s going to drive you sales. Now, if I’m

32:20
I have to be specific on like, who am I speaking to? What is the customer? Why is this going to solve something for them? And I got to convince them to take out their pocketbook and buy it. The consumers are still there and metrics show Q3 reports and the overall e-commerce census data. It’s up. People are still there. People are still buying. There’s still a ton of money in the market that people are wanting to spend on, especially as Q4. It’s a cultural norm that people are going to want to spend more money. people just…

32:47
It’s not, people are not going to stop celebrating Christmas or birthdays or anniversaries. It’s still there. So it’s, it’s not a fear, lack of dollars being spent in the market. It’s a fear of trusting the platforms because it was so good before. I can see that. Like if you’re only advertising on Facebook, that’s easy, right? Cause you can just directly attribute any new sales to it directly. have a question for you. How come this hasn’t affected Google?

33:14
as much like I know my Google stats still seem like they haven’t really changed. Is it because Apple still allows browser clicks to be tracked and correlated? That’s a question. I’m not I’m not the best at Google, but from what I understand, and we do run a lot of Google, it’s still very heavily search based. And it’s last click based. Facebook has been around less than was it like 10 years less, or 20 years less than Google.

33:43
So they still have a lot of this, this model of information. have a lot more data to pull from and it’s search-based. So I said that before, Facebook was an algorithm built off of like various data points that they needed to make sure that they can optimize. Google is one of the largest and most used platforms in the world consistently. So they still have a lot of good models and they still have a lot of good and intense stuff in somewhat like admittedly something that I need to get better at understanding is that if Google is going to be a lot of

34:12
a lot of where the actualization of search is going to be, or a lot of the demand generation is being actualized. It’s probably going to be the closest thing before that final click to purchase. Because it’s in that purchase path, we’re usually seeing some sort of search platform, whether it’s Google being or Yahoo, whatever it’s going to be being used right before that conversion happens. And we see that oftentimes in Google Analytics. So I think it’s closer to the conversion goal.

34:42
And I believe it has more information and data to pull in from overall that’s allowing it to consistently be accurate. you’re absolutely right. We’re shifting as much money as we can into shopping, a little bit more into YouTube so that we can understand, if we’re having more data points and more accuracy here, let’s go put the budget there. I mean, in theory, Google should have the same constraints as Facebook. They do similar things, right? Where you can upload customer data and

35:10
and kind of have like search audiences. And for display ads, it works almost the same as Facebook. I would have thought that they would have experienced something similar, maybe not on the search side, I guess. I guess I just don’t fully understand why Google hasn’t been affected, even on the display network, they should have, right? I don’t think we can say that they have not been affected. I think we can say that they’ve been affected less because of the way that Facebook’s been building. I do know that.

35:40
Android is obviously a major factor that Google runs on and majority of the population on Facebook from the reports that we’ve been seeing, there’s a lot of iOS users, especially in the major English speaking markets. So it could be that they have more data points or just more sheer volume of users to pull their correlations off of. Yeah, that makes sense. And it’s still kind of early. I mean, this just happened earlier this year.

36:07
So you mentioned a 30 % pullback in ad spend. So where is that money being diverted to? Some are just not spending it. Some are just trying to reserve as much as they can. Some of it’s going into SMS. Some of it’s going into traditional marketing. We have people putting into billboards. We have people putting into non-trackable places like this. You can track it a little bit, but I don’t know how much trust I have in a billboard reporting tool. Overall, they’re just kind of reserving a lot of this, which is something

36:36
which is something that was something I’ve never really encountered, especially coming into Q4, usually what we would want to do. And we, it’s not everybody, right? So we still have a lot of brands that want to spend, they want to push, but we’ve had more people pull back spend and reserve it for an influence reply or reserve it for more content rather than just like putting more and more budget into what was incrementally improving. Unless they like, Hey, we have to move inventory or Hey, we have to get, we have to push the sale.

37:05
so that we can look like we’re selling out. So there’s a lot of other specific reasons why budget is being spent. Some, this might be just their season and they have to push the budget. Others, like, hey, normally we’d spend a little bit, but we’re really a Q1 brand. We’re a health and supplement brand. Let’s just keep the lights on and run it as efficiently as possible. What are you seeing on TikTok? Nothing just yet because I don’t trust how it’s reporting, but there are a lot of people around me.

37:34
One really, really smart man, Maxwell Finn, is probably one of the leaders right now in spending on TikTok. But we haven’t dove in, we haven’t dived, we haven’t spent the time to dive deep into why it’s working or why it isn’t working. Because I think it’s heavily based upon what type of product is being sold there. I think that the ad platform has not been fully developed. And if you are not already organically spending time there or creating content, and you’re just running ads,

38:02
it seems to not be as effective. And that’s based upon us taking some brands and just running ads on it to see if it’ll work versus some brands that are organically seeing growth and revenue from that channel and then turning ads on and getting more incremental sales. To me, I think it’s a play that if you’re looking to arbitrage cheaper CPMs or cheaper traffic, not necessarily higher quality traffic, that’s a move that we go into. If you’re a Q4, like, Nick, I have budget, I need to spend it. Where do we go?

38:30
I would look at TikTok in terms of building up the funnel of remarketing. I still don’t believe a lot of the conversion is going to be happening there. I know that is a way to go and people want to be there, but I’m only saying it as a way of getting cheaper funnel, cheaper traffic into the.

38:48
I just wanted to let you know that tickets for the 2022 Seller Summit are now on sale over at SellersSummit.com. Now, what is the Seller Summit? It is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. And in fact, every speaker that I invite

39:15
is deep in the trenches of their own e-commerce business. Entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. The other thing I can assure you is that the seller summit will be small and intimate. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets will sell out fast and in fact we sell out every single year many months in advance. Now if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over 250k or $1 million per year in revenue,

39:42
We are also offering an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. Now the Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 4th to May 6th. And as of right now, we’re almost already sold out of mastermind tickets and we’ll be raising the price every month leading up to the event after Cyber Monday. For more information, go to sellerssummit.com. Once again, that’s sellerssummit.com or just Google it. Now back to the show.

40:08
So assuming you have a decent reporting tool where you can actually see that your ads are actually converting. In terms of targeting, are you putting less onto lookalike audiences and custom audiences as opposed to just interest-based targeting? This has changed recently. I actually asked a couple of my teammates this question before we jumped on. Right now, so before, I would say before September, we made this change in September. We’re at the end of October.

40:39
we were heavily on stacked lookalike audience. What that means is like, we’re putting a 1 % with the 2%, with the 3%, with the 4%. We’re putting a lot of groupings together into our ad accounts, into our ad sets. And we’ve moved away from the lookalike audiences as of October 26th, 9.15 a.m. We are not using heavy lookalike audiences. We’re using interest-based audiences that Facebook is providing us and we’re stacking them. what we call is, if it’s a mom product,

41:09
mommy, mommy of teens, mommy of X, Y, Z, stay at home mom, motherhood. We’re putting a lot of those congruent audiences together into one ad set. And that’s what we’ve seen to be most consistent. Cause it’s, it’s not a matter of like, we’ll, we’ll see lookalikes work for a day to two days, but then maybe day three or day four, it like really dies off like what just happened. And we don’t have answers for it. So we’re, we’re finding more consistent success with stacking interest-based audiences on here. And before.

41:38
We were heavy, we’re heavy like, it’s separated out. Let’s know which one is producing that, that, that sort of like return. And it honestly, was stuff that questions that brands were asking like, Hey Nick, tell me what audiences you guys are using. And we can build learnings from this. And I never recommended it them, but I can understand why a brand might think it’s important. If you’re the Kardashians, we’re always converting heavy for you. Maybe you make some content that’s tailored towards that audience, right? Or maybe you make, make something similar or, or try to

42:08
poke fun at it create content around it, what have you, but now it’s all jumbled together and that’s providing us the most stability. when a brand asks us like, what’s working, we’re delivering like, hey, this stack of interests together is working for you. Do what you want with that information, but I can’t pull it individual learning from this for you. No, that makes sense. I mean, I’m only one data point, but my lookalikes have kind of fallen off a cliff. I used to actually even run broad match, just kind of wide open.

42:37
Yeah. Broad match dynamic ads and those have kind of gone to crap as well. Where is the interest you can’t, I mean, there’s no feedback of information there. So I would imagine that’s a lot more stable. Correct. And even, even pulling in audiences from Klavi or even dynamically updating these, do I think it’s a waste of time? No, I don’t. think, I think you have to use all the tools that Facebook’s providing us. But I will tell you this, a little bit of nugget for you, The longer you can make your videos and I’m talking like,

43:04
Can you get 45 seconds? You get a minute. Can you give me a 32 minutes? The audiences that we’re building lookalikes off of that have found more success are the ones based upon video watch time, engagers, followers, likers, the on-platform metrics, the on-platform audiences that we’re building for whether it’s re-engagement, which is those types of audiences, the likers, the viewers, the followers, the savers versus the site visitors.

43:32
versus the avocados are we’re having more success with remarketing to those that have seen pieces of our content. Interesting. Is it because Facebook is allowed to track people who are on the platform who don’t leave it? Is that why I think it’s that simple? Honestly, I think it’s, I think it’s the fact that that is platform data that they have a lot more control over that they don’t need to send off the platform to get information on.

44:00
that they don’t have to have an upload or report it anywhere. I think there’s a lot of these things that allow Facebook to be like, ah, I understand who that consumer is because they watched something that was native to our platform or was already on our platform. They never left. So we don’t have to report that they left and came back. And we have to like, quote unquote, scrub that info. That’s more accurate. That actually makes sense, right? Because I guess Apple can’t 100 % enforce like something that’s going on in the app that you’re not.

44:27
that you’re not using, right? It’s really, that message only happens when you actually click off the platform, off the app, right? Exactly. So if you’re on it already, you can get marketing towards, so a strategy that we’ve been using is we might have an ad that’s 15 seconds, maybe five seconds, doesn’t really matter at this point. And we’re extending that final card, that final call to action or that final end card of whatever you’re doing, a couple more seconds, just to keep them watching a little more, just to…

44:56
see how do we elongate some of this creative or content? And a lot of us have been indoctrinated to show 15 second, 20 second, 30 second content, push it 45, push it to a minute. What does it matter for you if they sit there and watch more of your content or if they click and move by it, right? It’s still the most important thing is to build three seconds and get them hooked and watch, of course. I’m never gonna deter or move away from that. But the longer you give an opportunity for them to like sit there and watch, the more information you can kind of gather from this. Interesting.

45:25
So do you retarget like 75 % video views? what’s your protocol? Yeah, so we, depends on the type of product. So if you have an individual product, say you are a single skew or second skew, a single skew or a skew with a supporting product, you’re going to have to be very deliberate in the type of content you’re showcasing on the top of funnel. Let me explain this. If I have, if I’m selling a, a Sheets brand. So there’s a brand called Miracle Sheets, which we’ve been a part of for quite a while.

45:55
And they sell to bachelors, they sell to mothers and they sell to college students. Okay. Those are very three distinct consumers and very three distinct messages that need to be said to them. You, you have to understand that if you’re going to take these stances of speaking to these consumers, that second touch point is going to be very important of what audience you’re building off of. So you are going to end Facebook has this ability that first video.

46:24
might be a lot of value propositions and speaking towards the bathroom. Like, Hey, you don’t want to wash your clothes as much. No problem. This is your sheet. Just much. No problem. This will stay cleaner and better for you over time. Whatever that drop off point is, if, if I have multiple calls to action within the first 15 to 20 seconds, and it’s a minute video, I want to, I’m going to have a segmented. want to have my 25 % audience separate from the 50 % and separate from my 75%. Cause if I’m starting to see.

46:53
someone hasn’t watched my video to completion and they’re going to go into my next remarketing pool. And I wanted to pull like a 75 % view, but they have never even seen 75 % of my first video. Do I showcase that video again to make sure that they get further? Do I change the way that that second video started so that they can get further? It’s not so much the segmentation of the audience as the understanding of how much content was being consumed on that first initial touch point. Is that clear? Up until the call to action.

47:24
Or if it correct, where does maybe the call to action needs to be multiple times in the first piece of creative? Uh huh. This is, this is the thing that people didn’t have to think about before they could just put a product, show a bunch of testimonials and get into it. Now they have to be very deliberate. Like, what are we showing? What are the, what are the calls to action or the highlights that we’re putting in the first couple of seconds all the way through the back half of it, all the way through the end of it, because the drop off point might be high, which was severely, severely impact the next message that we’re showcasing them.

47:54
on the second touch or second remarketing app. Right, okay. So now you just kind of have to coordinate like what your ad looks like and whether they see in a particular piece of content that you want them to see before you retarget them with the next message is all you’re saying essentially, right? I am correct. So your question on like, do I need the 75 % versus 50 %? I want all of them. I want all of them separated. I want all of them segmented depending on if it’s a multi-skew store or a single skew store. If it’s a multi-skew store, how do I get as many products shown?

48:22
And then how do I support all those products? Second, it’s going to be a little bit less scientific and more of like, Hey, let’s just keep pushing them down the funnel and keep pushing them down the funnel, depending on what product they’re being clicked on or sold most. But it’s more about the type of content we’re putting at that second touch point versus is it a 25 versus a 50, 75 or a hundred percent viewpoints? Good stuff, Nick, man. I didn’t, I didn’t know anything about that. So thank you for that information, especially the, part about, uh,

48:51
Retargeting based on audiences in terms of engagement on the app itself without leaving it. That’s great. Well, I’m going to give you one more, Steve, that I’m putting it out there into the ether that we’re seeing work on our stuff. we have Facebook’s, let me ask you this question. How many ad accounts do you have with your current brand that you’re running right now? How many ad accounts? Yeah. How many ad accounts are you running? Okay. So for the longest time, I’ve always been under the same doctination.

49:19
because it’s what Facebook’s been feeding me. One brand, one ad account run. Yep. What we’ve seen, and this is stuff that’s still early, but we have now three brands on this. We have multiple ad accounts. So we have as much as four ad accounts for one brand and we’re running cost cap. Whatever’s, whatever’s acceptable for your brand. If you have a successful cost cap number, if you’re, if you get more conversions at $50 versus $60,

49:48
I’m not going to tell you what cost cap to play with. You’re going to have to test that yourself, but we’re finding that if we have a high budget, I’m talking five grand, 10 grand, a single campaign, single ad set with all your best converting ads in a different ad set, will just, I’m saying start a brand new ad account, one big campaign, one large, one large budget with a cost cap that’s going to limit it from spending everything and see if it spends. I’ll explain why I don’t know. This is what we used to do when we needed to scale

50:18
And we, in the ad account would cap itself at an overall spend. we’re like, shoot, we need to launch a new ad account with all and put all of our new, all of our best ads in it running again. If it’s under the same business manager, you can keep the post IDs. So what we’re doing is if we see a successful ad, a successful campaign running and we’re like, Oh, I don’t want to kill this. We’re launching a second ad account and putting all the things that were working before into that ad account and seeing if it will run. Now I’m not, I’m not getting romantic about it. It doesn’t work.

50:48
I’m not, doesn’t work. Meaning if it’s not spending as much, or if it’s not as profitable out the gates, I’m looking at it and going like, okay, I could launch another account and then just delete the one that wasn’t worth it. Just stop using it and just keep finding my way through it because you’ll find some brand new ad accounts will launch with a extremely high CPM. You know, like, holy crap, I’m never going to be able to make this profitable. The very next account you launch, it has a lower CPM for whatever reason. No, no, no understanding why it’s happening. And I’m at this point, not even trying to figure it out.

51:17
I’m just trying to win. That’s all I give a shit about right now. How do I win? And I’m launching multiple ad accounts with the best things that are working. Sounds like black magic, Nick. It’s, it’s, it’s stuff I’m not, I’m not sitting here trying to like advocate for, but right now people need to win, right? People need to win. And especially this is, this is the make money time for a lot of brands. This is something that we’re, diving aggressively into. Right. So basically just try a new ad account and see if, see if it works. If it doesn’t.

51:47
open up another one. These are just different things that you’re trying and just seeing what works right now. And that’s what’s working for you right now. Right. As of right now, that is what’s working. We have three brands running on this and across different niches and industries. And we have as much as 25 accounts open for one brand. This whole thing is just really sketchy to me. Like with them having a record quarter with the 30 % cutbacks, CPMs are getting higher. I don’t know, man. It just doesn’t make me want to trust these guys as much.

52:16
going forward. But Steve, what do you do? Well, no, mean, there’s no real good alternative right now. But it opens the doors for a competitor to come in. Maybe TikTok will be that platform going forward. Who knows? I hope it is. I hope it is. I send my prayers to Zuck every morning and go like, hey, today’s the day. Keep it going. Please, please, whenever you want, switch it over. I’m ready for it. You know what’s funny is like, I said this in previous episodes, I’ve gotten

52:44
burned by Facebook like many, many times where I’ll go all in on something and then it stops working abruptly. Like pages, groups, messenger, you know, it’s, I just never learned my lesson. So I guess the key is just to diversify yourself, right? And just not rely on a single traffic source and you should be good in the long run. think that and measuring first time customer acquisition and your overall retention, like how, how are you building a business?

53:12
And this is more like high level. How are you building a business that people want to come back and buy from it? Right? We have great examples of this, whether it’s a consumable product, whether it’s a limited edition drop, whether it’s some sort of exclusive something or other, those are the businesses that are working. No longer are you taking a product, changing the color or changing the cap and then making it work. You have to be diligent in building a business. And then all the owned marketing platforms like email and SMS are keys to making that happen.

53:43
Absolutely. more, more so this year and people have been talking about messenger and SMS for, I feel like forever. And it’s, it’s still like, even when we host our events, like we, we always try to throw like an SMS expert in there. And it seems like people are going, Oh, I didn’t know that could happen. I didn’t know you guys can do that. Why not? Like, why didn’t you know that that could happen? That’s something that’s you, how many SMS is, do you open up? How many text messages do you respond to? How many two factor authentic, authentic vacations are you approving through your phone?

54:11
There’s so many things here that people are not taking into consideration or just taking the time to try and learn honestly is what it is. Absolutely. I I went all in on SMS like a year and a half ago. I’m so glad I did. It’s, mean, it’s probably the best medium for both of my businesses right now. So wow. Nick, man, thanks a lot for coming on the show. This was really good.

54:33
And for everyone listening out there, this is like the inside scoop from someone who runs and spends a ton on ads and really understands the landscape. So I thank you, Nick. I’m very grateful for Steve as well. And anybody else, if you have questions, I’d love to talk to you. I’m on Twitter, I’m on Facebook. Just search the name and I’m there.

54:54
Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now, if you couldn’t tell from that episode, Nick is an open book and he’s also a speaker at Seller Summit 2022. So if you have any questions for him in person, meet us in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on May 4th. For more information about this episode, go to myvotequitterjob.com slash episode 391. And once again, I want to thank Postscript, 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.

55:23
over at postgroup.io slash Steve. That’s P-O-S-T-S-A-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. I also want to thank Clavio, which is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce 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 heading over to mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIO. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIO. Now I talk about how I use these tools on my blog.

55:53
And if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to mywhipqtr.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.