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Ultimate Marketer Podcast: #3 If Facebook Went Away, Best ECommerce Platforms, and Your Questions Answered

Ultimate Marketer Podcast: #3 If Facebook Went Away, Best ECommerce Platforms, and Your Questions Answered

Would your business survive if Facebook as an advertising platform went away? In this episode, we'll discuss the questions that Facebook is facing from government officials and how this could impact small businesses and the online marketer. We'll also talk about platforms like Shopify and answer more of your questions.

Would your business survive if Facebook as an advertising platform went away? In this episode, we'll discuss the questions that Facebook is facing from government officials and how this could impact small businesses and the online marketer. We'll also talk about platforms like Shopify and answer more of your questions.

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SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

What is up everybody welcome back to the ultimate marketer podcast. Well, if you, I didn't realize today is not Tuesday, it's actually Wednesday. Didn't get a chance to get the podcast out because of a couple of different reasons. First off we were supposed to have our first guest and that was supposed to be recorded late last week. Unfortunately he came down with a cold and was not able to come in and do the podcast with me.

So we're, we are currently rescheduling that. That was gonna be an awesome episode, but we're still going to do it and we're just going to reschedule it and get it done here sometime close here in the future. Additionally, I seem to have also got a bug this past weekend. I got it. Terrible, terrible cold. It has lasted several, several days.

I'm still not perfectly there, but you know, I have to get a podcast out this week. It's a must. I made it a dedication to create a new episode every single week. So we're going to do that. And so I apologize in advance if I have to cough or something or, or you hear a bunch of sniffles on the microphone. It, it's just part of it, part of gig. We got to get it done. And but I will say this, we, we do have some other interviews already lined up that we're gonna do and I'm really excited about it.

A whole bunch of different topics on the world of business and marketing and I can't wait to do that. Can't wait to, to, to show our first guests on the show because that's one thing I really loved about doing podcasting. All the years that I, that I have done it in that is talking to other people and hearing their stance on things, learning from their, their brains and applying those things to, to what I do as well.

So looking forward to that. So additionally, before we get started here I do want to talk about our black Friday pro setups. We're adding that to, to our online site now@dropkickads.com. And if you know, the last episode, I kind of gave a, a brief prep on things you should be doing now to prepare for black Friday weekend. And as I mentioned, we have a pro setup service that we offer specifically for black Friday for e-comm businesses.

This is more geared to if your business has already, you know, been running ads before, have already seen some success. You're already in business, you've been in business for a little while. If you're a brand new business, you know, this may not be for you. This is more of a build to, to build upon. That kind of goes and adds another level to what you've already built as a business to make sure that you're hitting all avenues and taking full advantage of the black Friday weekend sale. So when we do these pro setups, we're going to, you know, hit current customers, anybody that that has purchased from you in the past. We're going to make sure we reengage all past purchasers from your site as well as bringing in new customers during the sale weekend. So it's a whole setup.

We go in your account, we do everything for you, set up all the audiences, all the campaigns, and we will also make the creative for that as well. So the last one set up that we are taking. You have to buy that service by November 15th. That is the last date that we are going to take one of these services. So go to Dropkick ads.com.

Click on the Facebook tab and you will find the black Friday pro set up there. And guess what? If you use code ultimate, which is our podcast discount code for Dropkick ads, we will give you 10% off on that. So that's a pretty good savings on that service. If you're interested, again, go to Dropkick ads.com. Click on the Facebook tab and click on the black Friday Facebook pro setup. Now today we are going to talk about something that might get a little controversial.

I have some different stances on this. But it's something as marketers that we need to think about, and I don't want to actually have to think about this, but you know, we have to, especially because my business is so tied to Facebook, but it seems as if you turn on the news, you read on Twitter all these things every single day. It seems like Facebook is under attack by the government and by other people and rightfully so. In a lot of instances. There are some things that Facebook have done that they probably should not have done.

However, it's such a big important part of business, small business, especially think of the tons of small businesses that have been created online that have stimulated the economy, that have hired employees, that have taken people from, you know, working for somebody else to having their own business, making something of themselves. A lot of that is because of Facebook ads because it is such a great platform to advertise to. It puts you in front of the right people that would be interested in your product or service that, that you offer.

Now with that being so good comes a lot of privacy policy issues. Now my response when I hear people saying things like, why is Facebook tracking me? And you know, I hate that they know so much info about me and you know in sometimes you know I've even placed ads before people comment, get off my Facebook. I don't want this ad here. Well again, if you're a marketer, you're probably more than likely going to agree with me. If you don't, that is completely okay. But most people that aren't marketers would not agree with the things that I'm about to say.

And that is Facebook is a free platform to use. You don't have to pay anything to use Facebook. You don't have to pay anything to pay for the servers. That how's all your images and your videos that you share with your family and friends that are going to be there forever for the timelines that are there to to keep a memory book online of your entire life or you know, or if any of the big moments in your entire life, you don't pay for that. You don't pay for the events that you create on Facebook that you invite all your friends to. That reminds them when that event is where the event is. And also again lets you share comments and suggestions and all sorts of those things. So if you're not in business, if you're not in marketing, I can see from that aspect of things, you know how how there can be so a little disconnect because you log into Facebook every single day.

You, you know, you make your, your make your posts, you share things and you know, express your opinion, all that sort of stuff. And you just don't think about all the backend and all the things that it takes to have a platform of that size. It takes a lot of technology, a lot of people running that technology and data data is expensive to house, to, to transfer. It's, it's highly expensive. And so you're using that platform completely for free. And what Facebook gets out of it is exactly what people and the government are not so happy with, which is kind of a tracking of what you do online. What are your interests? What services or products do you to be interested in at the moment? All those sorts of things. So privacy.

Yes. You know, maybe tracking everything you do online is, is may not be that cold, but this is my rebuttal to to that. And again, it may not be a popular popular response, but these are my true feelings. I am never going to hide my true feelings on anything on this podcast or in anything I do. So my thoughts are exactly this. You are going to be marketed to in your life wherever you go. If you're driving on the highway, you're going to see a billboard. If you're at a restaurant, you're going to see a poster for whatever special they have for that day. There is no escaping marketing. If you go to the grocery store, there's going to be coupons for specific items that maybe you weren't even intending to buy.

Marketing will always be a part of your life and when you're out in the open and being marketed, these things, a lot of times it doesn't even apply to you, so it becomes even more of annoyance because you're not interested in that. You have to see all this marketing all around your face all day long and it's stuff that you don't care about. The beauty of Facebook advertising especially is this, you get to be shown things that you might actually like that you might actually be interested in and that is the beauty of it. If you're going to be marketed to in your life all day, every day, wouldn't you rather see things that you know that actually pertained to you?

If you're looking for something like cameras or something, wouldn't you rather be shown ads for, for cameras that you can look at and figure out which one is the best for you and whatever you need to use it for. That's my personal opinion and I think it makes sense, you know, I think that's makes marketing more enjoyable for the end consumer and actually possibly creates less, you know, time for that person to have to figure out and do all the research to make a decision on their purchase.

So I understand that. And I was recently, earlier today watching the ho house financial services committee kind of grill Mark Zuckerberg and you know, I do worry, I do worry about government intervention into, into how Facebook operates and how they are able to be accurate with their serving of ads. That could have a big, big impact on marketers. And I know there's certain candidates, I'm not going to list them by name, but you know, that really wants to break up Facebook in all they do because maybe they become a little too powerful.

There's, there's, well there is some things that I don't like about big business. There's, there's other outliers that I think politicians and people need to think about before they just look at it as, as one big thing. And in regards to the Facebook issue about being too big of a business that needs to be broken up. I think if we do that, there's a possibility that there could have a big impact on middle income people, people that want to start businesses and want to utilize the Facebook ads platform as their main source of getting new customers. If Facebook advertising loses the ability to target and be accurate with who would most be interested in our ads, then we lose the possibility of new small businesses being created online.

If you're going to start a brand new business online and start a new Shopify store, whatever it is, you need to be able to advertise to be able to grow your business, to grow your business in hire brand new employees, all things of that nature. If you can't target people as accurately as Facebook has created, that creates a big problem and a major entry point for anyone to start their own business online.

So I think it's important. I don't think Facebook is going to go away, that they're there too intricate into everything we do. And they have Instagram, they have WhatsApp and you know, they're gonna be starting all sorts of other things and taking over other companies. But we do need, as marketers need to have a plan. Don't ever be one dimensional in anything that you do. So have a plan. If Facebook were to go away tomorrow as marketer for your business, you need to make sure that you have other aspects to gain new customers.

Other aspects of communicate with your current customers and fans of your brand. Don't be one dimensional. That's hard. That's, it's hard to say because Facebook is still such a, such a great place for eCommerce to advertise. But it's something that we need to think about. And that's what I wanted to talk about today, kind of in regards. If, if Facebook went away, if the government, you know, intervenes in how Facebook operates, you know, we need to, to be aware of that in, in don't get complacent that Facebook will always be here. So it's something to definitely think about now.

Now that we've gotten past that part and I've gotten off my soap box and I hopefully, you know, I would love to hear everyone's opinions on this. So hit me up on social, on Twitter, Orlando Rios on Instagram. I'm Orlando Rios. And if you have some comments about that segment of the podcast, I would love to hear that. And of course if you go to Dropkick ads.com/podcast I, I've also set up a form where you can submit your questions or comments about the show. I would've loved to hear your responses on that particular segment. Well now it's time to do what am I favorite parts of the show. And that is to answer your questions.

Questions that have come in through Facebook messenger, through our format Dropkick ads.com/podcast and through email. So I'm going to get right to that and hit up with the first one. So Orlando, what are three things a person looking to transition from sales to marketing can do to build their skillset? So you want to move out of sales and get more into marketing? Well, congratulations. You're halfway there because if you're in sales, you're already somewhat of a marketer.

So what that means is all you need to do is learn how to utilize the tools. If you're in sales, you already have an idea on how to market. You're already doing it. The only difference to becoming a quote unquote marketer is using specific tools such as Facebook ads or, or a store like Shopify or something like that. To take your sales knowledge and apply it and use it in the platforms of marketing. So one of the greatest, you know, it's hard for me to list three exact things, but you know, this is a question I get asked by, by friends and others is, is you know how to, to get into marketing and build their skillsets.

The best way to learn, and the actual way that I learned is to do something for yourself. Create some kind of little product. It doesn't have to be something big. Maybe it's an ebook, something that you're good at, fine what you're good at and try to make market at yourself using your own money on a small scale. Learn how to build a landing page, learn how to advertise to that landing page for the product that you've created. And once you do that, you kind of build the skill set on your own because because you have, you're using your money, you're using what you know best to, to, to market, to, to do what you want to do. And I find that if it's something that is directly to you and not for something else, you're going to put in more time for that because it directly reflects on you.

Everything you do, all the marketing materials directly reflects on you. The results you see is a direct reflection of the time and work that you put into it. So that is the biggest thing I would say. Find out what you're good at or what your interests are that you know about. Create a simple landing page that has some kind of offer where there'd be a free book or something. It's that, that it's not expensive.

Learn how to use Facebook ad account. Learn to lose, learn how to use Google and just get started figuring that out along the way. Youtube is an incredible resource to learn how to do anything. But if you want to fast track your way to becoming a marketer that can help people market anything. Or maybe you just want to start your own business in general and you want to Mark that.

The best way absolutely is to create a small scale project with your own money on something that you have expertise on. That is the best way to learn hands down. Orlando. What platform is best when starting a business? Shopify, Wix, Squarespace. Well, it depends on what your business is going to be. If you're selling physical products, I highly recommend everybody use Shopify. Shopify is growing. It's actually in terms of the stock market is w is is something that people kind of see that might actually have competition for Amazon one day.

So, you know, take that into consideration. Get on board with Shopify and I'm not affiliated with Shopify in any way, but they make starting a store the easiest [inaudible] possibly integrating tracking with Facebook. Google easiest can be, you know, changing products, changing product images, you know, copy integrating with, with shipping, whatever it is with the apps that Shopify has. It's an incredibly powerful platform and is the easiest low entry, you know, thing to get into.

They have themes ready to go that you can change easily. It's pretty much, it's not drag and drop, but it's pretty dang close. And then when you want to get even better, you can hire a team to even customize that Shopify store even more. That's what we did with ours. Drop kick ads is run on Shopify. We don't even offer products. We offer services and they can do digital downloads to, and with integrations such as Zapier, you can utilize all sorts of things too to really round out your business and round out everything that you would ever need to do with your business.

So that's why I like Shopify so much. It integrates with everything and makes things things incredibly simple. Squarespace, you know, if, if you're going to to have, you know, maybe a local presence like a restaurant or something, I would probably lean more on Squarespace because you don't need all the shopping features that Shopify has. You just kind of need a, a presence and maybe a way to take reservations or something like that. I would look at something like Squarespace or something like that.

But if you're doing eCommerce products and you know, even services in some way I would look at Shopify if maybe you're a local based service, maybe Shopify is not the best thing to do. Maybe look at something more like Squarespace. Again. I guess Wix could probably work to a WordPress if you want something more customized. Those are the platforms that I would look to. It's very, very dependent on exactly what your business is for that. Orlando, I run Realty ads on Facebook with the new restrictions. I find the quality of my leads have gone down. Any tips to improve?

Well, this is part a little bit of what I was talking about earlier in Facebook and there their ethics and privacy policies. So they released this new, these new restrictions a couple of months ago on anything related to housing or credit where you couldn't target specific incomes. And I do kind of agree with that actually because just like there's fair housing laws and fair employment laws, things of that nature, people were able to get around that in those laws with Facebook ads because you could target then those specific things. So that makes sense to me.

But yes, it does make it a little harder to, to find the a higher quality lead that would most likely be interested in, in what you have to offer in that aspect. So, you know, yeah, you can't go with income anymore in terms of Realty ads and stuff like that. But what can you do? Well, this is what I say. So a lot of people ran lead generation ads on Facebook when it comes to Realty [inaudible], which if you're not familiar, a lead generation ad is an ad on Facebook or Instagram where the person fills out the form on the platform. They never leave.

They don't go to a landing page. You need to set your qualifiers there and be completely upfront on the advertising material and on the lead generation form of what you're, what you're offering. So if you're doing housing and maybe it's really expensive housing you know, say, let's just say for an example here that that the property cost is $500,000 for the property. You need to be really clear on that on your advertising.

Put that on the ad, starting at $500,000 in the form. Make it really clear in the headline, you know, that these properties start at $500,000. If you're clear about those, those, those barriers, you know, you're more than likely going to have a better quality lead. Somebody may not go through the trouble if they know that that is out of their price range. So that that's, that's really important to do. So instead of doing that in the targeting, you need to do that in the marketing material and be completely upfront about the offer. Additionally, there are still some interest based stuff that you can do.

I don't particularly like to do that because you're kind of just guessing there at that point. But you can do, do some interest based things based on, you know, what kind of cars they're interested in, what kind of phones they have. You know, what kind of brands they like on Facebook, all that kind of stuff. You can kind of create a customer profile. But again, I don't recommend that because it's a little too blurry for me. It's a little too blurry. So instead just abide by the rules that Facebook has put in and be ultra clear in the advertising ultra clear in your forms about what you're offering. That's the best advice I can give on that. In regards to Realty ads on Facebook, Orlando, I'm having good success with campaigns to get new customers from the top and middle of the funnel, but lacking results on things with remarketing.

What are common mistakes? So congratulations. If you're having an amazing response from your prospecting ads and you're having a problem on remarketing, that's a great situation to be in. But I do understand, I, I get it. You're, you're probably looking at pixel data and you're seeing, you know, purchases come in and you're having, you know, you know, maybe like 30, 40%, you know, purchases. But then there's this whole other percentage of people that have added to cart and didn't purchase or visited the site and didn't purchase. You're worried about those people and why they didn't purchase. And you should be, that is a big important part of marketing, but the fact that you're already getting, you know, conversions on the front end of things where people usually don't, that's a good sign.

So it might just be a setup problem in, in a creative problem that, that you have on your remarketing. So it's a little tough to, to figure out exactly what you're who direct problem is. But common mistakes that I see are our rec. We targeting audiences that are too small. People go too, too small in, in the retargeting audiences and they aren't broad enough. So a good way to figure out what, who you should be retargeting to is to look at your Facebook pixel data in your events manager. And there, you'll see the amount of people, you can set it for a certain amount of time.

Look at a seven day period of 14 day period and finally a 30 day period to see the amount of people in those retargeting groups. So people that added to cart but did not purchase. You know, if you have hundreds of people, that's probably a better audience then, you know, less than a hundred people for sure. So, you know, I know in some accounts that I run, I have an audience that are all visitors of the entire site for the last 30 days, which creates kind of a kind of a big audience, but Facebook doesn't do well with audiences that are custom audiences that are really, really small.

So, you know, you need to take that into consideration in your marketing and you need to try different, different creative types. Carousels seem to work really well in remarketing because you can show a bunch of different products or offers at the same time. So look at that. Another good trick if you're not doing it already and if you're running video ads, are you running videos on organic postings for Facebook or Instagram in general? You can also target people that watched a certain percentage of a video.

So things like that are what I would look at. Maybe maybe your offers and strong enough for people that visited and in didn't go through that the last time. So it could be the offer or it could be lack of education. So those are the things you need to figure out. Do they need to learn more about why your product or service is the one that they should purchase? Or number two, maybe. Maybe the barrier is entry, you know, in terms of price. So maybe you need to offer a better deal or some kind of trial, you know, those are things to think about on that end. Orlando, I want to run more video ads. As everyone says there's better performance with videos. What equipment do you recommend, recommend? So yes, videos do better.

On average on Facebook and Instagram, there's something that everybody should be running as far as equipment. Don't overthink it. You have, everybody has video equipment these days and that is your cell phone. Cell phone videos are incredibly high quality and you can make videos almost anywhere. I'm sure you see ads all the time and it looks like people just, you know, flipped on their, their cell phone and just recorded a video.

And then for some reason walking all over the place. I don't know why they do that, but it's that simple. Don't let a barrier, you know, be that you don't have the latest and greatest video equipment because it's not necessarily needed. Some of the best campaigns I've ever run were actually shot on an iPhone. You know, I've once you know, got over 600 trials for supplement with a picture I took of somebody holding a bottle of the supplement with my cell phone. That was the best performing ad that we had. So don't overthink it. Actually the more natural you can be is a lot of times the, the, the best thing to do if you want to take things a little step further and you can have the quality that that you may have seen in some of our video ads is I like cannons, mirrorless camera. I don't remember the exact name right now, but it's, it's a mirrorless camera by cannon and I want to say 50 maybe is what it's called.

But the quality on that is incredible and it's also not that expensive, expensive, it's a couple of hundred bucks and it's a really, really great camera. But again, iPhone is even the Google pixel two. It has great quality and you can get little accessories to make that even better. If you just go on Amazon, you can find these little Mike clips in, I use them, you may see them in the videos that I make that that increased the quality of the, of the audio and also filters out a lot of the noise for you. So all that's available to you and you can have a great video set up for a mere couple of hundred bucks, just using a couple of those things, using your phone, which you already have and just maybe getting a clip Mike on Amazon that connects to your phone. So it's really that simple. Don't overthink it.

You know, videos are an important part of an advertising strategy and you know, that's what I would recommend there. But if you want to improve, there's definite low entry camera equipment that is super big that you can get and use. So that's about it for the show today.

Thank you again for listening and if you can subscribe to this podcast, share it with your friends, get people to listen. So that way we can get some more listeners, we can get some more guests and we can continue providing awesome information.

Please follow me on Instagram. I am Orlando Rios. I'm Orlando Rios is my Instagram and follow Dropkick ads on Instagram if you don't mind.

And again, you can use code ultimate for 10% off any service@dropkickads.com. That includes pro setups, and that includes our black Friday pro set setup that we are offering now. Again, thanks so much. I love you guys. See you next week.

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