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The StoryBrand Podcast
#42: How to Create Facebook Ads That Beat the Competition Without a Big Budget
00:44:58
Businesses are burning cash on Facebook ads that just don’t work, and it’s not because of the algorithm. The real problem? Most companies are leading with clever headlines and flashy visuals instead of clear, curiosity-driven messaging. When your...
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- [00:00]
Merab Reza
Today in marketing, everything and nothing is changing. The everything part is your AI, your tools, your attribution, your placements, your campaign types. But the part that's more important, the part that's not changing, is understanding who your customers are so that you can speak an emotional message that triggers a reaction inside of them. That is the part that's never changing. When you have a better understanding of getting close to your customers and staying close to your customers, your results are better.
- [00:30]
Bobby Richards
Hey, it's podcast producer Bobby Richards and I've got a quick question for you. When it comes to your marketing, is it actually cutting through all the noise or is it just adding to it? I ask this because if it's not clearly telling your customers how you can solve their problem, they will not buy from you. But don't worry, because this is exactly why we created StoryBrand your business. It's a brand new hands on live marketing workshop taught by Donald Miller himself, happening January 28th and 29th here here in Nashville, Tennessee. At the event, Don will personally teach you the proven Story brand framework that's helped thousands of businesses clarify their message. Plus his brand new messaging campaign framework that's designed to help you compete in today's AI driven market. And you won't just learn the frameworks, you'll learn how to implement them into your business right away. You'll craft a controlling idea that drives every piece of your marketing, create survival sound bites your customers actually remember, and build a complete messaging campaign that works. And throughout it all, you won't be doing it alone. You'll be part of a small group of business owners just like you and receive live coaching from storybrand certified guides who are in the room with you. But tickets are limited, so Register now@storybrandyourbusiness.com youm don't have to stay stuck trying to figure out how to make your marketing and messaging work for your business. Join us at the StoryBrand your business live event with Donald Miller and walk away with a clear message and a plan you can immediately implement to grow your business. We can't wait to see you there, so go register right now@storybrandyourbusiness.com you're listening to the StoryBrand podcast based on Donald Miller's best selling book, Building a Story Brand. The Story Brand framework is made up of seven key elements, all of them anchored in one powerful idea. Your customer is the hero and you are their guide. Each week on the podcast you'll get exactly what you need to craft clear messaging that connects with more customers and Grows your business. Now let's dive in with your hosts, Donald Miller and Kyle Reed.
- [02:39]
Kyle Reed
Don, a lot of businesses are having a big problem right now, and it's probably not what you might think. The biggest problem they're facing right now is Facebook ads. Most Facebook ads are becoming incredibly expensive. They're not delivering results, and people are kind of starting to panic a little bit. I'm curious for you. Why do you think Facebook ads are not working?
- [02:59]
Donald Miller
I think Facebook ads are not working because the point of a Facebook ad is to pique somebody's curiosity. And it's the failure that is most common among small businesses, medium businesses, big businesses. They don't pique their customer's curiosity. And what do I mean by that? Yeah, what I mean is they don't. The way to pique a customer's curiosity so that they want to know more about your product is to use a survival sound bite. And a survival sound bite is a sound bite that you can use that piques your customer's interest in how you can help them survive. For instance, lose £30 in three months. Right. That. That's a sound.
- [03:39]
Merab Reza
Nobody.
- [03:39]
Donald Miller
Nobody's confused about what that is. If somebody's weight is getting out of control. Right. P90X. Get into shape in 90 days. Lower your blood pressure without the side effects that statins cause. These are very simple sound bites that make a lot of sense to people, and then that makes them want to say, okay, how do I do that? Or, what do I need to do that? You see what I'm saying? And instead of doing that, you place a Facebook ad. It uses cute language. It uses clever language. It speaks to the customer as though they already know things that they don't know. The way I look at a business, I look at it like a house. If I'm walking through a neighborhood and there's a house and it has front steps, a front porch, and a front door, Those, to me, are the three levels of messaging. The front steps are your survival sound bites. The front porch are your. What I call enlightenment documents, lead generators, white papers, YouTube videos. Even social media to some degree. Is actually front porch more than front steps. And then the front door is your commitment, collateral, your pitch decks, your proposals, your contracts, your sales rep, talking points, your webinar calls to action, inviting somebody into the house. Almost every company that we work with does a C minus to D plus job on the front porch, a C minus to D plus job on the front door, and an F minus on the front steps.
- [05:03]
Kyle Reed
Yeah.
- [05:03]
Donald Miller
And so if they just fix their front steps, they will see more people standing on the porch wanting to know more. You still got a C minus on the front porch, so we got to clean that up. And you've got to clean up your front door, but you don't have any steps.
- [05:16]
Kyle Reed
Yeah. And most people are spending so much money because they're already expected people to be almost in the house. Right. With their ads.
- [05:22]
Donald Miller
They're in the house thinking that they're talking to a customer, and that customer can't even get up the front porch. Not only that, but the neighbor over here with an inferior product has really great sound bites and. And a terrible front porch and an awful product once you get in the house. And they're crushing it. And that's how important those front step sound bites, those survival sound bites are. So I would say the number one reason that Facebook marketing isn't working is because you aren't using survival sound bites that get people to come up and want to know more.
- [05:52]
Kyle Reed
That's great. Well, today I'm excited, actually. We invited in one of our longtime story brand agency owners, Merab Reza, to kind of discuss this. He's an expert, expert at Facebook ads. He actually runs our ads here at StoryBrand. And so I got to sit down with Marab and we, you know, Mera has this interesting thought where most people, he said, are worrying about how much they're spending, but they're not focused on what is actually working. And so we kind of spent 40 minutes just dialoguing about, you know, a what is working? And then how can businesses and brands take advantage of that?
- [06:24]
Donald Miller
I love it. He's been very effective. He's really brilliant.
- [06:27]
Kyle Reed
Yeah. So here's my conversation with Merab Reza, Facebook expert. Mehrab, thanks for joining us today. This is an important conversation. I hear this one a lot. People trying to do better at their ads, trying to get more attention. There's problems that a lot of people encounter when they're trying to do ads in general. Not just Facebook, but just ads when they're thinking about it. And you kind of highlighted a couple of things. And I wanted to start from, like, a macro level for people. Give me kind of a breakdown. What are some things from a macro level that people are doing wrong specifically with Facebook ads and ads in general?
- [06:59]
Merab Reza
Okay. All right, Kyle, So I'm going to start by sharing, like, my second most favorite quotation when it comes to marketing, and that is today in marketing, everything and nothing is changing.
- [07:12]
Kyle Reed
Okay.
- [07:13]
Merab Reza
Yeah. So the everything changing. The everything part is, you know, your AI, your Tools, your attribution, your placements, your campaign types, all of that stuff. But the part that's more important, the part that's not changing, the nothing part, is understanding who your customers are, understanding how they decide, understanding what their values are so that you can speak an emotional message that triggers a reaction inside of them and ultimately help them make a decision that's going to be in their best interest and not just the brand's best interest. That is the parts that, that's never changing. This is the part that's harder to figure out. And this is the part that a lot of brands overlook because it's hard and they skip it and they go straight into dumping money into ads. And, you know, they, they, unfortunately, marketers are, you know, guilty of this as well. We test unproven messages and we cast them at theoretical audiences and we call that testing. Yeah, but when you have a better understanding of the nothing part, the part that's never changing about marketing, the part that's never changing about advertising, getting close to your customers and staying close to your customers, your results are a lot more predictable. They're a lot more, you know, it's a lot cheaper to produce ads and run advertising, and your results are better.
- [08:35]
Kyle Reed
So sounds like just that the first start starting point for so many people is they've got to get their messaging right. Yeah, it's kind of that, you know, everything and everything, but nothing is changing in the sense of like, that's proven, that's not going anywhere. Most people skip that because like you said, it's hard. And it is hard.
- [08:51]
Merab Reza
Yeah.
- [08:51]
Kyle Reed
But to have a successful campaign, you got to start there. That's that absolute macro.
- [08:56]
Merab Reza
Yeah.
- [08:56]
Kyle Reed
If you don't get this right, then it doesn't matter. Your strategy, your ab testing, your audience you create, you've got to get that right.
- [09:03]
Merab Reza
Right. And, you know, meta, they have like this message that they're really pushing, and that is your creative is your targeting. You know, it's not about targeting behaviors and interests and all of these things like before for a couple of reasons. The first reason is because meta is better at figuring out who the right audience is for the creatives that you produce. And the second reason is that, you know, using behavior, targeting, interest, targeting, all of that stuff, the things that made those parts of meta ads so powerful before, that's going away with the introduction of, you know, privacy and our ability to not track people with cookies and things like that. So creative is doing the heavy lifting of, of the targeting. But in this, there's a confusion Right. Like a lot of people think that that means, oh, I need a video, I need a carousel, I need an image, I need a gif that's under 10 seconds so that it loops. Unfortunately, that's not what, what it means. Like no one's going to buy from you because you have a carousel ad. Right. When, when you say creative is the new targeting, it's that message in your creative that's the new targeting. That, that message that's going to make people think like, oh, they understand me.
- [10:17]
Kyle Reed
Yeah, yeah. How do people do that? You know, because that, that's where my brain goes first, is what ad did we produce? You know, what did we use the latest tactics of? Because carousels are really working right now on Instagram. Yeah. And so, but what I'm hearing you say is really the words are far more valuable than the, you know, maybe the output of the creative.
- [10:39]
Merab Reza
Absolutely.
- [10:39]
Kyle Reed
What are some things you're seeing people do really well with that and kind of some tactics you see there?
- [10:44]
Merab Reza
Well, I would say like, you know, I don't want to communicate that it's not important to test different creative types like videos and images and carousels and things like that. But it's not what's going to make you successful that can improve results for you incrementally and, you know, give you the opportunity for success, like because you're showing up on more placements and more types of ads and things like that. But that messaging is, is, is, is the most important part. And I would say, like to create this type of process and growth and approach to the, like the micro level of marketing. I would say, like, there are three really important things.
- [11:28]
Kyle Reed
Yeah, let's talk about those. I think that's great. Why don't we start? I'd love to dive into the micro level that you're talk. What's the first one that you've kind of seen?
- [11:36]
Merab Reza
I would say the first thing that brands need to get right, and most brands aren't getting this correct, is understanding from a fundamental perspective that the hardest part of meta advertising, the most time consuming part, and the most expensive part of meta advertising is creating enough ads that will drive the majority of the performance in the ad account and creating those ads at breakneck speed and volume to keep up with the algorithm and the audience.
- [12:12]
Kyle Reed
Okay, can we define one thing before we keep going forward? Sure. When you say ad, are you talking about. Because we kind of talked earlier about the creative in the Sense of Carousel, 15 second video, GIF or whatever it may be for you when you Say, not creating enough ads. What do you mean by ads?
- [12:30]
Merab Reza
By ads I mean all of the above. Okay, so it could be one, you know, you can have five ads where they all use the same image but different headlines. You can have 10 more ads that use the same headlines but different images. So it's testing all of those things. I'll share like a eye watering statistic with you. And I think this is one we talked about offline. On average, what the data shows is that for every $1 million of ad spend on Meta, you need between 300 to 500 creatives, 300 to 500 ads.
- [13:10]
Kyle Reed
And most people are lucky if you have three to five.
- [13:12]
Merab Reza
Exactly. Most brands aren't even getting anywhere near that number. Right. To create efficiency in the ad account, here's something more eye watering. Out of those 3 to 500 ads, only 20 to 30 of those ads are actually going to win. Only 20 to 30 of those ads are going to drive 90% of the performance. The good performance in the ad account. Yeah, that's like, I don't know, that's like a less than 10% success rate. Right. So the, the next problem that we come across is how do we do this at scale and are we sure to, you know, in our approach to create efficiency in the ad account, are we creating inefficiency somewhere else? For example, to create three to 500 ads for every million dollars and some brands spend a million dollars in a week, some brands spend a million dollars in a month or in a year. Imagine how many copywriters you're going to need. Imagine how many designers you're going to need, how many video editors you're going to need, how many people you're going to need to up how many media buyers and agencies you're going to need to run those ads, how long the approval process is going to be to get these ads through the pipeline of this person needs to review it first, then this person needs to sign off on it and then, then we get and launch it. And then how many data analysts are you going to need to actually report back to you and tell you which one worked, why it worked, how it worked, et cetera, and where it worked, for example. Right. So a lot of brands then who are playing this game, they're a lot of times trading efficiency in one area.
- [15:02]
Kyle Reed
For another area, which makes sense. Yeah, I could see why they do that. What are some ways, I'd love to keep going on this cause what are some ways people can, you know, if I'm sitting here listening to this. And let's say I have a team of three and my ad budgets may be for the year 10k and I'm playing off your percentages. Okay, maybe I can't make 300 creatives, but I could make 30. What are some ways people can do that that you found that work really well? Maybe they don't have that big of a team. They can move fast, they have that skill going for them, but they cannot create that much. What are some things they can do?
- [15:36]
Merab Reza
Okay, so what's happening right now is that these brands that had hundreds of people to work on this entire process, they are now downsizing that team from hundreds to maybe a dozen.
- [15:52]
Kyle Reed
Yeah, because of AI.
- [15:53]
Merab Reza
Because of AI. And also because of AI, a team of three can now compete more fairly against these large brands. So one thing I think, another thing to like, think about when it comes to meta ads is Google. For example, when someone searches baby shoes, you're going to show up in a search result in Google Ads next to other brands that sell baby shoes. So those are your competitors and those are the ones you gotta worry about. But on meta, if you are selling baby shoes, your competitor is Four Seasons Hotel, your competitor is the Michelin star restaurant in your town, your competitor is Ford or Mercedes, because your ads are being displayed right next to theirs, right before theirs or right after theirs. And. And your ad is entering into a competitive auction for the same audience between all of these other advertisers. So you don't have to create ads that are better than your competitors. You have to create ads that are on par with the best advertisers on meta. That's the game, right? And AI. And this really comes into like the next thing that we said we wanted to talk about, how can AI help you get better insights, get to those insights faster, and really shorten that creative cycle that you need to create when it comes to these AI tools. Right. There's a common saying that AI isn't going to take your job. Someone using AI is going to take your job. I actually think you have to go one step further.
- [17:46]
Kyle Reed
Okay.
- [17:47]
Merab Reza
Someone with AI isn't going to take your job. Someone who knows how to engineer prompts with AI is going to take your job.
- [17:54]
Kyle Reed
Interesting. Yeah.
- [17:54]
Merab Reza
Right?
- [17:55]
Kyle Reed
Yeah.
- [17:55]
Merab Reza
So before, what did we have to do in this very exhaustive creative process? A creative strategist would have to go to all competitor websites, go through all of the reviews on their on their website, one by one, mine the information on their mind, the insights, go manually, search YouTube videos, talking about these products or categories or reviews. Look at the comment section one by one. Go to Amazon, read reviews one by one. Go to each and every single blog forum, Reddit, and read all of these things in a manual process. Right now, with AI deep research and complex prompt engineering, you can do all of that research in 15 to 20 minutes. And you can do that as often as you'd like. And you can use these tools to scrape YouTube videos, comment sections, reviews, blogs, Reddit, and you can ask these tools to tell you what are the most common problems my customers are talking about? What is the most frustrating part, in their own language, of dealing with these problems? How, how do these problems manifest in their lives? When do these problems come up? You know, what kind of vivid and emotional language are they using to describe these problems? What used to take weeks and a lot of people. Yeah, and a lot of people. Now, one creative strategist can do in 15, 20, 30 minutes max. And they can do that as often as they need. And this is now the framework, the foundation for your creative strategy and process. You can use all of these research tools to create ads at scale, test these messages quickly, come back and tell AI like, you know, a lot of people are using AI by just giving it prompts. But then when you get data, when you get, when you start seeing what's working and what's not working, you can give AI a prompt, then you can give it context, then you can give it education. This is what I tried. This is what worked. This is what it didn't work. And then you can give it examples. Here's an example of an exact ad that worked. This is why it worked. This is one that didn't work, and this is why it didn't work. And a lot of times what I've seen is you get much better results by giving it good examples and explaining why it worked than bad examples and why it didn't work. And now you are like, you can create these ads at speed and test at speed.
- [20:26]
Kyle Reed
Yeah. And that's how you then, as you said earlier, that's how you compete with the Fords and the Four Seasons. Absolutely. Know Pampers, all the ads that you're going up against. Because, you know, the, the advantage they had was, was money. You know, they had money to, to push that through. But now you have an opportunity to kind of, with some strategic thinking, pull that through. But you got to. I want to go back to what you said earlier, because I think you, you nailed it. It's. You have to start, though, with this foundation. Nail your, your Your, your message.
- [20:57]
Merab Reza
Yes, yes.
- [20:58]
Kyle Reed
Which, which is so huge. And I love, you know, you and I share in common that we're big story brand people and use that framework. And so that's a great place for so many people to start. I'd be remiss if I didn't say checking out StoryBrand AI to help you do that. But I think that's so important. I don't want to skip by that, but that you've kind of opened my eyes a little bit to where it kind of at times feels a little bit like ah, like I just, I'm going to run a couple ads. They didn't work. I don't have a videographer. I don't, you know, I don't, I can't do all these things. But really what I'm hearing you say is actually the playing field is being leveled because with some strategic thinking on the front end with getting your words right.
- [21:41]
Merab Reza
Yes.
- [21:41]
Kyle Reed
And then using AI to create those 30 to 50 ads, up to 100, testing them quickly and then coming right back and tweaking and then it sounds like, correct me if I'm wrong, once you nail a couple ads, that's when you pour the gasoline.
- [21:56]
Merab Reza
Yes. And also Kyle, the, the power of this process and this creative strategy. Strategy process is that before when you had when brands have to create 3 to 500 ads to find the 20 to 30 that were going to scale the account and drive all the positive performance in the account, that was because they weren't doing the correct and proper research. But if you are able to use these tool, you can create more efficiency and you don't have to trade efficiency, time and money efficiency in one place for another place. Right.
- [22:32]
Kyle Reed
I see what you're saying.
- [22:33]
Merab Reza
So with this research you can cut down the people you need, the time you need and the number of ads you need to get to the right insights and test the right ads.
- [22:43]
Kyle Reed
So it's almost like. Okay, so I made the mistake of assuming, and maybe I'm assuming here. When you were talking earlier about that stat of having to create 3 to 500 ads, it wasn't because that's what it needs to be successful. It's they didn't know it worked.
- [22:56]
Merab Reza
Right.
- [22:56]
Kyle Reed
They were throwing.
- [22:57]
Merab Reza
Yes.
- [22:58]
Kyle Reed
All this stuff at the wall because.
- [23:00]
Merab Reza
They ignore that nothing part of marketing.
- [23:02]
Kyle Reed
Okay. Because I think if someone listening to this, they could go, oh my goodness, that's so much work.
- [23:07]
Merab Reza
Yeah.
- [23:08]
Kyle Reed
But really what I hear you saying, your thesis in a lot of this is when you nail the beginning.
- [23:13]
Merab Reza
Yes.
- [23:14]
Kyle Reed
You, you cut down on the having to create three to five hundred ads.
- [23:17]
Merab Reza
Yes.
- [23:18]
Kyle Reed
When you nail that, then when you move that into step two for that and that's using AI to clarify what's working, what's not, then you can go now to the next step and that is more push that through. Okay, that's a really good distinction because yeah, I was like, man, that's a lot of ad creative.
- [23:36]
Merab Reza
Yeah. And you don't want to do that, but you don't want to.
- [23:38]
Kyle Reed
To your point, I think that's a really important distinction.
- [23:41]
Merab Reza
And brands moving forward are not going to be doing that. They're not going to be uploading 500 ads for every million dollar ad spend because they're going to, in the best companies are going to enable their creative strategist with the best tools and give them the best training and help them work with the best AI, prompt engineers to get to these insights and these ads that are going to drive all the positive performance in the ad account. Ad account much faster and they're going to create efficiency much more quickly.
- [24:10]
Kyle Reed
Which then you'd hope that then maybe ads start to go down a little bit in pricing and you know, hopefully with some more successful creative, the budgets.
- [24:17]
Merab Reza
Are a little more efficient in Zuckerberg size. I don't think he agrees with you.
- [24:22]
Kyle Reed
Yeah, well, you know, yeah, but I hope that would be the case. Okay, so let's get, let's get even deeper into the micro a little more practical. One of the things you told me was, Kyle, people are making mistakes and how they're using attribution models. Okay, can you talk about that a little bit for people? And is this like, are you talking about like how they're setting them up as far as targeting or like click ads or like. Okay, what do you mean by that?
- [24:47]
Merab Reza
Okay, so there was a gentleman who said a, who said something that became famous and I hope I meet him in the next life because I have some strong words for him, but his. John Wanamaker. Right. So he said that half of my advertising budget is wasted. I just don't know which half. And this quotation has caused people to lose their minds really about attribution and data. Right. And tech companies have never been so happy to provide us with tools that promise to solve our tracking and attribution problems and make our tech stack more complicated. And I would say the result, and you can tell me if you have experience with this, but the result hasn't gotten any better. Attribution hasn't become any more clear and things are still Confusing about attribution.
- [25:42]
Kyle Reed
Absolutely right.
- [25:44]
Merab Reza
So let's think about why that is. There are three most common attribution models. There's last click attribution. This is which ad did my customer click on last right before making a purchase?
- [25:58]
Kyle Reed
Yes.
- [25:59]
Merab Reza
The reason why last click attribution model isn't great is because it doesn't show you which channel or which ad or which message created the customer. Okay, which one created the demand? Right. Then you're like, okay, let's look at first touch attribution model. Then this is the ad or the channel or the placement that created the customer in the first place. Well, first touch attribution model doesn't show you all the touch points that successfully moved that customer down your funnel.
- [26:26]
Kyle Reed
The organic side that all that you can't track.
- [26:29]
Merab Reza
Right. So then they were like, okay, well, we'll invent multi touch attribution for you. The thing about multi touch attribution is that there's an assumption that you can track your customer all over the Internet, which you can't do. It's getting harder and harder to do with privacy getting more restrictive and cookies not being able to track people all over the Internet anymore. And also think about humans. Our customers, they're complex beings. The way they make decisions are. It's not linear, right? They engage with your brand, they talk to a friend, they have coffee with a colleague, they talk to their spouse at night, they call up, you know, other companies, they engage with other brands, they go online to read reviews. We have no idea how they're going to get to that final decision. We don't have a perfect way of predicting and modeling that. How are you going to track all of those things? How are you going to track all of those things? Inside of Google Analytics, Right?
- [27:35]
Kyle Reed
Guessing.
- [27:36]
Merab Reza
Right? Exactly. So there's this fallacy that it is possible to perfectly track my customers all over the Internet, online, offline, in coffee shops, in boardrooms, in meetings, in contentious conversations, back and forth. Should we get the software? Should we not get the software? You know, I talked to this friend and they said that they didn't like the software at this. We can't track all that. Right? But I'll, I'll say, like how I guess one type of business can look at attribution. Say your brand is doing anywhere from 10 to 15, 50 million in revenue. Right? The way you should be thinking about marketing is my goal is new customer acquisition. My goal is to grow new customer acquisition. And you should be thinking about which strategies you're going to use to grow New customer growth. And what are the different methods you're going to test to do that in the most efficient way possible? And the thinking is if I do this, then the result should be that.
- [28:50]
Kyle Reed
Okay.
- [28:50]
Merab Reza
And then you use your tools to see whether your strategy was effective and whether your assumptions were correct.
- [28:58]
Kyle Reed
Yeah.
- [28:59]
Merab Reza
If it wasn't correct, then you go and you have to test something else. You know, attribution tools aren't going to tell you what to do.
- [29:06]
Kyle Reed
It's impossible, like you said, to track all the touch points of the brand. So to solve that problem for most brands, the best thing they can do is focus on new customer acquisition. That is the strategy they should live with. And when you do that, then you kind of solve that problem of that debate in the back room of like, well, when did they, you know, when did they actually see this ad or when did they choose. It's really. No, it's all about the, the, the strategies that, that brands, anyone listening to this should be focusing on right now is new customer acquisition.
- [29:34]
Merab Reza
Yep.
- [29:35]
Kyle Reed
And inside of that, the content they create, the, whether it be organic or paid, the strategy with their words, with anything is that new customer acquisition. That's the focus and that's the strategy they need to be doing.
- [29:47]
Merab Reza
Yes. And like first, let's say in order to create that strategy, test one, you know, change one big thing at a time.
- [29:56]
Kyle Reed
Okay.
- [29:57]
Merab Reza
Right. Don't test multiple variables at the same time. Test one thing at a time. Measure what impact that had on new customer acquisition and then track to make sure that your CAC or your customer acquisition cost to your average order value ratio is acceptable. So you know, you can't acquire customers at any and at, at any price. Right. At there's a point at, at which, when it becomes unprofitable. So that's why you need to track the CAC to AOV ratio. So yeah, that, that is a really good process. And I'm not saying you shouldn't use attribution models. You should use all of them.
- [30:37]
Kyle Reed
Yeah.
- [30:38]
Merab Reza
To give you insight. But you can't make the final decisions based on last touch, first touch or multi touch. If you only focus on last touch, then you're missing all those other touch points that helped someone make the decision and finally click an ad after they've had all their conversations to finally create a sale. Right. That probably wasn't even the most effective ad. That's just the last one they clicked on.
- [31:07]
Kyle Reed
Well, you know, in the way we talk about around here, Don talks about this a lot about the, you know, the Messaging campaign. And there's. There's kind of this model he's been talking about a lot lately is there's the stairs, the porch, and the door. Most people focus on that door.
- [31:20]
Merab Reza
Yes.
- [31:20]
Kyle Reed
That. That sale, but they don't do very well focusing on the stairs. That gets them onto the porch.
- [31:26]
Merab Reza
Yeah.
- [31:26]
Kyle Reed
You know, and so he talks about inside of that as the curiosity. The stairs of the curiosity. And so that fits kind of right into what you're saying, is you got to nail that curiosity, which then pulls them in as a new customer, which then moves them a little bit to enlightenment.
- [31:39]
Merab Reza
Yeah.
- [31:39]
Kyle Reed
And then hopefully gets them through the door. Yeah, I'd love to talk. You know, this is the why that Worked podcast. And so, you know, what are you seeing now with messaging? We focus a lot on messaging. Brands that are doing it well. The words they use to message. You mentioned earlier at the beginning of the podcast that getting them your words. Right. The video plays a part of it. But then getting those things right. Who's doing this well right now?
- [32:04]
Merab Reza
Which advertisers are doing it well or.
- [32:06]
Kyle Reed
Brands that you've seen out there?
- [32:08]
Merab Reza
I actually think that some brands that are really doing it well, they're really scrappy. I'll give you some industries that I think who are doing it well. Okay, so there are E commerce brands who are doing it well. There are meal prep plans, meal prep companies. They're actually doing this really well. And when I say E commerce, it ranges all, all over the place. And it's like anywhere from organic bathrobes to, you know, like a massage gun. But, like, what I see is that companies that are like, we don't have a lot of margin to play with. We don't have, you know, huge investments. You know, we're not backed by a large investment firm. Those scrappy companies have figured this process out the best. I. I hesitate to name specific brands because you may go look at the ads of that brand this month, and they may not be good.
- [33:09]
Kyle Reed
Yeah, I get it.
- [33:10]
Merab Reza
Just be like, hey, what, a year from now?
- [33:12]
Kyle Reed
You know?
- [33:12]
Merab Reza
Right. But, you know, the bigger brands, like the really big ones, they aren't always the best examples because in order to test something, like the red tape that, you know, I've seen, like the red tape you have to go through too.
- [33:26]
Kyle Reed
Yes.
- [33:27]
Merab Reza
To, to. To test things. It's impossible, like, at the very end, like, you know, a brand manager can come in and be like, oh, I don't think, you know, that reflects our brand in, in the way that we want. But what's what these other companies that are able to be scrappy, what they're able to do is they're able to test everything and they're able to get to. They have to find out these shortcuts to get to insights faster and get. And get better insights and test as fast as possible.
- [33:57]
Kyle Reed
Yeah. So when you meet with clients, do you have a framework you kind of walk them through that you'd be willing to share with us here? Kind of from the, you know, that beginning part of like getting your words right, you know, getting that to kind of the testing side to the. To the. After you testing, what are we making? I love that word scrappy. You kind of have a framework you walk people through or a process.
- [34:17]
Merab Reza
Yeah, of course. So the way our agency works is usually we will have to show up to a call with a lot of that information ready before they hire us. So that involves doing an audit of what they've done and what they've tried, what worked and what didn't work. If there were things that work really well, we want to figure out how can we lean more in that direction? And that's when we use up these deep research tools, our understanding of psychology and buyer behavior and things like that, to see how can we lean more into this direction. What are some different use cases that we can try? Like, one funny thing is like, okay, there was this soap product, and we figured out that people weren't using this soap on the part of their body that this brand was advertising, they were actually using it on other parts as well. So we were able to say, that's.
- [35:19]
Kyle Reed
A good way of describing it.
- [35:20]
Merab Reza
Right. And so we were able to say, like, this doesn't only work on this part. I also use it for this part too. And like, that was a new message that we were able to find and grow the results with. And then if they don't have a great process for finding out what has worked and what hasn't worked in the past, then what we just talked about is where we start and we say we're going to go and do the research first. Now, the amazing thing, Kyle, is that what the research that used to take us two weeks to do, we can do that research in two days and come back to the client, be like, this is what we found. This is who your customers are. This is what their problem is. This is why that problem is a lot worse than you even realized for them. Here's how they describe that problem in their own words. Here's some emotional and, yes, emotional language that. That they use to talk about those problems using that data. These are the types of campaigns we would create. These are the ones that we would put head to head against each other to see which one is the winner. Like, we just show them the entire path.
- [36:29]
Kyle Reed
That's great. Yeah. I love to. I think that in the age of AI, you know, you hear Zuckerberg come out and talk about, we're going to solve everything for you. You just give us the money, we'll do the rest. It's kind of like, oh, boy. I still think what's so important and you're nailing it, is the words that we use. And Don says this a lot. Words matter. If you don't get those right, it just doesn't matter how you create anything. You have the best commercial shoot you possibly can. If the words that you're saying or the words you're putting on the screen aren't right, it doesn't matter. And I think that's something that as a listener and myself listening to our conversation, I'm just drawn back to what is working with ads. It's getting that foundational principle right of your marketing of the story. Brand framework is so helpful here, you know, leading with that problem. And I'd love to, from what you're discussing about coming in and kind of figuring out really, I guess I think so many people, when they're working on ads, they create something. They don't do a ton of customer research or they hire an agency who they can just give a budget to. Hey, we want to run these four ads. Here's the. It's just, here you go. And I love how you're taking that kind of hands on approach, going, I want to partner with you on this. I want to be strategic about this. I want to start with customer acquisition. I want to figure these things out. I think that's something for anybody listening to us, that's super important. As a takeaway.
- [37:53]
Merab Reza
Yeah.
- [37:53]
Kyle Reed
From this conversation. Yeah. Is it super easy to just kind of sit back and just kind of run the same thing or just try something? It's like, no. There's strategy that you can go out and implement. There's tools out there to use that I just think are massively underutilized because people are going to do it and that's your competitive advantage. And the playing field is leveled because of AI and it's not a threat towards us. It's a help to help us optimize, go faster. In the last couple of minutes here, we've been talking about a lot lately on this podcast about just messaging, getting your messaging right, what's working, what's not, what are you seeing? Just practically speaking, some strategies that people are using that are maybe underutilized, maybe even around that new customer acquisition. You know, I know for a while it was really big on post a lot of organic socials. See one that pops on Instagram or Facebook and then put money behind that. Are there some tactical things you're noticing in the ad space that people could maybe hear that and go try if they're like, I want to go after new customer acquisition. Get scrappy.
- [38:58]
Merab Reza
Yeah. You know, maybe one thing we can do is I can share my favorite prompts. Oh, that would give AI to go ahead and do this research for your brand, no matter what it is. The prompts that will scrape every relevant video forum, Reddit, blog post, review site, et cetera. I would say start there and hear in your customer's own words how they are talking about the problem you're trying to solve. Things that they've tried before that didn't work. What felt like a waste of money. What caused them to finally say out loud that, I can't deal with this problem anymore. I need to do something about it. Let's figure out what those things are. And before the process to get to that was so complex and difficult. It's not anymore. So let's do that. Let's share these prompts so that everybody can use it and create better ads, not just for the brands, but for people. I mean, we don't want to be, you know, inundated with irrelevant ads that are boring that, you know, say the same thing and it's just dross. And you know, the thing about, like, what you were talking about with what Mark said is that, you know, just our AI is going to figure out your ads for you. Great. I know he has a product to sell, and in doing so, what he has to figure out is how do I get people, how do I remove all the barriers for people to spend money on this platform? So let's figure out a way where they don't need a copywriter anymore. Let's figure out a way they don't need a designer anymore. Let's create an AI and help them do all this so that they can spend more money on this platform.
- [40:50]
Donald Miller
Great.
- [40:51]
Merab Reza
What do you think is going to happen? What's going to happen is that this AI, if you are shoe brand A, like, and then they're shoe brand B and shoe brand C and def.
- [41:06]
Kyle Reed
Yeah.
- [41:07]
Merab Reza
What. How are these AI? How is this AI going to differentiate these ads for all of these different brands. So you're going to have a lot of copycat and lookalike marketing, which no one is going to like. And one approach he's always had, Mark, is he's always tried to remove the human element. Let's just live in the metaverse. Let's just use AI. Let's create ads where human involvement is not needed. And that has never worked. You know, just look at how he doesn't talk about the metaverse anymore. Look at how big of a hit the company took when he announced, you know, meta and the metaverse and things like that. You can't remove the human element. You can't remove your customers. You can't go away from the nothing part of marketing, where, you know, in the beginning we said today in marketing, everything's changing. Everything and nothing is changing. You can't remove the nothing part. Getting close to your customer. Staying close to your customers. The brands that have always done this the best Dove png, Unilever, through all of the marketing transformations and technology transformations that they've lived through and stayed at the top during all of those transformations, they were able to do so because they know who their customers are. They get close to their customers, and then they stay close to their customers because their customers change. You know, so you can't, you can't not do that, and you can't solve that by giving the job to an AI. You need to just use AI to help you get to your customers faster. You need to help use AI to help you get better insights faster so you can do more creative strategy.
- [42:54]
Kyle Reed
So good. That's so good. I couldn't be more right. You know, just using that as a tool to get there. You mentioned sharing some of that prompts. You have some. Like, where could. If someone was like, I want to go do this, what would a prompt be that they could. Sure.
- [43:09]
Merab Reza
Oh, actually, these prompts, I, I was thinking somewhere. Yes. I was saying maybe we can put them in the show notes or something like do that.
- [43:17]
Kyle Reed
Yeah, we will put those. Because I think that would be an awesome tool. And thank you for offering.
- [43:21]
Merab Reza
Absolutely.
- [43:22]
Kyle Reed
Put those in the show notes. You can go find those.
- [43:23]
Merab Reza
Yes, please use them. I mean, these prompts took, you know, I would say hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars to like.
- [43:32]
Kyle Reed
Just keep them, you know, figure out. Awesome.
- [43:34]
Merab Reza
Yeah.
- [43:34]
Kyle Reed
Tell me where people can connect with you online.
- [43:37]
Merab Reza
Well, we have our website, which is atlantica.com and then the only social media I kind of use is LinkedIn Yeah. Yeah, great.
- [43:46]
Kyle Reed
Find you there. Yeah. Atlantica. Go online, check them out and then, yeah, go to the show notes. You can get these prompts and, and find a place to connect with Marab online. Man, thank you so much for coming here.
- [43:57]
Merab Reza
Thank you.
- [43:58]
Kyle Reed
This is super valuable. I really think this is something people should not skip over. This is important. Don't feel overwhelmed by Facebook ads. There's actually, it's, it's been that quote at the beginning, everything's changing, but nothing's changing. That's so true. And you can level the playing field for your business. Whether you're a, you know, 50 person business or a five person business, you can level the playing field and compete and grow and help so many people. So thanks for joining us.
- [44:24]
Merab Reza
Thank you.
- [44:26]
Bobby Richards
Thanks for listening to the StoryBrand podcast. No matter where you are in your marketing and messaging journey, get the tools, the training and the support you need to start clarifying that message@storybrand.com and don't forget to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode. And if you're watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and then leave a comment letting us know what resonated with you and what we can unpack to help your business grow in a future episode. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next week.