Episode 84: What Keeping Your Facebook Ads Running 24/7 Does for Your Business with Zach Spuckler

Monica Froese [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the Empowered Business Podcast where strategy needs action. I’m Monica Froese, and I’m here to help you create, sell, and scale digital products the smart way using AI and proven strategies to build a sustainable, profitable business. If you’re ready to turn your expertise into digital products that sell and eventually grow into a thriving digital shop, you’re in the right place. Each week, I break down real world tactics, unfiltered insights, and bold business moves. Because building a digital product business should be sustainable, scalable, and designed for long term success. Let’s ditch the fluff, leverage AI to work smarter, and turn your expertise into a thriving digital empire on your terms. Let’s get started. Welcome back to the Empowered Business podcast, episode 84, where I have one of my favorite people to learn from online on the podcast.

Monica Froese [00:00:55]:
I have Zach Spuckler. I had the privilege of meeting Zach last year at the Taylor Swift ERAS tour, and we hit it off. And he is my go to person for Facebook ads, and I am diving back into Facebook and Instagram ads. I have mentioned before that basically my business income took a nosedive because I turned off all of my lead gen ads when I was going through a really rough period at the end of twenty twenty three and for most of 2024. And now I am very heavily back into it, and I want to learn from no one other than Zach. He is the very best at this, and he’s also hosting a live challenge to help you get your list building ads up starting on April 28. And we’re going to link to it in the show notes, but I it’s a $25 challenge. I am going to be in there with you.

Monica Froese [00:01:45]:
It’s very action oriented and it’s only $25 So if you go to monicafroese.com/zach, which is our affiliate link for it, you can sign up and join me inside. Okay. So before we kick off, I just wanna tell you a little bit about Zach. Zach Spuckler is the founder of Heart, Soul, and Hustle and the host of the Not Your Average online marketing podcast with over 500,000 downloads. As a marketing strategist and launch expert, he’s helped tens of thousands of entrepreneurs scale their businesses with proven results driven strategies. With a knack for crafting high converting challenge launches, evergreen sales systems, and profitable paid ad strategies, Zach has generated millions in revenue for both himself and his client. Through his consultancy, agency, and membership, Zach has worked with brands and entrepreneurs at all levels, whether they’re launching for the first time or optimizing 7 figure launches and funnels. He’s well known for his transparent marketing reports and updates and has a deep understanding of what truly moves the needle in digital marketing from his decade in online business.

Monica Froese [00:02:49]:
And truly, he is one of the most ethical people too that you can learn from out there. So let’s dive into the episode and hear all about Facebook ads. Zach, welcome to the Empowered Business Podcast.

Zach Spuckler [00:03:03]:
Thank you so much for having me.

Monica Froese [00:03:04]:
So Zach and I got to meet in person last August at the Taylor Swift ERAS tour. He got to sit next to my daughter and her crazy dance moves and stuff. I’m so excited that we are able to connect on the podcast because we’re going to be talking about a topic that I am very passionate about right now, which is Facebook ads. And you are my go to now for this. So before we dive into that, I always like to ask everyone to tell us about themselves and their entrepreneur journey.

Zach Spuckler [00:03:31]:
Oh, well, thank you so much for having me. Like you said, my name is Zach. Our company is Heart, Soul, and Hustle, and we are a small education and consultancy company and agency for our Facebook and Instagram ad strategy. And so what that really means is we have three arms of the business. We have our agency, which is we take on about 10 to 15 clients where we manage ads for them. We have our education side, which is our membership where we basically do it in bulk and mass. We help lots of people. We work with a small team that helps us manage the Facebook group and answer questions, copy, creative, ad strategy, all that good stuff.

Zach Spuckler [00:04:03]:
And then there’s kind of like this middle ground, which is we do some consulting with clients. So that is the business at a high level. As far as how I got into it, it’s really funny. I started back in 2014 with a vegan food blog, and I was like, this is so fun. I’m not vegan anymore. Please don’t be mad at me if you are. But I started a vegan food blog, and what ended up happening was in about six months, we went from zero to 250,000 views a month on the blog. And what I realized after about six months, I was working with a blog coach, and I was starting to do webinars and even a little bit of Facebook ads for that business.

Zach Spuckler [00:04:36]:
And I was like, I’m way more into the marketing than than I think to the vegan food. I still love vegan food. Like, I’m always down for an impossible burger. But I was like, I’m really loving the numbers and the metrics and the tracking and the marketing. And so I kinda started to dabble at that time. Periscope was really big. Periscope. The OG Facebook Live, which, like, that’s not even really a thing anymore.

Zach Spuckler [00:04:58]:
So it’s like the it’s evolving so fast. But, basically, you would go live on your phone. It was a Twitter it wasn’t even Twitter based at that time, but it became a Twitter based app. And you would just, like, live stream to people. We grew that to about 20,000 followers, and people were like, what do you do?

Monica Froese [00:05:13]:
And I

Zach Spuckler [00:05:13]:
was like, we have a vegan food blog, but really, I’m loving running Facebook ads. We ended up getting a few clients from that, and then people were like, how are you getting these clients from Periscope? So we made, like, a little Periscope course. We took that to 6 figures, and then I was like, okay. Great. I have, like, proof of concept that you can advertise and market these courses. We did our Facebook ads course. We took that to a couple a multiple 6 figure mark. What I really love doing.

Zach Spuckler [00:05:37]:
For us, it is, like, foundationally Facebook and Instagram ads. I am ironically not a big social media person. I don’t love social media. In terms of, like, feeling beholden time in a post content, when we’re in a launch or a promotion, I, like, suck it up and do it. But to be honest, I’m not on social media that much other than I am in the Taylor Swift Vault Facebook group. I don’t know if you’re in it. It’s so good. There’s, like, half a million members, and they just talk about all the theories and the speculations, and I’m always watching for it.

Zach Spuckler [00:06:06]:
Like, it’s a really good

Monica Froese [00:06:07]:
Now I’m going to be.

Zach Spuckler [00:06:08]:
So all of that to say where I ended up now is we just leverage Facebook and Instagram ads because I am a wildly inconsistent person. I want to release a weekly podcast. I want to be on YouTube every week, and I want to post on social media. But the reality is I just don’t do it. But Facebook and Instagram ads are always running for me. So what I will say is over the past I would say about eighteen months, like, we’ve really dialed in. There have been less than one in fifty days where we don’t actively have a Facebook ad running, and those days would be, like, transition days moving from launch to evergreen or evergreen back to launch. So that’s how we landed here.

Monica Froese [00:06:44]:
Alright. So I find it so fascinating how similar so many of our stories are when we’ve been on the Internet for over a decade. The amount of people that because my blog started. We we all start with the blog. Mine’s the reason I’m blog, And mine was in 02/2013. And one of the things I find so funny, and I’m so glad you touched on it, was so many people because of the way the world is today with social media and the rise of influencers and TikTok and all that, people assume that I am, like, a slave to social media. I’m like, I grew a multimillion dollar business without doing a single dancing reel. I can’t stand social media.

Monica Froese [00:07:18]:
I even got to the point where I felt like it hijacked my entire personal fee, like my f Facebook and my Insta I went back to regularly posting on my private Instagram and using that because I just wanted to be, like, an individual in the world that wasn’t constantly happened to be this face of a brand.

Zach Spuckler [00:07:35]:
Yes. 100%. And I think a lot of us started with blogs. Like you said, we’ve been online for more than a decade because when we started, there wasn’t live video. This is really dating you. But if you’re a nerd, you’ll appreciate this. There wasn’t even an ads manager. There was, like, you either ran a Facebook ad or you were in what was called the power editor.

Zach Spuckler [00:07:53]:
Like, I don’t even know the last time I’ve heard that. But like you said, they grow and evolve. You didn’t have to be on social media to get really great traffic, and we got spoiled. And so now we’re like, well, I’m not doing that. We did a reel four years ago. It was literally this seven second reel back when voice over reels were a big thing. Like, you would lip sync whatever you wanna call it. Those are like, people don’t even really do that anymore.

Zach Spuckler [00:08:14]:
But I just did this Beyonce sound bite that was, like, five seconds long, 1,200,000 views. And what happened? We got 2,000 followers and no sales from it, and and then it messed up my algorithm for, like, three weeks. So, yeah, there’s just all of that to say, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I don’t wanna be beholden to social media to grow my business.

Monica Froese [00:08:33]:
When TikTok did shut down for the day that it shut down, I felt so bad. Because I I take TikTok, and I tell people all the time, listen. Do I think I could make a lot of money on TikTok? Because I know how to get people off platform and to buy for me. Absolutely. But it’s, like, my piece of the Internet for me to just consume in my in my happy place while my kids are safe.

Zach Spuckler [00:08:52]:
TikTok is for me to consume, not produce.

Monica Froese [00:08:54]:
But I can tell you the amount of times that I see these influencers. I’m like, oh my gosh, I could teach you to make so much more money than you’re making. The amount of times I’m trying to go deeper with an influencer and I want to work with them and they hook me and then there’s nothing. And I’m like, ah, it kills me. So the interesting thing here is we basically had very similar trajectories. You went Facebook, Instagram ads. I went heavily into teaching Pinterest advertising, did that for four years. The concepts are very similar.

Monica Froese [00:09:23]:
I always tell people, people who started with Facebook ads and tried to come to Pinterest ads struggled so

Zach Spuckler [00:09:28]:
Football game.

Monica Froese [00:09:29]:
But when you went from Pinterest to Facebook, it was a lot easier for people.

Zach Spuckler [00:09:33]:
Way easier.

Monica Froese [00:09:34]:
It was always a very fascinating thing for me to watch. That being said, I always while I taught Pinterest advertising, knew it like the back of my hand, I always always had Facebook and Instagram ads running. The biggest mistake I made, I published a podcast. We brought this back a couple weeks ago and we’re we’ve been regular, knock on wood. I did, like, my 12 lessons of online like, 12 lessons in twelve years of online business.

Zach Spuckler [00:09:56]:
I love that.

Monica Froese [00:09:57]:
And one of them was when my divorce started in 02/2023 and we were having a record year that year. So of course, everything’s gotta come crashing down in your personal life when that’s happening. And one of the things I said was in hindsight, looking at numbers and realizing what happened was I didn’t even realize at the time, because it was just there was so much in my brain. I turned off my ads and that I’d never been I I always had paid ads in my business running to some degree. Of course, it would ebbed and flowed with how much money I was spending. But in mid two thousand twenty three, I turned them off. And it became very apparent to me by mid twenty twenty four that we had a lead gen problem. Yeah.

Monica Froese [00:10:35]:
And it’s so funny because I I’m it’s not like I’m not aware, but, you know, when you’re going through a lot in your life, I guess I just missed it. And when I was looking at the data and my numbers and where I was spending money, I realized, wow, Turning off those ads for that year, I’m still recovering from it.

Zach Spuckler [00:10:53]:
Yes. That is so interesting that you bring that up because we literally wrote a blog this morning that is, like we call it, like, the strategic art of losing money, and it’s, like, such an interesting concept that you’re bringing up, which is a lot of times when we work with creators, what they realize or don’t realize, I should say, is, like, their audience is growing all the time a lot of times because of Facebook. And so when they’re seeing, like, ebbs and flows or a life change happens or they pivot products, the instinct is, like, I should restrict or constrict my expenses or, like, I should just turn off ads and I can come back to them. But we kind of say it’s like this invisible effect because what most people don’t realize is, especially, like, in 2025 and beyond, you used to be able to go dollar in for dollar out strategy. That’s what we called it. Right? So it’s like you put a dollar in, you get $2 out. You’d run them through your webinar funnel or your challenge funnel or your launch funnel. It’s like, that doesn’t really work the same way it did in 2015 and even 2020 to 2022.

Zach Spuckler [00:11:53]:
We call it the pandemic gold rush. It’s like everyone came online, so there was this new influx of fresh engagement. But what a lot of people don’t realize is you if you look at your ads day to day, you may be like, they’re not doing much, but there’s really three layers to your ads. There’s the immediate return, which is, like, what we traditionally want out of ads. There’s the short term return, which we look at on a quarterly basis. And then there’s the long term effect, which is kind of what you’re saying is, like, you don’t realize that there’s this compounding effect of if you’re spending $5.10, $20 a day, you are reaching new people. You can’t lose money on advertising because you’re not paying for leads, sales, or clicks. You’re paying for an impression.

Zach Spuckler [00:12:35]:
And so we know, like, the money’s in your list. You need to be visible. So your list is growing and you’re paying for visibility, you are unequivocally growing your business. Maybe not dollar in dollar out Monday to Friday, but your business is always growing as a byproduct. We did something similar to you over the last eighteen months. We’ve been so just like we always want ads on. Even if I need to lower the spend, the rule of thumb is, like, I may look at cash flow or liabilities, and I may lower spend, but I will never turn off ads because I can look at my p and l. I can look at my report in quick and, folks, and literally go, the months I spent more on money, I see a direct correlation to an increase in revenue within a sixty to ninety day window.

Monica Froese [00:13:18]:
So to 2024 was like a cliff dive. We went up as high, our highest revenue year, and then 2024 by mid twenty twenty four, it was, like, every month just kept going down. It was, like, panic button. And so but, like, all over my office, I usually wear this shirt. I don’t do failure. And actually my ex husband was the one that kept telling me. He’s like because I was, like, kinda panicking. And he was like, you don’t do failure.

Monica Froese [00:13:43]:
And I’m like, this I’m just gonna accept this. Pretty much almost on the dot, January first of this year, I flipped my mentality and I said, okay, the last two years didn’t exist. I’m just over it. I don’t even wanna talk about it. Like it’s bad juju. It’s staying over there and this is gonna be our year. We’re gonna turn it around. We’re gonna do just everything different.

Monica Froese [00:14:02]:
And the first thing I did was, I decided to embrace AI because I felt like I was getting left behind and I don’t wanna be left behind. And then two was we have to get our lead gen strategy back on the rails. And I listened to a podcast that you put out, and this is what prompted me to ask you to come on to talk about it. Because you did you run a live challenge essentially, like, quarterly. Right? Yep. And I was in your one that you did January. I heard this podcast episode you put out a couple weeks ago where you laid out your strategy, and I was like, this is stuff that is very intuitive to me as well, but yet I was not doing all the things that you were saying that we should do, and I’ve quickly adjusted. Can you tell us what this overarching strategy is?

Zach Spuckler [00:14:46]:
Yes. I was pulling it up because I’m gonna cheat sheet it. But I know what you’re talking about. So the way that we look at Facebook ads is this is like a perfect jumping off point because, like I said, we don’t look at as a on a we even a week to week basis, we will look month to month, but really, I’m looking at quarterly ROI. So my framework is essentially really three to four pieces depending on how you look at it. I think we said four in the podcast, but essentially, we have our list building ads that are always running. And this is the foundation. And I tell everyone, like, whether you have robust funnels or great retargeting or all the stuff that, like, if you are not growing the list, you are not growing the business.

Zach Spuckler [00:15:32]:
If you are not reaching new people, you are not growing your business. Right? So if you’re not growing an audience, you can make an offer to, you are leaving money on the table, like, no bones about it. So our core foundation, the ads that we are always running are list building ads to grow the list. Now the second piece of that, like, I think on the podcast, we called it part two of four, but, like, technically one b, if you will, is we have a tripwire and a sequence that goes out to new subscribers. So as soon as you join our email list, we make you a low ticket offer. Ours is, like, $25 with a $40 average order value. And then if you don’t buy it, you go through a sequence to buy it. If you do buy it, you go through a sequence to join our back end product, which is a membership.

Zach Spuckler [00:16:12]:
We charge $67 a month. Once all of that is running, the second piece is an engagement strategy. We dropped the ball on this one a lot, to be honest, but it is like the most powerful one. And I’m always like, gotta put this back in play. And we typically have it running, I would say, 50% of the time. But, essentially, whether you do this is why I don’t have it running is and we typically use Instagram content, Facebook content, and then a blog or a podcast. But we will take core content. And just to really clarify, core content is anything that speaks to your core messaging, your core products.

Zach Spuckler [00:16:43]:
It could be blog, podcast, video, real Facebook, because it doesn’t really matter, but we run it to all of the people who are joining your list. What we’re essentially doing is creating multichannel omnipresence. Essentially, what it means is you’re now showing up in their inbox, their Facebook, their Instagram. And with some of the Facebook and Instagram ads, you can even be showing up in, like, somebody who messaged me the other day was like, you’re showing up in my mobile game. Like, how are you doing that? And it is through Facebook and Instagram ads, so that’s really cool. And then the fourth piece is retargeting of launches. So, essentially, even though, like and again, if you listen to the podcast, I’m going from memory. I may have positioned a little bit different.

Zach Spuckler [00:17:19]:
But the fourth piece is essentially our launches and our retargeting. So you’re doing this all the time, and it’s kind of like a stack, a stacking strategy, if you will. So you’re always growing the list. You’re always generating some new customers, probably at a slight loss, which is okay because you are then engaging them with content to warm them up. So when, in our case, you do a quarterly challenge, the lead cost is phenomenal. The engagement rate is phenomenal. The conversion rate is phenomenal because what people have been doing historically, which doesn’t always work, learn from history, is they run ads to cold traffic with 80% of their budget to a launch, and now the market is more sophisticated. They don’t trust as easily.

Zach Spuckler [00:17:58]:
What we’ve done is flip that. We spend about 50 to 60% of our budget marketing all of that lead and engagement we’ve generated over the last sixty to ninety days, bringing them into a launch. And then we retarget everyone in that launch to buy our product. That’s your standard launch strategy. There’s kind of like a ancillary piece to that, which is you can also leverage that with an evergreen strategy, and we’ve tested that and had really great results with it. My argument, and this is like, we don’t run our evergreen funnels year round. We run our evergreen funnels at strategic times where they plug into specific content and promotion strategies where we get three, four, five x ROI on our funnel for a four to six week period, which, like, my argument is I’d rather get a four to six x ROI in a short period of time than try to get that, like, one and a half to two x ROI that people are fighting for over a quarter. Does it probably shake out the same? Sure.

Zach Spuckler [00:18:51]:
But it doesn’t require attention, focus, time, team optimization, copy, creative. Over a quarter, it requires it for a four week period. We generate a similar amount of cash, and then you repeat it. Every quarter, you just repeat the process. Grow the list, engage the list, make an offer, evergreen in there if you want to, repeat, and it stacks. So it’s like a staircase because you’re gonna make more money every launch or you make money every launch. You put that into the ad spend, then your lead gen goes up a little, and then your launch goes up a little. And so each time, it just gets a little bit bigger.

Zach Spuckler [00:19:26]:
And bonus I’ll throw this out there, then I’ll stop talking. Bonus is, especially in the b to b space, it can still work for b to c, but especially in the b to b space, what we have found is our affiliate engagement goes up every quarter. So, like, you reach out and we’re like, oh, we’d love to have you on the podcast because we’re putting out podcast content. Now we’re really proactive with affiliate, but we have, like, 35 affiliates for our upcoming promo who have like reached out, filled out a form, said, I wanna promote, I wanna send an email. I wanna tell people about your peer launch because every time you do this, if your launch is good, if your content is good, people then wanna share it. So because they are getting emails from you and gator from you, they’re always thinking about you. They get results with you. Then they wanna share with you.

Zach Spuckler [00:20:14]:
And so there’s also this organic spillover, both organic and affiliate, that is also growing in the background. So it’s just this massive back end compounding effect.

Monica Froese [00:20:25]:
And this is exactly why I struggled so hard in 2024. Yeah. Because what ended up happening then now I recognize I have a lead gen problem. Also going into, like so I was like, I kinda felt like the cards were stacked against me, but I was still, we’re gonna do optimism. And what I have seen so you figure we are four and a half months into me, like real plugged back in, trying, spending the money, using the data. And it was so interesting because we always run a launch the last week in January, but my ramp up time, I couldn’t have all that engaged ads running, you know, like, so we went hard at the the opt in ads to get right into the challenge. And I know historically, the amount of people that have anecdotally just told me, I watched your training six times before I bought. Like, that is overwhelming.

Monica Froese [00:21:15]:
And so I understand that compound effect. So that launch was like, and, of course, now it’s like, you know, that’s that’s a hard one when you’re trying to dig dig yourself out. And I was, like, pretty like, the show up rates were nothing like we were used to. So then I was like, okay. We’re not gonna do a whole entire launch event because we can’t use that much bandwidth if we’re not gonna have the proper ROI at the back. So I really started going. We got new funnels up that we were running just the regular lead gen to the trip wires, the nurture sequence. And then after I listened to your podcast, I was like, well, I’m recording these podcast episodes now, so let’s get that the audiograms out and start doing that.

Monica Froese [00:21:54]:
So we host it. So we wanna get the program on Evergreen and then do another live event. But we’re still we’re in the last like, I’m still doing the curriculum. It’s, like, pulling teeth right now. It’s done.

Zach Spuckler [00:22:07]:
I feel that.

Monica Froese [00:22:08]:
I put it on evergreen till all the curriculum’s done. But what I said was, okay, let’s run. We’re running three webinars. Like, one was three weeks apart, and the next are gonna be two weeks apart. To all these hot people, I participated in some really strategic summit, so they’re new on the list and all these leads coming in from Facebook. Well, our show up rate in the last two live ninety minute webinars. Right? I show up to present for ninety minutes are the highest show up rates we’ve had in two years.

Zach Spuckler [00:22:36]:
Right.

Monica Froese [00:22:36]:
There’s no doubt this is because we’re implementing what you told me to do in that podcast episode. I was to the point where I’m like, I don’t wanna run another, like, week long event because of the bandwidth unless I know we can get people to show up. And I’m cautiously optimistic that come May, beginning of June, we could probably have a pretty knock it out of the park proven launch

Zach Spuckler [00:22:56]:
Love that.

Monica Froese [00:22:57]:
To do this. So thank you. Honestly, like you really kicked my butt and really, I understood the compound effect, but listening to you talk about it with numbers was very helpful to me. So I have questions about the actual running of ads now.

Zach Spuckler [00:23:12]:
Yes. Stacks. If you do nothing else, grow your email list with ads because you can always email that list on a weekly basis. You can always retarget that down the road. I talk to so many people who buy the five k, 10 k, 15 k program. Something wrong with them, but it’s like build out your perfect ecosystem, upsell, evergreen, low ticket, high ticket, whatever. They’re all you pick your flavor of the month. The problem is what happens is somebody builds this system start to finish.

Zach Spuckler [00:23:38]:
They build the freebie and the upsell and the tripwire and the low ticket offer and the call booking funnel and all of this stuff. And what ends up happening is you turn it on and it’s broken, which is normal, by the way. You’ll have that funnel building ads. If you’re listening to this being like, this is like a six to twelve month plus goal depending on your experience level. It’s okay to just start running ads to grow your list because you even mentioned it’s like when you turn them off, you see a decrease. When you turn them on, you will inevitably, sixty, ninety, a hundred and twenty days out, see an increase. So don’t feel like you need to execute all of it at once. If you just start growing your list with ads, you will be literally in the top 20 to 30% of marketers, I believe.

Monica Froese [00:24:20]:
Yep. I have seen this because we essentially turned on our list building ad to a funnel that and not only we want to lead to the course that we’re still developing. I can’t have it on Evergreen yet, but the challenge we ran in January was really great. It was the best content that’s come out of my brain in a long time, to be honest with you. So we packaged that. That’s the tripwire, and then they get reoffered that in the sequence. Done yet. What we’re doing is we’re getting those people into the live webinars.

Monica Froese [00:24:45]:
You know? So and that’s where the show up rate coming. If I was not running those list building ads for the last four and a half months, we would not be having these show up rates like we have. And some of our highest live conversions, because one of the things that kicked my butt really bad was I’ve always been able to sell live. I’m great on webinars, like, because I just give it to you real. I go off script. I, like, do rants in the middle of my webinars. We have kids sometimes bombing us or, you know, like, I’m just real and people like that about me. But there were, like, getting people to buy live when I was not running these constant ads was really hard.

Monica Froese [00:25:19]:
And I started having confidence issues. Like, oh my goodness. Do I not know how to sell anymore? Like, because I need to be able to sell. That’s why we’re in business. It was scary. It was like Yeah. Did I just lose it? Like, it’s just gone? But no. It was a lead gen problem.

Monica Froese [00:25:35]:
Yep. So, yeah, everyone, can we talk actually about how much money to spend? Because I know having taught Pinterest advertising for so long, that is, like, the biggest thing that people are like

Zach Spuckler [00:25:46]:
Yeah.

Monica Froese [00:25:47]:
Quality matters too. So I could have 50,000 people on my list, but a lot of them might not be buyers. A lot of bloggers did that. So right now, I just looked before I got on the call. I have the two sides of the business. I’ve been reviving Redefining Mom. So that’s the b to c side, and it has a shop. And then I have the b to b side where we talk about digital products and digital shops, now integrating AI, and we have the empowered check.

Monica Froese [00:26:09]:
So I’m running a $30 a day opt in ad that’s meant to be, like, the lead gen, you know, and the tripwire is it’s not breaking even on ROAS. And honestly, remember the lovely days of dollar in, dollars 2 out, and yes, would I like it to be breaking even? Absolutely. There’s more optimization we can do there, but it is what it is. Then I’m spending about $15 a day on the engagement, different audiograms. I was running some of the audiograms cold. Now I’m using our retargeting audiences when we run the live webinars. And I found something very interesting. And I think this is why my lead costs went down.

Monica Froese [00:26:48]:
And I was using just advantage plus, like, cold audience for US. And I wasn’t making any changes, but I found this feature where you can now tell it, well, here are my warm audiences. And my lead cost compared to the last webinar was cut in half. And I’m like, that gotta be why.

Zach Spuckler [00:27:06]:
They change things constantly. That’s why we’re always updating stuff.

Monica Froese [00:27:09]:
I could drive yeah. This is why I stopped teaching Pinterest because I was so sick of being at their mercy of changing everything. Yep. I was like, I can’t take this anymore because they went public and then it was just like, every day I logged in and it looked different. I’m like, I can’t, I can’t do this. So I range anywhere from like $30 a day to a hundred dollars a day. And that’s where I’ve been sitting. Where do you advise people to be sitting?

Zach Spuckler [00:27:29]:
I know it’s audio, but I was moving my laptop screen around because I’m pulling up my ads manager. I don’t want the computer to shake. Just to give you contact, I like to give this context because I think I’ll preface this by saying, like, this is not the expectation. This is not the rule. This is just what we’re doing. In q one of twenty twenty five, which included a launch, full disclosure, we spent $43,000 on it. K? Now our revenue for that quarter was around $2.20 revenue. So we I’m a huge advocate of, like, throw 15 to 20% in that.

Zach Spuckler [00:28:05]:
It is a little aggressive. Admittedly, we have some really intensive growth goals for the next two years, so we’re putting more into expenses. I share that with you full disclaimer not to be like, I need to spend $40,000 on. No. You don’t need to spend $40,000 on advertising. I would not ask people to jump out the gate from that. If I were to look at say like Q1 of twenty twenty three, just to see what it was, we spent 16,000 in quarter one of twenty twenty three. So we’ve almost tripled two and a half ish x our ad spend per quarter over two years.

Zach Spuckler [00:28:40]:
So that’s, like, the long answer is, like, 15 to 20%. Let it grow with time as your revenue goes up. Here’s the short answer. 10 to $20 a day is a really good place to be. 3 to $500 a month is a great starting point. And I know people are gonna tell me, like, well, once I’m making x, then I’ll do it, and that’s fine. Here’s what I will offer is the byproduct of running the ads is an increase in revenue. That does require some faith, and I always love to tell little anecdote.

Zach Spuckler [00:29:11]:
When I first started my business back in 2015, I was working in a master’s program. I was a graduate assistant. I was on my own living in a really bad apartment. Somebody has tried to break in at one point. That’s the type of area we were in, like, full on shoulder two door trying to break down the door, like, okay. Not the best area. And so I get it. Here’s what I did anyway.

Zach Spuckler [00:29:33]:
I spent a year and a half, two years doing, like, little side hustles or freelance writing or whatever I could do to get a few thousand dollars in a pot that I was going to invest in my business. I am a believer that it costs money not to make money, but to get the tools, resources, and access to the things you need to make money. So 3 to $500 a month. I would say if you’re not willing to commit three to six months to an experiment at $300 a month on the low end. You’re already doing the math. You’re going $1,800 on advertising. Yes. But over six months.

Zach Spuckler [00:30:07]:
So if you’re making 10 k a year, that’s that 15 to 20% we’re talking about. It puts you right in that range. You’re making 5 figures a year, put 10 to 15% back in advertising. Baseline, 3 to $500 a month. 3 to $500 a month. Then the middle of the road answer is 10 to 15% of your ad spend, but figure out the value of a lead to your business. So, like, $50,000 a quarter is how many leads do you need to get things done? Because I see so many people go, I wanna have a 10 k launch. And I’m like, great.

Zach Spuckler [00:30:38]:
What does that look like? And they’re like, it looks like selling 20 courses. Great. And what do you convert at? I don’t know. Well, how many people were in your last webinar? I don’t know. Well, what’s your show up rate? I don’t know. No judgment. We all do it. We are taught by the online marketing space, by personal development spaces to be goal oriented and go, I’m gonna get there.

Zach Spuckler [00:30:58]:
Right? And then reverse engineer it. We think I’m gonna sell 20, but there are a million steps in between that. And so what I would offer is if you’re like, look, I can put more than $300 a month into it. Great. But I’m totally not at 50 k a month. Look at your last two to three promotions, figure out your conversion rate, figure out how much a lead is worth to you in that promotion, and start pacing for that baseline going forward. So if you say I spent a thousand in my last three promotions and I made 2,000, I would say, great. You’re doubling your money.

Zach Spuckler [00:31:30]:
Let’s jump bump it up to 1,500 for the next promotion. Analyze the stats. Take a look at it in scale up. Short answer, 300. Medium answer, calculate your numbers for your business. Long answer, 20%. Scale, scale, scale, scale, scale, and we’re now at about 50,000 a quarter.

Monica Froese [00:31:46]:
Okay. So this is so fascinating because I have always historically been very involved in my numbers, and I’m getting back into it now. We averaged like, I started tracking them pretty solidly in 02/2018 because that’s when, like, my Pinterest course took off, and it was like, oh, well, like, I should know where my money’s going. And historically, we’ve spent about 8% on paid advertising, which is low. And I know, like, my bookkeeper, I use a bookkeeper that works with lots of similar businesses of mine, and he’s always like, you know, your ad spend’s low, and it always has been. And that is something I need to work on. So I just looked at how much I’ve spent on the b two b side in ads manager since January 1. I spent $6,303 But considering that I had my ads completely turned off, it’s showing overall that the return on initial ad spend, at least according to Facebook, is 1.18.

Monica Froese [00:32:34]:
But I know because I track with unique coupon codes and stuff, and I isolate the funnels, that’s not taking into account the down funnel Facebook can’t. I mean, if it’s thirty days down, it’s not taking that into account. These people have gone on to buy the challenge that’s the tripwire. They’ve gone on to buy the course itself through the live webinar. So I know the ROI is higher than that, which brings me to a really good question. Do you use any of these fancy tools like Hydros? No?

Zach Spuckler [00:32:59]:
We’ve tried a couple. The one that I’m currently testing is Clickmagick. What I’ve come to realize is they’re expensive, and they’re not really created for online course creator business. For us, we’re tracking with pretty decent accuracy. We do everything very manually by spreadsheet. We do some UTM tracking. If you’re like, what the heck is that? Don’t worry. It’s not that important.

Zach Spuckler [00:33:21]:
If you don’t know what it is, you probably don’t need it yet in terms of advertising. But we don’t use a lot of the fancy tools. I actually just canceled one of them the other day because I was like, they’re so limited and mostly speculation. But I think around 2026, ’20 ’20 ‘7, a lot of the system and process that they rely on is gonna be start getting outdated. And I don’t mean doesn’t mean that they won’t innovate, but, like, even Google has come out and said, like, we’re getting rid of some of our tracking tracking issues. Like, privacy is important to us. So, like, they’re stripping some of the trackability from features that a lot of these companies do rely on. And so I’m always hesitant to get super involved.

Zach Spuckler [00:33:59]:
What I’m looking at is on the whole. Right? It’s like, I know that there’s an invisible effect to everything that I’m doing. Right? So, like, for example, I think we ran that post that I wrote about our strategy. We ran it as an engagement. Right? So let’s just assume for the sake of argument that you clicked on that engagement and listened to it. Well, now we’re here. We’re having this. You’ll probably share our boot camp, and then I’m gonna get sales from that.

Zach Spuckler [00:34:23]:
I will never track that no matter what I do with Highros, ClickMagick, Triple Whale. Like, I’m never going to be able to track the ROI on that. So to me, it’s like, I’m saying, is revenue staying in a growth period? I should have referenced that. Admittedly, that 18 to 20% is our growth period. If I’m just in, like, a stable average every day, I’d probably wanna be closer to 10 to 15% of my revenue on ad spend. I’m never going to be able to fully measure that. If I am spending this money and I start going, oh, wow. Advertising was 25% of cost this month, and it wasn’t a launch month or we didn’t have a big growth activity.

Zach Spuckler [00:34:57]:
That’s when I’m starting to look. Okay. Let’s take a step back. What are these decisions telling us? And even then, I’m looking at that on the quarter. So on this quarter, we’ll be right around 18% if we hit our numbers. And I’m like, perfect. Because we’re doing a really really big promotional launch. So I love the tools.

Zach Spuckler [00:35:15]:
I think they’re great in theory. I work with clients who use them. They’re very hard to understand. They’re very hard to use. And ultimately, you’re paying more in time, effort, team, and process than you get out of for 95% of people.

Monica Froese [00:35:27]:
I am so glad that that you said that because I don’t use those tools. I also manually track. Like I said, I isolate all the funnels for Facebook so that they have their own pages. They have their own way that they get onto my list. I use unique coupon codes for the trip wires. So I just pull it into my funnel. I have a funnel tracking spreadsheet and I pull the data in manually and it does all the calculations for me. If I was a betting person, my return on this $6,300 is probably in the neighborhood of 30 to 40,000.

Zach Spuckler [00:36:01]:
Mhmm.

Monica Froese [00:36:02]:
You know? And that’s so important for people to understand. And I felt like that was a big struggle for me with teaching ads that for people to understand that compound effect that we keep going back to. Yeah. Honestly, it’s oftentimes because people don’t well, for one, you made it mention that they build the whole funnel first before they’ll turn anything on. I’m just like you. We turn it on before that. But then they don’t know how to mirror up the data down funnel. Like, they just kind of glaze over and don’t do it.

Monica Froese [00:36:30]:
And so then they think their ads aren’t as effective as they are. We just got an email. My team put this email in our Slack channel this morning, the girl who does our inboxes, and she’s like, oh, you have a new customer that found you on the podcast relaunch. She’s gone to buy so much stuff out of our shop. She enrolled. She’s in our membership now, and she’s talking about enrolling into the new program. And the reason Natalie sent it to me is because she knows I knew that I wasn’t putting out content anywhere, like fresh content. And that’s how people historically, it’s that’s why they like me.

Monica Froese [00:37:01]:
That’s why they buy from me. And so to to know that the podcast is working again and then compounding the fact with Facebook ads, getting it out there, I I have no doubt that this is gonna be by the end of this year, we will have recovered. It makes me very happy

Zach Spuckler [00:37:16]:
Yes.

Monica Froese [00:37:17]:
Considering that I do have to pay my mortgage and stuff. Yeah.

Zach Spuckler [00:37:20]:
Me too.

Monica Froese [00:37:21]:
So, like, can we just talk about some of the mechanics about the ads real quick? Especially, I really wanna talk about the audiences because I have been defaulting to the what they’re calling the advantage plus, and it it’s like US. And what I had noticed, and this is I was letting it run. So, you know, I teach men. I had some great men in my membership, but the reality is my brand really attracts more women. And on the redefining mom side, I was using the audience, the cold audience, and it was Facebook So

Zach Spuckler [00:37:52]:
you’re having men?

Monica Froese [00:37:54]:
It was, but it was mainly women. But on the b to b side, they were grabbing more men, and I’m like Mhmm. I don’t know if I’m gonna resonate as much with men as I do women because it’s just the nature of my brand. And so then it made me think, what do I do differently exact? What am I supposed to do differently?

Zach Spuckler [00:38:09]:
Like Great question. So Advantage Plus audience, I have this love, hate relationship with. And just for context, Advantage Plus audience in its simplest form is technically a form of AI. It’s really more machine learning. If you wanna nerd out on that, go for it. I don’t even know that I fully understand it, but I always like to make that little delineation because I think, especially in 2025, there’s this, like, AI is, like, smart, and it learns, and it does all these things. Machine learning is more about statistical analysis and forecasting. Again, does it really matter? No.

Zach Spuckler [00:38:39]:
But just know that it’s a slightly different process. I know that. But I’m saying, like, what we look at when we look at AI is, like, I go to chat g b t. I go to cloud. I put something in. I get something. Just understand the mentality with machine learning is a little bit different. What Advantage Plus is saying is it’s statistical modeling.

Zach Spuckler [00:38:55]:
So Advantage Plus is basically saying, like, hey. Based on the history of your account, things that we believe will happen and our predictions about what will happen based on data, this is a decision we’re gonna make about who to target in your ad account. Now if your eyes have glazed over, don’t worry. The short version of this is everything you give to Facebook under Advantage Plus is a suggestion because they’re basing it on data, not input. For example, if I do Advantage Plus and people who like Amy Porterfield, it’s still gonna target people outside of Amy’s audience. It’s using that input as a suggestion overlaid on your data. So why is that important? Because for someone like you, Monica, who’s running $6,300 and has all of your pixels installed and has all of this data running through your ads account, it can be a really lucrative tool. For people who are spending less than 3 to 5, maybe even a thousand on the low end a month, you’re not giving Facebook enough data for the machine learning to work because the because, again, it’s not AI.

Zach Spuckler [00:39:52]:
Right? So if it can’t learn, it can’t make great decisions. So we do tend to see these things happen where, for example, we work with a lot of people who are like, oh, Facebook says just use advantage plus audience because it’s gonna be stronger and better and faster. And they run it in a new ad account and they go, my target are, you know, I work with moms. It will target men because it’s basing it on the holistic data that 50% of ad engagers are men. Maybe it’s more female, neighbors are male. I don’t know. We’re just gonna assume. If 50% of men are clicking on ads and it has no data in your account to base it on, even if you say target women and you turn on Advantage Plus, it will target men because it’s machine learning.

Zach Spuckler [00:40:31]:
If you’re using your ad account consistently regularly and you have good data in there, absolutely test Advantage Plus audiences. If you have no data or you’re spending less than 3 to 500 a month, I’d shy away from them for right now. And this is, like, April 2025 that we’re recording this. Could be totally different in two months. That’s the other pro con of Facebook is it evolves so fast sometimes. It could be a great tool that relies on AI and inputs in a couple months. So that’s the first thing. Second thing is I split test everything.

Zach Spuckler [00:41:00]:
So I’m gonna split test even if I have good data, advantage plus and non advantage plus. So when I typically set up an ad, let’s say for a launch, I’m gonna target my warm audiences. I’m gonna target people who like interest based audiences. So, like, people who like Amy Porterfield, people who shop at Whole Foods, people who follow Elizabeth Gilbert. And then I’m also gonna test custom audiences, which would be like my email list, people following me on Instagram and Facebook. There’s also what are called lookalike audiences, which is kind of using that machine learning theory based on input. So I can say find people who are most similar to my email list living in The US, and look alike audiences operate on a percent scale, one to 10%. People are always really confused by that.

Zach Spuckler [00:41:41]:
It’s what percent of the population you’re targeting. So if you say I’m gonna do a 1% look alike of The United States, it’s 1% of all Facebook users in The United States who are most similar to the input that you give it. So those are like the audiences you test. Warm, lookalike, cold, and cold with Advantage Plus, and we’re always split testing them. The other thing to keep in mind is so many people that I talk to go, well, I tried ads and they didn’t work because I’m a course creator. I targeted Amy Porterfield. I spent $20. It didn’t work.

Zach Spuckler [00:42:08]:
I didn’t get any leads. I didn’t get any clicks. This is why split testing is so essential. We split test all of those audiences, but we’re also split testing two creatives, two sets of copy, and 10 different audiences. Because if you go ads don’t work and I say, well, how much did you spend? And you say $20. You really need to spend about a hundred to a hundred and $50 just on testing to get the data to know where to spend your money going forward. And so the reason you do that is because maybe Amy Porterfield’s audience doesn’t resonate with your brand colors vibe copy creative, but maybe Brendon Burchard’s does. Right? But if you only said, here’s my copy to Amy, you minimize your testing, basically.

Zach Spuckler [00:42:48]:
And so to your point, yes, advantage plus, yes, cold targeting, yes, warm, yes, look alike, and split test creatives amongst all of those, which we teach how to do. But I don’t want you to get caught up in, like, how do I do that? I want you to just marinate for a second on the reality of if you’ve tested one or two ads to one or two audiences, you haven’t actually advertised. You’ve taken a shot across the bow and hoped it landed. And that’s okay. Most people do that. But just understand that this conversation is so important and why I’m really harping on all these different targeting options is because it is important that you try them all because you don’t know what’s gonna work in your ad account until you try them.

Monica Froese [00:43:26]:
Yes. And okay. So I just wanna clarify something from my understanding now that I’m all back into Facebook ads. So when you go like, when you’re gonna target, like, the special interest, like Amy Porterfield audience, you’re actually switching back to the, like, legacy audiences. Right? Like, you’re

Zach Spuckler [00:43:43]:
Yes. I’m still using legacy audiences like Amy Porterfield, James Webb, or

Monica Froese [00:43:47]:
Brent Porterman. Yes. Now that setting that I found that seems to be working, getting my lead cost for our webinars down was I’m running the advantage plus audience, but I’m telling it to find people like my warm audience.

Zach Spuckler [00:44:01]:
There’s a pure advantage plus, which is, like, you just give it age, gender, advantage plus. There’s cold overlay advantage plus, which is, like, likes Amy, likes Brendan with advantage plus turned on. And then there’s warm or focused advantage plus, which is, like, my email list with advantage plus turned on.

Monica Froese [00:44:19]:
Okay. And the fourth option is technically turn off advantage plus completely and go the legacy route of

Zach Spuckler [00:44:24]:
Yes. There’s technically a fourth option.

Monica Froese [00:44:25]:
Yeah. I do use that fourth option.

Zach Spuckler [00:44:26]:
And I’m using all those options.

Monica Froese [00:44:28]:
All those options. Okay. Is this stuff that you talk about in the challenge?

Zach Spuckler [00:44:32]:
Yeah. Great question.

Monica Froese [00:44:33]:
Okay. So I wanna talk about the challenge, but, selfishly, I have one more question that I wanna which is because the next layer after you get your audiences is then we have to talk about the ad copy and the creative that you’re using. And my first question about that is, are you using AI to help you with this at all?

Zach Spuckler [00:44:52]:
Yes. Sort of. So I’m a little behind on AI stuff. Not that I’m even a pure. It’s just like I’m super busy. And I do think that there’s some dead giveaways. When you tell chat g p t or even Claude, like, I’m writing a Facebook ad. Three things will happen.

Zach Spuckler [00:45:10]:
Just does. That’s usually like attention course creators, and they just don’t work anymore. It’s very much based on data from a year ago, and that’s kind of how the AI works. So that’s the first thing. Second thing is it will be littered with emojis. I can tell you used AI to write your ad and it’s all like, I’m not saying, like, five or six images. We’re talking, like, fifteen, twenty emojis as soon as you use the words Facebook ad. And then I know I’m gonna get flagged for this, but the m dash don’t use the m dash in your ads.

Zach Spuckler [00:45:36]:
It doesn’t look native. People are not using the m dash. I know that all the writers are coming out of the order. I mean, like, an m dash doesn’t mean it’s AI. I’m like, no. But if you’re a marketer who use the m dash and you’ve never used it for ten years, I’m pretty confident that you used AI to write this copy. And just for context, the M dash is like because I’m I had no idea what it was until somebody told me. It’s just the super long hyphen

Monica Froese [00:45:57]:
Yes.

Zach Spuckler [00:45:57]:
Between it.

Monica Froese [00:45:57]:
My chat g b t loves it, and it drives me nuts.

Zach Spuckler [00:46:00]:
That I will put stuff that has worked into Chat GBT or Claude. I really like Claude right now because it just gives my tone of voice really well. I know you can train Chat GBT. Claude, I’m just always putting, like, a full podcast transcript two or three and then having it right Facebook ads. I think Chajeevizi can do that now too. But anyway, I use both. I will put in some of my own content, then I will say here are two ads that have performed well. Please use the framework and concept for these to write an ad.

Zach Spuckler [00:46:31]:
Then I will take Chajee PT’s ad and still rewrite it in my own tone of voice. So I’m not, like basically, it shortcuts the time to do it, but I’m still putting twenty, thirty, forty five minutes into creative wise, I am not blindly using anything from Chad GPT. But there’s this really cool hack that I learned by accident. I didn’t learn it from anybody. I was like, this is crazy. So I was, like, looking up this ad somebody had made with a chart, and I was like, oh, it’d be so cool because we teach list building. So many people love the little ConvertKit chart. Like, every email software has some version of and what I’m referring to is, like, your growth chart, like, how many emails you’ve added.

Zach Spuckler [00:47:08]:
But it’s different in Slodesk. It’s different in ConvertKit. It’s different in ActiveCampaign. And I was like, I wish there was a way to be more, like, agnostic, like, platform agnostic with it. So I asked ChatGPT probably a week and a half ago, two weeks, where they’re now doing, like, really good image generation. I was like, make me a chart that shows an email that’s growing similar to this. I gave it a reference photo. The problem with ChatGPT’s image generation, and, again, this could be my limitation, is that it’s just there’s always something slightly not right about it.

Zach Spuckler [00:47:36]:
Like, still. I know it’s better. Like, we even just did one. It’s like, these words are, like, slightly too far apart. The l is a little too long. But what I will do is I will have it iterate images. And you can only do so many images in chat before it’s like, you need to wait even if you’re on the paid plan. Hate it.

Zach Spuckler [00:47:52]:
So what I’ve done is I say, give me, based on this ad copy, I rewrite it, then I put it back. And I say, based on this copy, here are some things I’m thinking. Give me some image ideas. Don’t generate the image. Give me ideas. It will type out what it’s thinking. And by doing that, you don’t have to sit and wait for three minutes for the image to generate, but you also get four options. I’ll take one or two options, refine them, then I will have Chat GBT make the image.

Zach Spuckler [00:48:18]:
I know this is really long, but I promise there’s an end here. Once it generates the image, I then tell Chat GBT, how would you make this image in Canva? And it will literally tell you step by step how to create an editable version so you can change brand color, size, placement, font, logo, colors. That is the little trick that I was like, this is so cool. So you can tell ChatGPT to give you step by step instructions, and it will literally be like, click the background, change it to this color, type this in, use this hex it’s so good. So that’s what we’re doing in terms of copy and image generation. And we’re testing it. Some of our AI stuff beats out our static or our non AI. Some of our non AI stuff way beats out some of our AI stuff.

Zach Spuckler [00:48:57]:
I think it’s always same as with audiences. Test, test, test. We have one AI image that’s crushing.

Monica Froese [00:49:03]:
So that’s okay. That’s very interesting. So because I have Haley, and she’s been with me for five years, and she’s my designer, I can just tell her I don’t need you at GPT because I can just tell her what’s in my brain and she can make it. But what I have found it helpful for is on the redefining mom side, we’re really like, we’re trying a lot of I she finally got me to start doing b roll. So I’m, like, fanatically into cleaning my house lately. Like, I like spring cleaning. And so I’ve been setting up the tripod. I’ve cleaned out my pantry and it it’s it’s working.

Monica Froese [00:49:32]:
So I’ll go to Chat GPT, and I’ll be like, give me ideas for more b roll, essentially, that I can easily record when I’m out. Like, I went to Sam’s Club, and I actually recorded myself. But the ad three times ROASed cold traffic to my shop with these b roll videos.

Zach Spuckler [00:49:51]:
Roll. Dance in Costco if I have to.

Monica Froese [00:49:53]:
If I’m getting three times my ad spend, I will do it. So okay. Last question about images. Let’s then we’re gonna talk about the challenge. Is there any, like, certain type of image you would say is working the best right now? No.

Zach Spuckler [00:50:04]:
No. This is a great question. There’s four core images we use. We say mock up style, which is like a mock up. That’s what you traditionally see for, like, low ticket or PDFs where it, like, fans out. There is stock photos work especially well for, like, the softer niches. Think artistry, spirituality, creativity, personal development. We literally go to Pexels, the Canva library, and we just drop in a stock photo.

Zach Spuckler [00:50:26]:
I have one I’ve been running for a client in the spirituality space for, like, a year and a half, and it’s just a picture of a crystal and, like, 70¢ leads for a year and a half. The other one is lifestyle photos, but I always qualify by saying, I’m personally in all of the accounts that I manage seeing a downturn in the performance of, like, highly stylized lifestyle photos. I jokingly say, like, if you have a wide hat and a long dress and it’s blowing in the wind on the beach in Southern California, probably not gonna convert. But, like, iPhone style shots, candid shots, shots of you at your desk, you know, shots of you doing what your niche is, cooking, you know, whatever. Those are doing really well. And then our secret weapon, partially because I’m lazy, partially because they convert, is text based images. And so a text based image is exactly what it sounds like. It’s an image where it is literally just like a giant headline in a square image.

Zach Spuckler [00:51:17]:
Those are just crushing it for us. I think our our one doing the best right now says, like, in my list growth era, obviously, Taylor Swift reference. But it’s doing really well. And it’s just it just says in my list growth era, and then it’s like, come learn about our boot camp. And it’s doing really well. Those are our go to images. And then video can do well for some people. I don’t do a lot of video mostly because I always look like I’ve just rolled out of bed because nine times out of 10 I have.

Zach Spuckler [00:51:40]:
But, like, b roll does do pretty well. Pro tip, if you wanna create really engaging videos, study trending reels and TikToks. Those do do really well as, like, ads. We ran one that was working really well, which you’ve seen it a million times if you’re on Facebook, Instagram reels, or TikTok. It’s the one where it’s, like, a green screen of somebody pointing at, like, a a notes, like, the notes app. Yep. We mocked it up in Canva. We used the green screen app, and I was like, I’m gonna show you how to add a thousand people to your list in the next ninety days.

Zach Spuckler [00:52:08]:
Let’s get into it. Boom. Boom. And it’s just, like, you know, high cut rate. You’ve seen these before. If it’s going viral on TikTok on multiple accounts, it’s probably going to work as that.

Monica Froese [00:52:18]:
Yeah. I feel like my b roll is working for the redefining mom side because, like, I don’t no makeup. My hair is on a mom bun. Yes. My glasses are on. I’m wearing a hoodie, and I’m just walking around my house doing stuff. Then I go to chat g p t, and I say, you know, help me with the voice over script for it. And then Hailey takes it and puts it into CapCut and makes really quick transitions with my voice over, and that’s been doing really well.

Zach Spuckler [00:52:41]:
Oh, and if you do video because you mentioned voice over, always have captions. Yes. Yes. Have captions. Yes. I don’t know the exact stat because it’s always changing, but it’s somewhere like 30% of people will start and do part of their videos. Like, 30% of people will do it without sound.

Monica Froese [00:52:57]:
Yeah. And one thing I’ll leave it with this with images, and we gotta talk about your channel. Because I I enjoyed this conversation so much. I talked to Jordan Gill from systems that they’ve made recently, and she was she’s crushing it with Facebook ads right now. One of her best performing ads is her literally laying in her bed. She’s just she snapped a picture of her laying in bed, like, totally chill, and she put testimonial on top of her head, and it’s crushing it. And I’m like, that’s anyone can do that. You know? That’s so simple.

Monica Froese [00:53:26]:
And that’s what really got me on to trying the getting the tripod out and doing the b roll here. Okay. So let’s talk about the challenge that you’re running at the end of this month.

Zach Spuckler [00:53:34]:
Yes. So at the end of this month, we’re running the Facebook and Instagram ads for list building boot camp. And basically, what it is is it’s a five day live training where we teach you how to write, create, set up, manage, optimize, and leverage the power of ads for list building. Now I wanna be really transparent. We don’t talk about, like, direct to sale or even, like, launch ads, not because we don’t want to, but because it’s five days and your admittedly brand will do some work that week. So like we mentioned earlier, the foundation of what we do is list building ads. Like, I always have a list building ongoing or I’m launching. That’s pretty much nonnegotiable at this point in my business.

Zach Spuckler [00:54:13]:
Because if the list is growing and you have a tripwire and you have an email sequence, which we also talk about in the challenge, then every day you’re getting new leads and every day they’re being made an offer to buy from you. And if you scale up, every day you get sales. We basically don’t have zero sales days 95% of the time. So, you know, there’s always that one day where I’m like, we lost the streak. Should we send an email? And I was like, no. Let the ads do their job. And then we didn’t get a sale. I was really bummed.

Zach Spuckler [00:54:35]:
But doesn’t matter. All I had to say, it creates a lot of consistency in your business. So day one, we teach you how to write and create your imagery. Day two, we actually go in the ads manager, set it up, all recorded, walk you through it. Day three, we kinda give your brain a little bit of a rest. Day four is looking at your results. And then day five is, like, next step and some of those custom audiences, look alikes, things that we talked about about today. Here’s what I will tell you.

Zach Spuckler [00:54:59]:
Results are typical if you show up and do the work. Right? So, like, we typically see people get 50 to a hundred plus leads in that five to seven day window by Monday. Most people get 50 to a hundred lead if you follow along. Budget wise, because I know that’s the big question, plan to spend a hundred and 50 to $200 over your first two weeks and then $10 a day ongoing, which is that 300 a month we talked about, is a totally reasonable place to be. There is a front load cost for all of that testing. We’ll teach you how to set all that up. And then the last thing I’ll say, we keep it really fun because let’s be honest. Like, I geek out like, we’re we clearly geek out about Facebook ads.

Zach Spuckler [00:55:34]:
You might be listening. It’s like, this is the driest conversation I’ve ever heard. I mean, hopefully not. We’re super fun. But conceptually, you might be like, this isn’t the most exciting thing I’ve ever listened to. So we always have a theme. I’m kinda bummed because the era’s tour ended, but I was doing a lot of Taylor Swift themes for our boot camp. So little teaser.

Zach Spuckler [00:55:50]:
There’s, like, still some Taylor Easter eggs. We’re doing when you wish upon a lead. It’s like a very princess fairy tale inspired week, which is gonna be so fun. We have different themes for every day, and that is, like, giveaway themes, content themes, process themes. And so if you show up, not only can you generate these, but you can also win prizes. And for those of you who are like, I’m not a princess girly, totally get that. We also opt that you can have the Amazon gift card of equivalent value every day. It just keeps it light.

Zach Spuckler [00:56:18]:
Some of the themes we’ve done were like, we did our in our list building era was the last one, And I had a life size Taylor Swift cardboard cutout, and I bought a giant friendship bracelets for the background. We did cats one time, which my friend was like, cats, like the like the musical. And I was like, no. Like the pet. Like, just cats. And she was like, this is so unhinged. People loved it. By the end, people were, like, dropping cat GIFIs and cat referent.

Zach Spuckler [00:56:41]:
Like, it was so good. We did iconic things of 2023, which was, like, the Barbie movie year. Stanley Cups had, like, a big resurgence that year, so we gave away Stanley Cups, and the Ares tour had just come out. We gave away, like, home viewing parties. So, you know, we just like to keep it fun, and I tell you that not because matters, but because we also incentivize you to take action. Because here is the thing, I mentioned this in passing. At the end, we invite you to our membership, but it is super important to me that you understand. If you join the boot camp, which is $25, you will, if you follow along, have ads up and running in your account, generating 50 to a hundred lead in the course of seven days.

Zach Spuckler [00:57:18]:
All of that is included fully. You if you show up and you do the work, you’re gonna trust yourself. You’re gonna trust me. You’re gonna trust Facebook ads more. And then hopefully, some of you will continue into our membership. And so the prize in the giveaway is to keep it light and fun, but it is to incentivize you to take action. Because if you get results, you win. If you get results, I win.

Zach Spuckler [00:57:38]:
If we’re both winning, who’s not to say it’s great? So that has a super long winded spiel. But, yeah, the Facebook and Instagram ads for list building boot camp, that’s what it is, and we would absolutely love to have you.

Monica Froese [00:57:49]:
Yeah. And Zach’s not kidding about people getting results in it. And this is one of the reasons I wanted you to be on the podcast to talk about ads because, obviously I love ads, but also we are very similar in how we teach. Like when I run a live challenge, it’s results oriented. Then, of course, we’re going to pitch you the next thing to work with us, but we get you results before we get there. And I love when people teach like that because nobody just wants a big I’m not showing up for a big sales sales pitch for fundraise.

Zach Spuckler [00:58:18]:
And we have you’ll see on, like, the sales page. I know you’ve got a link for it. We’ll like, you can see we have dozens of testimonials. We have done it to around 3,000 people really trying to get the review rate up, but we’ve had a 57 ish. 57 or a 75. I can’t remember. Over a 50 people have left a review for the boot camp, and it averages. We asked them to rate it out of ten and nine point seven from those 50 reviews that we’ve gotten.

Zach Spuckler [00:58:42]:
So, like, people do enjoy it. It is a really good time. And, yeah, we’re gonna give you everything you need to be successful.

Monica Froese [00:58:48]:
Yes. I already know when I’m gonna make the pretty link, so I’m gonna give it to everyone. It’s gonna be monicafroese.com/zach, but it’s zach. The right one. Okay. So I will put the link to this in the show notes so you can go sign up for it. And it kicks off what day?

Zach Spuckler [00:59:04]:
April twenty eighth through May 2. We send an email 9AM eastern every morning. We’re live at 12PM noon eastern time every day, and that recording goes up within four hours. You can watch it in real time, or you can join us for the replay. So even if you can’t make every live call, totally worth it. I promise.

Monica Froese [00:59:21]:
You seriously it’s like we’re the same person. It’s so funny. Okay. So I’m gonna put the link in the show notes. How else can people connect with you? What’s, like,

Zach Spuckler [00:59:27]:
the If you have questions, we do have a little chat box on the sales page. But if you’re just like, this dude’s cool. Instagram is the way to go at zachspuckler, z a c h s p u c k l e r, on Instagram. That’s really where I’m active. I post a few times a month, and sometimes I do stories when I feel inspired, but I’m always posting when something’s happening there. So Instagram is the best way to go. If you want more podcast content, not your average online marketing podcast, Spotify, you know, Apple Podcasts, all those good places you can listen, and we drop a show a couple times a month. I think

Monica Froese [00:59:57]:
we’ll make sure to link to all this in the show notes as well so people can, go and follow you. Listen. Your podcast is fantastic. I have been listening to every episode you put out. When I get the email, I’m like, I can go on a walk today. I have something to listen to.

Zach Spuckler [01:00:10]:
I love that.

Monica Froese [01:00:11]:
Thank you so much for joining us and sharing all of your awesome Facebook knowledge with us.

Zach Spuckler [01:00:15]:
Thank you so much for having me. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Monica Froese [01:00:19]:
That’s a wrap on today’s episode, but your next step starts right now. If you’re serious about selling digital products and want the AI powered tools, expert strategy, and real human support to make it happen, then you need to check out the Empowered Business Society. Inside, you’ll get AI driven trainings to create and sell digital products faster, a private community for expert feedback and real time support, exclusive access to the Monica Memo podcast. And if you go pro, you’ll get monthly marketing shortcuts, live q and a’s, and 20% off of the empowered shop perpetually. Because smart business owners sell smarter, they don’t work harder. And the best part, you can get started for as little as $9. The best business growth happens when AI and real humans work together. Ready to make your next move? Join us inside of the Empowered Business Society.

Monica Froese [01:01:07]:
You can check us out at empoweredbusiness.co/society. See you in the next episode.