106: Facebook and Instagram Ads for Your Podcast with Shelby Fowler

Written By Britany Felix
 
106 Podcasting for Coaches Britany Felix.png

What’s This Episode About?

Shelby Fowler is a Facebook and Instagram ads expert, creator of Fempire Ads Academy, lover of reality tv, and the founder and CEO of Fempire Media.

She started Fempire Media, an ads agency, in 2019 after freelancing as a digital marketer for years. She has grown the company to multiple six figures in the first 2 years and is passionate about serving clients, teaching ads, and encouraging her team.

In late 2020, Shelby launched Fempire Ads Academy to empower female entrepreneurs to run their own profitable Facebook and Instagram ads. Every month, members get all the tools and support they need to scale their business with ads.

Outside of business, Shelby is a mom of 2 girls, a crazy-awesome cook, lover of real housewives (and all things Bravo), and a true crime fan.

In this episode, she shares whether or not it’s realistic for someone to successfully run their own Facebook and Instagram ads if they don’t have the money to outsource it, when you should definitely start outsourcing your Facebook and Instagram ads, why she equates Facebook and Instagram ads for a podcast to a billboard, how much you realistically need to spend to promote your podcast with a Facebook or Instagram ad, what type of content should be used in a Facebook or Instagram ad for your podcast, her advice for running Facebook and Instagram story ads, the pros and cons of both sending potential listeners to a specific podcast app and a landing page for your podcast on your own website, why you absolutely should verify your domain inside the Facebook Business Manager before running any ads, why you need to be super critical of the resources you’re using to learn how to run your own Facebook and Instagram ads, and more!

Transcript

Welcome to podcasting for coaches. I'm Britany Felix and I'm a podcast launch consultant who specializes in helping coaches and consultants utilize the power of podcasting as a way to build brand awareness and generate new leads for their business. I realize not every new coach or consultant can afford to hire someone to help launch their show. So I created this podcast as a way to guide you through the process of launching and utilizing your very own podcast to help you grow your business and reach a new audience of adoring followers and potential clients. If you're ready to get your voice and podcast out into the world, head over to podcasting for coaches.com to learn more.

 

00:48

Welcome to Episode 106 of podcasting for coaches. This week's guest is Shelby Fowler, and she is a Facebook and Instagram ads expert, creator of fempire ads Academy, lover of reality TV and founder and CEO of empire media. She started the Empire media and ads agency in 2019. After freelancing as a digital marketer for years, she has grown the company to multiple six figures in the first two years, and is passionate about serving clients teaching ads and encouraging her team. In late 2020. Shelby launched fempire ads Academy to empower female entrepreneurs to run their own profitable Facebook and Instagram ads. Every month members get all the tools and support they need to scale their business with ads. Outside of business, Shelby is a mom of two girls a crazy awesome cook, lover of Real Housewives and all things Bravo, and a true crime fan. And in this episode, Shelby shares whether or not it's realistic for someone to successfully run their own Facebook and Instagram ads, if they don't have the money to outsource it just yet, when you should definitely start outsourcing your Facebook and Instagram ads. Why she equates Facebook and Instagram ads for a podcast to a billboard, how much you realistically need to spend to promote your podcast with a Facebook or Instagram ad. What type of content should be used in a Facebook or Instagram ad for your podcast? her advice for running Facebook and Instagram story ads, the pros and cons of both sending potential listeners to a specific podcast app and to a landing page for your podcast on your own website. Why you absolutely should verify your domain inside of the Facebook Business Manager before running any ads, why you need to be super critical of the resources you're using to learn how to run your own Facebook and Instagram ads, and more. Alright, let's go ahead and dive right on in with Shelby Fowler.

 

02:47

Shelby, thank you so much for being on the show. I am personally from a selfish standpoint, very excited to talk to you. Because this is a topic that I have been thinking about for a while I have not utilized the strategy in my business yet. And so I'm really excited to pick your brain for a little bit. And I know that the people listening are going to be excited as well. So why don't you give us just a little bit of an introduction to yourself. They've already heard the bio, but give us a little bit more information on how you really help people with what you do. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me, Brittany, I own a Facebook and Instagram ads agency. And we work primarily with coaches, course creators and consultants. So we help them fill their launches, get more visibility, right. So maybe get more subscribers to their podcasts, get more just eyeballs on their content, right? Because we want to get them in front of as many people as possible. We help them grow their email list, sell their high ticket offers low ticket offers all of the things. So really passionate about helping online business owners like scale their business quickly with advertising. Awesome. And so one thing for me is the idea of running ads. I mean, it just seems like this overwhelming daunting thing that's changing constantly. So is it something that someone can do on their own realistically, or should they hire somebody? So there's like two fold here, I think if you are very overwhelmed with all of the techie pieces, and just the idea of like going back inside of business manager and ads manager gives you like a full on migraine, then hire somebody to do it for you, right. My rule of thumb is like if you're under six figures or just a little bit over six figures, I think that doing it yourself is one very possible with the right support and training. And it will actually help you save money so that you can hire a really good ad agency. Once you kind of hit that multiple six figures and you're

 

05:00

Really rocking and rolling. Because once you've hit multiple, six figures, your time is best served, like working on your business and not necessarily doing all the end stuff, right? Like not running ads not doing all of that stuff. So that's kind of my rule of thumb like one if it just gives you a total migraine, if you're just confused, and it's too much overwhelming, hire somebody. And also, if you're thinking you're kind of in between, should I learn? Or should I hire? If you're at like six figures or under or maybe just just barely over? Then learning to do it yourself can be very beneficial. And then you can later hire somebody? Does it make sense to think that if you do learn how to do it yourself, you're probably going to be better off when you do hire someone? Because you can give them some guidance on like, what's previously worked? What hasn't? Or do you actually find that as almost the opposite where people come in thinking they know what they're doing, and they really don't, and you kind of have to like, help them unlearn a lot of things that they might have gotten wrong. The first time.

 

06:02

I've worked with several people who've tried to do it themselves. We have several clients right now who tried to run their own ads, and it was a nightmare for them. But the whole thing confused them, right? Like they go back inside of ads manager and they are not even really sure what they're looking at. And they didn't really have a lot of training or guidance or support. Many of them bought like a course that was like 300 bucks or 1000 bucks. And they went through the training did what they said, but there was no additional support, right. And I find that to be a big problem with just the course industry. In regards to advertising. Like, there's so many moving parts, like you said, and things are always changing that having that ongoing support is crucial when we're talking about advertising. So it does help if you have an understanding before hiring somebody. And I think that's like with anything in your business, right? Like, like having a general sense of finances before you hire a bookkeeper, or before you hire an accountant, like, that's always gonna help you out. It doesn't mean you have to be a pro at it. But like definitely having an idea of how much money you realistically need to spend. Maybe you do have, you know, some profitable ads, I've had clients who run their own ads for and they were pretty profitable. And we were able to take that data, and then like 10 access with our resources, right? So it could go either way. But I think if you like to do this kind of stuff, you can absolutely do it yourself. And it will help you because you won't hire an ad agency, or an ads manager that doesn't know what they're doing, because you'll be able to spot it pretty quickly. Like if they're messing up. Right, that makes complete sense. And I love that you brought up that you would know, you know realistically what you need to spend? Because I'm sure that the question you get asked constantly. And the people listening to this, obviously, they're interested for multiple reasons, because they are coaches and consultants who have launches and programs they need to fill in those sorts of things. But we are a podcast about podcasting. So coming at it from the sense of using ads to promote a podcast. Realistically, what is a number that they should be budgeting out for ads in the beginning until they really get things dialed in? Because it's my understanding that there's kind of a lot of testing that needs to happen for at least the first few months, correct? Yes. So I would say especially the first like two to three weeks of running ads, you're doing a whole lot of testing. When you're running ads to get more podcast subscribers, it's a little bit different. And every type of ad is going to be different. What I would look at it like is a billboard, like you're creating a billboard for your podcast, and the location just happens to be on Instagram and Facebook, right instead of on the side of the freeway. Right? So it's like the new Billboard. So it's gonna be a little bit different. You can do this for as little as $5 a day, you don't have to be spending a whole lot of money, but it is going to help you get in front of a lot more people. And that's important, right? So if you wanted to run ads just directly to your podcast to get subscribers, you can do that for as little as $5 a day. Obviously, if you spend more, you're going to reach more people, right? Right. And you can kind of run them for $5 a day and kind of get an idea of how many people it'll show you how many people you're reaching. And then you can kind of decide like, hey, am I seeing my subscribers go up? Do I want to increase my ad budget and you can kind of play around with it after that. Right? So if somebody were to come to you and they say Listen, my goal is to really just grow my

 

10:00

My podcast audience, I want to run ads to do that. I would imagine, like if I had to guess that the content you would use in that ad would actually be like a clip from the podcast? Or do you think it should be a video or more of a static image? Like? How would you kind of work through that process with them to create what type of content should be in that actual ad? That's a fabulous question. We're gonna try all of it.

 

10:25

So we're gonna try every single piece of that. So what's really working for a lot of our clients right now is running Instagram story and Facebook story ads. So like only on stories, stories, specific ads. And those are working really well. The cool thing about that is you can actually just film it right inside of Instagram stories and like, save it on your phone, and then upload it later into ads manager. And you don't have to write ad copy, because it's a story ad. So all they do is swipe up and they go to wherever your ad is taking them, right. So that's kind of the nice thing. But what we would do is we would try a story ad, we'll try a video, we'll try a static image, slash graphic, right. And then we'd also try kind of a, like a soundbite of your podcast layered onto like, a fun graphic or something. And we would test it and see what's working the best. And typically, we would do that. And we'll run all of those different types of graphics, or visuals, to the same exact audiences. And we would see what's performing best. And then after about four to five days, we'll be able to see like, oh, you're actually getting more, you know, clicks on this story ad, or you're actually getting more clicks on the video and less on this. So then we can really decide what is working. And that way we can spend your ad budget wisely. And we're not just kind of like throwing money around and guessing on what's working and what's not. Right. We have actual data, right? It sounds like from that, that you would run all of those various ads simultaneously. Correct? Correct. Okay. And for you listening, don't laugh at me, you know, I don't know anything about social media. I made that abundantly clear. With this story ad, it doesn't go into your story, right? Like, does it go between stories? How does that work? So let's say that you're targeting people who like Marie Forleo, okay, who like her business page, right? Or like on Instagram, what you'll do is you'll set up your ad, you'll submit it, and what will happen is anybody who likes Marie Forleo, they will be on Instagram, looking through stories, and all of a sudden, your story will pop up, and they don't have to be following you. Your story will just it'll say sponsored right next to it. And it'll be like, Hey, did you know that I have a podcast, and it's really great for those of you who like this, this and this and swipe up to have a listen or whatever. So it'll target those people directly. So while they're kind of looking at stories, and we know that Instagram stories, Facebook stories, they're really becoming more popular, people are consuming them a lot more frequently. And especially for those of you whose kind of ideal listeners, or ideal clients are somebody who maybe might be a little bit younger, like 20s 30s 40s, then definitely be utilizing the stories because, man, like that's where your audience is, right? So I want to meet them where they're at. Awesome. Okay, so another follow up question on that. So you say it's like the swipe up, and then it'll take it, I'm assuming to whatever link you set up. Now, I know that like in your actual stories, you had to have so many followers on Instagram, before you get that like swipe up feature, I am assuming since you're paying for an ad, that's not the case, you get it no matter like how many followers you have, correct? Correct. Okay. So make sure at the end of your like your little story that you do tell them swipe up, because they definitely need a call to action, since there isn't ad copy involved. You want to make sure you're telling them like what to do. I think a lot of people miss that. And they're like, you know, they're just talking and then it goes to the next story. And it's their friend, and they just forget about you. So make sure you tell them what to do. That makes complete sense. And I'm going to jump in here and say that I would recommend if you're going to do this strategy, and if I were to do it for me, which I that is the plan. I do have a course for Facebook ads and stuff that I've signed up for. So we'll see how this goes. But anyways, the link for that swipe up I would recommend that being like a landing page for your podcast on your website, rather than sending them to a particular platform like Apple podcasts because you don't want to alienate the person who doesn't use that platform. And I would recommend driving the traffic to your website where you have like all the various subscribe links they can check out your initial like trailer episode

 

15:00

And then they can take a peek around at some of the other things on your website. Does that strategy sound? Okay to you, Shelby? Yeah, so that's great because you can pixel them. And you can track buttons on your own website. So that's really great. If you did want to run ads directly to let's say, Apple podcasts, you would want to make sure inside of your targeting that you're only targeting people who have iOS devices. Okay, so yeah, it didn't occur to me that you can get that specific with it, that does make sense. And in that case, if you are running that type of targeting, it would make sense to send them straight to that platform, because it's like a, it's one less barrier to entry. Like, they don't have to then click another link on your website to then go into the app. Right, right. Now the Pro is, you're gonna lose less people, because they're going directly to your podcast, the con is that you aren't able to pixel them, right. So right, the great thing, if they're going to your website is that they can peek around, maybe they end up scheduling a consult with you, like, who knows, they could find some really good stuff on there. Right? Right. So if you were running this, like your podcast, your ad your business, which route would you choose to go? Or would you test them, I would test them. I know, that's not the fun.

 

16:19

But I would definitely test it because I want to see what's going to work best. And especially now like not to be a Debbie Downer here. But with the iOS updates that are coming out iOS 14, you know, that is a concern for sure, with Apple users. Because if they opt out of tracking for advertisers, where we are able to see the data, like where they're at inside of ads manager, so definitely test it. And how it's working out right now is that you really want to make sure that you're sending for most cases, you're sending ads to a domain that is verified that you own. So in that case, you would want to send it to your own website. Okay. And I don't want to speak like advertising jargon, because, but like, you can look up on Google, and this is for everybody listening, before you decide to run ads, just make sure that you go Google how to verify your domain inside of Facebook Business Manager, and it will pull up an article from Facebook, and it'll walk you through step by step how to do it. It's not as difficult and crazy as it sounds, it'll take you like 15 minutes. And you want to make sure that that's done before you run ads with all the new updates. Okay, is there a quick answer to why or is it more complicated? It's more complicated.

 

17:49

Well, we will leave that for people who want to do like a 201 thing, they can contact you and figure Yeah, yeah, exactly. Perfect. And so if someone were doing like, let's say, they're not on Instagram, and they just want to run ads on Facebook, is there anything different about that type of strategy over using like, specifically stories? No, if you don't want your ads to go on Instagram, when you go to set up your ad, you'll notice that it will automatically choose automatic placement for you. And so you want to make sure you uncheck that and click on manual placement, and then just uncheck Instagram. So it'll, your ad won't go to Instagram at all. And the same thing is how you would set up a story ad, you would click manual placement, and then you'd go in and click stories and unclick everything else, right. So that gives you a lot more control of exactly where your ad will be placed. Otherwise, it's automatically set up as automatic placement, which means it'll just put it everywhere it can put it that it thinks you'll have good results. So as far as strategy, good strategy goes for just a timeline specific ad like on Facebook, just make sure your ad copy is pretty good. Because obviously, when you're running a story ad, it's just a short like short video, so you don't have to write any copy. But you'll want to make sure that you write some ad copy for your regular ads. Okay. And then so my question here is, and this is probably another stupid question. But so you mentioned that like, for $5 a day now is that like $5 per platform, so like, say you're wanting the same ad, and you push it to, you know, all the places is that charge, like by the various place or is it just like, in general, they're gonna split that $5 up amongst all of those? Yeah, in general, they'll split that five bucks up. Okay. All right. And so one final question here. For someone who is wanting to learn a little bit more ads, get some more information, do it themselves kind of go the DIY route? What advice do you have for them as they get

 

20:00

started on that journey. Yeah. So I have a program and you can look it up, it's on my website for Empire media calm, you can look and see if that would be a good fit for you. I also have tons of free training on Facebook inside of my facebook group. Start there, because there's a lot of training out there on YouTube, and courses that are outdated. And I'll give you an example. I bought a course a couple years ago from a very well known like advertising agency, thinking it was going to be really, really good. And I'm sure most of you probably have gotten their ads before. And I bought it and I went inside to kind of like, really like funnel hack them, I wanted to see how their funnel set up, I wanted to see how their program was laid out. And I do this a lot with people's programs anyways. But I I'm like obsessed. So I went in and a lot of their training was super outdated, like their back end that they're showing of ads manager doesn't even look the same anymore. The features that they're going through like here, you can use this tool to figure out your audiences and Beauvoir. It doesn't even exist anymore, right? Like a lot of those things. And I'm like, Well,

 

21:18

can you guys update your training, please? Right. A lot of the stuff is outdated, or sharing strategies that just simply don't work. So my suggestion is to really find an ad agency or an ads manager that does it for a living, and really try to find those to learn under, right. And not just like a coach that is a business coach, but learn Facebook ads from somebody, but like really somebody that does it on the daily, because they're going to be the most educated on what is working and what is not working, right, because someone like me, or any other ads agency owner or ads manager, we're inside of ads manager all day long. And we're working with high ticket funnels and clients and huge ad budgets and moving things around and tweaking things all the time. So we can really give you like updated information. So my suggestion, if you are wanting to learn, find somebody that you trust that actually knows what they're talking about. And you can go to fempire media.com. I have lots of free resources. I have a blog on there with lots of free advice as well. And you can find my free Facebook group. So lots of free training for those of you that are like really wanting to kind of dip your toe in and learn a little bit. Awesome. Well, we will definitely have all of those resources to everything on your website, your Facebook group, all the things in the show notes for this episode. And Shelby, thank you so much for coming on. This has been very enlightening for me and actually has me kind of excited about doing ads, which is like the first time I think I can ever say that. Yes.

 

23:03

I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

 

23:09

And that wraps up this episode with Shelby. I hope that it was very helpful for you. If you do have additional questions for Shelby, absolutely, please feel free to reach out to her. Links to everything that was mentioned in today's episode will be in the show notes over at podcasting for coaches.com just click on the episodes tab in the main menu and go to episode number 106. All right, that wraps up this episode and I will see you back here next week. Have a fantastic week.

 

23:40

And that wraps up another episode of podcasting for coaches. If you'd like to connect with me further, you can do so on Instagram at podcasting for coaches. If you know it's time to finally get serious about starting your podcast, go to podcasting for coaches comm and click on the work with me tab in the main menu to learn more about my one on one launch consultation packages or my self paced online course. And I look forward to seeing the podcasts that you create and put out into the world.

 
Britany Felix
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