Navigating Facebook Ads and Security Threats with Katie Colella

Speaking from experience, getting hacked on Facebook is stressful, and I want to stop it happening to anyone else! Join me for this episode with Katie Colella, a multi-award winning Meta ads strategist, to find out how to stay safe on Facebook, and how to make advertising work for you (even with a small budget).

We kick off this conversation with a cautionary tale about hacking and how two-factor authentication could be your saving grace. We also explore the realm of suspicious emails, providing tips on identifying potential threats and who to contact in case of a security breach. Katie, with her expert insights, guides us on how to set up a Facebook Business Manager account, craft an ideal client profile, and utilise pixels for tracking data.  We also cover the hurdles of working with a lower Ads budget and the realities of investing in an Ads Manager. If you’ve been thinking about running Facebook Ads for your business, grab a cuppa and listen now.

——-

Find more information, episode transcriptions and an accessible podcast player here:  https://www.annfionamartin.com/podcast

Continue the conversation on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annfionamartin

Find Katie Colella at: https://katiecolellasocial.co.uk/ and https://www.instagram.com/katie_colella_social

Transcript

Ann: 0:00

You're listening to Simple Content, the podcast for entrepreneurs, creatives and anyone who dreams of making money whilst doing what they love. I'm your host, Ann Martin, a copywriter, author and content expert. In this podcast, I'll be sharing my own experiences, plus having conversations with some of the world's most inspiring content creators and industry experts. This is your one stop shop for practical PR, marketing, business and self-development advice. Put the kettle on, settle in and get ready to listen, learn and feel inspired. Today, I'm joined by the lovely Katie. Hello, lovely welcome to you, Katie. It's so great to have you here. Thank you so much, Ann.

Ann: 0:45

So, we're going to get started with an introduction, so please can you introduce yourself to our lovely listeners.

Katie: 0:51

I sure can. Hello everybody. My name is Katie, like Ann said, and I'm a Facebook ads manager and strategist, certified business strategist and business mentor. So lots of different things and all the different hats.

Ann: 1:01

Amazing, and Facebook is our focus today, and we're going to get started by talking about security on Facebook and how we can keep ourselves safe. This is really important to me. As you know, more and more people are getting hacked, and I know this because it happened to me and I sent a very frantic message to Katie a few months ago telling her that.

Katie: 1:23

I had been hacked and I was like help me, Katie.

Ann: 1:25

I don't know what to do. SOS, yeah, and it was so stressful, oh my goodness, it was so stressful. Somebody was basically in my account and I could see them and they caused absolute chaos. Eventually, my bank had to step in and resolve the issue. Being hacked was a really stressful experience for me. So we're going to kick off with that, because I wouldn't want it to happen to anyone else, and it is happening more and more. So, Katie, what do we need to do to make sure that we are being safe on Facebook?

Katie: 1:54

I think first of all, there is no, unfortunately, one kind of magic wand that will stop it happening, but there are things we can do to try and help prevent being hacked, absolutely like you said, it's happening more and more. I'm seeing more and more people message me. I had one yesterday. A lady messaged me had been recommended. She was like I've been hacked, what can I do? She was at the stage where it was very little she could do. I certainly couldn't help her. She needed to speak to Facebook. So all I could do is advise on that.

Katie: 2:18

First and foremost, make sure you all have two-factor authentication switched on your accounts. It goes just without saying. It's an absolute pain putting these six-digit codes in everything we log into. I hate it. I have hundreds of client accounts. Believe me, I do it multiple times a day but it will help. It won't necessarily stop you being hacked. It will help you from having these issues. Ann had a particularly bad case as well. I know she had money taken out of her account. It was horrific. I have had another handful of clients, probably this year alone, that have been hacked. So make sure you've got your two-factor authentication switched on. Make sure you have someone else as a full admin in your business manager account whether that's a partner, a close friend, a colleague, somebody you trust implicitly that can access your business manager for you if you need to, so they can go in and make changes. So the lady yesterday had nobody in her account. She had been removed and put back to very basic settings so she couldn't do anything. So she couldn't access her page and answer messages. If she'd had someone else in there, potentially they, if they hadn't been hacked as a person, they would still have access. They could then change her settings. So that's really really important as well.

Katie: 3:22

Don't ever click links. Some of these emails and messages look really really authentic. Just don't bother. Genuinely, I reckon I get a client a week going Katie, is this real? I'm like just don't click the link, just don't do anything, and then at least you know you're not opening it up. A lot of the time people have clicked a link, a lot of the time they didn't even realize they have because they 100% think it's on Facebook. If you look in the email address who it's from, that will often give you a clue as to whether it's real, because it'll just be a gobbledygook email. Some of them do look quite authentic and some of them will have Facebook written in that, even though it might then be a hotmail account. So obviously, if it's something like a hotmail account it's not going to be Facebook, even if it says Facebook. But regardless, you know, I have sometimes thought actually that does look kosher, but I'm just going to log in separately to my own Facebook business manager. You're going to have a warning in there or an error or a message or something that's going to tell you there's an issue. If there are no issues logging in completely separately, then you have nothing to worry about. So the main thing is not clicking on those links and then, if something happens or even if you get just get wind or something not feeling quite right, get onto Facebook straight away.

Katie: 4:27

The best way to get out of Facebook is business. facebook. com/help and you really have to look for this help. I remember saying this to Ann as well. You have to scroll down the bottom of the first page and it says something like still need more help or contact us. They don't make it easy for you. Then you go to the second page. Again, there's something similar like a call to action and I think it's on the third page. You finally kind of get an opportunity to say speak to Facebook. Again this isn't even open to everybody when you go to this page, so it is really difficult. Usually now it is open for most people.

Katie: 4:55

You click on chat, you fill in a little form, they get on chat, they normally ring you back and they can normally do something when you need to prove, obviously, your identity and stuff like that, and you can normally kind of halt or stop that hacker in their tracks. With Ann she had to get a bank involved. It was money being taken, it was twice, if I remember rightly as well, and so it was horrific. And keep on at Facebook. There is literally, you need to keep on at them because they won't always come back to you when they say they will. They'll say they'll investigate, get back to you in 24 hours. Don't let that slip. They haven't heard from them after 24 hours. Just keep on, keep on, keep on. And that is literally the only kind of pointers that I have.

Ann: 5:30

Yeah, and I think what we find with Facebook is it's such a big machine, isn't it? It's such a big company that often we can feel that as business owners, that they don't really care or that they're not interested in getting back to. Certainly, with my situation, I had to really, like you say, keep on at them to get them to take action, and I think it was the intervention from the bank that really made them sort of.

Katie: 5:53

Yeah, I guess it's happened. Listen.

Ann: 5:54

Yes, exactly that.

Katie: 5:55

So if you are in a position like I was and you notice somebody in your account, just take action before it gets to the point where money's coming out of your account, because that was very stressful. Well, I suppose in that case, as soon as you're seeing something as well, or if you think you've been hacked, remove your payment methods or put a payment method on, that is, you know who's got no money in there that they can't charge. If they have access to your business manager, they can add in their own pages, their own ad account, set up our accounts and just spend, and sometimes it's so senseless you can't even kind of understand what it's really achieving. I've had clients I can't remember if it was you actually? I've had someone add in an ad account and page that was selling t-shirts and they were just spending all the money to this t-shirt page and trying to get, obviously, sales in that way. But sometimes there doesn't even seem to be a rhyme or reason to it. But yeah, definitely as soon as you mention anything, take some steps, absolutely keep on at Facebook.

Katie: 6:46

I had one client that literally ignored it because she found it so stressful over well Mim, and in the end I just got her on a Zoom call and we phoned Facebook together. So there was kind of three of us all chatting to Facebook. In the end I think I was admin on her account and that's why they even spoke to me, because if I'm not admin they won't let me speak to any accounts. But she just didn't know what to ask to what to say and she had had, I think, 200 pound taken, but it was PayPal and PayPal really helpful. They refunded it. But yeah, absolutely you have to get Facebook involved ASAP and keep on at them, because it depends who you get at the end of that call, whether they actually follow the procedure of what they're supposed to do and escalate it or not.

Ann: 7:21

Yeah, and having said all of this, we don't want this situation to put anyone off from using Facebook ads because they do have massive benefits for your business. So for anyone who's listening, who hasn't ventured into the world of Facebook ads, how did it work? Why should people start to think about using them?

Katie: 7:38

Yeah, absolutely Don't be put off by Facebook ads. They are fantastic when done well, and some of these things that I've said, like the two factor, authentication and all the rest of it, will help you from having these worst case scenarios. They're a huge tool and part of your bigger strategy. They're not a one size fits all and a magic one, and I never proclaimed them to be. I can never give guarantees and run for the hills. If anyone does try to give you any guarantees as an ads manager, what they do do is increase your visibility, increase your list, increase your audience, and we all know bottom line. That's what is one of the most important fundamental aspects of growing a successful business. If we don't have an audience and we're not visible, we could be the best kept secret in the room. Nobody knows we even exist. So I often think of ads as another way of just getting in front of these people and letting them know we exist and why we're the expert, why we're good at what we do, and then growing that list the list is the only thing that we actually own so that we can continue to nurture that relationship and position ourselves as the expert so when that person is potentially ready for the next step and may be interested in using our skills or our services or our products.

Katie: 8:41

You are the obvious person that they go to. They are still the biggest in terms of the amount of exposure they have and the amount of people they reach. When we say Facebook ads, we mean meta ads, which includes Facebook and Instagram, and they are by far the biggest out there, so they have the biggest exposure. They can reach the biggest amount of people. So you are absolutely missing a huge potential if you're not using them.

Katie: 9:03

But if you are just starting out, also don't play at them, because you can be throwing money down the drain if you just dabble and you're just boosting the odd posts and a lot of clients come to me and say, oh, they don't work for me. I've wasted 50 pounds and they've boosted a post and I don't know what they expect to get back from that. But you're probably not gonna get anything. They're not done correctly. So I think it's really important to make sure, when you are thinking about using ads, either go and find somebody that is an expert in that field, learn from somebody that's an expert in that field. You know there's plenty of courses out If your budget doesn't stretch to be in tort or having them manage for you. Go and get a course and learn how to do things correctly.

Ann: 9:40

That makes sense. So when somebody starts on Facebook ads, they're sort of going on to the first page of the ads manager. What do they want to be looking for? What should they be first paying attention to? What things really make a difference.

Katie: 9:53

Before they even go into ads manager there's quite a bit of setup. So pre-IOS 14 or post-IOS 14, there's been quite a lot of changes. That has just made a lot, a few more hopes. I guess to jump through it before you can kind of getting and use ads manager, or before you should be going into ads manager when you're setting up the ads. So everybody needs like a business manager account set up. But if you haven't got one literally just Google business manager, if you don't know what it is, it'll take you through.

Katie: 10:18

If you go to businessfacebookcom forward slash settings, actually straight away you'll know whether you've got a business manager set up. A business manager is like the umbrella that all your Facebook and Instagram assets sit underneath. So an asset is a page and ad account and Instagram account, a pixel, all these different things that you need in place to be able to run successful ads. A lot of people that first step haven't even got that business manager set up. So that's the first protocol. If you're then looking at setting up ads whether that's now six months, 12 months top tip go and get your pixel installed. A pixel is a little bit of code that goes in the back end of anywhere you're sending traffic to your landing pages, thank you pages, your websites and that pixel is going to collect data about the type of people that are visiting your pages. So it's really, really powerful. And later on down the line you can use that pixel to retarget those same people or to find more people that are similar. So it's really really massively, hugely powerful. And you are missing a trick if you're not putting that pixel anywhere that your traffic, your ideal clients, are visiting.

Katie: 11:16

Another top tip really when you're starting out is to get super clear on that ideal client. If you're just sticking ads and you're putting them in front of everybody and you're saying, well, anybody could buy my services yes, potentially, but it's very, very broad let's get a little bit more specific and start to find out who your ideal clients are, not just who you're working with right now, the people that maybe don't even have the investment or don't want to necessarily work with you. Who are your real dream clients? Absolutely buy into the investment, into you and what you're providing. Who are those dream clients? Let's get the ads in front of those. Get really super clear on that as well. So, yeah, there's a few more kind of steps, but the number one I would say is get the ideal client, get the business manager set up, because that can be done in advance, regardless of whether you're looking. Set up ads right now and get that pixel installed.

Ann: 11:56

That feels like quite a lot of things to pour out. Now I know exactly what you're talking about, but somebody who's never done any of this before. Is it just as simple as them Googling what's a pixel and that sort of thing?

Katie: 12:11

Yeah, it sounds more tacky and literally the word pixel can drive fear into people. It's honestly, it's just a tiny bit of code You're just tracking in the back end of your website or your pages Most software when I say pages, if you're using software that has the landing page facility normally they've got something set up. It might even be the pixel number. It's not going to take you too long. This isn't like a month's task or anything. You can follow this. There's going to be plenty of tutorials out there. I'll get in touch and I can do it with you over a call. You know it's if you need that extra bit of help. It's so worth your while in the long term to start collecting this data and getting that pixel seeded. Even though it can sound scary and sound quite overwhelming, it can be done in 20 minutes, no problem whatsoever with any software you're using.

Katie: 12:52

So there are tutorials out there. Because it will vary depending on your software. For instance, if you've got WordPress, then Pixel your Site is a great plug-in stuff, like Katra, fva, creature you can either put in the back end of the page as coding or some of these software. You can just put a pixel number in. So it's not as overwhelming as it kind of seems once you start to do that, but it is worth doing so. If you need to get help with that, lots of tech VAs will be able to do that. Your website developer if you're having your websites built for you, they will know how to do that. So it's not a bigger task, as it seems. The ideal client everyone should be doing anyway doing regularly as well, and revisiting, because as we grow and evolve as a business owner, so do our ideal clients. So that's really important to revisit anyway. So that's everyone's kick at the bum to go and do that and revisit that anyway.

Ann: 13:35

And it's interesting you mentioned ideal client there, because one of the really clever things you did when we worked together was you took my email list and you used that to help shape the audience for the Facebook ad, and I thought that was really clever because people who obviously have signed up to my email list are interested in hearing from me. They want to know what I'm talking about and so ultimately, that is an ideal client that you're shifting from one platform to another, and I thought that was really like a really interesting way of doing it.

Katie: 14:03

Yeah, it's really clever and they're probably one of my favorite ways of. Certainly my favorite style of audiences are often these lookalike audiences. That's what I'm referring to. You can bring in a CSV from your existing list, especially if you've got like a big list, and normally for this to be successful, to work, you want 500 or 1000 people on this list. Now, even stronger, if you had a list of just purchasers, for instance, and you had 1000 people that purchased something from you over the years, they're going to be even more powerful. They really are your ideal clients. They're the purchasers. They're even higher quality.

Katie: 14:35

You can bring in the people that follow you on Instagram, on Facebook, that have watched a video, that are filled in a form on Facebook, that have gone to an event on Facebook and anywhere that this pixel is installed, that people have visited. So you can bring in all these audiences and they would be classed as your warm audiences. They're people that already know you exist, they're on your list or they follow you on Instagram or whatever, and then you can create lookalike audiences from all of those Basically saying to Facebook here's my co-audiences, these are like my tribe, find me more of these people. And that's what Facebook has the power of doing and, like you said, you then put those ads in front of people that you know of the most similar and share the most similar traits and personalities as those people you already know. You're doing clients, so it's really really, really powerful.

Ann: 15:19

Yeah, really clear a way to do it. One of the other things I think people listening might struggle with is the creative side of it. So when you'd run a Facebook ads, there's lots of different ways you can do it, isn't it? Or you can have a quiz, you can have a master class you can have lots of different ways of getting your content to that person. Have you noticed there's particular types of content that work better than others? And why do you think that is?

Katie: 15:44

Yeah, I can ask this all the time in terms of what's working right now, and it's like there is no right answer to that, because what is working for 99% of other people might not be the thing that works for you. So it goes back to testing. I think people get kind of bored of hearing that. But genuinely, and it's the same with anything in business, you need to test to see what works for you as a person, for your clients, for your messaging, for your offer, whatever it is. It can vary, so it comes back to testing. So you would traditionally be testing maybe different graphics or images, maybe a reel, maybe video if you're talking or video you're not talking. There's so many different things you can test and it is trial and error. And that's why, when you work with ads managers, ads managers will often say three months minimum, because it can take time to get this test and get this data back to see what is working and what isn't working.

Katie: 16:31

And then what works for one launch, for instance, won't necessarily. You know. It's a great starting place, obviously for the next launch. It's not necessarily going to work exactly the same on the following launch or the following months. So things evolve, they change. You know, different things start probably given presidents by the algorithm or whatever in the back end. Who knows? But what works for, like I said, most people won't necessarily work for you. So it comes back to testing different things and that's different copy. Like I said, different creatives, different headlines, different call to actions, different everything.

Ann: 17:02

One of the things I think when I go into Facebook. The ads that I'm certainly most attracted to personally are the ones that show the face of the business owner. They're the ones that I'm most likely to click on, and I've noticed that you know big business names like Millie Forleo and Amy Portafield. They're very much using adverts now where it features them and their face and either a video of them talking or a visual talking about their new program, and it's got them front and center. And before we came on this call, katie and I were talking about personalization and how important that is to business. Now have you noticed that you're really needing to push your clients to show their faces more in ads, and is that making a difference, do you think? For?

Katie: 17:43

some because again, I have some clients that have never showed their face in an ad and actually they're some of the most successful ads I have run and they've been running for quite a long time. I absolutely agree that we've had this shift and people need to be seeing the business owner and that person. They're the person they bring into it and I don't think that's ever going to change that. People buy people. Personally, again, I completely agree with you. For me, the ads that I tend to click on are the people, the one where I can see a bit of personality, a really happy, shiny, smiley person. That's what I tend to buy into and that's what I click on. But you'll always see, if you go into something like ads library which you'll be able to someone like Marie Forleo that, especially if they're in launch, will have a lot of ads running you'll be able to see all the different ads that they're running, the different creatives, and you're going to see it and kind of use that for inspiration for your own ads. The last couple of months I've actually had some success with ads that are really going back to basics, if you like, taking away all the design elements of an ad, creative and actually just having a blank background with sign up for my free five day challenge for business owners or wherever it's for, and the most basic graphics. I've actually worked for a couple of my clients this year and again others absolutely need to have that face and that's the person they buy into. So again, just goes back to testing.

Katie: 18:57

Personally, yes, I'm with you, I buy the person absolutely always, and that's just another top tip. Well, I think that as well, when you have your business name. So the order in which people see the ads, they see the creative, the video or graphic or whatever is first, then they see the headline, then they see the top line, which is your page name and your logo or icon that you have there. Make sure your profile image is you or your business page image is you as a person, because that does help people buy people again, rather than the pretty little logo which means absolutely nothing to anybody. So, yeah, definitely have you on there as well.

Ann: 19:30

It's interesting you mentioned doing the simplification of the ads. I wonder if that's because people are at a stage now where it's a bit of information overloads and they just want the pure facts rather than anything.

Katie: 19:43

Yeah, and there's a couple of clients I know. I've tested them with lots of different clients and not everybody. Some people you know absolutely went back to the person on video. But I've got some clients that where they speak and they just work much better than graphics. I've got other clients where videos just absolutely full flat. So it does vary so much. That's why it's important you're kind of testing all these different things but whilst you're tested you can't test all the things.

Katie: 20:07

If you have what is classed as a smaller budget, it's difficult to again get that balance and that's why, with an ads manager, you're thinking well, if you're working with an ad manager, you have that three months minimum to be able to test different things.

Katie: 20:17

Because if you have, for instance, a 500 pounds or 400 pound budget a month for ads and then you're testing three different audiences on one campaign and then you're testing six different graphics and videos, when you break down that 400 pounds over a day, over the month, it's not going to feed out. There's going to be too much and you're spreading that budget too thinly. If you have a 1000 pound budget a month, obviously you can test more things at the same time and that's why sometimes if you have a smaller budget, it takes longer to get the results back as well, because inevitably Facebook want to see results so they can optimize and give you better results and put your ads in front of people that they think are going to convert for you. So they ideally would like 50 conversions a week so they can see 50 people signing up to your freebie, for instance, so they can see this hyper person that's clicking and signing up to be able to optimize and show to more of the correct people. So that's why they can sometimes take time as well.

Ann: 21:10

It's interesting you mentioned budget there, because I wonder if, for people listening who don't necessarily have a large budget, are the successive Facebook ads all about how much money you spend, or can you be successful with a smaller budget?

Katie: 21:23

Yeah, absolutely not. They're not dependent and you can be successful with a smaller budget, but your results will be different, inevitably. So a lot of ads managers that colleagues of mine that I talked to they would think my budgets are really low. So most of my clients to give you the heads up between 500 and 1000 pounds a month, the majority sit in that kind of amount, and I'm not saying that's a small amount of money. In terms of Facebook ads management and Facebook ads land, that would probably be deemed as a fairly low budget in terms of what you can do with that.

Katie: 21:50

There are strategies. If you have a lower budget, maybe 300 pounds a month you could set up some strategies to help towards visibility and awareness for maybe 10 pounds a day or $10 a day. So 300 or 300 pounds or dollars a month, you can actually keep showing up to the same people you could show. Have some call to actions, invite them to calls, invite them to sign up for your freebie. You're better off doing something rather than nothing.

Katie: 22:14

But if you're doing something and just you're putting a very small amount into it, have a strategy around that so you're not just playing at it and then wasting that 300 or whatever pounds a month, but definitely if you're spending into 500 pounds a month, I would recommend not working with an ads manager because it won't be very efficient. You see your money and you're much better off. Unfortunately, I know we're all trying to learn all the things. I completely understand that, but that has to be the trade off. If you're looking at using Facebook ads and you have that smaller budget, it's not worth you investing in an ads manager monthly because you're just going to be wasting that money. You're better off using that money for the ads manager and learning it yourself.

Ann: 22:50

That makes sense. So people listening who maybe don't have their budget at the moment, just trying even just pick up the basics online and try it out themselves. Day-to-day life for you. So you are so busy running all of these Facebook ads and accounts for lots of different people. What does that look like for you? How do you spend your day?

Katie: 23:07

All different things, which is what I love as well. So I do kind of lots of different things. I do the strategy of people. I have calls with ongoing clients. I monitor my ads, all my ads accounts that are running constantly. I'll be monitoring those daily, setting up new ads, speaking to clients around that. I do quite a lot of VIP days, where I have an intensive day online or in person, where we set people's ads up there and then.

Katie: 23:28

So again another option for if you're starting out, you haven't got the ongoing budget to be able to invest in an as manager, ongoing, but you can run ads or in between launches, for instance, then you could have the IP day.

Katie: 23:39

We can set them up for you there and then in a day, which is another great option. So yeah, lots of different things, lots of different one-on-one calls with people and helping people have a lot of people kind of just going stuck. What next? Can we book a call in? I just need a one hour call to unravel all the issues that have been caused, because a lot of the time, when you don't know what you're doing as well, it can be quite confusing because you have more than one business manager, you have lots of different ad accounts you've set up over the years that connected to different pages, and all of a sudden it all looks a little bit complicated. So I also help people with that type of thing and get anything straight so that they can kind of pick up from a fresh starting point, if you like to be able to then go and learn about running the actual ads.

Ann: 24:16

Yeah, and we obviously spoken earlier in the call about things going wrong and I imagine that your job is fairly reactive in the sense that if stuff goes wrong in one of your clients ads, you know that must be quite full on and quite stressful because you're it can be yeah, and I think if it's something that's going to go wrong, it nearly always seems to fall mid-launch.

Katie: 24:37

I don't have tons of things going wrong, luckily. But then other people recommend me, say okay to help me, so come and then you sometimes do end up just unraveling and helping, but I have had clients, accounts or a person be restricted from advertising during launch and genuinely I'm just like, okay, let me do my thing, let me try and sort it out for you. There is no point stressing about that either, because it's in the hand of Facebook gods. But yeah, you know, we just need to try and react to that and do the best we can. Normally, if anything gets restricted, you can get it lifted, and that's really important.

Katie: 25:10

Actually, to make you all aware that there are Facebook ad policies, please familiarize yourself with those before running ads, if you're doing them for yourself, because they do change and there aren't certain things you shouldn't or we advise against doing so. Do familiarize yourself with those and just literally Google Facebook ad policies and you'll find a ton of them, just to make sure you're not breaking any of those rules, because that will get you in. You know Facebook ad restrictions and Facebook ad jails and everything else. So you want to just make sure you're playing by the right rules.

Ann: 25:38

And a lot of it for you, I guess, is managing expectations of clients, because you don't have direct link to Facebook, you're not at Facebook and say you're where you can just pick up the phone to. You have to follow the same processes and systems that everybody else has to do, but people are paying for the speed and the efficiency and the knowledge that you have to be able to do that in a much quicker way, than they spend hours and hours and hours online trying to figure it out, and that's a really nice like summation of that, because I've got a few clients that kind of said when things have just happened or there's been issues, that's why I pay you.

Katie: 26:07

You know, the rest of the year sometimes can be I, even though I'm optimizing and making changes and I'm doing things with the ads, it can be quite an easy client. But actually then if something goes wrong, they kind of think you know what, you're just handling the stress for me, you're taking that off my plate and for that is partly why they invest in me as well as an ads manager Because, like you said, I know the processes. I know how to go about and chat to people, chat to Facebook and get these things looked at. Yes, I have to go through the same procedures, but I know them and that's what I do. So sometimes, yes, in the middle of this day that is already kind of fully booked something goes wrong and then you have to be reactive and proactive and be able to kind of help immediately, because it is very stressful for the client and I can understand that having been having me through that, having myself it's really very stressful and it also feels really invasive and of your privacy.

Ann: 26:54

And yeah, you feel like you've been like violated. It's just not a nice place to be in. So having an expert on your team and by your side is really reassuring, and even when I, when it happened to me, I knew I could text you. That was just like right, okay, at least I know somebody who knows what they're doing with this because I would have been up all night trying to figure out.

Ann: 27:13

Go minding circles and exactly In terms of Facebook ads in the future. So what do you? You? Know look into your crystal ball.

Katie: 27:21

What do you think? Tell me, what do you think is the future of Facebook ads.

Ann: 27:26

What do you think?

Katie: 27:27

I think I've definitely seen a change. They're not going anywhere. Number one they have stuck, like I said, the biggest audiences in the biggest reach. They're not going anywhere. What I think some people are too reliant on or kind of think they're this magic wand. Like I said, they aren't and it's the play in the long game.

Katie: 27:43

Like, even if I work with some for three months and they may be launching, the people that are coming into that free challenge or that masterclass or whatever it is aren't necessarily going to the people that are going to convert here and here and now, immediately. You know they might be new into your world and you're kind of coming in, yes, you're providing value, support, you're sharing your knowledge and why you're great at what you do. That doesn't mean they're going to convert right away and go, oh my God, like, oh, yes, I need this straight away. They might need to be in your world three months, six months, nine months, twelve months longer. We don't know how long that journey is and that is definitely changing and people need to have more touch points, more value given. This is what we're seeing, that with launch, and it is changing a little bit. People need more of you, the business owner before they convert and go ahead with things. So, taking that into consideration, you can't expect to run ads for three months. Get those people in and go hi, buy my thing, look at my thing, you know, it's just not going to work, not to say they can't sign up there and then and you will have a percentage of people that are ready. But more and more people are needing more time, more decision making time, more touch points, more value before they make that decision.

Katie: 28:45

So if we kind of scroll back a few years where we had, you know, organic reach I've been in business for many, many years and my last business I used to have about 16 percent organic reach and I remember the time it dropped in from 20 something and being like, oh my God, this is rubbish. Now most people would give their right arm for 16 percent organic reach and you have to look at ads almost as replacing that to a certain extent. You know Facebook are a business. They're in it to make money. They don't have to provide you with free organic reach.

Katie: 29:13

At the end of the day, this is just another avenue for visibility for growing our businesses, which we're really lucky to have. This didn't exist 20 years ago. So I still think of it as a huge opportunity to increase the awareness, increase the visibility, get you in front of more people, get you on more people's radar and so forth. I think look at the bigger picture, I would say, and stop expecting ads to be a magic wand of hey, here's my thing, sign up for my thing. Now I'm going to sell to you and I'm sure you're all going to buy. It doesn't work like that. And also go back and look at the percentages. You know one to two percent average of people would buy something. So it goes back to being in a bit of a numbers game in that sense as well.

Ann: 29:50

Boosting your audience as well, isn't it?

Katie: 29:51

Absolutely. You know it does come back to that, doesn't it? Audience and visibility, you know. So yeah, I'm a strong believer in that. And keep showing up, you know you'll see people. I always think of Denise Duffield Thomas when I give an example. But if she's in launch or you've done anything of hers, she'll literally be everywhere, all of your social media, because her retargeting strategy is really really good and she'll just keep showing up and all of us. You will go and check her out because you'll be like, oh, she's everywhere. You know, let's go and see what's going on. And retargeting again, you know, top tip, if you can retargeting and keep showing up, is another kind of really strong method for magnetic marketing, really to keep showing up in people's social media feeds as well as your email. You know they work in tandem, it's not one or the other, it's both of them together.

Ann: 30:33

Yeah, because with retargeting, the reality is that we are not. I think as business owners, we have this feeling that, oh, I'm going to annoy people, I'm going to be like you said, be everywhere, but actually people aren't seeing loads of your content. You think that you're talking about your new thing over and, over and over again until you're sick of talking about it, but people in your audience have probably only seen one or two of those posts.

Katie: 30:56

And that's often they say, don't they? I didn't see that.

Katie: 31:00

And you know, yeah, we all have that thing. I think in built that. Yeah, the more we talk about something put people off. And I've started emailing a bit more recently and I've definitely seen you and subscribed to go up and I think, right, shall I not? Look at them and I'm like, right, it's fine, I don't want them on my list, I don't want to be paying for them if they're not interested in being here. And actually it's not about exercise of people and subscribe. You don't want them there, to pay for them if they don't want to be here.

Katie: 31:24

But I know lots of business owners that say every time they send an email about the thing, they will get more people sign up. So does it really matter about the people that are unsubscribing? Probably not. And, like you said, we're probably getting 20 percent open rate and the email is good open rate, so that at least 80 percent they're not even seeing that one email. If you're then sending more emails, you might get the stuff. If it's someone that's really interested, I don't think they care anyway, there's lots. I'm on lots of different email lists and if it's something I'm even remotely interested in, doesn't bother me at all. If they send 50 emails, I just like OK, fine. And also, you know a lot of people these days and it's probably good practice. If you don't want to hear about this specific thing, but you still want to remain on our list, click here and we won't email about this thing. I think that's really good practice, because then you're not losing them as a subscriber, but they just don't want to hear about that thing that you're promoting right now.

Ann: 32:10

I've noticed lots of people doing that recently and I think it's really effective. Even larger, like big retail companies and things are doing that now for things like Mother's Day and Father's Day. They'll just say if you don't want to hear about this particular holiday, please click here, and I think that's so useful in targeting the content that you're sending out.

Katie: 32:29

It is. And then you're not losing them completely, are you? You know it's quite intuitive to what is important to them right now. You know if something is triggering to them and it just puts them off, you might lose them as a subscriber, whereas they might have actually been a huge fan previous to that. So, yeah, it makes massive sense to target and filter, I guess in segment who you're kind of speaking to about each thing Brilliant.

Ann: 32:52

So we're kind of on find you there, and where can our listeners find you if they want to work with you or come into your world and find out more about what you're doing?

Katie: 32:59

You can stalk me. I'm pretty much Katie Kallela everywhere. So Katie Kallela socialcouk is the website. From there you'll find the social links, but it's Katie Kallela social on Facebook and Katie underscore Kallela underscore social on Instagram, and they're the main places that I kind of hang out.

Ann: 33:13

So come and connect Lovely. Thanks so much, katie. Thank you for having me Bye. Thank you so much for listening to Dee. Before you go, if you've enjoyed this episode or any of the other episodes on the podcast, please head over to Apple Podcasts and give us a lovely review. It really does make a big difference and it helps other people to find us Whilst you're there. Click subscribe so that you don't miss out on any of our future episodes. If you're unsure about how to do this, just check out the show notes for all the information that you need. Thank you and see you for the next episode of Simple Content.