The complete conversation, in order. 4,447 words.
[00:00:11] Dan: We are talking about the Facebook strategy in particular, middle of funnel. And he just said the return on ad spend that I get on Google now is the best I've had in about two years. Only thing that's changed is we've added in.
[00:00:27] Dan: Meta advertising matrix. G'day
[00:00:35] Dan: YouTube fans. Here we are in our next installment talking with Dan Nickis and we are talking about the Facebook strategy in particular, middle of funnel. just a bit of recap for those who haven't listened to talk about top of funnel talk, and I loosely call it top of funnel, because we're hitting people that don't know anything about the brand.
[00:00:58] Dan: this is book, e com ads matrix. So the engineers, the core campaigns, and that's what I'm taking you through. this is about how we build engagement with the brand and make people solution aware.
[00:01:09] Dan: So people come to the socials, they know they've got problems, but they're not necessarily looking for a solution. They're going there to be social. So all we're trying to do is not hard sell them. we're trying to make them solution aware that we are the solution to whatever problem that they have.
[00:01:24] Dan: It's just about making them aware that of who we are, what we do. These top of funnels fuel the middle of funnel campaigns, which is here again. We're not trying to push to try and sell to them. There is an option of people to click to buy using the shop now button as a call to action. But fundamentally, at this level, in middle of funnel.
[00:01:43] Dan: We're going to use the audiences that we've created at top of funnel. So people we've already created touch points with us, then their solution away. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to build trust with them. We're trying to make the people now product aware. So which product is their solution?
[00:01:58] Dan: Not just that where the solution as a whole and make them us POS. So you need selling proposition away. The audiences were using using their people that have engaged in the last 30 days of insta The last Facebook, they viewed 50 percent of the videos in the last 30 days that sit up here in this type of funnel.
[00:02:18] Dan: They're in the ads there, and they could have also visited our website in the last 30 days or subscribed via Klaviyo or other email marketing solutions. Klaviyo one that we use because it connects up really easily. subscribe. But not purchased and we also exclude purchases from the last 30 days.
[00:02:36] Dan: We're still trying to educate people at this level was not. We do have that shop now button as I said, which directs to the home page. We're trying to put other options in front of them that talk about the products or offerings or services that the brand has.
[00:02:51] Dan: We can be a little bit more personalized with the targeting because we know they already know about us. We don't need to just introduce them cold. So what I'll do is I'll show you a real world example of how that's the easiest way to do it. we talked about Top of Funnel Brand Awareness and how that built up the audiences in here in the middle of Funnel.
[00:03:06] Dan: And we call this brand recall. We optimize these ads for, ad recall or recall. They're exceptionally cheap to run. You can see the CPMs here. This is in Australian dollars, 4. 81. And I think that works out to maybe 3 Australian, 3 US. so we're still, even though we're built, we're using our custom audiences at this level, it's still exceptionally cheap.
[00:03:26] Dan: There'll be two ad sets in here. One will be for New Zealand, which is off at the moment. One's for Australia. this one's a direct synced audience from Klaviyo. So that's people that have signed up to the email list but not purchased in the last 30 days.
[00:03:39] Dan: Now, some of these audiences do overlap, but we do just try to get as many. We don't want to leave anyone out. Engaging with Facebook over the last 30 days, that audience builds from Topper Funnel Ads because our conversion objective there is engagement with the brand. We've got people that have watched 50 percent of the videos that we've got in those Topper Funnel Ads.
[00:04:00] Dan: We've got all website visitors last 30 days. That's based on Pixel and Capi data. And we've got engaged with Instagram in the last 30 days because the ads are shown on both at top of funnel of both Facebook and Instagram as a platform and we exclude purchases last 30 days. We're not trying to reconvert existing purchases.
[00:04:18] Dan: Everything else is left nice and broad. We've got the country abroad, the age and the genders as all by default. Reason is, is because we're not, we don't, we're not being picky as to who's who's who. Coming into these, if we've targeted them at Topper Funnel, we've targeted them correctly. We know that. And if they've engaged with us, they've engaged with us.
[00:04:36] Dan: and you can see the audience size here we have is, sits between 88, 700 and 104, 400. So it's a sizable audience that we know. We've already created touchpoints with so this is why it works so effectively keeping in mind this works effectively and this initially this system was set up to add fuel to your Google ad campaigns that have been run through solutions.
[00:04:59] Dan: So this is going to go to. Brand search. This is going to go to your dynamic remarketing and everything that's incorporated within your P Max campaigns. People are aware of you. We're adding more good data points because think about it every time someone comes through to your website, fills in a form, looks at a product, adds to cart.
[00:05:16] Dan: All those signals are also being sent to Google. The great offshoot of this is these convert. see this is last month.
[00:05:24] Dan: It's the 15th of March now. We're only back in February 2024. This isn't what was working five years ago, Chad style. This is what's working today. You like what I said there with Chad style? No, you know what Chad style is? No, Chad style They just put one ad up no interest targeting thousand dollars a day budget.
[00:05:43] Dan: no Knowledge about copy one video and it just goes crazy for them and then they're like I'm a guru. I'm gonna make a course That's Chad style. Okay. we're talking about unique selling propositions and how these products are their solution to their specific problems. This refers to removing harmful chemicals. This is a water filter company. It's easy to install. There's 40 years of experience.
[00:06:05] Dan: And this long form one, which didn't perform overly well for us, that's why it's off. It, talked about. All of the product features, and this lady's an ambassador. She's actually a doctor. So you can see how we're trying different, angles to see what worked. And what we're finding is working is that people want to remove the chemicals from their products and that's converting at 3.
[00:06:25] Dan: 86, which is fantastic. Obviously, one of the biggest pain points for people with, buying water filters is the complexity of them. Like, how do you set them up? How do they work? I've never had one. I don't know how to use it. We have a simple video showing them how they're easy to put together and use.
[00:06:41] Dan: And it converts at 14. 49 ROAS. Keep in mind this is set up at this level for awareness. trying to convert these people at all. But, whilst our intention isn't to convert them, people are people. And what I mean by that is that they're all at different stages of that consideration process, whether it's a first touchpoint, a second touchpoint, third through to 18th touchpoint.
[00:07:07] Dan: Everyone's different. For me personally, it might take me nine touch points with a brand to develop enough trust with them and to go, yep, you are the solution to my problem. You're a higher price point, but you're what I want. Some other people, they might have had, a real pain point where they bought a filter and it was just an absolute nightmare to try and get together and to try to work, or it didn't strip all the chemicals out that they wanted it to.
[00:07:33] Dan: And that on the second touchpoint, we address that and they go, yep, I'm in. No more consideration. I'm getting my credit card out to buy this. So we still need to be mindful that people are going to be ready to make a purchase at these different levels, which is why we still have the shop now call to action, but the majority don't.
[00:07:51] Dan: at a CPM of 4. 38. $4 84 on average, $4 72. You can see the power of it. There's a few things that do happen here. Dan, can you just hook into the ads, like how you on your ad sets.
[00:08:05] Dan: So this is an ad that we run. you know there are up to 50 chemicals added to Australian drinking water? So we know from experience with this brand, and you would know your brand. We talked to brand owners that, one of the biggest questions that people have when it comes to water quality in Australia is what's actually added into our tap water.
[00:08:25] Dan: They don't really know. They've got an idea, but they didn't know it was 50 of them. So we're like, okay, well, there is actually 50 different chemicals that are added into it. And our water filters filter out about 99 percent of sediment, rust, bacteria, cysts, chlorine, chemicals, heavy metals, fluoride and unpleasant odours.
[00:08:42] Dan: So. We have a review from a verified buyer. Transform your tap water. Now, fix your cap water today. 99 percent removal of harmful chemicals. It's not showing on that feed one, but on other placements, it shows in full. Now, this has been running for a little while and you can see, you look at the positive engagement here, 132 comments, 65 shares.
[00:09:01] Dan: Like, this is free advertising. We're paying 4. 32 or whatever it was to reach 1000 people. Then out of that, It's been shared 65 times and commented on that many times. Like it is, you can see how the cycle works. if we go here, it's the easy to install the best investment in your health in your health, you could ever make such a noticeable difference.
[00:09:23] Dan: We've gone with a review based thing. First, easy to install and use. Our water filters are responsible for improving the lives of many Australians. We then go on about how what it filters. Get yours today. And this is just a simple user generated content video where we talk about how to put it together.
[00:09:38] Dan: So your conversion objective for all these ads is just awareness. Awareness. That is exactly it. This one doesn't get as much, in terms of the social engagement yet, the one without the harmful chemicals has more, but I ask you a question? These ads here? Yep.
[00:09:54] Dan: are they these creatives? Are they creatives that were also created in the top of funnel or they're brand new? These are different. we want them to be different because we want them to specifically address that. So at the top of funnel, we go more general about the brand. So we can talk about the history of the brand, the range of products.
[00:10:15] Dan: And this is going in more or? Yes. Questions people might ask. Yes. we go to brand owners and we said, well, what questions get asked a lot on your support desk or what on your socials? what gets commented on the most? because we know that there's no point in knowing it and not addressing it, we'll get user generated content or create user generated content through the brand owners.
[00:10:36] Dan: Yeah. So go out and just show us how you put, share the video of how you put this together. Or shoot a video of someone reviewing your product talking about how it gets rid of 99. 9 percent of everything out of the tap water in Australia. So that's more specific because we don't want to talk to someone about how this product is easy to put together.
[00:10:54] Dan: if they're not interested in the product to start with, it doesn't make sense. Yeah, he's got to put a bike together, but you're not interested in riding a bike. So we need to develop that touch point and that trust with them and establish that they're actually interested in the brand first.
[00:11:10] Dan: Sure. At that really, really cost effective way. Okay. the other point that we've raised with this one is about experience. There's a lot of companies that just come and 40 years of experience and research goes into our work. So the second stage, the middle of funnel is more about education on the actual semantics or more intricacies of a product rather than just saying, hitting them from the top of funnel, middle of funnels.
[00:11:35] Dan: More of an education, correct? And it's where we address the most common pain points or problems that people are finding in this industry, because we've already established that they're interested in their health and interested in clean filtered water. Yep. at this level, we're educating them about how their actual products work and it solves their specific problems and what points they have.
[00:12:00] Dan: this situation for this particular brand, it's exactly the same methodologies you would employ for any brand. You would do introductory. Bit of an education in the middle of funnel and then of funnel is going to be a completely different message you deliver. A hundred percent.
[00:12:14] Dan: So we've got another, client that we're working with, with SolutionsAid. Now, I'm not going to say the name of the client, but they sell,fishing gear, fishing tackle, fishing accessories, very, very niched. and at the top of funnel stage, we're just trying to gauge whether someone is interested in that style of fishing.
[00:12:31] Dan: We're not trying to sell them fishing gear or show them fishing gear. They have two specific seasons of fishing that they have, dependent on the migration of the fish. and we need to know which one of those styles of fishing or seasons of fishing that that person's interested in. It's no point just going, I'm interested in fishing, that could be anything like there's so many different ways, so many different environments to fish in, so many different fish to try and catch, so many 10, 12, 13.
[00:12:58] Dan: whether you're on land, whether you're on fresh water, salt water in a boat, what time of year it is, there's so many variations. So at Top of Funnel, we're not trying to sell them any gear or show them any gear by solutions to them. We're just trying to gauge whether they are a person who is interested in this style of fishing or this style of fishing.
[00:13:14] Dan: Yep. to get that engagement, they move into this. We know that they're engaged with that style of fishing. Middle of Funnel. We're going to show you our solutions or our products for that style of fishing because we already know at the top of funnel you're interested in it.
[00:13:29] Dan: So essentially all you're doing is the old days of Facebook saying, We want to grab these people, you're creating data in the top of funnel. That's filtering into the middle of funnel that you can now start showing to those people solutions or all those, those features of that particular type of product.
[00:13:47] Dan: Yeah. A hundred percent. So, and it's just pre qualifying them. And this was now to the fact that, we did lose a little bit of that. Facebook was amazing at just putting the right things in front of people back in the day and. It's not always like that. The users have become more aware that they're looking at ads.
[00:14:05] Dan: It's not just, Oh my God, this is like, this is destiny. This is in front of me. And it's exactly what I'm looking for, you know, as things got restricted with privacy and Facebook, or even removing some of the interests based targeting of the real specific stuff. Yep. that have been doing for years ever since that Cambridge Analytica data bridge.
[00:14:25] Dan: And, you know, all the issues that come along with the Apple privacy, but fundamentally, it's still, if we go at that top of funnel level and, you know, the water filters, is this person interested in their health? So, my next question is,
[00:14:38] Dan: whilst we get this segment right? We've got the middle of funnel. We're targeting these engagement audiences. are we creating any further audiences from here? So we're creating people that have viewed content or added to cart, but not purchased.
[00:14:54] Dan: The other thing we're doing is we're creating an audience of our loyalty, in our loyalty section, which is people who've purchased and that does happen at middle of funnel. we do also use these warm middle of funnel audiences, and we do test scaling campaigns out as well for purchase conversions, which can potentially work, and that's, I'll go through those strategies about how we make those decisions, what ads we show them.
[00:15:16] Dan: that can be later on down the track. Yeah, and there is an advantage plus shopping sort of, extra that we put in here. Yep. But what I can do is in further videos, I'll take you through it. It'll take hours for us to go through everything here, but fundamentally, yes, everything feeds itself in here.
[00:15:34] Dan: You can see this feeds bottom of funnel, but then also, as we get further down, our loyalty campaigns guide. What goes into top of funnel and middle of funnel. It also guides our scaling campaigns, these feeding to these audiences. It's not doing this thing.
[00:15:50] Dan: Yeah, it's not doing this. that's why I called it a matrix because in turn, this is also feeding Klaviyo and it's also feeding Google ads. So it's not just like that, but. Everyone understands top, middle and bottom. It's being drilled into us. It's an easy way to explain it to people at the heart. Sure, good.
[00:16:09] Dan: makes a lot of sense. I I think that's a nice conduit to move into the, the bottom of the top of funnel into funnel. Now you've got those awareness camp, Audiences built, you're retargeting them. So you're not, it's sort of like you're retargeting the audiences you built.
[00:16:26] Dan: It's, you're not retargeting the people have been in your website. retargeting, but you're retargeting audience engagement, Exactly. that's the difference now. Whereas we used to just they used to effectively be very little bottom of the funnel. It was Facebook, go find people to go buy stuff off me.
[00:16:41] Dan: If they didn't, but they added to cart, So it's a two stage process. 99 percent of people did. And I'd say 99 percent of people still do. Yes. There's all these other functions on here. And. Especially we have this data loss where, people might have opted out of tracking or they might have, on your website it could be targeting people in Europe with GDPR, but these audiences that we're creating at Middle of Funnel, we know we've got control of them because we're looking at, you know, But people engage on Instagram and Facebook, or they've watched 50 percent of your videos.
[00:17:15] Dan: That's all in app data. what I mean by that is Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, owns that data. They're not asking the user permission, can we report this back? It's their data. All the app. It's part of their turn to service. They own that data. The subscribers, you own that data as a brand owner, because you've got their consent when they opted in and you put them into your email marketing software.
[00:17:41] Dan: People that visit your website, there can be a little bit of a drop off there, depending on what people's privacy settings are as to whether you can remarket to them. But I'd like to think. goes to reason that if someone's interested in your product, they're signed up to your email list that they have already been and read content on your website as well.
[00:18:00] Dan: So there is a mobile app there and that's how we capture them there. But the in app data is the key for us here. Yep. It's cheap for you too. It's cheap to retarget them cause it's in app data. You're not driving traffic away from the Facebook interface and that therefore it's more expensive. You're keeping them in app and now you're going to start retargeting that, audience and it's going to be cheaper for you.
[00:18:24] Dan: And not only that, it's going to be more qualified audience. Oh, it's way more qualified and it's accurate. And. You saw there in the last 30 days, that brand that I showed you for the water filters, their warm audience of in app data, their subscribers and their website visitors, excluding their purchases, sat around 100, 000 people.
[00:18:44] Dan: That's a pretty big audience that you know, have already had contact and engagement with that brand, with your brand. And that's not a bad conversion like in app ROAS for a conversion action. That's not a conversion action.
[00:18:57] Dan: You're talking about how much it's costing us to build that audience effectively. Yeah. 100%. And it's not costing us a hell of a lot. whilst you've shown us that example there, that's just one example. the clients that you work with, do you see universally result From top of funnel to middle of funnel, the bottom of funnel, whilst there could be variations between the, performance metrics, but are you seeing a similar type of result
[00:19:22] Dan: Every single time. And I just had this conversation before I jumped on this call with you with another brand owner. he runs his own Google, we run his email and his Facebook, he's like, my Google ads have never performed this well.
[00:19:35] Dan: The system was designed to fuel your Google ads. But now that Facebook has balanced itself out and it's performing a lot better in 2024, it's also fueling the conversion campaigns really well. And he just said the return on ad spend that I get on Google now is the best I've had in about two years.
[00:19:54] Dan: Only thing that's changed. Is we've added in this meta advertising matrix, which is just fueling it for him because what he's saying, he's getting a better return on ad spend, but he can see the conversion rates higher. So people aren't coming in cold, they're coming in with that search intent. They're solution aware, they come straight, they start doing a direct search or they're doing a brand search or.
[00:20:16] Dan: 100%, exactly. It's not by accident. This whole system is designed to work like this, you know, Klaviyo then feeds these audiences back into Google as well. Klaviyo is feeding these audiences into Meta and it's just this big cycle that we have. the other question people ask is, well, how much should I be spending in terms of budget allocation to this top and middle of funnel?
[00:20:38] Dan: To start with, we say about 20 percent of what your overall daily budget is 20 percent what up to top of funnel or middle funnel. So 10 percent to each. So 20 percent in total, yeah. So 20 percent total to top and middle there to build engagement and awareness. So 10 percent to each. I'll just digress a bit.
[00:20:56] Dan: 10 percent top 10 percent middle. Is that just for Facebook or is that overall budget? Just for Facebook. So let's say for argument's sake, you've got a hundred dollars a day to spend on Facebook. Yep. Advertising. We'll do $10 to each. 10. 10. Gotcha. Yep. You can see those CPMs are so low. Yeah. Going to reach two to 3000 people per day in each of those campaigns for $10 a day.
[00:21:19] Dan: Yeah. Gotcha. That. So you can scale that accordingly. If you're doing a hundred dollars a day, you're doing a thousand dollars a day, be a hundred. A hundred. And then we'll move into Yep. Head, adjust that a little bit. As you move further into it, you might, might need to spend a little bit more on that top of the middle.
[00:21:34] Dan: If you've got nothing to start with, sure, and then have something to start with. That's where we start. Most brands do when they come across to us because they're already part of the solutions. A Google ad strategy. lots of audiences. Yep. Yeah, if it's brand new, we might need to adjust it and change it or if they haven't done anything for so long, we might need to adjust it because we need to build those audiences quickly for them and reallocate budget as we need to.
[00:21:59] Dan: Yeah, yeah. Nice. Okay. that was good, mate. I even learned a little bit from there. Did you? That's not very nice. Thank you. yeah, so that's our middle of funnel.
[00:22:08] Dan: if you do want to reach out and find out how you can utilize the system that we're working with Dan, using the, Facebook, Klaviyo, Google Ads system, make sure you reach out to, the Solutions 18, we'll be able to fill you in as to how we can help you guys out. So, thank you very much.
[00:22:27] Dan: Thank you, Dan.
