Shelby Fowler is the founder of Fempire Media, a digital marketing agency, Facebook and Instagram Ads Strategist for Small Business Owners. She helps businesses and female entrepreneurs tell their story, share their brand, create content, and build an online community. She is all about showing you how to save time and make more money. Shelby is passionate about helping entrepreneurs escape the long hours, get out of the hustle, and start to scale with an automated sales machine. She also passionately teaches Facebook ads and funnels to female entrepreneurs. She lives outside of Little Rock with her family, dog, and cat. She loves dance parties, green smoothies, and playing board games.

Social Links: 

https://www.fempiremedia.com/ https://www.instagram.com/FempireMedia/ https://www.facebook.com/fempiremedia https://www.linkedin.com/in/shelbyfowler/

Episode Transcript:

Lindsay Maloney:

You are listening to the Book Your Dream Clients podcast. Bite-sized episodes from one coach to another to help you create and scale your business with simplicity. No hustle required.

Shelby Fowler (00:18):

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Book Your Dream Clients podcast. We have Shelby Fowler with us and we're talking all about Facebook ads, Instagram story ads, which one Shelby prefers and how you can start putting a little money aside to invest in your own ads. So sit back, relax and enjoy. 

Lindsay Maloney: Shelby welcome to the podcast. 

Shelby Fowler: Thank you for having me. 

Lindsay Maloney:

I'm excited to dig in because I just told you before we hit record that Facebook ads is a hot topic, especially in the last six months with all these major changes. So I'm excited to have you on because I am not a Facebook ads expert. My ads run pretty well, but I love... I think there’s like a million ways to run your ads. So I think it's important to get all these different strategies or even just why you should run them, all of the things. So thank you for being here with us. Why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started.

Shelby Fowler (01:10): 

Yeah, thanks! So I own a Facebook and Instagram ads agency. I actually started my business when I had my second daughter and I was kind of freelancing doing social media and ads for restaurants, for brick and mortar businesses,  a lot of salons, doctor's offices. When I started and I was actually in school at the time to be a speech pathologist. So I was doing that, and wanted to make some extra income. I'd always loved marketing. So it was just like a natural kind of like side hustle, if you will. But then I started to make so much money and I just really loved being able to see my work help businesses. So, you know, we run ads for, let's say a restaurant, and then we noticed that their sales have increased - people coming in that had never been in the restaurant before.

And like, Oh my gosh, I saw you guys on Facebook or Instagram. And I knew I had to come eat here. I knew I had to have cocktails here. Right? So I really loved that. I had a client of mine at that time she was a permanent makeup artist. So she did -  she had her own little salon and she had people coming up to her in the grocery store, in her small town. And they were like, you're the lady from Facebook. So I loved hearing stories like that so much. And what happened was I was getting so much fulfillment out of it. I was getting really good at what I was doing and I was making more money. And so I decided to go all-in on running ads for businesses and I dropped out of school.

So now I work from home. I own an agency and we work primarily now with coaches and online business owners. And that kind of naturally happened, especially when COVID hit, right? Because a lot of my brick and mortar businesses had to let us go because they couldn't stay open during COVID. So especially the restaurants and salons and plastic surgeons and things like that, who I was working with. So I had a pretty good mix of the time of coaches, consultants on my business owners, and brick and mortar. And so I really shifted into helping online business owners and haven't looked back.

I love that. I think you're in a great niche because coaches know how important it is to invest in marketing, especially when you've gotten your foundation established. It's strong. You're confident in what you're doing. And you're super confident in investing in driving traffic to the things that you have. I know that one of the biggest questions is when should I start running ads? I get that a lot. Can you help our coaches out?

Yes! That's one of my favorite questions! I get that one quite a bit as well. So, my recommendation is always to wait to run ads until you have profitable offers. So I like to use this analogy. Facebook ads are like the icing on the cake. They're not going to fix a broken sales problem, right? And a lot of people think that's what they're there for. Right? So let's say you have, I have people to come to me and they say, Shelby, I'm newer to business. I haven't been able to sell this program of mine - my group coaching program or this course or something like that. And they say, Facebook, I'm thinking I'm going to try Facebook ads to help. And I'm like, no, right? Because it's not going to fix a broken sales problem. It's going to amplify whatever you have going on in your business.

So if you don't have any sales, you're just going to waste a lot of money. Because what it tells me is that you might need to work on your sales skills, right? You might need to work on your marketing skills. You might need to fine-tune your messaging. That's a big thing with people, making sure that you're clearly communicating what your offer does, who it helps, etc. So ads are just the icing on the cake. Once you have a profitable offer, you're making a good amount of money through this offer, then you can throw ads into it. There are certainly methods and strategies of running like five of the $10 a day ads just for visibility and to gain authority in your industry. And you can do that like ASAP, but I'm talking about real, more robust campaigns to sell your programs, to fill your launches, to fill webinars. I want you to have funnels that you've put people through organically and your conversion rates are good. Typically what this means is that you're usually at above six figures. So you're already hitting consistently. You know, what is it? $800 something dollars a month. You're consistently at eight, nine, $10,000 a month.

Lindsay Maloney (06:26):

I think that's an important thing to note is to make sure it works. I just gave this advice on a group call yesterday or the day before. If you want to launch something, do it organically with the people you already have. And then once it works, look at your conversion data and then take it to the Facebook ads. I think maybe waiting until you're six figures it might feel a little like, oh my God. But maybe you could decide what, what percentage of my income a month could I set aside for marketing to help me grow my business? I think that's important. So what are your thoughts on the actual conversions? Let’s say you had a launch and you’ve got a few students and what is kind of the baseline conversion where you would say, okay, I think we have something here. Let's take it to the ads.

Shelby Fowler (07:11):

Yeah, absolutely. So what I want to see is for any sort of free offer. So let's say that you have a free training, a webinar, a masterclass, a live launch, maybe, maybe it's a freebie -  like a guide -  something like that. Anything that's free that you're offering. We want your funnel to be converting at a minimum of 20%. Meaning that 20% of the traffic that hits that landing page, registration page, you know, whatever you're calling it, they need to convert into leads, into registrations, into people now in your funnel. Okay? 20%. If you're sending traffic to a paid offer,  so let's say something you're selling, right? We want to see that conversion rate be at least 2% and that's and a lot of that, you might actually get hired at a higher than that if it's a warm market, but with cold, remember that your conversion rates are going to be less.  But as long as you're hitting above 2%, then we have some good data to go off of. And we can see people are responding to this. People are liking this.

Lindsay Maloney (08:30):

Okay. That's good. One of the other big things I have is for students is impatience with ads. They'll turn them on. And if they don't see their inbox flooding with leads, then they turn them off. Sometimes they don't even wait a day. So what kind of pep talk could you give those ladies?

Shelby Fowler (08:51):

Yeah, I have a rule! 48 hours. So remember that you do not want to touch your ads for at least 48 hours after they are approved. Okay? Not after they're submitted, because you know that when you submit an ad inside of ads manager, they go into a review process. Right? And then Facebook says, okay she's not breaking any rules. We're going to go ahead and approve this and let it run. And at that time, once it's approved and starting to run, you have 48 hours where it's in hyper learning mode. Meaning that your ad is just trying to get out to enough people. And Facebook is trying to figure out who wants this. Right? And gather enough data to really optimize it. If you turn your ad off before that, then you really miss out on letting your ad do its thing.

It's super normal in the first couple of days running ads for your ad cost to be a little bit more. And if you're not getting anything in the first three days, then we want to look at maybe your ad budget isn't enough. Maybe we need to increase your ad budget. But then we can kind of start to look at the data and see what's happening. But there's been clients...to your point, a lot of people turn their ads off way too soon. Or they tweak and mess with them way too much. And we've had clients that we've run their ads for like a week and a half, two weeks. And, and it took that long for our costs to get down to where we wanted it to. But we had to go through a learning process. And so sometimes if you just give it a little bit more time, you're going to end up where you want to be.

Lindsay Maloney (10:43):

So people who check their ads every day, is that too much? Or should you have it on your calendar to check on them once a week -  in case you're that person who feels the need to micromanage or you've got your ads manager?

Shelby Fowler (10:55):

Yeah. So I would set a reminder on your phone to check it 48 hours after they've been reviewed and approved. So then you're not going back there and looking at it in between that. If you are running ads like if that time falls on a weekend, remember the ad costs are always a little bit more expensive on the weekends. That's normal. So if your ad got submitted, let's say Friday morning, I would wait until Monday to look at them. And you don't need to look at your ads every single day. If you have someone that you’ve hired, let them do that. We do that for our clients. We look at our client ads one to two times a day because that's our job. But I would say every couple of days, look at it.

Lindsay Maloney (11:49):

Okay. I like that. And I think that that relieves some pressure on people who are constantly flicking over and refreshing their screen. Let's talk about the new updates to Facebook. They're massive. And can you explain it to us in third-grade terms - what is the deal?

Shelby Fowler (12:09):

Yeah, that's a great question. So essentially Apple just came out with an update on their devices and this update allows its users to choose whether or not they want an app to be able to track them. So I've got this now on several apps that I own. I opened a running app the other day that I use and it popped up. The iOS prompt popped up and then I was able to choose whether or not I want that running app to be able to track me. So this is actually going to affect not just Facebook, but then I'll tell you how it's going to affect it in just a second. It's actually going to affect Google ads, YouTube ads, Pinterest ads... all ads. So here's how this looks. Here is what happens. Because people can choose whether or not they want the app to track them.

People are saying, no, I don't want Facebook or Instagram to track me. So if you're running an ad and let's say, I'm in your target audience and I just got the update on my iPhone and I say no, I don't want Facebook to track me and I clicked that button when it prompted me after my update went through. Then I'm scrolling on Facebook and I see your ad, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I need that, and I click on your ad. I can go through, sign up for your thing, all of that. But now Facebook can't track that data correctly. So you, as the advertiser, as the business owner, your data and your backend may be a little off because you don't see that I'm clicking on your ad, right? And if you want to run retargeting ads later to people who have, who have gone to your... let's say your landing page, but didn't download your freebie or people who went to your registration page and didn't sign up for your masterclass, you want it to retarget those people.

You're not going to be able to retarget me because I opted out of being tracked. So there are several different things that it's going to affect just like that. And people are freaking out. There's a lot of updates in Facebook because Facebook has had to adapt quickly to the changes to ensure the advertisers are still going to be successful. And so I've seen a lot of people freak out and I'm always like, guys, it's going to be fine. Facebook is one of the most powerful companies. They are going to adapt and listen, they make all their money from advertising. So they're not going to just be like, Oh, rollover and be like, okay I guess we're going to give up, right? They're going to make sure the advertisers are going to be successful. So that's why there's a lot of updates going on.

One of my mentors who owns a very big ad agency told me this is going to separate the newbies running ads from the people who are more experienced. And it's so true. You're seeing this a lot. So when you hear the horror stories online and you read them on Facebook and Instagram and people are like my ads! Or, my ads manager messed up! What's happening right now - people that have been running ads for a while, who have been really good at it and have access to maybe bigger clients, so they're learning in real-time, a lot quicker -  those people are going to succeed. And the people who are kind of dabbling in it or wanting to do it themselves might have a hard time. So I'm not telling you not to do it yourself. I'm just saying, make sure that you follow the steps. So make sure your domain is verified and make sure two-factor authentication is on inside of your ads manager. 

Lindsay Maloney (16:09):

Yes. I think domain verification was a big, hot topic and I love your approach. It's going to be fine. This is how Facebook makes its money. They're not going to, you know like you said, rollover.  They’re going to make it easy to spend money with them because obviously, that's what they want. So I think educating yourself and keeping up in some way or another as a business owner is important. We don't just want to hand off our ads to any random person. I think it's important to educate yourself of what's going on and what, and what looks good. That's why we do podcast episodes like this. So you have an idea and then once you figure it out, once you figure out all the new Facebook changes, you feel a billion times smarter because you got it. Because it is a lot more steps than it was a year ago to run your ads. But it makes sense once you put it all together.  So for me, I love running ads to build my list, to fill my challenge, my webinar, things like that. And I think that's a great place to start. Are there any other tips you could give a coach who has some money set aside for marketing every month?

Shelby Fowler (17:15):

One of my favorite strategies is like a $10 a day strategy. You don't have to spend very much money. We do this a lot and it's something we do a lot with some of our seven-figure clients as well. We run video view ads and we rent them for like $10 a day. And essentially we'll just take a live video that they did on their Facebook business page. I just did one the other day. I did a live video on my business page called, “how I would spend $10 a day,” and it was about this exact strategy, and then I'm running $10 a day ads to it, full circle. So essentially what I'm doing is just running a video of you $10 a day. And then when you go to create your ad, you're going to pick an existing post and pick the live video you just did on your business page.

And then you can still have that call-to-action button at the bottom of your, of this ad. So if they click on it, they can go to your website or wherever you want to take them. And so this allows you to really do more than anything, it's just about gaining brand awareness and visibility and authority in your industry. So it's not necessarily going to get you like a conversion, right? It's not going to do something for you. So a lot of times you want to run ads to get, like you said, to grow your email list, to get people registered for your webinars, your masterclasses, your challenges, or buy your products. But this is simply just to increase your visibility and it will allow you to develop an audience that you can retarget later, as long as they have not opted out of the IOA. But I like this method quite a bit, just because it does help you in that sense. And I have found that it'll make your other ads perform better as well.

Lindsay Maloney (19:16):

I can imagine so, because you're boosting your engagement and if you play with more of Facebook's tools, then they help you out a little bit. Like if you rub my back, I'll rub your kind of thing. Okay, so what if you find that -  for me -  I feel like a lot of my clients are hanging out on Instagram stories. Would you recommend a person run just Instastory ads or still let Facebook figure out where they should place your ads.

Shelby Fowler (19:48):

I'm so glad you asked this and we didn't even talk about this before, but I'm obsessed with Instagram story ads, I actually have a course on it. They're my favorite right now because I have consistently seen them be less expensive for my clients than newsfeed ads. We still run newsfeed ads because they're super effective as well. But Instagram stories, Facebook stories, messenger stores -  people are spending more time consuming that content. And there's like 500 million daily users of stories. And not only that, but one-third of the most viewed stories are from businesses. So that tells me that people are... and we know that from stats, people are buying from stories. So that tells me that based on our data and evidence, people are consumers, people are consuming them and then making decisions. And that's important to know, right?

It's quick content. And they're a lot easier to create in my opinion, because you don't have to write ad copy, write ad copy. You're going to have to write that if you do a newsfeed ad. So we've found that the Instagram ads that work the best are the ones that look super native to stories. Meaning I like to film them directly in stories. Or you can film them like a reel and instead of posting your reel, just save it to your computer and then you can pull it into Canva and add music to it and stuff like that. So they're a lot of fun to create and they're just really short-form content. Right? Because you have to do like you can do, I would say up to three slides, but you really want to keep it. If you can keep it under 15 seconds, then you're good.

Lindsay Maloney (21:47):

I love Instagram story ads too because you don't have to write copy. And I love creating ad creative. So those are my favorite too. And when I think about my own habits, I spend the vast majority of it up in stories in Instagram stories. And I think that we sometimes disregard our own habits and they're probably very similar to our dream clients or dream students. And we try to do way too much, but really, what a few simplified and just tried that once -  if you've never ran an Instagram story ad, Shelby tell us about your course on that.

Shelby Fowler (22:23):

Yeah. It's only 67 bucks. So it's basically my lowest offer. It is jam-packed full of how to film it, how you can film it right in Instagram. And I give you a few methods on how to do it - what to say in your ad, because that's a big thing, right? People are like, okay, well, what do I even say? Consistently my Instagram ads have done about 50% less of what my newsfeed ads...they've cost 50% less than my newsfeed ads. So they're about half the cost for me, which is killer. So I'm teaching how to set up your ad account, how to film your ad, how to edit it, how to submit it, how to manage it. And then also how much you should spend in ads. All of that is kind of in this course. Yeah. It's called Irresistible IG Story Ads.

Lindsay Maloney (23:25):

I love that. I think that's a great way to get started too. Because you don't have to feel the pressure of doing the copy and all of that. I have to say, I have the same results of story ads - about 50% less than feed ads, which is always great. I think there's pros and cons to doing both. For me, feed ads are - I can boost my page, I can boost my Facebook group, all that kind of stuff builds a little bit better, but then Instagram story ads just convert so much higher. Shelby, where else can everybody find you? I'm assuming on Instagram, but where else? 

Shelby Fowler (24:02):

Yeah, you can find me on Instagram @lifewithshelby and you can check out my website, FempireMedia.com. I offer free consults. You can find my programs on there and I have a free Facebook group that you can also access from my website. 

Lindsay Maloney (24:21):

Awesome. Shelby, thank you so much for being with us. You guys go follow Shelby, go get her Instagram story ad course and start spending a little bit of money to build your business. And I think you'll be happy with it. Thank you so much. We're so grateful.

Before you go. I want to invite you to join my free Facebook group for coaches, simply type dreamclientcommunity.com in your browser request access. And we'll happily let you in. We have amazing coaches in there just like you, who are starting and scaling their business and we would love to see you there.