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#55: CPG Investing with Andrea Popova

UMAI social circle cpg podcast

#55: CPG Investing with Andrea Popova

Welcome to episode #55 of the UMAI Social Circle, with your hosts, Karin and Alison. Today’s episode features guest Andrea Popova, and we’re discussing investing in consumer packaged goods brands from an investor perspective.

Andrea shares her journey from spending years in retail and eCommerce at companies like Walmart, Nielsen, Meta, and Prose to writing one of the most-read DTC newsletters—CPGD. CPGD has evolved into a vital resource for digitally native brands, boasting 10,000 weekly readers and fostering a vibrant community, and it’s the go-to online directory that connects brands, investors, and service providers alike. Andrea shares how her experience of finding brands to invest in, what to look for, and her favorite brand darlings at this time.

Join us as we explore the dynamic world of CPGD and uncover invaluable insights for investing success. 🎙️

Let Us Break It Down For You…

[0:59 – 5:12] Intro: Meet Andrea Popova of CPGD.xyz
[5:13 – 8:23] Making Your First Angel Investment
[8:24 – 11:43] Andrea’s Favorite Brands
[11:44 – 13:15] What to Look for When Investing
[13:16 – 15:27] What Kind of Questions Founders Should Ask Potential Investors
[15:28 – 18:30] Recent Brand Investments & CPG Opportunities
[18:33 – 21:03] CPG Trends: The Rise of Brand Profitability
[21:04 – 22:03] Final Thoughts and Closing
 

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#55: CPG Investing with Andrea Popova

 
Alison Smith: [0:17]
Howdy, listeners. We’re Alison.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:18]
And I’m Karin.
 
Alison Smith: [0:19]
And we love growing CPG brands.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:22]
We’re the founders of a digital and social media marketing agency, UMAI Marketing, and creators of The Consumer Goods Growth Course, where we’ve helped grow dozens of brands to six and seven figures.
 
Alison Smith: [0:32]
We’re former in-house marketers turned consumer goods marketing educators, who’ve set off on a mission to provide CPG founders and marketers with actionable strategies that drive community and sales. We’re talking real results.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:46]
If you’re wanting to learn simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies needed to drive real brand growth, without breaking the bank or sacrificing your social life, then this is the podcast for you. Let’s get into today’s episode.
 
Alison Smith: [0:59]
Welcome to the UMAI Social Circle, where we talk consumer goods tips to help business owners and marketers grow. We’re Alison and Karin, co-founders of UMAI Marketing, and today we’re being joined by Andrea Popova, co-founder and CEO of CPGD. Welcome.
 
Andrea Popova: [1:16]
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
 
Alison Smith: [1:17]
We’re super excited to talk to you. We’ve been following you and tracking you down for a while, so this is huge for us. And today we’re going to be talking about raising, investments, things that we haven’t really had the chance to talk in depth with. So yeah, we’re super pumped about it and we’re excited to learn all the things. But first, let’s get into your background. How’d you come to start CPGD and all the other fun things that you’re up to?
 
Andrea Popova: [1:49]
So I’ve always had an interest in E-commerce and retail. I started my career at Nielsen as a consultant at Walmart, which was such a cool time to be there because they had just acquired Bonobos and Jet.com. And so it was a very forward-thinking version of Walmart, and they were really getting into E-commerce, which was exciting. And then I went to PROS after that where I was one of their founding analysts creating dashboards and data systems to help them drive data-driven decisions. So that was where I really got into data and tech and how it can be applied to E-commerce. And that was also right around that time when I was a subscriber to CPGD and the owner of CPGD reached out to me and said that he had bought the business and that he was looking for a new owner. So he brought me in based on my experience, and it was just kind of a once-in-a-lifetime dream opportunity because you suddenly are the owner of a publication that you’re obsessed with.
 
So for the last three years I’ve been running a business that I once was just a subscriber to and watching it grow from 2,000 to 10,000 readers and a lot of them now founders who are my friends and my peers and brands I’ve helped get investments in and get different forms of traction in. And it was just such an amazing opportunity. So that’s a bit about me.
 
Karin Samelson: [3:06]
Oh, that’s so exciting that it just happened. He just really liked your experience. But for anybody who doesn’t know what CPGD is, can you give a very quick summary of what it is?
 
Andrea Popova: [3:20]
Oh, yes. CPGD stands for the Consumer Package Goods Directory, and it’s an online directory of digitally native brands and that it started as a free resource of these brands. And since then it’s sort of scaled into a newsletter where these brands are featured where we also feature different founders and agencies and services. And that’s where we have about 10,000 readers currently that read that on a weekly basis. And because of that newsletter, I’ve been able to then engage with the community in a way that now I’m able to source deal flow for the investors in the network. I work with a lot of agencies in the network to help them get clients. I help a lot of the founders on an advisorship where there’s even a mentorship basis. So yeah, it’s been a whirlwind, but that’s a bit about what exactly it is, kind of a watering hole of sorts.
 
Karin Samelson: [4:13]
Nice, nice. Yeah, it’s one of our, if not our favorite CPG newsletter, obsessed with the directory on the site and also the fact that you are helping not just CPG owners, you have agency partners, you have a whole slew of things you’re doing. Are you a one-woman team or what does that look like on the back end?
 
Andrea Popova: [4:34]
Yeah, the person who brought me on, he does own half the… I don’t know if I want to say this necessarily, but I guess the other person who brought me on, he owns part of the business and then I own the other part. And so he is not really necessarily a day-to-day operator, but so I guess you could consider me a one-woman show in that regard because I’m the only one operating the business. But I do have amazing interns who come in and currently have one from Brown University who’s just the best person ever. So it’s been awesome.
 
Karin Samelson: [5:06] 
It is awesome. We love a good intern. So congratulations on finding a really amazing one. Well, let’s just dive into investments. So getting straight to the point here, how does someone make their first angel investment in a brand?
 
Andrea Popova: [5:22] 
So getting involved in investing can be kind of daunting because you might want… There’s so many opportunities to invest. A lot of brands, especially right now are raising. And so I think the first thing is deciding what brand you want to invest in. And because there’s so many opportunities, I think it’s important for an angel investor to be really discerning, and that can be really impactful because if you invest in something early on that does really well, then that can really legitimize your career as an investor down the line.
 
So I would say yeah, being really discerning to start. And something you can do to do your due diligence, even though you’re not a fund, is leverage funds in your network to do the diligence sort of for you. So if you have an investment that you’re thinking of making, look at what other funds are investing in in the company, or if it’s very early, maybe look at later-stage companies that are in the same category of investing and ask them, “Do you think this is a brand that you would invest in if it got to a Series A or Series B?” And then in terms of the mechanics of it, typically you’ll have a call with the founder or the founding team and get an idea, a valuation and everything like that. But in terms of deciding on the brand itself, the metrics that I look at early stage are things like traction, profitability, margins, and looking at whether it can scale organically without paid media.
 
Alison Smith: [6:47]
Love that last one specifically, just because it’s something that we do, paid media, but we also do a slew of other things to build that strong foundation. And a lot of brands will come to us without that foundation and just want to throw money at the wall and see if it sticks sort of thing. So love that. You’re very in tune to that as well, and it’s like, yeah, this has to have legs. Very cool.
And have you found that being an angel investor and reaching out to firms or funds and asking for straight-up advice, like you mentioned, people are receptive to that in general?
 
Andrea Popova: [7:34]
Maybe it is because I already know a lot of these people already and talk to them on a regular basis, but…
 
Karin Samelson: [[7:41]
Talk to your friends and funds maybe first. Yes.
 
Andrea Popova: [7:45]
Yeah. I mean, if you’re interested in angel investing, maybe a first step is to have 20 or 30 calls with GPs or partners at early-stage consumer funds and understand how they’re thinking about investing. That’s what I would do is just do research among people who are already doing that and also actually joining networks like the angel group or syndicates that do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. That can be a great way to get your foot in the door, kind of dip your toe in, and then do some angel investing on your own after that.
 
Alison Smith: [8:17]
I love that actually, just doing 20 to 30 calls, just putting a number to it. Is it CPGD that got you into investing or was there a different avenue, or was it just being around all these brands constantly that made you really want to get into this?
 
Andrea Popova: [8:34]
I kind of always thought, “Will I go into venture capital, will I not?” Because I do love the entrepreneurial space, but I don’t want to run my own CPG business, but I love helping CPG businesses, so it’s kind of an easy way to do it as if you’re investing in them. But I didn’t really know if that would be possible for CPGD as a business to start doing until we found this platform called PIN that allows communities to raise capital together.
 
So the Uber alums use it to raise, the Y Combinator alums use it to raise. And so we were like, “Well, we have this community and we know that a lot of these people want to invest in CPG as well. Could we pull together money from that community using a platform called PIN to do that?” And so that’s when we first started thinking, could we actually do the investing ourselves if we reduce the technical barrier to entry and are able to use something like that. And that’s been really promising so far.
 
Alison Smith: [9:30]
Awesome. Is that still around, the PIN site?
 
Andrea Popova: [9:32]
Yeah, well, I am legally not allowed to say if we’re actively raising, I think, so what can I say? That yeah, PIN is thriving and we are actively working with them to maximize the impact of our community in CPG.
 
Alison Smith: [9:51]
Awesome.
 
Karin Samelson: [9:53]
So since you always have your eye on CPG brands right now, what are a few brands that are some of your faves that you’re interested in and why, what makes them compelling?
 
Andrea Popova: [10:04]
Yeah. Well, one brand that I’m really excited about is 4AM Skin. It’s founded by two amazing female founders and when they started the brand, they started also building their own social media followings, which ended up being really impactful because now they’re able to scale their sales pretty organically. I don’t think they’ve ever spent a dollar on paid media. They’ve actually grown through just organic mentions with the other influencers and creators that they partner with and also their own social media. And the brand itself is just very eye-catching and luxurious, and so it just garners a lot of attention. So that is a brand that I’m really excited about and the numbers are also really strong. So definitely one to watch out for in terms of content and unique, I don’t know how to describe it, unique ways of communicating with their community.
 
Omsom is a really cool example. They’re an Asian food brand. They started off doing sauces and now they do noodles as well. And just the way that they build their community online is very authentic and raw and open and the way the founders live their lives is also an expression of that. So it’s just really cool to see, again, two female founders who are actually sisters in this case, scale a business that way.
 
Karin Samelson: [11:26] 
I love that. And we always preach founder forward content just because of the connection that you can make and social is all about building community. So we completely align with that. So both of those examples were very, very strong founder stories, founder forward. Is that a huge thing that you look for other than the margin and profitability? And would you recommend other small brands be open to that kind of strategy?
 
Andrea Popova: [11:53]
Oh yeah, I totally agree that founder forward is the way. In fact, there’s this tool called Tolstoy that allows you to have videos embedded on your website. They would probably hate that I describe it this way, but it’s like a pop-up that pops up on your website. But it’s kind of like a mini way of you being able to say, “Hi, I’m the founder,” on your website. And I think that that’s why it leads to such stronger conversion rates on websites because it is so founder forward. And yeah, I just think the reason CPG is such a cool industry to be in is because the founders. So the more that people can lean into who they are and why they started the business, the better for their ability to raise and also for customer’s ability to engage with or feel the product resonates with them.
 
Alison Smith: [12:41]
Yeah, I was on a site the other day. It was a small CPG startup, and she had her Tolstoy video, and I listened to her story three times on repeat because it was good. She knew what she was doing. It was good. It instantly felt connected. I mean, just adding the human element to your shoppable website is, I’m sure it increases conversion rates, but it also just feels better as well as a consumer. I’m curious, what types of questions do founders who you’re potentially investing in, what type of questions do they ask you that you think are super smart or that you love and kind of more pique your interest into their brand?
 
Andrea Popova: [13:34]
What types of questions do founders ask me that pique my interest? What’s an example?
 
Alison Smith: [13:40]
Yeah, when they’re raising your potential investor, do they ask you any questions that you’re like, “That was a good question. It makes me want to work with them further.”
 
Andrea Popova: [13:53]
I think that any founder who’s looking for more than just capital, I think that’s always an important thing to seek out. So if a founder is asking like, “Okay, you’re investing this money in me, but what other things are you going to be providing? As an investor in this business, what are you committing to in terms of growing the business?” And I think that’s a perfect question for CPGD because we do so much beyond just investing capital. We have discounts and deals that we’ve curated on SaaS tools and agencies that we give our investments. We have advisors in our network. We have a talent pool that we can draw from. So there’s just so many things on top of the money. Obviously, the money is secondary even to all the resources and intros we can provide. So yeah, I think that that is a really good question to ask your investors.
 
Alison Smith: [14:38]
And how does CPGD get access to all of the CPG deals?
 
Andrea Popova: [14:40]
All the deals that we come across are inbound from our network. It’s pretty crazy. Either they come from the founders themselves because so many founders do subscribe to CPGD, and so they’ll tell us when they’re raising, or an investor in our network will say, “Have you seen this deal that I’ve come across?” I’m also a scout and a venture partner for several funds, so they sometimes show me deals that they’re looking at that maybe are too early for them or too late for them. So it really is all just inbound in the community, which is awesome.
 
Karin Samelson: [15:13]
That is awesome. I mean, when you build something so strong and there’s so many people that know about that reputation is really nice. There’s a lot of trust being built between what you’re doing and the brands that are relying on you here. So I love that. What are some brands that you’ve recently invested in?
 
Andrea Popova: [15:30]
I recently invested personally in Flaus, which is Flaus. I don’t know best to pronounce it, but it’s F-L-A-U-S, and it’s a really cool, really cool brand. It’s the first-ever electric flosser. And I invested in it because I talked with the founder and after talking to the founder for two minutes, I was sold. I was truly just like, “You have a vision and I am on that. I’m going to ride into the night with you till the day I die. This is just the best business ever.” That’s kind of how I left that conversation. And I have rarely felt that way. And I actually have only made just a couple personal investments in CPG brands personally versus the business, and that was one of them. So that just goes to show how strong of a business that it really feels like from talking to her.
 
Karin Samelson: [16:22]
A two-minute conversation. What on earth did she share with you in two minutes that had you sold like that?
 
Andrea Popova: [16:30]
I had follow-up conversations since then, of course, but I was already sold in that conversation. She told me about the long-term vision of the brand, how they were going to scale and different channels they were going to scale in. And I was like, “You are right.” And also the patent that they have on the business is also really promising. So yeah, very cool company.
 
Karin Samelson: [16:51]
That’s awesome. I have definitely received the ads, and I’m very intrigued because it is hard to remember to floss and of if it’s just right on my counter like that, super easy. So maybe I’ll take a harder look at it and see what stories they’re telling through their content.
 
Andrea Popova: [17:09]
Totally. Oh my gosh, yeah. You got to tell me if you try it.
 
Karin Samelson: [17:14]
I will. Now that I know that you’re an investor, that’s great. So what makes a CPG investment opportunity a good one, a smart one, when there are so many brands raising right now?
 
Andrea Popova: [17:26]
I think that right now we’re in a time of really focusing more on profitability and scale than ever before. Well, maybe not ever, ever before, but the most in the last decade. So a good investment right now is maybe even the unsexy brands that you don’t even see on trendy influencers. Maybe right now the best brands to invest in might be just brands with really solid growth that are actually targeting middle America and have strong margins. Those are really compelling businesses that are probably really acquirable on the other side. But a business that combines both hype with scalability, I think is just a unicorn. And that’s why I love brands like 4AM Skin, for example, that I think are doing really well in both regards.
 
Karin Samelson: [18:21]
I really have to take a look at 4AM Skin. I’ve never heard of it. I’m like, “Do I need this now?”
 
Andrea Popova: [18:26]
You do. I have them in my room right there.
 
Karin Samelson: [18:29]
Oh, perfect. Love it.
 
Alison Smith: [18;33]
You mentioned kind of a change towards brands feeling more that they need that profitability in CPG. We’ve definitely seen that too throughout the past year. Have you seen any other changes in the raising landscape in general as well?
 
Andrea Popova: [18:55]
Well, a lot of funds right now are having trouble raising, so I think that funds are also being way more, I don’t want to say stingy, because that almost has a negative connotation, but they’re just being more maybe selective because they have to be about what investments they make, and so brands are feeling that burn as well. But yeah, that’s definitely one trend is that I feel like it’s really coming even from the higher layer of the LPs and the funds themselves.
 
Alison Smith: [19:28]
Yeah, it’s so interesting that that wasn’t as important for some brands previously, and now it’s more like profitability is at the top of importance for at least a lot of the brands that we’re working with, which is exciting and a new challenge as well. It really puts our marketing skills to the test. But yeah, we’ve seen a lot of brands that we work with having to trim the fat in terms of looking really hard at their operations, their marketing as well, every single factor that goes into making a beautiful product. So yeah, kind of exciting new territory to work in. I’m going to use the word exciting, another way to describe it.
 
Andrea Popova: [20:20]
Marketing has always been about being creative with what you have, but now more than ever, brands have to be very creative and scrappy. Scrappy is probably the stronger word to use there.
 
Alison Smith: [20:31]
Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
 
Karin Samelson: [20:33]
Awesome, Andrea. Well, we’re so thankful that you came and shared wealth of knowledge about a subject that we really haven’t breached too much on the podcast. So we appreciate you being here, and we appreciate what you’re doing with CPGD. We reference it and we look to it all the time. And I mean, other brands should be too, regardless of if you’re looking to raise or if you’re looking for an agency partner, but just to see what the landscape is like, see what’s new, see what’s hot. So thank you for doing that work, but would you like to leave the audience with a link or a call to action, a final statement?
 
Andrea Popova: [21:09]
Well, thank you so much, first of all, for having me on. It’s been really amazing to meet you guys and to talk to you face to face. So yeah, thank you for having me on. I would just say if anyone is interested in investing or learning more about CPG, we have some resources on the website at cpgd.xyz, so check it out.
 
Karin Samelson: [21:30]
The best name, I love it.
 
Karin Samelson: [21:31]
Thanks for listening to the UMAI Social Circle, y’all. We’re here to support you in your CPG journey, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any new podcast episodes. And while you’re a it, please leave us a review on your listening platform of choice. Shoot us a DM @umaimarketing on Instagram if you have any topics you want us to cover on new podcast episodes.
 
Alison Smith: [21:51]
And don’t forget to access our free masterclass where we’re showing you how to create a solid marketing strategy. You can access that at umaimarketing.com/masterclass, and we’ll meet you back here for the next episode.
 
 

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#54: 4 Steps to Successful Ad Audience Targeting

UMAI social circle cpg podcast

#54: 4 Steps to Successful Ad Audience Targeting

In this final episode of our Facebook and Instagram advertising series led by Alison, co-founder of UMAI Marketing, we conclude by delving into effective audience targeting methods. Learn how to properly identify prospective audiences, optimize cost per acquisition by using better audience targeting techniques, and leverage your retargeting for lifetime value. Join us as we explore the four essential steps for discovering optimal audiences to drive successful ad campaigns. Let’s dive in! 🎧

Let Us Break It Down For You…

[0:58 – 2:07] Introduction: How to target audiences for Facebook and Instagram advertising
[2:07 – 4:22] Step 1: Analyze the Competition’s Customers
[4:23 – 5:16] Step 2: Craft Your Customer Avatar
[5:17 – 7:21] Step 3: Define Motivators & Pain Points
[7:22 – 11:23] Step 4: Choosing Targeting Interests & Other Audience Types
[11:24 – 12:25] Final Notes for Better Audience Targeting
 

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#54: 4 Steps to Successful Ad Audience Targeting

 
Alison Smith: [0:17]
Howdy, listeners. We’re Alison.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:18]
And I’m Karin.
 
Alison Smith: [0:19]
And we love growing CPG brands.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:22]
We’re the founders of a digital and social media marketing agency, UMAI Marketing, and creators of The Consumer Goods Growth Course, where we’ve helped grow dozens of brands to six and seven figures.
 
Alison Smith: [0:32]
We’re former in-house marketers turned consumer goods marketing educators, who’ve set off on a mission to provide CPG founders and marketers with actionable strategies that drive community and sales. We’re talking real results.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:46]
If you’re wanting to learn simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies needed to drive real brand growth, without breaking the bank or sacrificing your social life, then this is the podcast for you. Let’s get into today’s episode.
 
Alison Smith: [0:58]
Welcome to the UMAI Social Circle, where we talk consumer goods tips to help business owners and marketers grow. Alison here and I’m one of the co-founders of UMAI Marketing, and I will be wrapping up our three part series on all things Facebook and Instagram advertising. So welcome to today’s episode. I’ll be covering the steps in different ways you can find new people to target with your product or offer to ensure the best cost per acquisition possible. We call these audiences who are called prospects, prospecting audiences. Additionally, you can re-target people who have interacted with your brand before. We would call this retargeting audiences, and these are people who have maybe visited your website, engaged with you on Instagram or your Facebook profiles, or are on your email list engaged with a past ad, et cetera, et cetera. But today, we’re focused mainly on targeting new customers.So let’s get into the four steps for finding the best audiences that you can target for successful ad campaigns. 
 
[2:07]
So step one is to do your research. We’d like to research our competitors and we like to research our customer avatars. To do this, we will look through a client’s FAQs, we will look through their web copy, look for any highlights, benefits, pain points that this product or brand is working on solving. And we also go to Amazon, Reddit, and Instagram, and any other social channels. So with Amazon, we are looking at the reviews for this particular brand or we’re going to competitor reviews on their brands. And we’re looking at the most frequent complaints and the most frequent likes, what they like about the product. On Amazon reviews, they generally pull out, at the top, the most frequent terms used. So it’s really easy here if you’re selling on Amazon or if your competitors are to highlight how people speak and pull that into your ad copy and creative. We also go to Reddit and we’ll type in the product or the brand name or competitor of brand names and get some really amazing data from people about this product or about this type of product, their issues with it, what they like about it, and then again, how they speak on it is really important. 
 
[3:51]
And then finally going to Instagram, looking at your competitors on Instagram, see the posts and what they talk about on these posts. Generally, for the bigger brands, they’ve spent hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars testing what resonates with their customer. So it’s a really cheaper way to conduct research if you can pull out and highlight some of the things that people are talking about and some of the content that they’re sharing when they’re a bigger brand.
 
 
[4:23]
Now onto step two to help you better target people with your Facebook and Instagram ads is to create a customer avatar. So to do this, imagine who your core customer is, really try to visualize them in their head, what they look like, how old they are, what their… You can even name them. So what’s their name, what is their job, what’s their household income? And dive into even deeper questions that you can ask yourself about who this person is. You can even go and pull a stock photo off the web of what he or she or they look like just to help you really visualize this person. So anytime you’re writing ad copy or putting together creative, you’re thinking about what this person wants to see. 
 
[5:17]
Now, step three of finding the best people to target with Facebook and Instagram is after you lay out your customer avatar or avatars, it’s then time to define what motivates them and what barriers they have or what pain points they have.
 
[5:35]
So basically how we do this is, we’ll make two columns and we’ll ask ourselves why someone would want a product like yours, what motivates them to purchase your product? And then on the other side of the pain point or the barrier side, we’ll ask ourselves, what’s hindering this person? Why would they hesitate to not buy our product? So as an example, let’s say we were the cricket protein bar by EXO, and we are running through this practice. Our benefits that we know our customers like in our product is that it’s high in protein, it’s sustainable, and it’s a on-the-go meal. But when we move to barriers, we need to figure out why someone would have a barrier to actually buy this cricket protein bar by EXO. 
 
[6:33]
So one thing that’s obvious are, crickets can be a tough thing to swallow for a lot of people. So a lot of education may have to go into solving and changing people’s mindset about why cricket protein is normal and good. And then also, these bars are a bit more expensive than other protein bars. So we’ll also need to solve for that with our marketing as well. And then once it’s time to speak to our customer avatar, through our creative and our copy and through all of our marketing, we can pull these different benefits and barriers and work to solve for them or work to speak on them so that we can really identify and relate to our end user, our customer. Okay. 
 
[7:22]
Now on to step four. Now that you’ve identified who your customer avatar is, how you want to speak to them, what your competitors are doing online, what your potential avatars are saying online, let’s now speak about the different types of audiences that you can use to target these new prospects on Facebook and Instagram. The first one, we’ll talk about our lookalike audiences. So lookalikes are a way that you can reach new people who are most likely going to be interested in your business or your product because they share similar characteristics to your existing customer base. So to create a lookalike audience, you would use a source audience, you would upload that into Facebook and it would pull all the data points from that source audience. So say you uploaded a list of people who have purchased from you in the past, it would take data points, demographics, interests, behaviors online, and spit out a completely cold audience that has similar characteristics for you to go out and target. So these are people who have never heard of you before, but they share a lot of the same traits as your current customer base. The second type of audience that we’ll talk about is inside the Meta Business Manager backend.
 
[8:48]
You can also choose additional demographics, interests, and behaviors to target. So beyond just age and gender demographics, you can also target things like this person’s household income. Are they parents and are they parents of toddlers or of small children or babies, what have you? You can even target if they’re in a relationship or not, as well as other interests that you can pull in and target, like what media do they consume in terms of magazines, books, television, movies? What influencers or prominent people do they like and interact with, as well as other behaviors. What is their political stance or what are their shopping behaviors? So as you can see, there’s tons of different specific things that you can target within Meta’s backend. So get creative and everything that you’ve done in the research and building of that customer avatar and their likes and dislikes is going to help you identify some of these things that you can target.
 
[9:57]
And finally, the last type of audience that we’ll talk about is likely the newest update to Meta at this time. It’s their Advantage Plus update. So what the Advantage Plus audience allows you to do is to maximize your performance and reach a very valuable audience with a super simple setup. So choosing the Advantage Plus type of audience will automatically choose for you. Meta will automatically choose for you who to target on your behalf, working with you to get the lowest cost strategy. This is giving Meta the reins and allowing it to choose the right people to target without you having to manually do all the research or choose all the interests or demographics or behaviors that you want to target. It’s going to do it for you. And we have seen great results with this really easy, simple approach. It is super great. We highly recommend it for any busy founders or solopreneurs who are wanting to run their own ads, but don’t have time for all the research or all the audience testing.
 
[11:09]
And then a side note, within all of these targeting options, you can also exclude certain audiences within each of these as well, so you can get really specific about the person that you want to target within Meta’s backend. 
 
[11:24]
Okay, thanks for listening to today’s episode. I hope that this gave you some insight and inspo to better target the right people at the right time for your brand. Cheers to investing in your growth and your brand’s growth. This is the final episode of our three part Facebook and Instagram advertising series. If you missed the first two episodes, feel free to go back and listen when you have a chance. And as always, let us know your thoughts or question. You can shoot us a DM on social.
 
Karin Samelson: [11:53]
Thanks for listening to the UMAI Social Circle, you all. We’re here to support you in your CPG journey, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any new podcast episodes. And while you’re at it, please leave us a review on your listening platform of choice. Shoot us a DM at UMAI Marketing on Instagram if you have any topics you want us to cover on new podcast episodes.
 
Alison Smith: [12:11]
And don’t forget to access our free masterclass where we’re showing you how to create a solid marketing strategy. You can access that at umaimarketing.com/masterclass, and we’ll meet you back here for the next episode.
 
 

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#53: Our Top 4 Ad Creative Optimization Tips to Increase Conversion Rates

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#53: Our Top 4 Ad Creative Optimization Tips to Increase Conversion Rates

Hi friends!  Today, we’re serving up some juicy tips on how to spice up your ad game with killer creativity! These tips are sure to help your brand skyrocket its growth! 🚀
 
Creative is QUEEN when it comes to ad performance, so buckle up for this episode as we share our favorite tips for better ads. We’ve gathered all of our learnings on what works and what doesn’t over the years into four simple tips (+ some bonus tips for good measure) for you to discover how to hook your audience with better creativity.
 
Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just dipping your toes into the advertising waters, this episode is sure to leave you feeling inspired and ready to take action. So, let’s roll up our sleeves, unleash our inner creative goddess, and watch those ad campaigns soar to new heights! ✨
 

Let Us Break It Down For You…

[0:58 – 3:16] Introduction: Facebook & Instagram Ad Creative Best Practices
[3:16 – 4:40] Tip 1: Create a Strong Hook to Stop the Scroll
[4:41 – 6:53] Tip 2: Test Optimal Video Lengths
[6:54 – 7:50] Tip 3: Humanize your Ads for More Engagement
[7:51 – 11:15] TIip 4: Make it Look Native
[11:16 – 12:32] Bonus Tips for Higher Performing Creatives!
[12:34 – 13:28] Closing
 

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#53: Our Top 4 Ad Creative Optimization Tips to Increase Conversion Rates

 
Alison Smith: [0:17]
Howdy, listeners. We’re Alison.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:18]
And I’m Karin.
 
Alison Smith: [0:19]
And we love growing CPG brands.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:22]
We’re the founders of a digital and social media marketing agency, UMAI Marketing, and creators of The Consumer Goods Growth Course, where we’ve helped grow dozens of brands to six and seven figures.
 
Alison Smith: [0:32]
We’re former in-house marketers turned consumer goods marketing educators, who’ve set off on a mission to provide CPG founders and marketers with actionable strategies that drive community and sales. We’re talking real results.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:46]
If you’re wanting to learn simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies needed to drive real brand growth, without breaking the bank or sacrificing your social life, then this is the podcast for you. Let’s get into today’s episode.
  
Alison Smith: [0:58]
Welcome to the Umai Social Circle, where we talk consumer goods tips to help business owners and marketers grow. Alison here, and I’m continuing our series on all things Facebook and Instagram advertising. So let’s jump in.
 
[1:17]
Today, we’re talking all things Facebook and Instagram advertising creative best practices guaranteed to help you get a better grasp on how to optimize your creative, and therefore your ad game. Whether you are a seasoned media buyer, or this is all new to you, today’s episode will hopefully leave you with some actionable best practices. So once you’ve set up the right campaign structure that will work harder for your brand growth, it’s time to start crafting content that speaks to your audience. You have to ditch the stock photos and generic copy type of creative. It’s time to start embracing authenticity and your creativity. High quality visuals, catchy hooks and compelling ad copy are your secret weapons to Facebook and Instagram ads success.
 
[2:17]
Something that we say here, all the time, at Umai is that creative matters most. It’s what the end user, your consumer, actually engages and sees. So we want you to tell a story, spark your consumer’s curiosity, and make them stop mid scroll. Remember, you are competing for attention as people are mindlessly scrolling and scrolling through their phones, so it’s so important to work on standing out from the crowds. Now, there are a few key aspects that make up a great ad creative. We’ll talk specifically about video creative today. As we all know that video is queen and generally will result in the highest conversion rate for your brand. However, this being said, it’s important to test multiple ad formats. Now let’s dive into our key ad creative video tips.
 
[3:16]
Number one is to focus on your hook. Your hook is what hooks your audience in the first three, five seconds of seeing your ad. This is the most important part of your ad creative as this gets your potential customer to stop the scroll by doing things that relate to them, or answering, or speaking to a critical problem that they have. So upon first sight of your video ad creative, you are relating to them in three to five seconds, which can be quite tough. A great way to create a good hook is look at your most frequently asked questions to see what your customers are asking before buying your product, and then agitate this problem or question that they have in the first few seconds. For an example of this, a hook could be maybe a gifting service or your product is a great gift for moms. So your hook on your ad creative could be tired of endless research trying to figure out the best gift for the mom who has everything, and then you go into your product from there. So that’s a hook I could definitely relate to because my mom is very hard to shop for.
 
[4:41]
Okay, tip number two is to test your video link. So we test video links generally anywhere from five to 60 seconds. So the shorter links from what we’ve seen through years and years and hundreds of thousands of dollars of testing is that short, generally best performs for retargeting. So those five second ads can be really great if you’re having a promotion or a sale or you’re simply retargeting people who have already visited your site, maybe added products to their cart. They just need a short, simple reminder to go back and purchase, and that these longer ad creatives are better for top of funnel. So people that have never heard of you before, you can do a lot in 60 seconds to introduce your brand, your mission, establish that no like trust and sell towards the end, but that 60 seconds has to be engaging the whole way through.
 
So to keep that video ad creative engaging, try changing videos every five or so seconds. So different clips every five seconds. And then you can also use different on ad copy speaking about different benefits, or solution your product offers at the same cadence. So every five or so seconds talk about different value props and benefits or problems of your product that it solves. You can also add in different pieces of social proof and testimonials as well. So every five seconds switch it up. We have very short attention spans. Now if you nail every five second clip and it’s corresponding copy by relating to your customer avatar, it’s not going to matter how quality your video ad is. It doesn’t have to be some high production shot. It just has to really relate to the consumer. So don’t overthink it. Just really dive into what this person needs to hear and needs to see.
 
[6:54]
The third tip is human elements. Always try to add in as much human elements into an ad video creative as possible. That’s why we love using UGC or User Generated Content to show who our customers are and also show the product and use. It establishes a lot of social proof. It shows potential buyers that people are already using and loving this product. And then other human elements that we’ll often use is just any other product shots, short clips of any aspect of a human, their hand grabbing the product, them using the product obviously, or just someone speaking at the screen is generally going to outperform just a product shot. Even if it’s a beautiful Studio 360 shot, it’s likely not going to outperform someone speaking to the camera.
 
[7:51]
And then tip number four is to keep it native. Native ads means that your ad isn’t meant to look like an advertisement. It’s best to make it look like something an influencer or content creator made on TikTok or Instagram, as this is going to not flag people right away that, “This is an ad. I’m just going to keep scrolling.” Instead, it’s going to help people actually watch and engage with your ad. We also like to use lo-fi type videos. So videos that you film on your phone, your iPhone camera often can outperform a high produced video. Obviously test both, but don’t underestimate iPhone filmed ads. Because it looks super relatable, it looks like something a friend or family is posting, it’s going to generally help relatability and help people get engaged with that ad. Also, always think mobile first when you are creating your ads from the start. Remember that it’s going to be a vertical screen. Think about how to fill that screen. Think about how that copy is going to fit within that ad screen of 1920 by 1080.
 
[9:10]
And then we also like to use videos that are already performing organically. So say we posted something on TikTok or we posted a reel on Instagram and organically it got a ton of views, a ton of engagement. That is a great test that this post is going to perform really well as an ad creative. It related to your organic audience, it should relate to your targeted ad audience as well. So don’t reinvent the wheel. You don’t always have to be making tons of content. One for organic, one for paid. Use what’s already working on organic and pull them in as ads. And then other scroll stopping tips for your video ad creative is to focus on what’s trending. If you have the capability to crank out some ads, go check TikTok, go check Instagram. And see what the trending audio of the moment is. See what the trending memes or other styles are and hop on that trend as fast as you can.
 
[10:14]
It’s also important that you add captions to all of your videos, so that when people are, say on the bus, or work, who need to have their sound off, they still understand the general idea of that ad and are still able to engage with it even with their sound off. We also recommend using for the onscreen copy using TikTok native captions and Instagram’s native captions. So to do this after you’ve made your ad, upload it into Instagram or TikTok and add the caption straight from those platforms. They’re not going to be your brand typography, but they are going to look native to that platform so that when they are being published as an ad, they don’t look like they don’t belong on the platform. So generally, we’ve tested this a lot. It’s generally better to use the native captions that that platform provides you.
 
[11:16]
And then finally make that ad creative as flashy and as high contrasting as possible. So once you’re finished with your ad creative up the contrast, up the brightness. If you can add trendy, flashy transitions between clips, really trending music or upbeat music. that’s going to all help people stop the scroll and actually pay attention to what you have to say. And then as a bonus tip, don’t forget to utilize Facebook and Instagram’s ad libraries for inspiration. So see what other brands are doing, analyze what their successes are, see what your competitors are up to, and adapt their strategies to your own niche.
 
[12:05]
Just remember, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery as long as you add your own creative twist, so not copying, taking as spongin. And to do that, you can go to Facebook’s ads library. I believe it’s facebook.com/ads/library, and you can type in any brand that you want to see the ads that they’re currently running. 
 
[12:34]
So I hope this episode provides a fun and informative way to explore Facebook and Instagram, add creative best practices. Feel free to adapt it to your specific style and your brand voice. And let me know if you have any other questions. We’d be happy to chat. Just send us a DM on social and stay tuned for our next podcast episode as we’ll be talking more Facebook and Instagram ad strategies to help you keep scaling profitably.
 
Karin Samelson: [12:57]
Thanks for listening to the UMAI Social Circle. Y’all. We’re here to support you in your CPG journey, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any new podcast episodes. And while you’re at it, please leave us a review on your listening platform of choice. Shoot us a DM at UMAI Marketing on Instagram, if you have any topics you want us to cover on new podcast episodes.
 
Alison Smith: [13:16]
And don’t forget to access our Free masterclass where we’re showing you how to create a solid marketing strategy. You can access that at umaimarketing.com/masterclass and we’ll meet you back here for the next episode.
 
 

Join below for marketing inspo & trends 👇👇👇

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#52: How Much Should I Spend on Advertising? Planning your FB & IG Ad Budget to Maximize Profitability

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UMAI social circle cpg podcast

#52: How Much Should I Spend on Advertising? Planning your FB & IG Ad Budget to Maximize Profitability

Welcome to the UMAI Social Circle! In today’s episode, our co-founder, Alison, discusses Facebook and Instagram advertising. We’re answering the #1 question we get about FB and IG ads: “How much should I spend on advertising?” Join us as we discuss setting your budget, scaling it, and maximizing your spending between acquiring new customers and getting existing customers to return. Jump into today’s episode, and let’s start making your ad investment work for you! 

Let Us Break It Down For You…

[0:59 – 2:05] Introduction: How to Budget and Plan Your Meta Ad Spend for the Best Results
[2:06 – 5:51] First Tip: How to Set Your Advertising Budget
[5:52 – 7:33] Second Tip: How to Scale your Budget once you’re Hitting your Goals
[7:34 – 9:36] Third Tip: How to Break Up your Ad Spend between Prospecting for New Customers and Retargeting Existing Customers
[9:37 – 10:12] Closing
 

Mentions from this episode: 

Learn more and Start growing with us 

UMAI Marketing socials  –

Access the Digital Marketing Tools Collection, SHOP NOW!
 

Stay in touch:

Join UMAI’s Facebook Group: CPG Marketing CORE 3 Inspo: Organic Social, Social Ads & Email with UMAI

#52: How Much Should I Spend on Advertising? Planning your FB & IG Ad Budget to Maximize Profitability

 
Alison Smith: [0:17]
Howdy, listeners. We’re Alison.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:18]
And I’m Karin.
 
Alison Smith: [0:19]
And we love growing CPG brands.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:22]
We’re the founders of a digital and social media marketing agency, UMAI Marketing, and creators of The Consumer Goods Growth Course, where we’ve helped grow dozens of brands to six and seven figures.
 
Alison Smith: [0:32]
We’re former in-house marketers turned consumer goods marketing educators, who’ve set off on a mission to provide CPG founders and marketers with actionable strategies that drive community and sales. We’re talking real results.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:46]
If you’re wanting to learn simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies needed to drive real brand growth, without breaking the bank or sacrificing your social life, then this is the podcast for you. Let’s get into today’s episode.
 
Alison Smith: [0:59]
Welcome to the Umai Social Circle, where we taught consumer goods tips to help business owners and marketers grow. Today, it is just me, Alison. I am one of the co-founders of Umai Marketing. I’m giving Karin a break today, and I am going to be speaking about our series on all things Facebook and Instagram advertising. 
 
So let’s dive into it. So today, we’re diving deep into a topic that we get asked frequently, how much should I spend on Facebook and Instagram ads? We get it spending your hard-earned revenue on Mr. Mark Zuckerberg cannot feel so great. So we are here to try to reframe your mindset into something more along the lines of spending my hard-earned revenue on my business equals investing into my business’s growth. So today, specifically, we will break down some guidelines on how much you should spend at any point in your business so that you can slay your goals without breaking the bank.
 
[2:06] 
Our first tip in today’s episode is how to set your advertising budget. The first thing is we need to set a budget that makes sense for where your brand is now and where you want to take it in the next 6 to 12 months and beyond. The general rule of thumb here is to spend 20% of your monthly revenue on ad spend if you’re in growth stage. So if you’re making $10,000 a month, plan to spend about $2,000 a month on acquiring new customers through advertising. Once you start hitting target costs to acquire these new customers and hitting your overall goal return on ad spend, then you can decide if you’d like to scale this budget as your revenue scales.
 
[2:54]
Now, there are some caveats to this as well when advertising on Meta, as you’ll also want to take into account your AOV or your average order value. If your average order value is say $30 per purchase, well then you’re likely looking at a target cost to acquire a new customer around $15 on average. But if your AOV is much higher, say it’s like $400, then your cost to acquire a new customer maybe closer to say $200. Well then it’s going to cost you a bit more to acquire a new customer as it’s not going to be that no-brainer, quick-to-pull-the-trigger type of purchase for this person, it’s going to be likely a longer sales funnel process where they may weigh the pros and cons of your product. They’re going to likely conduct their own research, look at your competitors. They might talk to their spouse before they even make a purchase of this size. They might wait for their payday even. So the slower timeline for them means a longer ad funnel for you, hence generally the larger ad costs to acquire this person.
 
[4:09]
The reason you need to understand this is that in order to be successful with Meta sales campaigns is that you need your campaigns to receive at least 50 conversion events per week in order for the Meta algorithm to better optimize on your behalf. This is because it will gain more data points and 50 is really the minimum here for it to gain enough data points, and that overall is going to help you get a lower cost per acquisition. So if you are a CPG brand with a lower price point, let’s stick with that $30 AOV that we spoke about earlier and you’re shooting for around a $15 cost per acquisition or less. Then you know in order to receive those 50 conversion events in a week, you’ll need to spend at least around $750 a week or around $3,000 a month.
 
[5:07]
But say you fall into that higher price point category and you’re shooting for that $200 cost per acquisition, well then you know that in order to hit about 50 conversion sales events per week, you’re going to need to spend closer to $10,000 a week or 40k a month in order to hit that full optimization of your campaigns. So you can really see that your product retail value can change your ad spend plan, but of course, you can always start with around 20% of your revenue. And then based on the amount of conversion events you receive each week, if it’s under that 50 or over that 50, you can increase or decrease your budget from there.
 
[5:52]
So this brings us to our second tip, which is how to scale your budget once you’re hitting your goals. You don’t want to scale too fast as this can cause your campaign learning to reset and lose optimizations. Therefore, we recommend three paces to scale. You have slow scaling, medium scaling, and fast scaling. So let’s start with slow scaling. Slow scaling is to scale your spend. That’s a lot of S’s. So scale your spend budget by about 20% month over month. This is great for solopreneurs who are managing their ads themselves or for startup brands who want and need that stability. This way you can check your monthly return on ad spend at the end of each month and increase spend only once a month in your account.
 
[6:43]
The medium scaling is to scale spend by no more than 50% every seven days. This allows you to jump in only weekly, like perhaps every Monday morning and adjust the budget accordingly for the week. So say you had a really good week the previous week, everything is stabilized at this point. You can increase it up to 50% with the medium scaling and then fast scaling is no more than 50% every three days. This is best if you’re in growth mode or if you’re running a promotion and seeing a great return. Three days is generally the fastest you’ll want to scale your spend and your ad account for Facebook and Instagram ads as data can be delayed by 72 hours. So you don’t want to make decisions any faster because you’re not going to have all the data to make informed decisions.
 
[7:34]
And then finally, for our last Meta ad spend tip, let’s talk about how to break up your ad spend between prospecting for new customers and retargeting warm or existing customers to come back and buy from you again. We generally will use the 80-20 rule for splitting the budget between these two groups. So between prospecting and retargeting. So 80% is reserved for attracting and converting new potential customers while 20% is for retargeting people who have visited your website, engaged with you on social profiles or on your email list as leads. This group also includes people who have order from you in the past and it’s time for them to buy again.
 
[8:18]
Now, if you are a more established brand and you’ve either been advertising for a while and have a solid cost per new customer acquired and or are making at least 10k in sales a month organically online, then we would recommend splitting this percentage a little differently by giving a bit more weight to the prospecting budget. So instead of sending 80% on prospecting for new customers, we would generally spend closer to 90% of your ad spend on prospecting and then the remaining 10% for retargeting warm and hot leads to come back and buy. The reason for this is because Facebook and Instagram ads are really best used for acquiring new customers as a lot of times you can remarket to your leads in more cost-effective ways like through email marketing or through organic social. So therefore, if you’re a more mature brand with a more proven product and sales, you have all these other marketing cylinders firing on your behalf, then splitting the budget on Facebook and Instagram by a 90-10 rule will give you the most benefit to your brand’s growth and you will get more bang for your buck.
 
[9:37]
And that wraps up our episode on how to best budget and plan your Meta ad spend for the best results. I hope this left you feeling better armed to tackle social advertising for your brand. And if you have any questions or war stories about your own Facebook and Instagram ads, shoot us a DM on social. We’d love to hear from you. And then stay tuned for our next podcast episode as we’ll be talking Facebook and Instagram ad strategies to help keep you scaling. But in the meantime, keep converting and keep slaying those marketing goals.
 
Karin Samelson: [10:13]
Thanks for listening to the Umai Social Circle, y’all. We’re here to support you in your CPG journey, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any new podcast episodes. While you’re at it, please leave us a review on your listening platform of choice. Shoot us a DM at UMAI Marketing on Instagram if you have any topics you want us to cover on new podcast episodes.
 
Alison Smith: [10:31]
And don’t forget to access our free masterclass where we’re showing you how to create a solid marketing strategy. You can access that at umaimarketing.com/masterclass and we’ll meet you back here for the next episode.
 

Join below for marketing inspo & trends 👇👇👇

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Amazon Ads Best Practices

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ads

Mastering the Amazon E-Commerce Landscape: A Comprehensive Guide to Running Amazon Ads for Consumer Goods Brands

In the ever-evolving world of e-commerce, consumer goods brands are in a constant battle for visibility and market share. Amazon presents a unique opportunity to reach your ideal audience and drive sales because Amazon is the preferred shopping platform for almost 200 million active users every single month. And it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

However, navigating the complexities of Amazon Ads can be daunting, so we whipped up this handy guide that is going to equip you with the essential tactics and insights to conquer the Amazon e-commerce jungle and gain quality sales.

Tip 1: Understanding Your Audience

The basis of any successful ad campaign starts with a deep understanding of your target audience. If you don’t have it already, conduct research to gather insights into your target audience’s demographics, interests, buying habits, and online behavior.

Once you have this knowledge, you can craft focused campaigns that resonate with potential customers by solving their core pain points and appealing to their desires. Utilize tools like Amazon’s Audience Targeting Manager and Market Basket Analysis to build precise buyer personas and tailor your advertising accordingly.

Tip 2: Keyword Mastery: Unlocking the Search Engine Gatekeepers

How do you gain visibility on Amazon? Keywords. It’s wise to employ a strategic mix of broad, phrase, and exact match keywords to cast a wide net while capturing high-value search terms. You can conduct in-depth keyword research using Amazon Keyword Research Tool and third-party platforms like Keywordtool.io and Ahrefs.

Optimize your product listings and ad campaigns with relevant keywords, ensuring your brand appears when customers search for products like yours. Implement the same strategy in your advertising when bidding on these same broad and exact match keywords.

Tip 3: Compelling Images and Descriptions: Crafting the Perfect Product Story

You can utilize professional product images along with lifestyle photos and videos to enhance your brand story and connect with customers on a more emotional level (remember: solve their pain points and highlight your unique selling propositions!).

Craft clear, concise descriptions that highlight key features and benefits. Optimize your titles and descriptions with relevant keywords to improve search engine ranking and organic visibility.

Tip 4: Targeted Precision: Reaching the Right People at the Right Time

Amazon Ads offer an array of targeting options, allowing you to refine your campaigns and reach your ideal customers with targeted precision. Utilize demographic targeting, interest targeting, and product targeting to ensure your ads appear in front of the most relevant audience. Leverage advanced targeting features like retargeting and in-market audiences to re-engage past visitors and reach customers actively considering similar products.

Tip 5: Bidding Strategies: Optimizing Your Budget for Maximum Impact

Setting the right bid is crucial to maximizing your ROI. Start by establishing realistic bids based on your budget, goals, and competition. Utilize automated bidding strategies like Dynamic Bids-Down Only to optimize your bids in real-time and ensure you are always competing for the most relevant keywords at the most competitive prices. All the while, monitor your campaign performance and adjust your bids accordingly to achieve optimal results.

Tip 6: Data-Driven Decisions: Tracking and Analyzing Your Campaign Performance:

Data is your most valuable asset. Always! Don’t forget it. Regularly track and analyze key metrics like impressions, clicks, conversions, and ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sales). Leverage Amazon’s Seller Central dashboard and other analytics tools to gain deeper insights into your campaign performance. Identify areas for improvement and optimize your targeting, bids, and ad creatives based on your data.

Tip 7: Experimentation and Adaptation: Embracing Innovation in a Dynamic Marketplace

Embrace the spirit of exploration and testing! Experiment with different ad formats, targeting options, and budget allocations to discover what works best for your brand. Consider testing new ad formats like Sponsored Brands Video and Amazon DSP to expand your reach and engage customers in new ways. Be willing to adapt your strategies based on your data and market trends to ensure your campaigns remain competitive and effective.

Navigating the complexities of Amazon Ads can be a time-consuming and challenging process. Partnering with a reputable CPG Marketing Agency can provide invaluable expertise, resources, and support. Leverage our experience in e-commerce marketing, Amazon Ads management, and campaign optimization to achieve exceptional results for your brand.

By following these essential tactics and partnering with a trusted CPG Marketing Agency, you can transform your Amazon Ads into powerful drivers of sales and brand growth. Embrace the journey of e-commerce advertising, constantly learn and adapt, and let’s secure those sales!

Ready to create a 7-figure Consumer Goods Brand without wasting money on strategies that don't work?

Then it's time you join the Consumer Goods Growth Course & start driving the results you've been wanting!

Book a call with us now & learn how you can start making consistant, 7-figure sales!

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Marketing Email Best Practices 2021

Marketing Email

Marketing Email Best Practices in 2021

So you wanna send some emails, huh? Well, you’re gonna need these marketing email best practices in hand! Don’t go blasting your audience the first chance you get without a plan of action.

Apply these marketing email best practices to execute a more intentional strategy and win over your audience AKA your potential purchasers.

CAN-SPAM Act

Contrary to the name, you can NOT spam your email subscribers – and, that’s what this law intends to prevent!

It’s an acronym: The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003.

This law sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.

Each of these separate email violations is subject to penalties of up to $43,280.

  • Don’t use false or misleading header information
  • Don’t use deceptive subject lines
  • Tell recipients where you’re located
  • Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future emails from you
  • Honor opt-out requests promptly
  • Monitor what others are doing on your behalf

Do you have +40K stowed away in a shoebox somewhere? No?? Us either.

So, proceed with caution. However, email hosts like MailChimp will send you a warning if a recent campaign resulted in a spike in unsubscribes or bounces.

marketing email best practices abuse rate example

Generally speaking, this can be prevented by cleaning your email list regularly – removing and not sending to email addresses that have hard-bounced, soft-bounced multiple times, or have unsubscribed.

And, experimenting with audience segmentation – so, you’re sending the right emails to the right people at the right time. Right!

Subject & Preview Lines

It’s your first (and sometimes only) chance to make an impression – say something bold, fun, and always direct.

And, mention a deal if there is one!

marketing email best practices subject line

3 Irresistible Subject Lines:

  • Promote a deal
    Example: Take 50% Off

  • Use customer call-out
    Example: Hey ##name##, check this out now

  • Insight intrigue
    Example: Have you ever wanted to start your own business, ##name##?

Frequency

Every brand is different, but we generally recommend sending ~4 e-blasts per month!

You have to consider how many other automated emails your audience will be receiving (the last thing you want to do is blow up a new subscriber or recent purchaser’s inbox).

And, you’ll want to remain agile about that frequently. Make adjustments as needed depending on your open and unsubscribe rates.

Timing

This is totally dependent on your brand and audience.

You have to test different send times to get a real understanding of your audience’s behaviors.

With that being said, we have a few favorite times: Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday before work.

This is when you’ll be able to catch those early birds who scroll through their email when they wake up, during their morning commute, or first thing at work.

Most email clients now offer a “send at the best time” option – that’s a great place to start!

Design V. Copy Template

Designed emails (a single or series of PNG, JPG, or GIF images) quickly captivate audiences.

Copy-heavy emails (consisting of plain text copy and/or sparingly used PNG, JPG, or GIF images) often have a longer story to tell.

You can always combine these types of email or commit to one style over the other.

marketing email best practices design or copy

Google Postmaster

If you really want to understand what Gmail thinks of your emails – which you should – you can use the free tool: Google Postmaster.

Google will tell you exactly what Gmail thinks of your domain reputation – that’s a Good, Medium, Low, or Bad rating.

Then, you can make more informed email decisions based on your score.

Essential Email Automations

These are our MUST-HAVE automations! We recommend that you get at least 2-3 of these running ASAP.

1. Welcome Series

Introduce your brand to your newest leads and email sign-ups! This is your first impression, so you want to make it right.

Answer the following questions –

  • Who are you as a brand?
  • Why did you create your product (or service)?
  • What are the benefits associated with your product (or service)?
  • What problems does your product (or service) solve for?

2. Customer Win-Back

Depending on your product’s shelf-life or the time it takes a customer to consume your product, you can (and should!) set up a reminder automation to ping the customers when it’s time to order again.

It’s much easier to get someone to purchase a 2nd time, so these win-back automations can be great money makers!

3. Abandoned Cart

It’s best to assume that something blocked a user from buying, not that they intentionally exited your site – who knows, they could’ve been late to pick up their kiddos from school!

Remind them that their cart is waiting for them by creating automated email reminders. In most cases, this will reduce your customer drop-off rate and increase purchase conversions on your site.

4. Post-Purchase

Finally, nurture your relationship with those who’ve purchased your product or service! Create a series chalk-full of resources, a testimonial or two, as well as a call to follow your brand on social.

Anddd, send message!

The folks on your email list are hot leads. Take advantage of their interest in your brand and deliver content that serves them, and sells product, direct to their inbox. Apply these top marketing email best practices to do exactly that!

Those are just a few of our marketing email best practices that we’re sharing with y’all for now! Head to our CPG CORE 3 Facebook Group for additional email inspiration.

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Design a Great Landing Page That Looks Good AND Converts!

Y’all, we’re excited about this one: It’s landing page time! 

You can see amazing returns from a well-made landing page that follows these techniques.

First, let’s define a Landing Page (LP): It’s a stand-alone page where someone “lands” after they click on an ad or a marketing campaign. A landing page is not usually found anywhere on your main site, as it generally contains a really great  offer that you wouldn’t want just anyone to see. 

Now, here’s  10 best practices to creating landing pages that we keep in mind. 

1. Know your audience

Before you do anything, get to know your customers. Seriously! 

Yes, keep your brand guidelines in mind when creating your landing page. But, also remember who this page is for. It’s not for you, it’s for your customer. Speak to them by using colors and language that they resonate with.

2. Provide a great offer 

This may be a no-brainer, but make sure you’ve got a killer offer. 
 
If this is your entry offer, are you offering a really bad ass mini course, an ebook, or a free-plus-shipping product offer? How can you sweeten the deal? 
 
Consider bundling multiple deals. Don’t get too caught up on if you’ll break even or lose a little on your first offer. You can always add an upsell on the next page!
You can see above that Winc offered customers (directed from a Facebook ad) 4 bottles of wine for $39. By contrast, users shopping on their website rather than this landing page would only receive 35% off.

3. Clear offer above “the fold”

Users should come to your landing page and immediately know the offer they’re getting. 

Your offer’s language should be clear and concise + fit on the screen (of any device) without a user needing to scroll to see it.

4. Find social proof

Social proof is so important in helping secure the sale. Customers raving about your product on Twitter? Add it to your landing page! 

According to WebDam, testimonial videos on landing pages increase conversions by 86%. So, when someone tags you in a video Instagram Story, hit screen record and save for later. Always ask for their permission before use.

5. Address pain points

Know what pain points your offer is solving for the customer. 

Before you start, list out the top three pain points that your landing page offer will resolve to keep your landing page focused when building it out.
Pain point: a number of factors get in the way when shoppers are buying a product online. Solution: Bolt seeks to eradicate those distractions to increase sales and presents a number of studies to prove their methods do just that.
 

6. Less asks, the better

Don’t ask for too much on the first page. 

If you do require a lot of information, like a mailing address or phone number, take care to make it a two-step form where you are sure to at least secure name + email from step one in case the user drops off. This way, you can follow up via email.
Daily Harvest’s page is bright, white and clean! Products are clearly presented and both pages ask for minimal info to start so they can always follow up with email marketing if the customer doesn’t decide to purchase right away. 

7. Put their blinders on

This means no menus or links that lead away – all clickable assets lead directly to your goal. There’s no way for us to be clearer on this one. 😉
Every click leads to HelloFresh’s delicious offer. Also, that initial pop-up message is a little tricky with a reverse yes-means-no tactic.

8. Brighten button colors

 Your CTA (call-to-action) button should be a contrasting, attractive color that screams “click here!” Our favorite button colors are green, blue, yellow, and orange.  


If your brand is design heavy, feel free to use colors that match your branded color scheme, but do try to make the button pop in other ways. You can make your buttons stand out by –

  • only using a specific color for CTA buttons and not anywhere else on the screen.
  • making your CTA buttons animated: add a button hover or wiggle to make your CTA draw attention.
  • using large text, a drop shadow, or arrows pointing toward your button. 

9. Is it mobile friendly?

Cause it really does matter: “40% of users turn to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience,” (Compuware). Now think of that in terms of people – if 430 people visited your site (nice!) and had a bad time, you could lose out on as many as 172 purchases (not so nice).

Guesty’s page isn’t just mobile friendly – it’s color coordinated! Bright illustration’s make their objectives clear to understand with just a quick glance.

10. Track conversions and optimize

What’s your goal? Leads, sales, registrations, or otherwise?

Be sure to set and track your goals. That way, you’ve got a benchmark for success and can properly determine if your offer + landing page is converting well. Once you know your benchmark, you can do things like A/B test your landing page design, your CTA button’s text or color, or your landing page offer all to optimize for a better cost to acquire a customer.

How can you use these strategies to put together a great landing page that entices customers to your brand?

Take these recommendations and run with it!

If the process seems a bit much, that’s because it is – but, it gets easier over time! If you’d like a second pair of eyes,  share your landing page to our CORE 3 Facebook Group!

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Become a Facebook Advertising Pro in 3 Easy Steps

INTRODUCTION TO FACEBOOK ADVERTISING

Yes, today is the day! You, yes you, are going to learn about Facebook advertising!!

Why now? Well, we’ve seen entrepreneurs put off Facebook advertising for far too long.

We get it, Facebook can make it intimidating to get started, and spending money on marketing, albeit necessary, can be scary

But, it’s our job to change all that by demystifying the Facebook advertising process.

Look familiar? It’s not  Déjà vu, but another one of our step-by-step blog posts.  That means, it’s a culmination of info and real from-the-field insights we’ve gathered in the past. 
 
But, this post is routinely updated to ensure you’ll always get the latest advice to kill Facebook advertising efforts for your brand or client! 
 
If you missed our last one, here it is: How to Use Instagram to Grow Your Business.
 
Okay, let’s get right into it so you don’t waste another minute without Facebook advertising $ coming in.

STEP 1: FACEBOOK ADVERTISING INDUSTRY TRENDS

Honestly, launching ad campaigns can be scary. Of course, you don’t want to waste a bunch of money on Facebook advertising campaigns that don’t convert. 

Our first piece of advice? Simply, don’t reinvent the wheel.

Really, the smartest marketer in the room knows what their competition is up to. Start here, by pulling existing inspiration from your industry’s trends to educate yourself on what’s already working.

 Yep, we’re suggesting you spy on your competitors before getting started!

Find the Competition

Now, if you don’t already know who your competitors are, here is a simple way you can find them!

Go to your Instagram profile, then click the arrow next to “Contact”. Up next, Instagram should populate with various accounts that are similar to yours.

Sift through the results,  finding some direct competitors. Go on, repeating this process on more like-minded profiles to discover additional competitors.

Make a List

For this purpose, make a list of 3-5 top Facebook advertising competitors you admire in your space.

On our team, we like to add ours to a spreadsheet that lists the competitor’s assets like Instagram, their following, and website. That way, we can quickly check up on these accounts.

Spy on Their Facebook Advertising Library 

Onto the next step, see what type of ads your competition is running. Above all, never copy and paste their work. In any case, that’s not only plagiarism – your audience will see right through it.
 
To start, go to  The Facebook Ad Library and type in your first competitor’s name. Soo effortlessly, Facebook will populate all the ads this page has run!
 

Once you’re there, ask yourself the following questions about Facebook advertising…

1. How long has the ad been running:

  • Usually, longevity means it’s a winner.

2.  What creative is being used:

  • Alright so, do they have lots of videos? 
  • If so, are they educational videos, testimonials, slideshows? 
  • Do they run carousel ads? Catalog campaigns?

3.  What copy works:

  • Alright, is their copy short or long? 
  • Are they offering discounts or coupon codes? 
  • Or, are they educating in the copy or going straight to the offer?

4. See where people are being sent:

  • Now, where does their Facebook advertising lead? 
  • Click their CTA buttons to view their landing page. 
  • Once you’re in, find out where they send customers – straight to a product page on their website or to a longer sales page (to warm up leads).

5. See who’s being targeted:

  • Go ahead, click on the CTA button. And, pay careful attention to their UTMs to learn more about who they’re targeting.

6. Get on the list:

  • Sign up for their email list, gaining a peek into their opt-in flow.
  • Do they send educational content? Or, do they run promos?
  • Finally, what type of ads do they serve you after you’re on their list?

7. Abandon checkout:

  • Go to your competitor’s site, moving through their checkout flow.
  • Next, enter all your information then abandon your cart.
  • Notice, what type of abandoned cart email sequence and ad campaign you get.
  • Do they offer a coupon code? Or, do they push any type of scarcity (Ex. “This offer is ending soon!”)

So, that’s how you can easily spy on your competition and launch better Facebook ads!

Remember, stay tuned in to what your industry leaders are up to via Facebook advertising. And, ask yourself what you could be doing to spice these ideas up. Inevitably, that’ll set you apart.

Now, you’ve got an understanding of what’s already out there. Okay, let’s jump into making enticing visual creatives and copy that actually sells!

STEP 2: FACEBOOK ADVERTISING CREATION

Take note, great ads are more than just pretty pictures! So, let’s zoom in on what makes a truly eye-catching creative. And, one that sells at that.

Though, you don’t have to be a designer-photographer-stylist extraordinaire to get a positive return on your ad creatives. In reality, you just need to know the guidelines while sprinkling in a few of the tips below to produce something your potential customers will love!

Through this series of tips, we’ll show you how to stop the endless social media scroll and awe your audience.

Think about when you’re checking in on the goings-on, scrolling through your Instagram like a madwoman, when something flashy catches your eye. We actually made a Facebook just group for this, called CORE 3. Join here!

This is what you, as an advertiser, need to be aware of and emulate to create a great ad.

Keeping your customers in mind, ask thyself when creating ads, “What stops thee in scrolling, and therefore, what will stop thy in scrolling?”

1. Interactive

Movement may appear in the form of a Facebook carousel or catalog ad as well as a poll add-on. Or, you may create movement with slideshows and video creatives.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to be a videographer! You can use Facebook’s ad creation tool to simply upload photos to make a slideshow or a video with text overlay.

2. Colorful

Eye-catching, bright colors stop users from scrolling but so does negative space. Play around with both, but don’t stray too far away from your existing brand’s attributes.

Over time, we’ve found that high-contrast and slightly over-saturated photos tend to out-compete others. So, turn up the contrast and saturation ever so slightly to make your ad POP!

3. Readable

We all know copy is important, but the size matters too! For example, when you see text while scrolling that your brain wants to process – it can be more efficiently understood depending on the text’s size.
 
So, we recommend highlighting triggering words that you’d like to get across to your audience quickly by increasing their size. Be highly selective when you do so, adding emphasis to one word rather than every bit of text on an ad.
 
And just in case you weren’t in the loop, Facebook removed the 20% text rule on ads (the rule stated that less than 20% of your ad could be text). We still find keeping text to around 20% works best in most creatives, as it looks more native to be “image heavy.” However, we find the best results with text heavy graphics when running promos and sales.
Pro tip: Create folders in Instagram to save any ads or imagery that stopped you in your tracks (scroll).
 
Then, join our CORE 3 Facebook Group – we post new ad, email, or social posts inspiration there every dang day!

4. Dimensions

We’ve all heard it, and we’re here to tell you – it’s true. When creating an ad, you must keep the platform(s) you’ll be running it on top of mind.

This way, you can size and resize your creatives to take up maximum space, and therefore exposure, in the feed!

Here you go, the most popular ad types and platforms and preferred sizing:

  • Facebook Feed Desktop/Mobile: 1200px by 628px OR 1080px by 1080px
  • Carousel Ad: 1080px by 1080px
  • Instagram Feed: 1080px by 1080px
  • Facebook or Instagram Story: 1080px by 1920px
  • Video Ratio: 16:9 to 9:16
Now, save or pin this graphic for ongoing reference:
Facebook will let you upload different creatives onto different platforms. This way, you can customize each ad to perform its best.
Simply, click “Select a placement to customize” to upload different creative sizes for different platforms.

5. Tooling

Here, have some of our favorite tools:

  • Canva, free and user-friendly
  • Pexels or Unsplash, free stock images
  • Adobe Spark, a tool in Adobe Suite, so it’ll cost you
  • Instagram Story, create an Instagram Story full of stickers + other fun movement, then download for free (easiest video ad editing app + super duper native)
  • Pull UGC, user-generated content generally outperforms any creative you design up! People love other people and UGC provides the social proof your brand needs! Be sure and ask before using the creative as an ad though. We simply shoot over a DM asking for permission.

Get creative and seek feedback from your teammates or influencers in your field.

You’ve got a good idea of what kind of visuals you’ll create, but which ad type should you work with first? Through this next step, we’ll spotlight our favorites…

STEP 3: WINNING EXAMPLES OF FACEBOOK ADVERTISING

‘Cause, not all ad types are created equal! In fact, the first ad type that we recommend to our clients is the Facebook Catalog.

Often called a Dynamic Product Ad (DPA), it’s basically a database of your products ready to advertise and sell.

Ad features clothing brand Lou & Grey, a fave among our team for standout fashion pieces.

 It connects directly to your site to collect information on your inventory, like whether a product is stocked and if a price or description changes.

What’s more, your catalog can pull information from your store on a daily basis so your catalog ad campaigns stay up to date.

The Facebook advertising catalog allows you to dynamically retarget users 

It’s based on the product they viewed, and it deep links them directly back to that product page. When you connect your catalog to your Instagram account and Facebook page, those users can shop your profiles directly.

Also, you can even create multiple product sets in your catalog to create specific upsells and cross-sells based on what a user did or didn’t do on your site. 

The Facebook advertising catalog is so great because it’s an adaptable tool

 

A solid jumping off point, it’s generally the first ad campaign we recommend launching as it can retarget users that are the lowest hanging fruit.

Meaning, you can send people who’ve viewed a product or abandoned their cart directly back to the product pages they first viewed.

In this way, these ads tend to yield the highest returns for one’s business. 

 Since this is our absolute favorite type of ad, we’ll dig in a little deeper on how to create a successful one!

 

4 Facebook Advertising Catalog Best Practices

1. Stand out with a frame

Find above, a video ad we made for Mother-in-Law’s Kimchi – illustrates this product’s probiotic pop with a super simple frame-by-frame animation! 
You already know this, color helps catch the attention of a scrolling user! So, adding a colorful frame to your product catalog to show off that mouthwatering deal will almost certainly seal the sale.

2. Be relevant

If you want a recipe for Chocolate Banana Pancakes with Bone Broth Protein, you gotta check out Ancient Nutrition. 
In your Facebook advertising catalog, you can dynamically retarget people that abandoned their cart and be super relevant when you speak to them through ad copy.

3. Make a slideshow

You must, MUST, have multiple photos in your Shopify product page for this one to work – it’s a great way to showcase lifestyle product photos along with your run-of-the-mill product photos!  
If you’ve got several product photos for each product, create a product catalog – each frame is its own slideshow and catches the attention even more from the scroller!

4. Get creative

Playful catalog ad for Serenity Kids – can’t resist a cute little veggie garden. 

Challenge yourself, getting creative and interactive by making a wide motif with copy that they’ll want to read until the end.

With this ad there is a clear subject that highlights what sets the brand apart to naturally entice the reader to continue a story or idea by clicking through the entire carousel.

Try testing the same creative with different subject lines and copy to see which performs better with your audience.

If you’re not constantly looking for ways to entertain your audience… 

…you’re not doing it right!

For added customer entertainment inspo, browse Facebook’s Ad Library or join our Facebook Group – CORE 3!

Alright, so you’re all set when it comes to the Facebook Catalog, let’s push forward with other ad types.

Creating interesting, educational and eye-catching ads is one thing. But, adding an interactive element will take your ads to the next level.

Let’s talk Facebook advertising polls…

If you haven’t heard of or seen this feature, here’s what it looks like:

Emmy’s Organics is using a Facebook poll to ask their audience which flavor they’d choose!

Timeline-wise, Facebook implemented the ability to add polls to video ads at the end of 2019.

There’s no stressing this enough, it’s so important to connect and engage with your audience. And, polls help you do just that.

Facebook ran a study testing their new poll feature for video ads, with promising  results. They said, “[in] 5 out of 9 brand lift studies, we observed poll ads increased brand awareness compared to video ads.”

Of course, we ran an experiment of our own testing a poll video ad versus a regular video. And, our poll video converted completely cold audiences at a ROAS of 6.30 and had double the engagement. In this client’s ad portfolio, that well outperformed other non-poll video ads.

We’re here to tell you, video ads have always been queen. 👑 So now, just think what you can do with video plus a poll! 👑👑👑

The poll possibilities are endless, so try using polls to:

  • Ask your audience, “which variation of a product they would like best?”, then send them directly to that product page!
  • Learn more about your audience, asking them a question about themselves or their interests
  • Find out if your audience found the information you provided in the video helpful!
  • Discover your customers’ biggest pain point by asking them even more questions
  • Learn which new flavors to launch by polling your audience!

Enough chatter, let’s walk through how to launch your first poll ad:

  1.  First, hop inside your Facebook Ads Manager to create a new campaign
  2.  Poll Ads are only supported with the following objectives, so be to sure to choose: Brand Awareness, Reach, Traffic, App Installs or Conversions in your ad set
  3.  After you’ve uploaded your Video, click “Add Poll” 

          4.  Now, enter your Poll Question and your 2 Choices 

5.  Pro-tip, add specific URLs for each choice that the user can visit after they’ve made their selection!

P.S., Facebook only shows your polls on your video ads in the Facebook feed. But, it will play your video without the poll in other placements.

You’ll quickly start to collect valuable poll data, here’s how to view your poll results:

  1.  First, go to your Facebook Ads Manager
  2.  Then, select your ad with the poll on it
  3.  Next, click on “See Charts”
  4.  Finally, scroll to the bottom of the page to see Interactivity Results

We’re curious, are you testing video poll ads? Let us know, how they’re working for you!

If the process seems a bit much, we’re here to help! If you’d like us to run profitable campaigns for you, learn more by scheduling a free strategy call with our team.

BONUS: How Much Does Advertising Cost?

So now let’s get into the nitty gritty, how much is this gonna cost ya?

Well, it depends!

We generally recommend brand’s to spend 20% of their monthly revenue on advertising.

So, for example, if you’re pulling in $3,000 a month, then you could start advertising with $600 a month. This will allow you to at least set up some retargeting campaigns to make an efficient, non-leaky, marketing system because you’re retargeting those web visitors and social engagers that need that extra attention to come back to your site and purchase.

Of course, you can start with a larger or smaller budget as well.

If the 20% rule was shocking and you’d like to start advertising at a smaller scale, then we recommend targeting your lowest hanging fruit. What does this mean?

Think about who your hottest leads are currently, they’re going to people that have added a product to their cart, or even initiated a checkout, but dropped off right before buying.

You’re (hopefully) already sending these people abandoned cart emails, but people need multiple touch points before making a purchase, and that’s where your lowest hanging fruit ads come in. We call this type of campaign a Bottom of Funnel (BOFU) retargeting campaign, because we are retargeting those hot leads who are at the bottom of the funnel. 

For our BOFU campaign, we are generally retargeting people who have viewed a product or added to their cart within 7-30 days (the range will depend on how large your retargeting audience is – you’ll need to skew toward the longer day range if you’re a smaller company with less website traffic – because Facebook will need enough data to optimize your campaign and exit the learning phase).

We also use this catalog to retarget our previous purchasers from 30-60 day range (generally you want to give them time to consume the product before reminding them it’s time to restock!), as we all know that it is much cheaper to convert an existing customer than a brand new one, so use some of that small budget to ensure you’re increasing your life-time value (LTV) with this retargeting ad group.

But enough with the set up, let’s get back to the main reason we’re all here, the advertising cost!

So, for those of you who need to start with an extra small budget, you’re going to run this one campaign only, and set your daily budget to $5-10 to start.

This may be enough, you may need to up it slighting to exit the Facebook Learning phase, but this means you’re only spending $150-300 month to massively reduce your abandoned cart rate and increase your overall conversion rate!

Pay close attention to your ROAS with this campaign, you want this campaign to at least break even, but we generally see the highest return on ad spend (ROAS) on this campaign overall.

Be sure and check out our notes above on how to make these catalog campaigns higher converting using eye-catching frames and imagery!

Say you got some investment or money bags ready to go hard on your social ads. Well, in this case, the skies your limit! We still recommend starting with less than half of your target monthly budget so that you have the ability to scale the right ad sets and campaigns and trim the fat, rather than having unproductive ad sets spending budget.

With a budget over $2K a month, you’re generally able to create a full marketing funnel, meaning you can set up retargeting campaigns and prospecting campaigns – where you’re targeting and bringing in new leads into your facebook marketing funnel.

Though, it’s dependent on your niche, we find any less than this makes it too difficult to optimize your prospecting campaigns as there’s not enough budget to gain enough conversion event data that Facebook needs. Also, it’s difficult to do proper audience and creative testing under this mark.

With a budget over $2K we recommend spending 70% of your budget on prospecting for new customers and 30% of your budget is spent on retargeting.

You generally want to set your prospecting campaigns daily budget at least 3-4 times your target cost per acquisition (CPA) as well.

Once you’re hitting break even or better, it’s time to start scaling your campaigns. We recommend scaling your Facebook ads budget by 20% every 3 days or so, just as long as your ROAS and cost per purchase (CPP) stay steady, but no more than 50% in a 3-day period or you could cause the algorithm to go out of whack.

So, there you go. How much does Facebook advertising cost?

Well, it depends.

You can spend as little as $150 on solely BOFU retargeting, or really as much as you want!

Remember, we recommend 20% of your monthly revenue as your ad budget, and at least $2,000 a month if you want to set up a full Facebook funnel system – meaning, retargeting existing audiences as well as prospecting new audiences.

OUTRO TO FACEBOOK ADVERTISING

Yas, you did it! Now, Facebook advertising isn’t so intimidating. Right??

Especially, knowing there are many other food, bev, and wellness (CPG) brands out there like you. Now, you’ll know HOW to look to them for inspiration. And, UTILIZE these tips to refine your ad campaigns + make them your own.

And of course, there’s a balance to strike. But, we believe more is more when it comes to inspiration. 

That’s why we created this Facebook Group: CORE 3

This way, we’ve all got an outlet to share killer ads, posts, and emails that we see on the world wild web.

So, we’d LOVE for you to join up and share what you’re working on.

But, wanna get to know us first? Shoot us a message at hello@umaimarketing.com or follow us on Instagram!

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