How to Run Profitable Facebook Ads Without Hiring an Agency with Stephen Blackburn & Stephen Johnson

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot. podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like The Hustle Daily Show. Today, we'll be breaking down how to run profitable Facebook ads without hiring an agency. To drop these vibe bombs, I brought Stephen Blackburn and Stephen Johnson into EO Fire Studios. Stephen and Stephen teach coaches, consultants, and dedicated entrepreneurs how to leverage digital marketing to increase sales, automate their business, and discover new ways to monetize. And Fire Nation, we will talk about why Facebook ads is the best.

0:36We'll talk about whether businesses should outsource or in-house. And we'll talk about what's working right now in Facebook ads and the biggest mistake people make within Facebook ads and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Steven, Steven, and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lance is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business.

1:12Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. If you've ever considered launching a show on YouTube, I may have the solution for you after launching a very successful show on YouTube in 2024, MicroStrategy Today. I've learned a lot on what it takes to create a successful show and have launched a one-on-one mentorship program called YouTube 100. If you want to jump on a call and learn more about this program, shoot me an email, john at eofire.com. This is the year of YouTube. Let's go. All right, Fire Nation, we're going to kick right in because we're talking about how to run profitable Facebook ads without hiring an agency.

1:50I have brought Stephen and Stephen in the house. That's Blackburn and Johnson, and we're going to rock this. I'm actually going to start with Stephen Blackburn. Because Stephen, we've heard that every social media platform has its pros and cons. I mean, somebody has an opinion about this. Somebody has an opinion about that. And this is specifically when it comes to paid advertising. You believe Facebook ads is the best. Why? So it really comes down to data, right? Data is the most powerful resource in the world. It has surpassed oil. It's literally the reason why, you know, Facebook bought WhatsApp for what, $17 billion a few years ago.

2:27And that was a deal by the way. And that was a deal. And, and you know, the question is like Facebook has some of the best coders and developers in the world. They could have just created their own WhatsApp, but why did they buy WhatsApp for$17 billion? Well, it was because of the data that was housed inside of it. Right. And so Facebook has more data on its users than any other platform by far. Like it's not even a, it's not even a close shot. Right. And so 50, 52 ,000 data points. Think about this. Facebook has 52 ,000 data points on every single profile on Facebook. So that means Facebook knows 52 ,000 things about every single one of you guys listening right now.

3:04And it knows you better than you know yourself. And the reason why that's so important is because it can serve you ads that are super hyper relevant to what you're going through. And some of the ways that it collects data is I describe it as ineffable, right? So So the word ineffable means it's too great to be expressed with words, right? That's how powerful it is. Like, obviously it looks at the types of videos that you watch and the types of things that you're clicking on. Obviously it does all that kind of stuff, but it also scrubs all your Google searches. So anytime you're on Google searching for something, Facebook's watching, right?

3:41Facebook's listening to your conversations, right? So I'm sure you guys have had this experience where you've been talking with a friend or a family member about something. And then the next thing, you know, you see that product all over the place. Well, it's because there is microphone eavesdropping going on. Facebook's listening to your conversation, scrubbing your messages, all that stuff. Um, it actually even does, it does some crazy stuff. It actually tracks your movement patterns. So a lot of people don't know that there are sensors inside of your phone that can detect movement patterns.

4:11So it knows, okay, so John, you like to take walks at seven o 'clock in the morning and you like to work out at 11 o 'clock in the morning. And then maybe you're stationary at, let's just say 1.30. Well, let's target John at 1.30 because we know he's stationary and he's more likely to look at his phone. Isn't that crazy? I mean, Fire Nation, this is where it really starts getting crazy because when they know when you're looking at your phone, when you're in the quote unquote mood, I mean, the chances are so much higher you're going to take action. So keep going, brother. Yeah, yeah. And it just keeps going.

4:44I can literally go on and on. there's shadow profiles. So this is something where when you sign up with Facebook on your phone, it not only just pulls your information in, but it pulls in all the contacts that you have inside your phone. It pulls in those contacts and it actually starts creating what they call shadow profiles. And these shadow profiles are not publicly seen. You can't see them, but they're on the backend. And the reason why Facebook does this is because Facebook wants to know everything about you, but it also wants to know everything about your network and how your network influences your thoughts, behaviors, and actions.

5:19So again, all this is happening to every single one of you. And that's the reason why these ads sometimes, it's so crazy, John, that sometimes people will mistake ads for like spiritual religious experiences, right? They'll be like, I seen this ad. It's like a sign from God that I must buy this. I'm like, Hey, whatever you need to think about, but that's how powerful it is. I mean, listen, people are looking for signs. They're looking for reasons to take action. So give them that sign, give them that reason. And Stephen Johnson, we have a lot to get to today. So it'll have to be quick before we move on to the next question.

5:52But do you have anything to add? Well, you know, one thing I would say about Facebook being the best advertising platform, the reason that is, is simply because it just works. You know, Facebook has what we call interruption marketing. So it literally interrupts you from your normal daily scroll, right? And a lot of times when people want things, they don't necessarily know that they want those things until it's like thrown in their face, right? So that's why interruption marketing, we truly enjoy interruption marketing. Actually, YouTube is getting into interruption marketing as well because now YouTube is letting you run ads on YouTube Shorts.

6:31So that's a form of interruption marketing as well. But for us, it's worked well as well as for our students. So that's all I have to add as far as that goes. Well, I want to stick with you, Stephen Johnson, because there's a lot of debates about in-house versus outsourcing this type of work. So do you believe businesses should outsource their marketing or should they do it themselves? Great question. So this is a very common debate, man. What I would say is I feel like all businesses should rely on marketing in-house. OK, now I know there might be some high level entrepreneurs out here that are listening right now that are saying to themselves, there's no way that I could run my own ads like there's there's no way I could do it.

7:10I'm simply just too busy. Well, that's OK. That doesn't mean that you have to outsource your marketing. What we always recommend is that regardless of whether you're a busy entrepreneur or you're someone getting started, you can literally train someone on your team to learn marketing. For instance, Crumble Cookie. Have you heard of Crumble Cookie, John? I've heard of it. I've tried it, and I'm actually drooling right now as a result. So Crumble Cookie, yes, everybody loves Crumble. And Crumble has never really tapped into Facebook marketing. But we were actually the first company to come to Crumble Cookie and teach them advertising.

7:50We actually have a student of ours who owns seven Crumble Cookies in the Northeast United States. and he's a busy entrepreneur. He's a serial entrepreneur. He has a bunch of different companies that he runs, but he wanted to, to empower his company and have his company learn Facebook ads. So instead of us training him how to do this, we trained their marketing team, how to actually do this. And as a result of that, it literally changed the game for their business. They got, I think, 13 ,000 leads in like a week or two from from a promotion that we did with Facebook ads. And they're thriving out there.

8:27But honestly, when it comes to outsourcing, if you are considering outsourcing your marketing to, you know, let's say an ad agency. Right. Here's the issue with agencies. OK. And I'm not going to sit here and just poop on agencies all day. But here's what I would say as far as agencies go to hire a good agency. You're going to spend between, you know, five and ten thousand dollars per month to hire a good agency. Right now, here's typically the lifeline of you hiring an agency. You hire the agency because you don't know marketing yourself. When you hire the agency, the agency starts doing the marketing that you don't know how to do.

9:01And they might get you a few results and you might see a little bit of traction. But here's what tends to always happen. After about month three, you're not seeing any more headway and you're kind of like stuck at that plateau. So then you're like, OK, well, this isn't really working for me. Let me go ahead and fire my agency that's doing all of my marketing for me. So you fire your agency. Once you fire your agency, number one, you've now spent probably about$15 ,000 to$30 ,000 on the agency. But another big thing that people fail to realize is that once you fire the agency, because you don't know marketing yourself, guess what happens to your business?

9:41It literally flatlines. You literally have no more marketing flow. you have no more new customers because they were the one that were running ads for you. And because you're not knowledgeable about how to run ads yourself and market yourself, now you're in a world of trouble. And that's where we come in. That's where rich from anywhere comes in. A lot of people come to us because they've recently been burned by an agency because they don't understand marketing. So our recommendation is always, you know, even if you do decide that you want to outsource your marketing, always learn this stuff first, because it'll literally help to hold that agency accountable and they can't pull the wool over your eyes and say, oh, we're running a retargeting ad or, oh, we're doing this.

10:23Because now you can actually jump into the ad account and see what they're doing and make sure that they're doing what they say they're doing because there's cases, I've heard horror stories. There are cases where these agencies say they're doing one thing and they're doing something completely different. So my recommendation is to always keep it in-house. Stephen B., anything to add? Man, I think the biggest pushback we get when we tell people to learn it, it's either like he said, I don't have a time. I'm a super busy entrepreneur. But the other really big one is that people just really think marketing is super complicated.

10:53They think Facebook ads are impossible to learn. And I'm here to tell you right now, it's not hard to learn at all. Right. It's not the subject matter. That's difficult. It's most people. It's their studying method that makes it difficult. Right. They're going off and they're watching YouTube videos. They're watching 800 ,000 YouTube videos, learning from 800 ,000 different teachers. And they're all teaching different strategies. And then they wonder why they're confused. Well, of course you're confused, right? Like no, people don't learn that way, right? You need one person to sit down and sit and say, okay, look, here's step one, here's step two, here's step three.

11:29Let's take that. All right. Run that test, come back. Let's tweak, do it again and do it again. And when you do that over and over and over again with somebody who really knows what they're doing, it's only a matter of time before you figure it out or you're going to run out of ways to fail and you're only going to be left with the ways that work. Right. So it's again, it's not difficult. We've had people come into our inner circle that are in their 60s and bless their heart, some of them can barely even turn a computer on. And within like two to three months, they're running ads like a professional agency.

12:01And it's because and these are people who would consider themselves very not tech savvy. Right. We've had people in their 60s come in and within months go viral on TikTok. I'm talking millions of views. I mean, we have so many case studies of this stuff happening. But so don't let you feeling like you're not tech savvy hold you back. And don't let that be an excuse. You just need to get around the right people, man. Fire Nation, we have so much more to talk about when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Ever feel like your job description just keeps getting bigger? But we all know there's only 24 hours in a day causing marketers everywhere to feel spread thin.

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13:14It's not what a customer see big results in just 12 months, like collecting 110 % more leads, 31 % more deals created, 46 % more deals closed, and 192 % more web traffic. Visit hubspot.com slash marketers to learn more. Let's talk YouTube. Have you ever considered launching a show on YouTube or do you currently have one that's struggling to gain traction? I may have the solution for you. After focusing on audio for 13 years, I launched my first YouTube show in late 2024 and have seen fantastic results, over 12 ,000 subscribers, every show getting well over 10 ,000 views, all 100 % organic,$0 spent on promotion or advertising.

13:59That is the beauty of YouTube. If you create the right content with the right cadence, YouTube will make sure it gets in front of the right people. My show is called MicroStrategy Today and I'm having a blast creating content on a daily basis because it's on a topic I love about a company that I truly admire. What excites you? What fires you up? If you want to launch a show around that passion or improve your current one, I'm launching an exclusive coaching program called YouTube 100, where in 100 days, I will mentor you one-on-one, and together we will create a show that you love and that's successful.

14:33I hired the best mentors when I first started and have learned so much along the way. I'm ready to help you ignite your show and let YouTube do the heavy lifting of building a meaningful audience that will allow you to grow and monetize your show in ways you might not currently think possible. If you wanna jump on a call and learn more about this program, shoot me an email, john at eofire.com. Put YouTube 100 in the subject line and we'll schedule a time to chat, j-o-h-n at eofire.com. This is the year of YouTube. Let's go. Stephen Blackburn, we're back and we're going to stick with you for this one because I love talking about the present moment.

15:12What's working right now? So what the heck is working right now today when it comes to Facebook ads? One thing that's changed a lot. So we've been running ads now for almost 10 years at this point. So we've seen a lot of progression and what's happening right now is that the algorithm, the Facebook algorithm is getting super smart. It was always smart, but now it's getting ridiculously smart, like the AI machine learning. And what's been working really, really well for us is broad targeting, right? So, and Facebook's trying to make this switch of allowing us to not worry so much about the targeting aspect and allow us to focus more attention on our messaging.

15:50So what we like to say is messaging is the new targeting. So for us, we've been running ads for a lot of different types of companies. I mean, we have business coaches, tax strategists, e-commerce brands, real estate agents, chiropractors. I mean, we've ran ads in about 15 different industries and, and it works for everyone, honestly. And, um, what we've been seeing though is broad targeting and then letting Facebook go out and find the right people for you. Cause Facebook's way smarter than, than you. It's smarter than me. Right. And, um, what you need to get really good at though is messaging and learning how to write effective ad copy.

16:30That's really going to captivate and convert those people properly. And so that is like something that I feel like is a really, really important skillset that every business owner should really dive into is learning how to speak to your avatar, learning what their pain points are, knowing what keeps them up at night. What's their pleasure? What are their desires? What are their objections? Know your customer better than they know themselves so that when they see your ad, it feels like that religious experience that I was talking about before. Like, oh my God, like this ad was created for me. And then what happens is Facebook starts realizing what type of people are, are watching those videos and what types of people are clicking on your ads.

17:13And then what it does is it starts to automatically start recruiting more and more people, just like those people. And remember it's super accurate because Facebook has 52 ,000 data points on every single profile. So when it goes out and starts finding new people, it's, it's extremely accurately. It's terrifyingly accurate. So I would say the biggest shift that I've seen is going from a really intense targeting to like more broad targeting and just really getting really good on, on the messaging side. I mean, here's the deal, fire nation, Facebook wants you to win. They want you to convert because they know, they know for sure that if you try Facebook ads and you get no leads, no sales, no clients, no, no generation, you're not coming back.

17:57You're gone. And you're going to talk crap about it. You're going to talk bad about it. And then the opposite case, if you're getting great leads, sales, if you're having a positive ROI experience, you're going to tell the world about it. And that is the kind of loop that Facebook's looking for. So believe me, they want you to win. And I love how Stephen is just saying, let them help you win because they've got the data points. Now, Stephen Johnson, let's talk about the biggest mistake that people make with Facebook ads. What is that? Here's a stat that a lot of people don't know, right? 97 % of the people that visit your website the first time are not going to buy from you.

18:35This is a real stat. You can look it up. 97 % of the time, meaning that if you're driving traffic to your website, let's say you run Facebook ads for the first time ever and you're like, yo, I'm going to give this a shot. This is going to be amazing. Facebook ads are going to work for me. And you run your first ad and you don't get any sales, right? it's not because they hate you. And that's a common misconception. Like you just mentioned, John, like some people, they'll try running ads and they get frustrated or they say that this thing doesn't work and all of these things. It's not that Facebook hates you.

19:07It's not that God isn't looking out for you. It's not that the customers don't like your product and service. It's simply that for every 100 people that visit your website, only three of them are going to buy from you the first time. The biggest mistake you can make is giving up on running Facebook ads because you ran one ad that didn't get sales. That's literally the biggest mistake you can make. Instead of doing that, what you have to do is understand that the fortune is in the follow-up, meaning that you need to be retargeting these people that have visited your website the first time. Typically in the ads world, retargeting is gonna be the most profitable ads that you are going to run.

19:46And when I say retargeting, it's basically like when you visit a website online, you leave that website, And then a day later, you go on Instagram or Facebook and you're scrolling around and you just keep seeing the same businesses ads just popping up everywhere, following you everywhere. Right. That's retargeting. That's what the biggest brands and the biggest the biggest businesses in the world are doing consistently to make millions and billions of dollars because they understand that stat that 97 percent of the people that visit your website the first time aren't going to buy. So you do not want to make that mistake of just thinking you can run one ad and then all your problems are solved.

20:26Absolutely not. You want to continue to run ads. Now, there's a difference between running ads the right way and running ads the wrong way. So to add on to that, one of the biggest mistakes that you can make when it comes to running ads is boosting your post. okay a lot of people on here have probably boosted their posts and the reason why is because facebook always gives you a little nut it's so easy it's just like oh it's just a little click i can boost exactly exactly and what facebook does is they're like hey john you know that post that you just did it got 50 000 views well guess what you could get 200 000 more if you just put 50 towards this post and click this little button on your phone and boost it but here's the issue with boosting posts.

21:11You do not have the same control that you would if you would run ads inside of your Facebook ads manager. There's such a lack of control there. And when there's a lack of control, you can't do the things that you really want to do in order to get sales. And what we found, I've only, I've talked to a couple of unicorns that have had success boosting posts, but here's another thing for all my iPhone users out here. Now the app store is charging a 30 % fee if you buy ads from your Apple device. So that's another thing to keep in mind. So I would say those are the biggest mistakes. All right. We talked about a lot of stuff today.

21:46I mean, you guys are a wealth of information. So what I want to do now is this. Let's have each of you take about one minute, maybe 90 seconds, and give us one key takeaway that you want to make sure that we really get from our conversation today. Because we talked about a lot. There's a lot more that we can talk about. We're going to get to a call to action in a little bit here, but let's start with Stephen Blackburn. What is your one big takeaway you want to make sure our listeners get from our conversation today? You learn from mistakes, but there's no rule that says that mistakes have to be yours.

22:20Right. And so when you're learning Facebook ads and really any skill, I think what people naturally always want to do is they want to just go off and do things themselves. And naturally, I think people just need to bump their heads a few times before they learn. But at the end of the day, there is someone out there who has already done what you're trying to do. And they've been doing it for years. They've already figured it out. And so that we always tell people, look, the hack to success is mentorship and coaching and finding someone who already has the results that you want. whenever you find that person, pay what, pay them, whatever they ask, do whatever they say, right.

22:58Cause it's always, it's going to work out. Right. And so a lot of people are, they're, they're not afraid. They're afraid of doing that. But at the end of the day, this has been the hack to our success. And by, and I say, it's a hack. It's not a secret, right? Every successful person knows that mentorship is the key to success. Um, but a lot of people, you know, they're still figuring that out. So anyway, I would say if you're really trying to explode your, your sales and you're trying to get a lot more awareness and a lot more traffic coming to your business, Facebook ads are the way to do it.

23:28They're the, they're the most powerful platform. And by the way, I, we don't say this because I'm not sponsored by Facebook ads. And like, I don't have, I don't even have stock in Facebook, right? I have no reason to actually tell you that to use Facebook ads other than they're just working. And so, and if you really want to get good at it, learn from someone who's already done it, do not try to do it yourself. It's like a kamikaze mission. If you do. Steven Johnson, take us home. Oh yeah, man. So what I would say is this. Facebook ads can be easy for you if you have the right guidance, right?

24:01A lot of times people are so afraid of Facebook ads or they've had one bad experience running ads and they simply just give up hope and they say that it's not for them. But it's not the fact that it's difficult. It's just the fact that you haven't been learning the right way, right? Like the other Steven said just now, once you find the right person and get the guidance you need to run the play and do it correctly, Facebook ads all of a sudden becomes easy. Like when we started, you know, we started with an e-commerce brand and our first month in business, we spent$5 ,000 in ads and made no money.