Master Holiday Ads on a Budget

Unlock the secrets to creating captivating holiday ads without draining your budget. Join me, Samantha Holyfield, as I share my expert insights on harnessing the power of Facebook and Instagram to turn ordinary content into extraordinary ad campaigns. With my Holiday Rush Blueprint, you’ll discover strategies to inject urgency into your offers, craft compelling Instagram Stories, and connect with audiences in real time. Whether you’re a newcomer to digital advertising or a seasoned pro, this episode promises to equip you with the knowledge to understand your audience deeply and utilize Meta Ad Manager like a pro, ensuring your ads are strategically targeted for maximum impact.

Embark on a journey of maximizing ROI with audience insights and upselling strategies that resonate. I’ll recount my experiences running successful ads before lead forms were available, and reveal how to leverage email lists and pixel data for creating robust and lookalike audiences. Dive into practical tips for setting up traffic, lead generation, and sales conversion ads, bolstered by resources like Canva templates and a free budget planner. With my guidance, small business owners will confidently navigate the Meta Ad Manager, crafting effective campaigns without the hassle of complex A-B testing. Find all the tools you need to enhance your holiday advertising efforts in this episode, and start seeing real conversions this season.

Where to dive in:

(0:00:00) – Mastering Holiday Ads on a Budget (11 Minutes)

This chapter focuses on transforming scroll-stopping content into effective digital ads for Facebook and Instagram, especially during the holiday season. We build on the Holiday Rush Blueprint to create urgency and conversion with deals, limited-time offers, and special coupon codes. By mastering Instagram Stories, engaging with audiences in real time, and understanding the nuances of running ads on a budget, you can boost sales even as a novice. A key takeaway is the importance of knowing your audience inside and out. This understanding helps you utilize Meta Ad Manager effectively, ensuring your ads are targeted and positioned for success. The chapter acts as an introduction to my Master Holiday Ads on a Budget mini-course, emphasizing the need to capitalize on seasonality and see real conversion without being a seasoned digital marketer.

(0:11:10) – Maximizing ROI Through Audience Understanding (6 Minutes)

This chapter explores the concept of lead generation through Meta ads and the effective use of upselling strategies to maximize ROI. I share insights from past experiences, including a story about running successful ads before the existence of lead forms. Emphasizing the importance of understanding your audience, I discuss how to leverage your email list and website pixel data to create powerful audiences and lookalike audiences in Meta Ad Manager. The chapter outlines the process of setting up various ad types, such as traffic ads, lead generation, and sales conversion ads, and provides practical tips for optimizing ad content across different formats. Additionally, I offer tools like Canva templates and a free budget planner to assist in creating effective ads, stressing that you don’t need to be an expert but should understand the basics covered in the mini course.

(0:16:41) – Mastering Meta Ad Manager Basics (2 Minutes)

This chapter is all about empowering small business owners to confidently navigate Meta Ad Manager with a suite of tools and resources designed for novices. We explore how to effectively utilize ad copy, swipe files, and ad templates that are ready to be tailored to your product or service. Learn the art of crafting ads that convert, with tips on breaking up copy for short reels and creating a sense of urgency. We introduce a 10-minute audit tool for optimizing ads and a holiday ad checklist to streamline your campaigns. With a focus on simplicity, we guide you through setting up a strong ad campaign without the complexities of A-B testing. By understanding audience leverage, you’ll improve conversion rates, save money, and target the right people. Find all the resources in the show notes or visit hollyfieldconsulting.com to get started on your journey to successful digital advertising.

Proud to be in the 918 and from the 956!

Transcript:

0:00:00 – Samantha Hollyfield
What if you could quickly learn what it takes to run high impact digital ads on Meta, that’s, facebook and Instagram in a short period of time and actually see clicks, sales and leads without being a digital marketer? Welcome to Marketing Con Sabor. I am your host, samantha Holyfield. I’m an MBA, an entrepreneur, small business owner right here in Tulsa, oklahoma, and, most importantly, a marketer. And in the last episode we discussed the Holiday Rush Blueprint. We went into what it takes to create scroll-stopping content on Facebook, on Instagram, tiktok you could use it as YouTube Shorts, a whole bunch of places that actually converts, creates a sense of urgency and helps you make what Last-minute holiday sales. Well, in this episode, we’re going to take it one step further, because if you actually do what is in the Holiday Rush Blueprint I’m going to link it again here in case you didn’t get it and you can go back and watch that supporting episode that helps you do everything in that booklet but if you do everything in there, if you create that high impact, high scroll stopping content, you can actually use it for digital ads and that is what my Master Holiday Ads on a Budget mini course does. Now this episode right now is actually kind of like an episode zero for the mini course. It’s free duh, because it’s on the podcast, and it’s going to go into how you take everything from that blueprint and actually apply it to running digital ads and help you create better ads that convert.

As a what a novice, because we’re in it guys, we’re in the holiday season and we need to see conversion. Now are you going to necessarily run the best ad you’ll ever run? No, that’s crazy. You’re a novice. You’re a small business owner who’s just getting started. But can you click, publish on an ad and know that it’s gonna reach the right people, that your creative is solid, that it’s sending people to the right place and you have a better chance for conversion? Yes, you freaking can. And so let’s do a quick rundown of what we learned.

In the last episode it was about the Holiday Rush Blueprint. Again, you can get that link to that free guide in the comments and you can go watch that episode to really dive into the details there. I mean it is so nice to not just have a free download that just tells you on paper what to do, but then actually see me on video talking about the nuance of all those things. It is incredibly helpful. Don’t miss it. It’s totally free. Doesn’t get better than that.

But one of the first things that talked about was creating scroll stopping content. Quick tidbit is that those first three seconds of what you do really matters. It’s that hook, it’s what pulls people in. It’s what tells your target audience hey, I see you and I know you, and it is critical to get people to stay around. The next thing you’ve gotta do in terms of creating actual conversion for sales during the holiday is create a sense of urgency, and you do that with deals. You do that with creating a short time frame for people to act. You do that with special coupon codes. You create a sense of urgency in the content that you create that has that good hook at the beginning and that says, hey, that gift you’re waiting for, you need it to get there before Christmas. Well, you can buy it today for 25% off and get it before Christmas Eve, so you can wrap that sucker and get it under the tree.

Another big thing that that free download covers is creating stories. In what stories? It tells you how to tell a story in your stories to create conversion, because you can create reels all day long, carousels, posts, all this stuff. But one of the missed opportunities we have on social media is selling in, specifically, instagram stories. It is an overlooked place with high conversion rates. Another really big one is going to be engaging in your audience in real time. Now, if you have a higher ticket selling item, this is gold y’all. Engaging in real time means you get to address concerns, anything that keeps people from acting, answer questions and actually improve the conversion rate.

In what Real time? And the last big one is running ads on a budget. And the last big one is running ads on a budget. And that’s what this episode is about. And it’s that perfect transition into my mastering holiday ads on a budget mini course. It’s only $29. It’s usually $150. I thought you know what the hell? Let’s get this thing out there and start seeing conversions. Because I’m a small business owner, I deeply know what it means to have to get sales, to have to capitalize on seasonality. I’m here with you, I get it, and so I’m gonna tell you the biggest thing that I use for my business and for clients that impacts their conversion rate and actually helps people see an increase in sales that injection of cash during the holiday season. So the mini course is really the how.

But I want to talk to you right now about the what and the what is that? What does it really take if you don’t know how to run ads, to know that you’re going to see conversion? And everything is going to come down to this it comes down to knowing your audience. So the more that you know your audience, that you understand them, the better chance you have at running ads that actually convert. Now in Meta Ad Manager, it has absolutely fabulous detailing. In the mini course we show you examples of that and you can go deeper on your own time. But before you ever get there and the mini course says this I need you to write down on paper what you know about your ideal customer and your target audience and what you know about your best recurring customers. That is absolutely huge because the more you know, the more detailed you can get in Meta Ad Manager and it will tell you if it’s too broad, it will tell you if it’s too narrow, it wants you to be right in the green and it’s literally a visual tool you can use to improve your audience in real time.

But that’s if you’re creating an audience from scratch, that is, if you are in the detailed targeting section of things. You’re creating a custom audience. You’re saying, okay, these are their demographics, these are their interests, these are their behaviors. You can get really narrow on those things. You can even you know, by job title target people. That is certainly one way to do things and we discussed it in the mini course.

But the best way to do things if you want to literally see response hefty, good, high, converting response, is to leverage the audiences you already have. And so, if you have an email list, if you have, you know, website data, if you have like a pixel, you can do that Facebook pixel installed on your website that you’re just sitting. It’s sitting there, it’s dormant, it’s not doing much. If you’ve been working really hard on Instagram, on Facebook, to you know, engage with the audience, post all year long, do all this stuff, then you have a better chance of actually retargeting all of those people and creating ads that convert. When you use all the tools I gave you in the Holiday Rush Blueprint, when you create that scroll-stopping content that has the hook, that has the urgency, that has all those things, I have literally given you a blueprint to take a piece of content and run it as an ad with a powerful audience that you know will get conversion, and you don’t have to be an expert to literally run ads like an expert. And so this course is very basic but very powerful. Facebook meta ad manager is like an iceberg, and so you can do even the surface level stuff and still see powerful results.

Too often I hear people saying like I’m just not seeing my ads convert and sometimes, hey, I have to test. I have ads that I’m like I don’t like that conversion rate, so I stop them and I fix them, I optimize them. You may have to do that too, but the point is that we start strong. So we’re not just throwing spaghetti at the wall. We’re not just throwing 50 bucks behind a post and crossing our fingers. No, not at all. We’re literally creating scroll stopping content, scroll stopping content, and then we’re pairing it with a powerful audience and setting it up correctly so that way we drive traffic from Facebook, from Instagram, to the place we need them to go and convert, and, of course, I will always tell you that place where they go. Convert that landing page, that sales page. You gotta make it look good and you gotta make it easy to check out. The more steps you have, the harder it is for people to convert.

Another big thing that I want you to know before you go into the master holiday ads on a budget mini course, even before you create your any of the content using the holiday rush blueprint is that sometimes people want to be clever, but the truth is ads that convert have clarity. So always choose clarity over cleverness. Now there is a perfect match there where you are clever and it is really clear, but lean into clarity. When you are a novice, when you are writing headlines, when you are creating the text that goes with your ad, when you are saying, okay, I’m going to send people from facebook to my landing page, when you’re looking at that landing page and saying, do I know if this thing is going to convert, choose clarity, speak clearly, speak to the benefit, make sure your target audience is abundantly clear and then make it easy for them to act.

A very simple but powerful thing to do when they are trafficked from Facebook to whatever landing page is to say how does this landing page alleviate any fears, any stopping points, any concerns, anything that might have this person say I’m not going to buy it right now or I’m not going to buy it here. Address those things, literally, write them down. It is absolutely huge. So again, you’ve created scroll stopping content. Beautiful. Now the master holiday ads on a budget mini course. Can I say that any faster is going to tell you how to take that thing. Put it in a powerful ad and get results. Point A to point B. And what do I want you to do after point B? Make sure that landing page, that sales page, whatever it is, addresses all of the concerns that can make somebody say I’m not going to do this right now. Remember that sense of urgency we talked about. That landing page could literally have a visual timer telling people hey, time is ticking. You know you’re not going to get it before Christmas if you don’t order it right now. It could also have something really powerful like an upsell. Let’s say you traffic somebody in for just a I don’t know. Let’s say a sweater. Well, at checkout you can say, hey, you can also use this discount code when you bundle that sweater with you know, x, y and Z. Or it could be as simple as suggestions for other products. You have lots of opportunity from going from point A to point B and then an automatic upsell. That is a huge way to take a little bitty ad and maximize your ROI. It’s enormous, let’s say you’re using. Okay.

So in the mini course, one of the ad types that we talk about is lead generation. I tell a story in there about running ads. Actually, I think I still told this in a previous podcast episode of running ads for a client before lead forms existed on InMeta and we were usually usually, you know, trafficking them to a landing page that had, you know, put in your email or whatever, and how all of that went wrong. Um, but it went wrong, but it was successful. But here’s my point with that particular client the way that we maximized that. Well, that actually initially happened organically. We learned some very important lessons and then we put dollars behind it.

When we put dollars behind it, we learned that the best way to maximize ROI from that pre-product was what it was the immediate upsell. Hey, you’ve got this free thing. This free thing can go even farther and it’s only $20, $5, $50, whatever it is. So the ad gives you something tangible, free. It collects an email address. Boom, you have an asset now and we have an immediate upsell. The same is true even if you are literally selling a product. You know, let’s say you have a low-cost product you can, at checkout, bundle with maybe other potential low-cost products or products that just work really well with that particular thing you’re selling. Or maybe it’s an upsell to something pricier, but it’s just hey, it’s worth it. It makes this thing go farther.

All of that is going to help you take this little bitty mini course and maximize your ROI, and I’m telling you that, doing it on a budget, it’s going to come back to how much you know about your audience, your email list, your website pixel and literally feeding those things into meta ad manager to create powerful audiences that convert, to create lookalike audience, audiences based off your literal, very best customers. We go in there and we discuss how to do it. Customers, we go in there and we discuss how to do it. Now, if you have a very big email data set, you will see when you take the mini course it’s going to. It’ll actually give you a prompt where, when you’re creating a lookalike audience, it gives you an Excel sheet you can download and you have to enter all this data. It’s a very big project but it is certainly worth it when you are going to retarget those people, when you are going to create lookalike audiences and you would be so surprised. There are many absolutely fabulous businesses out there that are not leveraging this. It’s so simple and it’s overlooked when you’re really just getting started, and so the mini course is going to get into the how to do that. I think it’s the fourth video in the mini course.

We you actually have seen me open Ad Manager. I click, create an ad. I literally tell you oh, you know what, I would actually change this or do this as I’m doing it. Here’s how you can do this better in real time. We discuss how to create traffic ads. We do lead generation. We do a sales conversion ad where you actually see me select my product catalog.

You can do so many cool things in Meta Ad Manager even if you are not an expert, but the very best thing that I keep repeating that you’ve gotta know is you’ve got to know your audience. If you have a database, you’ve got to know how to leverage it and you’ve got to use all those things I told you in that free blueprint in that last episode to create scroll-stopping content and just really quick. To recap if you create something a reel that’s 15 seconds you have the vertical version. Then you create a horizontal version, then you create a square version and you queue that up into Ad Manager and you now have an optimized ads across all of the places that it’s going to appear. You also actually want a graphic too, but I give you those templates. I literally give you my canva templates for an ad that I have run, actually for this mini course that you can plug and play your own stuff into, and so you literally don’t have to do any of this alone. You don’t have to be an expert, but you do have to know the basics, and that is what the mini course covers. You get to understand your ad types, your ad formats, understand how audiences are set up, understand actually how to set up the creative part of the ad and what are the most critical elements of that thing.

I’m going to tell you right now headline is a huge part, and I give you best practices for creating headlines. Y’all this is huge. It’s so simple. Here’s what I hear a lot when I dig into these things with clients if I’m running their ads or if I have a mini course that somebody’s taking or I’m doing a training with people. That’s another big thing that I do. I think just last year I did a two-hour training with somebody who was a brand new baby marketer. It was one-on-one. The company paid for me to train them, to help them in their digital ad journey and said this seems so obvious, but I never would have seen it without you. Yeah, that’s the thing where I said that meta is an iceberg. You don’t know what you don’t know and so you do not realize some of the capabilities in there if you’ve never done it. But I’ve done it, and so that’s what this course is. I show you very simple ways to actually generate return on a budget and I’ve given you some of those really great tips right now and it’s not just that I give you a free budget planner to go along with this course.

You get ad copy, swipe files. I give you a list of potential email subject lines you can plug and play your product and service and brand name into. I give you again, I said, those templates, those powerful, powerful ad templates where you get, you know, the vertical, the horizontal, the square, the graphic that you can see how I plug and play that information into there, how I broke up copy across a 15 second reel so that way it would convert, so that way it had a sense of urgency at the end, but it actually had a very short copy at the beginning. You can see how I broke it up and did that and then take it and do your own version. You also get a 10 minute audit tool so you can audit your ad and see how to improve. And, of course, you have a holiday ad checklist, because there are a lot of moving parts from audiences, from graphics, from copy to campaigns and ad sets. This is a simplified version. We have one campaign, we have one ad set and we’re going to publish this thing knowing that it’s really strong. Now we don’t get into the heavy mix of something like A-B testing or campaigns sets with, or campaigns with, many, many ad sets.

No, again, this is for a novice. This is for a small business owner branching out into this who is like, hey, I’ve got to do something and I’ve got to see that I’m doing. I’m throwing money at something that will work, and here’s why this really is one of the best ways to get into Meta Ad Manager. You get a quick introduction to all the different ad types. You can use a very clear understanding of how to leverage audiences so that way you can improve conversion. All of this is foundational and it will give you a tremendous way to build all of your digital ads all by yourself.

So I want you to save money, I want you to build your confidence, I want you to target the right people, I want you to spend money on ads and be like yeah, I did that and I know that it was good. And I want you to understand how to optimize your ads so you can make those dollars. Go free To get the course. You can just look in the comments or look in the show notes or look in the description for wherever you’re watching this video, or you can go to hollyfieldconsultingcom. That is two L’s in Hollyfield H-O-L-L-Y-F-I-E-L-D, and you can find it in the shop there.