Chris (cold open): I love using AI for image generation. If it's like a fitted bed sheet can be flying around and you see it, I but I hate AI humans. AI humans like if it ai it's a no where robots drops like crazy.

Scott: Everyone. Scott Austin here. And this week we have another guest, Chris Ertel. And I wanted him on because he's a well-known expert in meta ads in the e-commerce space, specifically, a lot of the brands that I work with start out doing is they try to think. They think they can do all of their demand gen through organic, right, and through their own marketing efforts and social and all that stuff.

And the reality is, if you're really going to scale, you're going to have to bring in ads. So I want to bring in an ad expert to help us talk about how to integrate ads into your customer acquisition. So welcome to the podcast, Chris.

Chris: Hello and thank you. It's always an honor. I hope I'm a German accent is okay for you all. I was very happily living also in South Carolina, and I'm happy to give a my my knowledge today to to this cool, cool audience.

Scott: So tell us a little bit about your meta ads experience, especially with e-commerce. How long have you been doing it? And some of the, you know, the why should we be listening to you? Prove to us your you're an expert.

Chris: I think also like later when I talk is going to be like, oh yes, we should listen to him. He makes good, good advice. I'm not talking about a B testing because every testing is very important. So a lot of times like if you want write down during this episode, Amy, Jess, I tell you and then you can see and if you can see if I'm right or wrong or if, if I helped you to to make make more profit thanks to this, this test.

So when we come into this like first of all there quickly, a quick story. I started 14.5 years ago with meta ads. Basically the first thing I did after uni was moving to Spain. So then moving to Spain, I was like, okay, I actually here it's better to have your own company than to have a job. So I just after uni, I started Management International and I was like, okay, this is not going to help me so much.

But I also had marketing. I was like, okay, I'm going to look into this and I'm going to test and I'm going to launch. And I was like, okay, I have a limited time until my parents run out of patience. So I was like, I'm going to launch a product every month and validate it with meta ads. Meta at just, you know, we were like just growing, you know, just there was Facebook ads, of course.

No, but it was pretty Instagram as obviously them. But then every month I tried a new product like was one was like selling shoes to actually California. She was made from Mallorca to California. We sold two pairs. First month goods, failed company closed. New company second month we sold belts. Third month we had an ad for months.

So so so so so until seven months where we tried with sunglasses and we were like, what's happening? This is flying like starting selling 12 go on 200. And we were like, what? And was our seven months of trying. I always a different co-founders and I love meta of like validating a market very quick. So all the time my friends pitch me ideas and I tell them cool, but don't waste this like quickly, like and don't, don't keep an idea secret.

Like I believe a lot and like trying it out, validating it and and seeing seeing where you are like, I'm I'm loving meta for the a b testing tool. And now I applied testing even to my to my real life where I was a lot. But that's for me, the beauty of it, like you can very quickly sell all over the world.

It's the same amount of work. If I in some of my accounts in the beginning, if I put, let's say I started like a €5 per campaign, you know, a small amount. And now sometimes my, my biggest client spends 1.1 million every two weeks and their work is nearly the same. Like for me, I'm helping all of them to touch it and it's like it's not.

And also selling in more countries. So I like the beauty of it. Meta can be, I hope I can say like it can be a bitch. The support is terrible and it can be annoying to work with as all the box and so but the reach, the reach you can have, the testings you can have and the the when you can find a market, that's a beauty for it. For me, that's why I, I fell in love with it.

Scott: I like the story there. But the one thing you just said that really popped for me is, you know, meta can be a bitch. Their support sucks. And I think, you know, one of the key learnings anybody should take from this podcast episode, even though we're, you know, two minutes into it, is when you're dealing with essentially a monopoly. Their support is going to suck because they don't need to have great support, right? Whether that be Google for anything they do or meta for their ads, or Shopify, you know, which is basically, you know, an anomaly for small brands.

Chris: Isn't it surprising how actually Google has a solid support? How TikTok had TikTok doesn't work, so we don't use it, but the support is great. If we would use it and Google. We use it, of course, and it's a great support. Like it can be done, even a monopoly. I think meta is just a very special breed. Sometimes I hate love relationship, sometimes.

Scott: Well, and that's why, you know, having podcasts like this or any resource, you know, on the internet, you know what a lot of people are gonna have to do as they get into a new platform. Meta ads being a platform, they're gonna have to learn that tool. And I would say the best way to do that is to not rely on their customer support, but to go out on the internet in general and find good content that gives you the information you need.

And that's that's what we're trying to do here kind of thing. So, you know, let's talk about my audience here, this podcast. It's all Shopify right. So it's ecom brands and they're small and growing right. It's you know not the the all birds of the world kind of thing. It's the smaller brands. And what I like to do is try to give them a recipe on how they should get started with something.

And then also, you know, once you're bigger and start scaling, how do you scale up? So, you know, let's picture, you know, the 90% of Shopify stores that don't make a profit, right? Because, you know, there's a there's a head and a tail, definitely in the Shopify ecosystem where a lot of people are making money, but there's a ton making nothing because they're just getting started. What are those new brands, you know, when should they start thinking about advertising and how would they get started in that?

Chris: So for me here you. I have you catch me and like I have never had a brand where we didn't right away do meta ads because from my answer would be right away because I don't see a reason why not. Because you will always have. You can really talk about you will always have these $200 a month, which can be enough.

Like I always say, Max already has a big enough boat. Like don't put in big amounts until you validated it. You can test the very, very small budgets, but like a try to to find and find a way and like $200 a month can be enough. Obviously every test will take longer, you can take longer, but it can be enough.

Like and I think this normally if you have a Shopify store, you will have that. So I don't see a reason why. And also there's like a big updates coming obvious December. So we're recording this thing. Let me check today 30 of October. So very very soon know where meta will help you further to create your first image ads.

It'll be a help and so but for restores who who have no time and very little budget with exactly the use case. That is going to help them. That will create the first work if you're lost and you'll get more support. So there's something that, it's like a book announced to be launched before Christmas. So if we are punctual, there's something that that will be there.

No, it's going to drive CPMs up. So CPM is cost per meal for all the rest of us. But for the small shops, I'm a big fan of small people and small shops. It's going to be a very good thing. Also like let's think about let's go away from from e-commerce. You are a hairdresser, no one, and you have a budget of €100 a month for, for your hairdresser shop to get people in the area.

Meta can of course put a pin in this location and run ads like let's say one mile around very easy and not agency wants to run this for you because it would be 100 $100 a month. The agency would get maximum 10%, so they get $1,010. No agency takes this, but meta will take meta. AI will take that and they will create that.

And so I see a lot of potential for the small shops, for the small Shopify with with these added support of like easy image generation and so on.

Scott: When we get started. You know, in e-commerce it's interesting you say, yeah, they should start spending, you know, immediately. I don't disagree with you. However, in my experience in dealing with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of small e-commerce brands, you know, cash flow is is absolutely crucial for them. And there's always this hesitancy, right? You know, you don't want to spend money.

You actually see it with a positive Roas. But it takes time to get that going. So how does a small brand get started spending money on meta? And how how can they quickly determine that it's, you know, working for them and you know, Roas positive and you know, they're not losing money on this spend here.

Chris: A case study from from from Germany. And Aaron knows what a fitted bed bed sheet is. Fit the bed sheet. Boring product for me. Perfect. When? When a lot of times I because of those speeches and podcast, people reach out to me all the time to help them. So this one I always look like what do I like and fit?

The bed sheet is boring, but everyone needs it. Everyone needs it is a very good signal. Also, later you were going to talk maybe of what? What for Google? What's a meta everyone needs? It is a great signal for meta because your audience is always on on on track, right. So also sunglasses. But what what worked then it fit the badge.

This German company is, they invented it. The grand grandfather invented the fitted bedsheets. So once that you're using now, it was invented in Germany, in a small village in Iceland, he went added, obviously it went around the world, but they have a story of they invented it and now they have every, every different quality. So you can get a fitted bed sheet from a little above 10 USD.

And this obviously in the ad is a great hook. But then also they have for 100 or more like like well it feels like your favorite t shirt. Like it's like bedrock right. But basically they had this all the time. They make millions and millions of line, but they have never gotten, online to work. So that's where I came in.

So they have been years and years of every money they spent. It comes back to them in revenue in a row had spent of 0.6, 0.4, like burning money for years and years and then and so this was was the case when, you know. And so now we went actually and changed the approach completely because what they just they had no feeling.

They just didn't have the skills of like what's going to work. Right. And therefore you can like I will also share a little things here. But like if, if you even go to like YouTube, you buy my name. There's a lot of you see me protecting slides of what what makes an ad an ad work now here to share something right away.

I love using AI for image generation. If it's like a fitted bed sheet can be flying around and you see it AI. But I hate AI humans. So it also in in Germany you will see I have some friends and they are working with it in works a little bit in Germany. AI humans like if it's AI it's a no.

We're robots groups like crazy. So we we always pay real people, so we pay like a lot of German UGC rates are crazy low. Like normally will be like $250 a euros, but we $270 then for one. UGC very very make a very good video and then we script write them like for example here she makes $10 for this fitted bed sheet.

And then she explains of like what? You didn't expect this quality and how she sleeps so so good and and so on. And like how you can also have 27 different colors. And then the person comes to website and, and shops around and see all the different qualities. And still our average order value is 140. And now why I say the case study.

They went years and years with the same products, losing money and then nearly stopped. And then I visited like a case where I could come in. And now it's been record month after record month of the record month, and we might soon. And then we're a really big offline, but they are actually might soon be bigger, awful online and offline, which is very cool for a 74 year old company to change them around.

And what I'm very proud here is I get changed to a corporate culture. Like when I went in for a first workshop, I flew to Munich from from Spain, and I had with three day workshop, and I told the CEO, I'm going to change your corporate culture, which was going to be a young than any company. And and I was actually saying it very convinced, but I wasn't sure if I can do it in such a old company, but I managed I'm very with something that couple of things I'm proud and I'm very proud of how how to see them now, like, yeah, flying and so happy people seeing how everything they try works or not, everything I try. A lot of things that try works. And they became like a young company in spite of being 74 years old.

Scott: So when you have a company that's not doing advertising like the Sheets, what do they think about about their business when making the decisions and what products do they pick based on those decisions that they're making? Like, how should they look at the different types of ad products that they can deliver and make the decision of, here's what I'm going to try. Here's how I'm going to test that.

Chris: Yeah. In the beginning, as always, you always want to write down a list of, of of of tests. I like to have, like to not exhaust people, write down a list of like 25, 24, 40 tests of the most important a, a a a b test you can do for, for, for your business. Let's say now again, if it's a fashion company, catalog ads are very likely to work very, very well.

So if you're in this industry, definitely try to have catalog ads, but it needs to be with real humans. If your catalog is filled with AI, humans not going to work. I just had that case. You can try. It might, but it's very unlikely if you have real humans. Machine thing. The trust is there. Trust is where biggest thing.

So you always want to try this. When you want to try to have ads on the urgency of that. This could be solved very soon. Like very image ad variations. No, no, I'm not going to go very advanced because of course later you do everything but like very, very soon in every startup, get your first UGC content like pay with 270 to to to someone.

I don't know what your price is to be honest. I have to check with how much is this? But in Europe is very very cheap to get the first UGC where very surprised it used to be five years ago it was like 566 K per person, which was still profitable for us. But the prices came down a lot because more and more people want to be UGC generators.

Scott: That's, you know, more UGC than influencer. Correct. So you just have people that you're paying like give me a 32nd or a 15 second, you know, video clip or is it images? What are you using the creators for?

Chris: I really want them to exactly like they have their phone like this, and we're going to film, film themselves and, and, and really engagingly talk like a happy customer about the product.

Scott: You give them the script for that, or do you let them determine what, what their messaging is?

Chris: I always give them a script, but I tell them, be yourself. I'll tell them, like, I'm fully okay with changes. Like, you know how you are, you know your audience, you know how this is like, even if it doesn't go to the audience. Everyone like, it has to be very real. Like be authentic. Like I give them the allowance to go really out of it.

Like a lot of times I show them like 2 or 3 winning ads like this. Others did it, but I want to see normally we always again, with most companies that I work with, we have higher budgets. And also for 250 we always buy 3 or 4 videos. We'd be like make one where it's fully you. How you would sell this product, make one where you're more strictly follow a script, make one in the middle, and so on.

Because obviously normally the at the ad spans I usually work with are very high, like half a million a month or so. So very 250 is just ridiculously low. So we, we don't we don't try to save costs on having one less or so. We rather have to write that.

Scott: Yeah. Let's talk about content a little bit, you know, because I like the fact that you brought that up and this tactic of, you know, getting creators who are all over the place, it's so easy to find them. It's a bunch of different ways you can do that. But can I do an ad campaign where I pick for ads and run it for a year, or is it a lot more dynamic of a process where I'm, as you're saying, you're testing things out?

Am I testing different creative, different messaging, different people, different targeting and all that stuff? What can a small brand expect to be doing from a content creation standpoint to be successful on ads? You know, we're talking about video even though we didn't explicitly say the word video, our most of our ads going to be videos. Are they going to be, you know, images, you know, what does that content look like?

Chris: Definitely. You want to use the option of catalog ads. Doesn't matter how many products you have. This is an automatic one. It it works kind of well depending on the thing and fashion. It works really well. But you want to have this because it means extra work. It means there will still always be new ad created. So this is for putting as little work into it as possible.

The second one we added I love the most. If you go in my LinkedIn, you see a lot of my LinkedIn posts about it. I'm very passionate about founders, passionate like I want to see an without the ads, whether for free for you, right? Like no one will care as much about your product and your brand as you.

And you made this brand for a reason. So like if you now get take your iPhone like shake it like be real and not don't have it like perfectly set up. But you explain why you create this product. Like a lot of times if I'm going to do that with some founders, they pitch it to me of their product and I'm like, wow, I'm in awe.

Like, I love it. Like, you know how I just told me? And then I look at their ads and it's like an image with a lot of text and I'm like, I'm not. This is not if a customer sees this, but do you explain me this? So you can just easily film yourself like this is what is for free for every founder?

I'm trying my way with the bed sheet found. I'm trying to get him for a camera. He's shy. But, if if you can do that. This is a big, big thing. As examples, I always, we can put the show notes. I love the brand. For example, I just became a dad, and I'm using web products.

But minimize is a, like, award winning shoulder carrier from from Norway. These ads are amazing. And this is a very happy thing. This doesn't happen a lot, I have to be honest with you. But if you go to the ad library and you might see some ads which were created like 13 years ago, I saw it then and it's still running.

So sometimes with every once in a while, but you create a video and with passion is so real that this ad is still a winning ad now. And this is not normal. Okay? Like normally you have the ad. If it's a good ad, it runs two three months. Maybe Scott can correct me what he is seeing, but, it's we had ads running long but with rare.

Okay. And found those passion ads are ads that can all perform and no one else can do it. Another very good example of a German brand who's doing it very, very well. They are crushing it on TikTok. The founder is Max. Max from Bavaria. We are infused energy. It's a T which has a lot of coffee in it, like an energy drink, but much healthier in a Red bull, for example.

And and he is always like he makes whatever he does, he just films himself or employees film him, and it just all goes to to metal. And testing it like a winning ad, for example, is him when he was actually the person who was picking the warehouse thing, he was ill, so he was doing it for a bit there because it's still a small startup.

And so he just a person filmed him. I think his girlfriend filmed him and he was like, he was reading out, okay, you ordered this, are you ordered this again? I'm happy. And he was picking and commenting and like, you chose well. And you saw the house. He saw what he like. He commented on it and he became such a good ad.

Or he goes to a gas station opens and he's like looking at said of like, oh, all these, all these energy drinks. And he's like visible solution. And you just see his passion because he was a bodybuilder who was obsessed with energy drinks. And when he felt the negative health effect, so he built it for himself. So obviously if you you needed someone else, we don't need it.

So he talks to people who have the same thing. And this is what I love. And this is the easiest ads to have. Like, and this no one can take away from you. So it's founders passion ads. I can happily and maybe you also you can send a link to my, to my speeches because speeches in the middle of a first pitch, you will see a lot of founders passion ads.

And basically they are all full of it. But check, minimize, check infused energy and so on. You will see. Like great follows. Passionate.

Scott: I love that you bring that up because, you know, every time I'm talking to my clients, you know, I want I want to tell a story for their brand. And that story is their story. It's the personal story. And I think that's true for probably 99.9% of, you know, new and small brands. And, you know, I would say more than 50% of them say they don't want to be the face of their brand. And then, you know, the 50% they do don't do the work, but that's another story.

Chris: Yeah, I think these things want to do. They should then do it.

Scott: Yeah. But you know, the and I tell the ones who like, you know, I don't want to be the face of my brand. I'm like, great, then you will not be successful. Because that's the only differentiator you really have here is, is that personal story and it's you.

Chris: In this case, I would like to disagree. One of another big success cases was one company that I helped. They they got an exit for 330 million. So they did succeed. They were paying everyone. If you google Henkel for 3 million, you will know which brand it is. Skincare brand from Germany and the two founders. When I met them, I started there were 25.

They made a skincare brand for women and they they were also very shy. So they they didn't want to be the face of a brand. And also they should not be because it doesn't fit. They basically they saw a big market opportunity, but it was not like a woman making a cream for her own. It was not the right passion.

So they hired a person to be the face of a brand. So you can also do this again, it's capital. And they gave away a couple of shares, which she was very happy at the exit. Now you can hire if you if it doesn't make sense with your face or brand or you really want to get out, you can hire someone for all the media, for all the ads and so on.

And in this case, but also worked well. Actually, you can Google it. I don't I can share it as well. Hello body company is called More Monikers for one who was face of the brand.

Scott: So on that one. You're still saying though, that a human being with a voice and a personality, a real face is there, right? So you still need that personal thing. And, you know, in all the brands that I'm working with, they don't have enough revenue to hire, you know, a flow from a progressive insurance type of, you know, persona kind of thing.

Let's help these small brands for a second. Let's help the brand owner get comfortable with making a video, because what I always tell them is, you know, your expectations are probably, you know, you the brand owners expectations are it needs to be TV, you know, commercial quality. I'm like it doesn't video is very, very forgiving. And you can be imperfect.

You can be human. You can, you know, have a pause kind of thing. And that actually is a good thing, not a bad thing. Would you agree with that? And how would should people go around about creating their first founder ads?

Chris: Exactly. I agree this is something, but it feels scary the first time. But after a while it gets very normal. So normally what I do when I work with a brand, I give them a very easy first founder ad. But we were like, okay, how do we get the funnel a passionate? And we're like this Netflix documentary style where you're sitting down and you're answering questions.

It's so easy. So we started with him. With this ad, you get a clear question by asked if we knew how to film it. And and then he was like, oh, this was much easier. And I thought it was just like, you know, and you get them to be in. And then obviously they can do more, more, more natural things.

But always when I teach a workshop, for example, I give again a real life example. There was a very cool fashion brand from Berlin, a popiah, and they called it. They were right on their clothes. It's cool to be kind and I'm a big, big fan of like kindness and messages. So everywhere it says it's cool to be kind.

It's a slogan. So they were in my office in Spain for a workshop and I was like, okay, look, I'm not going to give you a homework of making it. We're actually going to be in the lunch break. I'm going to take your phone and we're going to record it. And they were like, hey, hey, like, you know, it's a follow up with shy.

But then we just did it. We like found a cool background and you could start with, for example, you can start with something, namely three things about the brand. You know, like three free things they want to be not known for. Like you asked them. Like actually I asked them and then they reply it. That's a very easy way.

And later you make ads like obviously it works really good. Like, hey, my name is Lisa and this is what problem I had. And this way I created this brand and I believe in it. Like that's already a formula. Presenting yourself, being real and then explaining why this is with passion and why you would why you would, you would feel that like for example, let's say I would change industry and I want to give breath for courses.

So I would just make an estimate. Hey, I'm Chris, very happy to be living here. I found breakfast and it changed my life. If you want to try it, I'm happy to give you a session or so. And people see, they get the vibes and maybe they don't vibe with me, then they wouldn't be a good plan anyway.

And if they do vibe it right away, explains like there's a human explaining what it is not no bullshit, nor nothing around it, and where you can get very, very quickly feedback of what people like it. So these are these are good, good, good video ads. And obviously in the ad you can and I we only try to have less subtitles.

But to highlight certain words like one, one good ad we made was there's no such thing as a good or bad memory. So we would just highlight good memory, bad memory in very big yellow text we used. There's a trained memory and an untrained memory and then untrained trained. But like we give a message across notes and it's like a course for remembering names.

So there's no such thing as a good or bad memory as a trained memory and a untrained memory. Like that's a very good start for an ad. Another thing that I love, and this one, not only I'm very for ethical marketing and having everything very real. This one if you want and your shy, you could fake it. So what works really good is being on a stage and and and you say something on stage for a social trust.

So a founder is on stage and saying something. But obviously sometimes if I want to have this in my speeches, I give myself notes to save 1 or 2 sentences. So it's filmed so I can use it to them. Cool. But actually and you go to a conference and there's a lunch break or whatever, you just jump on the stage, take a bring a old microphone from you, buy it, Amazon microphone for €30.

You jump on the stage where there's no one. Where a friend films you. You say these two sentences, boom, you have an ad like, again, you can do these things, you know, like you can. And this is obviously working really good as well.

Scott: I love the jump on an empty stage. That's a great tip. And the other one you said, and I just want to call it out because it's such a good one. And I see this true all the time. It's much easier to, as you, the founder, given the ad, if someone's filming you and asking you questions, even though the person filming you and the questions they ask are not going to be in the ad, it's easier for the person being filmed to talk to that person instead of putting a tripod up with their phone pointing at them in an empty room. It's just it makes it a lot more conversational, and it makes it easier for the person to have that discussion and come across as much more natural.

Chris: Also, I would like to add one more thing, because I really think like people are writing about taking notes and if you're taking notes, I want to do it, go for it. For a listener here, why don't you do an ad like this? Like whatever your product is, let's say here I have what's a I have a mushroom complex selling around here.

No, let's say it's my product. So I would go, this is a mushroom complex. I needed this and it wasn't there. So I developed it. And I you explain like you explain the product and how it helps you. Like, you know, I just grabbed the one thing from my. But like so formula is in this Ed you don't say who you are first.

Its first about the product. You say this is a minimized, award winning shoulder carrier developed in Norway by parents and you can what is but like the hook is this is and you know like and you explain and it becomes clear that you're the founder by your passion, but you don't have to say it in this case with also another, another photo of it.

But like whatever it is, put it to a camera fully and then you just go like and also one formula that is like, how would you describe if you and me met at a dinner and you describe me what you do, what's your product like this. But then in this moment I have a phone and I film it, and this is already good.

Like, you know, like how how you would describe it, how you tell it to it, to your friend with passion. But people show the passion to your friends, but they may don't show it in the ads. And you need you need that. No.

Scott: So in this video ads, you know I love the ideas you're generating here and giving people, you know, ideas on how to get started. How long are these ads, how much editing goes into these ads?

Chris: Normally very little editing. So like like I said, like what people put it like the bold words like train memory and trained memory we would highlight was very big in yellow text, for example. But that's about it. You know, maybe we want to make some, some cuts or so, but that's nothing crazy like really. And the length, the longest ad that I had running successfully this ad we I was crazy.

We made 5 million revenue, this one ad and it was 30 minutes because it already I like ethical ads that they they promise you something. But also if you can't afford it, they already teach you. This one was about teaching a skill and the first skill they just told you in the ad. So he he was selling a video course, but then he was like, lesson one is here.

And he was explaining it. People were like, and if you can't afford it, just watch this. And this one worked really, really well. So I love giving value in ads. That's not going. It can be long. I don't mind if it's long. I always say ideally an ad is like 13 seconds. I wouldn't do this and normally it's 13 seconds to 55 seconds, but it's better normal ad at length.

But having it longer is no problem. Having it shorter is stupid because kind of you pay your same to work. So like why if you put the 30 minute ads or 10s ads, you get charged the same. So why make it super short? Or why? You know why make it only images if you get charged very similar.

Scott: Make sense? Makes sense. And do you have like a couple recipes on, you know, like for a script of a 1520 second ad like are there openings, closings, you know, how would you recommend people think about structuring that time?

Chris: I like to change it every time in our cases. So I'm not following strict. But like, let me make it easier for our listeners. If I go to testing the beginning, I would normally the hook, obviously I would try 3 or 4 different ones. And when I upload for testing later, I upload them into one ad set where it's a four hooks running.

They can compete, I don't care. But this is where I would have this. Then obviously you have a problem solution ads. Maybe give me one product example because I was I read I don't like to keep it easy to formulas because this everyone can do. I always try to be the marketer who really comes up with unique solutions, like, you know, because I've been doing it for so long, so I rather I would rather come up with a, with something special and great, great.

Like for example, yesterday we talked about a pajama and they blamed me overuse piece. And I was like, but why don't we market it as the pajama for the future? And the whole company was like mind blown off, like, it makes so much sense. It's like we haven't thought about it and it's like, you know, like then that the new angle on it.

Scott: What I like to do is when we're exposing people to something new, we give them some ideas to start off with just to get that, you know, pump moving for them, priming the pump. And then as they start getting more comfortable with it, they can come up with their own ideas and start making it more authentic to their brand.

But for example, you gave a great example a moment ago of the gummies and you said, hey, and you threw the gummies into the camera and said, these are gummies, blah, blah, blah. What would that ad finish with? Right? Do you say these are gummies? Here's why I made them. And then do you say, now, buy them now and for, you know, whatever. Or like just just do the gummy ad for me in 15 seconds. What would that look like?

Chris: This is crazy because I wanted to have this product and it wasn't there, so I invented it. But now I'm going to give you two promises. I'm going to promise you that currently we have the highest sale of the year. If you ever want to try it, it's now. But I give you two promises. There won't be a higher sale.

It is a higher sale of a year. Guaranteed. And I promise you, there will not be. And I give you my word as a founder. They will not be a higher sale on Black Friday. You can buy right away. We're going to have this offer the whole month. But last year we had the same and we were sold out after five days.

So you there's no the traffic lights have now been green. You can buy this now and you can try it. This is the moment if you ever want to have moment to try it. It's now like, you know, tell them like keep, give. I love to give promises and keep them like, you know, you can never break a promise.

I really believe in like the ethics. And I would never, ever. If you give a promise, you never. You have to stick with it. But giving promises and like I love to get the sales in the early days of November, like Friday, is too competitive. And then saying like, look, last year we were sold out and you really want to to to get one and so on.

Like these are the urgency factors and people are always waiting of like maybe it's a different time if you tell them this is the best sale of the year, which you can currently best, very likely you can tell them this. That brings a lot of trust and this can be an image ad as well. You can put an image above.

Text is cool and if a founder sells it, like what kind of trust is bad? Do I visit again? I mean, you can just copy right away. Try it and if you want and it works well, write me a thank you message and I'll be happy. But yeah, I once I received a thank you message from a guy who took one of my ideas and he was like, thank you, I have another 10 million company and I'm 919.

And I was like, that's what I love. I was teaching at a uni and when I was like his professor for a bit and when he wrote me this. But that was a very cool, cool feeling.

Scott: Yeah, absolutely. I love helping brands grow is is so much fun. So we talked a bit about, you know, video and you just mentioned an image ad, right. And we were talking earlier about you got product catalog ad. So we think about the, the creative type you got there, your product catalog ads, which is just taking images from your Shopify store that uploaded through the meta system.

We talked about video. Talk to me about image ads. What should those look like? Should they be, you know, because I'm going to assume they're more text heavy because there's not as much audio going on kind of things. So give me some some pointers on what image ads should look like. And then I'd love to understand a little bit of a mix of how I should think about creating these different types of ads, like where should I be focusing my energy?

Chris: So here I would also tell you tools that that would help me in my day to day work. So the first two we talk about image ads is I got recommended it when I was teaching a workshop, actually in Thailand to an Asian company. And in this workshop, one of the guys was like, but you should try this as a very brand new company.

It's two months old. It was called Vivi and it's basically all the image creation or audio creation or prompt enhancers, all these AI tools that you have, it's all packed in one, like a Swiss Army knife. Now the company, it was only after seven months they got sold for 80 million to Figma. So now if you just have Sigma, you can you can use it.

But basically it was not no monthly costs. I love it because it just charges me whenever I use it as no, not ongoing fee, which is like very cool for a startup. Obviously if I have images, I always said no AI humans have, there's no problem. Let's say now I have I'm selling, I'm helping Adidas, I'm selling this, this polo.

You could have this flying around moving. You can have all these effects. And these are very, very simple prompts in this tool. So this is going to cost you 1 or $2 like and it's like very the cool thing. We've also it's fun to work with like I'm in this case here I'm not promoted at all. I'm not getting anything for saying it.

It's just for me it's a it's a fun, fun tool to to work with now. So like you want to you can use AI to make your product to make cool effects with your with your products. And and again, it's very hard. I know which product you specifically have, but for sure we can find out creative ways to showcase these these products now.

And that's, that's something that was very hard and only for big brands. And now with AI, which is very, very simple. For example, I would, I would use, an AI, image creator. And then you would, you can have, you could take this output and connect. It was like a you draw a line to another one, and now I connect it to runway and I make motion all of it.

And then for example, these motion images are like like what I used in this tool. I just needed a 3D model of my sunglasses. So I just took a picture and I said 3D model this in the tool and it made it. And now you can use with 3D models as because we want to see it from all sides.

And you can use this now in the catalog and Love and Facebook is currently launching. I think it should finish six of November. Those should be soon. But they are currently giving all ads account video catalog. So you might already have it or it might be coming to you soon, but you can do a catalog, but it will be a video catalog.

So you could create this using runway or other things with motion in your images or whatever you you feel could be smart here. I'm a big fan of text heavy because you want to get a message across, so not a lot of small text, but like you can have one big text here. Questionable statement when we use piece I have a lot of errors like my, my, my normal image ads are full of errors.

Again, if you go to an ad library, just go into a random currently helping Slav. Good. Where the German company for sleeping. Well. Slav good. I can put you on the show, not just look at this and you will see, like the error heavy ads text. And so this is the style which is very proven working because we see it.

Scott: Makes sense now on the the split between, you know, images and video, how much inventory or spend or how how you do it inside of of meta. How much should we be putting behind these two different types of creatives, images and videos?

Chris: I would normally let the numbers decide, no. But what you normally do is where you have for me, every account you'd have two two campaigns, one a one campaign which I call and I call it testing. Right. Just having very simple testing. And it's a b o edge set budget optimization. And where you have many, many ad assets and then you have one asset and this one only runs with one.

Let's say we are small company. This week we created for ads okay, two image ads to videos. Now we're going to create this campaign testing before assets. And every ad gets their own ad set so they don't compete on spend. If I if I take the time one of them is like a fondness passion at the make. So I took my courage.

I took my time. I don't want that in the end, with AD only gets ten sent or spent because it lost in a in a competition early on. Right? I want that this gets a fair test. A fair test can be like $80 spent. Okay. But then I can already know something where it's going to. So this is running and this is clearly where we we see how they perform.

But then normally the best ones. And now let's see, I have done it for weeks in a row where I had for four weeks I have 16 ads out of these 16 ads, maybe five of them are are winning ads where they bring me a positive rowers, they turn S-band. So now these five ones, they are in my scaling campaign.

This is where I have CBO campaign. But observation ideally I have very high budgets can be low. But obviously later if you can run this with 30 K or day perfect because when the algorithm learned a lot, but in the beginning it will run at ten, $10 a day, just just fine. But obviously later, this is the one that has the idea to get huge.

And here you want to let them compete image compete with with with the video. Because obviously now example Scott, do you react more to videos or images if you're fully honest to yourself? In your case, where do you buy more after seeing image or video ads? Video okay, so this is your case okay. And this can be many case.

But we there's some people who are normally looking at ads while they are in in traffic with bad connection, and they will react more to image at or some people to do with. So every person has their own preference, which both of them work. But meta knows a preference like meta knows exactly. But for Chris and for Scott, I have to show a video.

And for Paola and Patrick we have to show image at okay. And because we algorithm has learned from the last ten years of your user behavior. So like it's very easy for them. And they also know in which moment they, they always try to guess in which mood you are. And if now you would react more to this of which what you should see.

So they are really trying to get a very good guess on what current events are giving the algorithm the option for both even. But meta tells me every time I go to California to a headquarter, they tell me the concept, but I don't like it too much. They say pitch, play, plunge. But you should also have. And have you heard about it?

Pitch. Play. Plunge? No. So they always we always preach with also in these ads you want to have one ad which just pitches the product, one with plunges more into it goes longer, one more gamified ad. And so so you you know to again that they can target these two different users terms like some people just want to get pitched all the time.

Some people want to really have a soft approach and long ad and so on. So they always tell me like, please Chris, please create this so that you will see a better result. In this case, I every time I tell me something I tried, I haven't seen an uplift of this. So we are not doing this currently because I see that there's one type of video ad which is like a cool UGC 55 seconds, which is actually outperforming the other ones by so much, but I rather have this one running.

But again, every time I tell me something I tested and if we are right, I'm happy. And if we're wrong. I'll do it my way.

Scott: Makes sense now as as we're putting out all these ads and testing things out, what sort of metrics are you looking at to determine success?

Chris: That is such a cool question, because I'm going to give a very different answer when everyone else, I guess. So I have my clear favorite metric, which is for every Shopify owner, very easy to do, and especially if you're a beginner like me with Getting Started. It's the best method to look anyway, so you want to look at cost per view content.

So let's say you have your your page and your selling caps. Yeah. Going to make some branding for a German German cap. You're selling these caps. No. So now you come to a page and there's like a hundred different colors on different concept logos. Every time someone goes through and clicked on a product, it's a new content, right?

So if I get a person to my page, the cost per view content is very low. It shows that I'm getting people who are very interested in this type of product. So the metric cost per view content is like an early metric. Like normally you get it after some brands have it at $0.20, some brands have it at $0.80, some brands have 70.

But you know where you currently add I mean you compare it to others, but it's like below a dollar. You should get that metric right. So very easily you even after having spent $7, you can already see if it's at the starting good or bad. So this is and the correlation between click through rate and Roas sometimes doesn't exist.

Like in Hello Body we always made the joke of like a if a ad had a 0.3 clip rate, which is terrible, you want to be one or above. We had an eight ROI return and so we were like always joking with lower Richter, with higher spend because we get the person to choose before. So we. I'm in 14 years I haven't seen the crazy, crazy, crazy correlation between TTR and Raws, but I'm seeing the craziest correlation between cost per view content and rovers.

So if an ad is starting and has if it has a very high cost content, I can nearly guarantee you, but it's not going to work. If an ad has a very low one, it's very likely to get a good, good return. Like my my current employees and new projects. They didn't believe me. And now when I said like, well, it's like so crazy.

But look at it like, okay, this is going be bad. Like they this is really weird in love with the metric, of course, content. And it's such an easy one to measure and it's like there's no errors. It's a very clean one to measure.

Scott: Well, I want to start closing up. Here is a lot of good information. You mentioned one tool. One of the big questions I have is, you know, in addition to the, you know, the meta ads platform, what other tools should people think about needing to bring to their first ad efforts?

Chris: For me, obviously, when when you do Facebook ads, it's always very, very important to. So you can do Google ads without Facebook ads enable work. So it's like push or pull marketing remote. You do Facebook ads, you want to accompany this with other sources. Right? So Facebook ads nearly always wants to have at least Google search on. So if someone sees you but wants to find you they need is very easy one to set up.

But this you want to have it a need not obvious and obviously you want to accompany it to email marketing. And here. So if your best clay like the past was MailChimp, they kind of invented it and it was good. But it's not for E-Com when Clavijo came across and were used it for many, many years because clever is super cool tool, which was for ICO.

But we at one point we were like, this is like feels like paying a rent in Los Angeles. If your company grows, it's like it goes to a high thousands of euros. So now we're all switched. Nearly all of my companies, I know we all switch to omniscient, which is like a European solution. They basically looked at how good is Clavijo?

Gut inspirations build some certain things better, and also we offer everything at 40% less. So the ROI return investment obviously higher so they can constantly get over 80 ROI, which clearly was not fully aware they can get nearly the same revenue. But obviously when it changes. And now for example, one thing that that really helps also like when you have like many, many chat is another good tool.

You know it. No I don't. You could turn your your followers like now you have like this a your brand and you have like 5000 followers. Okay cool. But you are this is not really your list. You cannot always approach them. If you can turn these 5000 followers into email subscribers, it's very powerful. Let me pass. People use like a tool, like, like many chat where you go like you make a real and then you say you want access to this Black Friday and it's going to be the craziest deal.

Like what I said before, the craziest deal of year. I promise this and you can get this before it's sold out. And everyone who comments early they want to comment early gets, get an automatic DM and where I can sign in to be and where I can write their email and many gets added automatically. So there's this tool helps to get the 5000 followers into, let's say, 2500 emails very easily.

Okay, so now I hate having many tools and not omniscient. For example, they invented a tool for this very does the same, but without having another tool. So now this email tool can do it directly, which is very, very useful, but also again ethical marketing. I switched in the best tool for me, but I'm also a partner of a brand like they approached me to helping them.

So me and some other stickers we are actually a partner of. On this end we are happy. But this is also a really I'm not not affiliated here. Yes, some some other tool where fully I just loving it. Not a partner at all. You want to have one way you can scan a brand. Like for me, a lot of times when I have a first call of a new company, I scan them and I use the tool spider by for foreplay. You know, for play.

Scott: I do not.

Chris: Okay, I can do you will like it in this tool. Spider. It looks at all the ads with brand has ever made, and it sees how long they were launching. How much in Europe. Like the cool thing of the European Union is sometimes we are forcing meta to do things, but they don't want to do in the US.

So like what, what this tool can do. Also in Europe every ad has to report how many impressions it has. This is very very hidden. You have to click ten times. But of course a tool can easily make it visible. So it actually this estimates what are the best ads like. What are the whatever 100 best ads of every brand.

And for me, I have actually tried it for all the I have access to Ferdy ad account, so I have tried it where I really see the best ad and I have compared it and it's scary close. So for me, knowing it scary close is a shit for my own accounts because people can copy, but it's very good for me to see other, other accounts.

If I want to know something about the brand, I get to prepare myself for the call. I look at it and I see, I see exactly what are the best ads. And like this, you can get inspired by many competitors. So the spider by foreplay again here affiliated is just a great tool. You might you might love it.

And again, I have a present here for you. And also if people write me, I might have present for a person who wants support where as well.

Scott: Well that's awesome. I love those tools. And you know, you just invited people to to contact you. How can they reach out to you if they want to want to talk to you some more?

Chris: Yeah, you can you can reach out on my I think the easy part is on my Instagram. Chris FL, Chris, my airflow or of course on the website or LinkedIn also works infrared or there's many, many ways.

Scott: Excellent. I'll include that in the show notes. Well, thanks for your time today Chris. This is super interesting to learn how you guys are, are managing, you know, meta ads and digging deep into the creative side of stuff.

Chris: I think it's really cool that you help people to get going because we would have needed this, like when we started like, yeah, when I was 25. No, I'm old. But when I was 25, when we started, I would have needed where we had to figure out everything on our own with Shopify. And so I was like a scary times that way, but fun times.

But scary because no one could teach anything. So now it's so cool. But now you can get so much information and I think you're helping your audience a lot.

Scott: Thank you. We'll talk to you soon.