Tom Broschinsky

Blog

  • 4 Tips to Scaling Facebook Ads

    4 Tips to Scaling Facebook Ads

    Over the years one of the questions I am asked the most about Facebook Ads is “How do I scale my ads?”

    I get the question. I have been there. You found something that works and now the trick is how do you grow it without breaking it.

    I can you tell you that it isn’t a mystery. In fact, I would say it is more science and patience than anything else. It is very tempting to drop a pile of money behind something because you have the glimmers of success.

    After years in the industry, here’s four things I’ve learned and I hope it helps.

    1. Be conservative. Just because you found success doesn’t mean you can’t break it and that it will last long. It’s social media after all. The whole process can change on a whim…and it has. So be conservative. On the flip side of that, realize that Facebook Advertising is an engine and it needs fuel. Be cautious, but know that you need enough fuel to keep it running.
    2. Increase in 20–30% Increments. The Facebook Ad auction runs on an algorithm. There are parameters, guardrails, to operate within. Personally, I have found that increasing budgets 20-30% of your current budget gives enough to the engine to measure a change without breaking anything.
    3. Make changes every 3–5 days. The algorithm takes time to implement changes, usually 24-48 hours. So, you want to give it time to take the budget increase, run with it, and optimize accordingly. If you budget is minimal, the change can happen faster but if you are spending upwards of $100/day and you increase to $130/day, it will take time to get up to spending that amount on a daily basis.
    4. Analyze and Report. You can’t be successful if you don’t measure your success or failure. Every 3-5 days, go in and look at your campaign/ad set/ad. Check your KPI’s. Did your cost per event stay the same, increase, or decrease? Was there a change to your CPM or reach (personally I use these as indicators and not my decision maker on the success or failure of something)? Whether it is your money or not, you must measure your changes or you really are just giving Facebook money. Facebook will not hold you accountable, you have to do that yourself.

    When scaling ads, this is the foundation I always build on. No matter what Facebook does and doesn’t do, this process is consistent, systematic, and repeatable.

    What about you? What have you done to scale your ads? What have you heard? I want to know. Comment below and let’s learn from one another.

  • Syncopate and Disrupt Your Industry

    Syncopate and Disrupt Your Industry

    The last thing a successful business owner or entrepreneur really wants to do is disrupt the flow of business. But there are times as a business owner and entrepreneur that you have to do that. Now, I spent the better part of my life being involved in music consumption. I was raised in a home where music was very much a part of our everyday life.

    So, when I was in college, I played a lot of jazz music. And there is a musical term that comes to mind as it relates to business, and that is the term is syncopation. Miriam Webster defines that as a “temporary displacement of a regular metrical accent in music caused typically by stressing the weak beat”. Really what that means in layman’s terms is in normal everyday music you have the downbeat, and it’s a very strong downbeat. It’s the beat that you tap your toe to.

    A syncopated beat means that as you are tapping your toe, basically you lightly tap your toe on the downbeat but as your toe comes back up, that’s where the emphasis is. It’s on the offbeat. And I like to look at that as a way of disrupting business. Now, how do you as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, disrupt that? Disrupt that flow without causing issues to your business?

    I would dare say you do that by finding other methods to get your message out to the masses. Do you need to get your product, your brand, into a new industry? That’s possible. Find influencers. They are some of the most powerful tools in your set of advertising offerings, that you can find a handful of influencers in just about any industry who could really and truly evangelize and become brand ambassadors so that as you continue to move into that industry, they can help you disrupt it and get your name and your brand and your product out there.

    Another method that I particularly like, in large part due to the cost of it right now, is Facebook Video. Facebook Video is so inexpensive now. That’s why it’s so important to get on it right now. You can get your message out to the masses for not hundreds of dollars a day, or even thousands. I’m talking like 10, 20, 30 dollars a day you could get your message out to the masses.

    So, if you are just trying to test the waters, you can do that. Or if you have something that you have fine-tuned and you are ready to get out there and get the world aware of it, it’s okay to drop 100, 200 dollars a day behind it. Run it for a week, and in that week, you might have video content that goes out to literally tens of thousands of people.

    These are the ways that I like to look at how an entrepreneur or a business owner can disrupt the flow of business, or not so much disrupt the flow of business but disrupt their industry to truly grow and to achieve. Achieve something that they didn’t previously think was possible.

    If you found this interesting or you know of other ways to disrupt the flow of business, but still keep business operating, comment below. Let me know. It’d be interested in your thoughts.

  • There Are Two Kinds of Entrepreneurs

    There Are Two Kinds of Entrepreneurs

                  I would say in life there are two different kinds of entrepreneurs. There’s the purposeful entrepreneur. Their intent is to run a business, to build something meaningful. Then there is the entrepreneur that is the accidental entrepreneur. Something happens that shoves them in that direction, or they have a paradigm shift. Russell Brunson and his Marketing Secrets podcast talks about a paradigm shift, and his paradigm shift of sitting at a conference where this individual had gone up to talk about their service, their product, and they had a pitch and they sold that. Then he sat there and watched all these people go to the back of the room, and he was talking about how he started doing the numbers in his head, and how this individual earned $60,000 in an hour.

                  And then he saw someone else do it, and someone else do it. And he had this paradigm shift, this changing in his thinking and how he looked at life. The event changed the trajectory of his life and goals. Since I’ve been following him and listening to his podcast and reading his books, to see how that paradigm shift, that one incident in life has directed his life since.

                  I don’t think I had anything that impactful, but some time ago I’m sitting in a room and listening to an individual speak, and they’re listing off their skill set, but also how much money they’re making. I realize that they just described my entire skill set. And I came home from that meeting with a different view on life, and what I wanted to achieve.

                  As I started to connect the dots here, and here, and here, and here, I was very fortunate to find a fantastic mentor, Richie Norton (which if you are looking to start something, please go check him out, he is a stellar guy). He’s been very instrumental in leading me down this path and giving me a nudge here and a nudge there. And the people I’ve met, but also realizing that there’s so much more that I can do with my skill set. The money is awesome, but the impact on people’s lives. But then also realizing that one of the things I learned from Richie is having an intentional life, living life with intent, but also trying to have experiences over things. It’s been very eye-opening the past 16 months, doing all this, and learning how to connect the dots on everything.

                  I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot lately and just seeing other friends start businesses and have great success. And others that are still working through that process. I feel like in life there are those two entrepreneurs, and maybe that’s too much of a generalization. But I would be interested on your thoughts and would love a comment below.

  • Content Hacks for Entreprenuers

    Content Hacks for Entreprenuers

    Getting the most out of your content and optimizing it, is huge. Especially when you’re an entrepreneur. So, two quick services that I highly recommend that you look at and consider.

    If you’re doing video, so take that video, drop it over to Rev.com. What they’ll do, they can get the closed captioning and the transcript. Now, what you do with your video, once you have the transcript, drop it over to your blog post. You have a blog article.

    Take that same video, upload it to Kapwing, strip the audio…You now have a podcast.

    That closed caption that Rev.com provided for you, head to Kapwing. It’s a free service that is dead easy to use. You upload your video along with the closed captioning and now you have text overlay on your video.

    So you’re optimizing your video content to get the most out of it. And whether people are watching your video with the sound on or off, your message is still coming across.

    Quick hacks to get the most out of one piece of content and utilizing it in many different facets. So, good luck. Go out, check Rev.com, Kapwing. Thanks.

    P.S. The screenshot below is the end result of me using these services. I took a video. Uploaded it to Rev.com to get the Transcript to build this blog post. The captions I then uploaded along with the video to Kapwing.com to have text overlay subtitles on my video. Now I can upload that video to anywhere and whether someone has the sound on or not, my message is still getting out there.

  • Health Is Wealth

    Health Is Wealth

    Stop.

    Take a moment to take care of yourself. And here’s why. So, two times in 2018, I had the lovely experience of being admitted to the local ER. Nothing super major, but I was admitted to the hospital. This most recent time, as I’m sitting there on the hospital bed, waiting for some results to come back, thinking to myself, “You know, I can hustle all day. I can help people grow, I can give marketing advice, coaching, consulting. But at the end of the day, if I’m not in a spot where I’m healthy and take care of myself. I can’t take care of other people.” I can’t take care of my family.

    I can’t grow my business. I can’t do a lot of things.

    So, for me, and I hope that you don’t have this experience and that you can learn from my experience, is you can grow all the wealth you want, but if you don’t have the health to go with it, how can you enjoy it?

    I love my family and I want to be around there with them and for them, and that’s why I do a lot of things that I do. And I can’t do that when I’m sitting in a hospital bed. Don’t you do the same. Don’t you forget to take care of yourself.

    Grow your business, grow everything you want, but don’t forget you can’t enjoy it if you’re not there.

  • What Defines Profitability?

    What Defines Profitability?

    In the world of digital marketing it’s a lot of different things, whether it’s physical product, digital product, whatever.

    But, for a minute, let’s talk about whether you’re talking to a cold audience, warm audience, or hot audience.

    Cold Audience = never heard of you.

    Warm Audience = people who are thinking about purchasing but haven’t done

    Hot Audience = people who are ready to buy now

    People who’ve never heard of you really, they’re a prospecting audience. They’re a cold audience. You should be looking at a 2:1 return on ad spend. Every dollar you spend you get two dollars back. At that point in time you are paying for your advertising, your marketing campaign and you’re making a little bit. That’s okay because you’re going to get them with upsells. You’re going to get them with new product, with additional courses. They’re going to mean more to you over the lifetime. That lifetime value. You hear that term a lot.

    With a warm audience, these are people who have added to cart but not purchased. They’ve heard of you but they just need something to push them over that edge. These kinds of people in your marketing campaign you should at a minimum be generating a 3:1, which for most business that’s their breakeven point. They have made enough money from the marketing efforts that they’ve paid for all their operating expenses and now they’re retaining a customer and they’ve made a little bit of money.

    A hot audience, people who have already purchased from you and you’re marketing to them again. Buyers. You really should be looking at a 4:1 or 5:1…maybe even higher. For every dollar you spend to try to acquire that customer you should get five dollars back, six dollars back.

    That’s the point where you really start making a lot of money and you can start scaling and building a profitable business. There’s a lot of other things that can go into that. That’s okay. But the main thing is define what your profitability is and start looking at your campaigns and how to scale to that, how to get to that.

    If you’re already there, great, start looking at how to scale up. Increase your ad spend 25% or 35%. Let it run for two, three days. See how that happens. Then do so again and keep increasing. Keep going. Or if you start to see a decrease maybe you’ve hit that the law of diminishing returns. You start to hit that plateau. Start decreasing until you hit that profitability level that not only are you comfortable with but it is your goal that you want to do to be able to maintain and operate your business.

  • It’s a Pixel…Not A Cooking Ingredient

    It’s a Pixel…Not A Cooking Ingredient

    I’m going to try to make this as short and as quick as possible. I’ve been in the social media industry for six years. One of the recent terminologies, recent that I’ve heard, is “seasoning the pixel”.

    I feel like it’s a bit misleading for what it is that you’re trying to accomplish with your Facebook ad account and the pixel. Because that pixel, someone told me a really good, apt description, is that the pixel is a vehicle for transporting data from one spot to the next; from your website to the ad account.

    Now, the idea of seasoning the pixel, I feel like really more refers to the algorithm. The algorithm is this … Frank Kern in one of his podcasts mentioned that Facebook has spent a disgusting amount of money on it, and it’s absolutely true. That algorithm is amazing, because it knows how to find people who have the highest propensity to perform what you are trying to accomplish, whether it’s conversion, landing page views, leads, custom conversions, whatever it may be. But that algorithm is really what learns. It’s not the pixel. The pixel is just a static piece of code that sits on your website. But the algorithm, when you are creating your ad account and you are specifying what it is you are trying to accomplish, it’s the algorithm that’s going out and finding people and trying to accomplish what you’re optimizing for, not the pixel.

    You can run video views without ever using the pixel. You can do post engagement. You can do a bunch of different things without ever optimizing or using that pixel. It’s the algorithm that is running that. Now, the pixel is a piece of that when you start running conversions and landing page views and things like that. But it is just a piece of the puzzle, not the end all be all with what you do with Facebook.

    I’m interested in your thoughts, what you’ve run into on that.

    Comment below. I’d love to hear what things you’ve heard about the “mysteries” of Facebook Marketing. 😊

  • Q. Facebook – Can It Be a Money Driver? | A. Does a Bear Crap in The Woods

    Q. Facebook – Can It Be a Money Driver? | A. Does a Bear Crap in The Woods

    I think I really could just leave this post at that.

    Sadly, I know there are folks out there who either just don’t get it or feel like they haven’t figured out how.

    For the first group, I’m not here to convince you…well, maybe a little. More importantly, this is about letting you know you are leaving money on the table.

    For the second group, you will get there. I promise. I would highly suggest you scour SocialMediaExaminer.com and JonLoomer.com. There is a goldmine of information there to help you get going and making Facebook a money driver and not a money pit.

    The second group is already sold on the possibility of Facebook. The Facebook Humbugs who may feel Google or some other platform or method is the gold standard of advertising and that’s that. Consider this…

    Google does a phenomenal job at tracking your consumer. Sites. Demographics. Search History. Etc. What it doesn’t have is…engagement analytics. Hobbies. Likes. Interests. Relationship status. And much more.

    An example here…You have an active style clothing company but your product isn’t carried by the likes of Dick’s Sporting Goods and your competing against Nike, Under Armour, and Reebok. Your social media manager says “We can target the exact audience we want”. If you’re smart, you say “Show me.” (Let’s assume you’re smart.) Your social media hero shows you this…

    Your manager goes on to tell you that they have targeted:

    • Men, Living in the U.S.
    • 18-35
    • Interested in Sports (NFL, Soccer, College Football)
    • Single, have a college education
    • Work in a corporate setting

    Then you look at the screenshot. You have a group of people who have a HIGH propensity to Like posts and even better…click on ads. Also, this group primarily looks at ads on mobile.

    What the heck does all this mean? Well, you take a leap of faith AND…

    You let your social media manager (who will soon be a freaking hero) work with your design team and they build a mobile-only campaign that targets men who will click on ads. Let them set up some nifty remarketing ads using Facebook’s Pixel Data and your email marketing platform and BAM!!! you have an ad campaign that could easily maintain a ROAS of…let’s say 4-5x, maybe more if you offer free shipping or some other incentive in your shopping cart. You not only break even, but you self-fund your campaign and make money.

    Sound difficult? It may to that first group. The second group is saying “Hallelujah!” and they’re just begging for some upper management person to give them the go ahead.

    The great thing about this is that it can apply to almost any industry, product (SaaS, download, course, webinar, physically product), event, etc. The tools are there.

    All that being said…do not, I repeat, do not put ALL your eggs in one basket. I love Facebook. (Seriously…I I geek out on this stuff.) But it should only be a tool, albeit a 20 lb. sledgehammer in my opinion, but a tool nonetheless amongst your other digital marketing tools. Imagine what you can do when you tie Facebook into your Email Marketing, Google Marketing, Amazon Marketing, Snapchat, and even traditional methods?

    The possibilities are there. You just need to take a leap of faith and know that…yeah, a bear does crap in the woods, so you can make money using Facebook. Seriously…you could make a LOT of money by adding Facebook to your digital marketing efforts.

    Want more information?

    Go here: https://www.facebook.com/business/

    And here: https://www.facebook.com/blueprint

    Annnnnd here: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-for-business-ultimate-facebook-marketing-guide/

  • Facebook Advertising – Is It Still Alive?

    Facebook Advertising – Is It Still Alive?

    Not long ago, there was a smattering of people out there saying Facebook reach was going to decline with the update to the algorithm. To be honest, for many, it has, and I am sure it will. Does that mean you should step away from Facebook? NO! Please, for the love of all that is digital, don’t! If anything, it should tell you two things:

    1. Dig in! Facebook has loads of useful information. Find what has worked (like, look back at your content last year and find the best stuff and repurpose it) and is working. Look at your competitors. Scope out your favorite Facebook page and see what they’re doing. It may take a minute, but you’ll find what works.
    2. Diversify! Facebook, Instagram, and all other pieces of the platform are amazing. But they should only be a tool or tools in your toolbox…not your end all. There’s still Google. Twitter. Snapchat (did you hear they recently added advertising on Snapchat?). Twitch. YouTube. Live Streaming. SEO. SEM. Email Marketing. App development. Publications – online/offline. Influencer Marketing. Seriously, there’s a lot.

    What about advertising on Facebook? Well, folks, I’m here to tell you that it is alive, and holy toledo Batman is it thriving. If you used only one thing on Facebook, it needs to be their Website Custom Audiences. The possibilities of finding people who have visited your site, purchased, abandoned, spent X amount of time on your page, etc…it’s amazing. Then building adds to target them. THEN…build a lookalike audience. Now you’re just talking crazy.

    Moral of the story, or today’s thought. If you aren’t using Facebook as a marketing tool, I guarantee you that your competition is, and they’re loving that fact you aren’t there. If you are, dig in and check out JonLoomer.com, SocialMediaExaminer.com, Facebook Blueprint, and Lynda.com. I promise you will find a nugget there that could easily help you.

    My latest “Dig In” is Facebook Dynamic Ads.

    What’s yours?

  • I Went Live…

    I Went Live…

    Today, for the first time in about 3 months, I was the one in front of the camera. At work, for the past 18 months or so, we have been doing Facebook Live. We had some serious duds…I mean duds. Then, we would hit some out of the park with 300k+ views.

    Today, myself, our camera guy, and a co-worker helping moderate, we had a 30 min or so Live video do 48k views and over 1.6k shares.

    The end result is that I just engaged with our audience base in real-time, they shared it with their friends, and my ugly mug and the brand just reached a pile of people for far less money then if I had paid for those views/engagement, etc.

    If you have a brand that is even mildly interesting, consider going Live on Facebook, YouTube, or whatever. Just do it. If you screw up…like I did today…it’s okay. The beauty of social media is you can be real and things don’t always work as planned. But people know that, and your fan base will, more often than not, understand.

    Be brave. Make a mistake…or a lot of them. Just learn from them and improve.