Show Notes
Several years ago he started a business, launching his own brand. Within a year, through his study and application of Social Media Advertising, it was a multi-million dollar company.
He has helped his clients generate over half a billion views across different channels and millions of followers!
We talk about:
– Who should market on Facebook?
– How hard is it to do?
– What are some first steps to take?
– How can you learn more?
– How much money should you spend?
– Is it right for you?
Listen to this and more on this educational episode about Facebook. If you want to hear more from Manuel visit www.manuelsuarez.com
Transcript
Welcome to the Custom Apparel Startups podcast, your best source for information, news, tips and tricks to get you off the ground running, and earn success with your custom apparel decorating business. So, get ready to soak up some knowledge!
Now, here are your hosts, Mark and Marc!
Mark S: Hey, everyone! Welcome to episode 81 of the Custom Apparel Startups podcast. My name is Mark Stephenson, from ColDesi.
Marc V: And this is Marc Vila, from Colman and Company. Mark, we have a guest today. What I always do is I don’t tell Mark we’re having a guest.
Mark S: Yeah, thanks a lot!
Marc V: Then, he just finds out, so I give him a fake script, and then we go from there. So, I’m going to have you guess, okay?
Mark S: Well, you told me that we were going to talk about Facebook today. You did leak that information, and you said something about he wears a hoodie.
Marc V: Yes, and the first letter of his name is M. M-A-…
Mark S: Are we having Mark Zuckerberg on again? Again.
Marc V: Yes! So, Mark Zuckerberg, welcome to the show! Actually, no. Manuel Suarez is here. I’ll tell you, he is a Facebook advertising guru, to put it kind of simply.
I had found Manuel, just doing what I typically do. I jump in my car, and before I leave, if I’m bored with what I’m listening to lately, I try to find a new podcast. So, I just searched either “marketing podcast” or “Facebook marketing podcast,” whatever it was.
His name popped up. I read the description. I said “This looks like somebody who’s got it together.” I listened to a few episodes over the course of a couple days, and I said “I’d love to talk to this guy!”
So, I reached out to him on Facebook, and here you are! Manuel, thanks for joining us!
Mark S: Yeah, welcome to the podcast!
Manuel: Guys, super happy to be here! I’m shooting for being the size of [inaudible 02:13] one day. I’m not there yet, or Mark Zuckerberg. Maybe one day. It’s a good guess! I’m going to try to work hard to approximate that one day, for sure.
Mark S: You know, we have found that most successful people are named Mark, so you should maybe -.
Manuel: Hey, I’ve got the first two letters, so that’s good! We’re on our way!
Marc V: And he’s doing well. We’ll plug your websites and stuff, and podcasts and stuff. But ManuelSuarez.com is your website. You just had some fascinating stuff about Facebook. We’ve done a few episodes, even recently, talking about Facebook and advertising, and how money can really be made on Facebook, and how this is a really great opportunity.
The first thing I’d maybe like you just to start with is, how about you sell us and our customers on the idea of why they should learn how to use Facebook and Facebook advertising, and Facebook for marketing?
Manuel: I think that obviously you have this great model, in which you can turn any individual into an entrepreneur. This is something that our great-grandparents did not have a chance to do. I mean, my granddad – I come from a family of entrepreneurs.
My great-granddaddy built a toy store in Puerto Rico, and we were dominating the market for I want to say about 70 years, until Toys’R’Us came into existence, and put us out of business.
This thing has kept on happening over and over, but right now we are in a special era, in which anybody that is not actually satisfied with their existing condition, in which they feel like they should be making more money, or they should be taking advantage of the current scene, to survive better, they can do something about it.
There’s one thing that I know for certain, after being in this world for a good five years, as I became like a hardcore entrepreneur – one thing that I know is that all of us hold our future in our hands. If you want to have a better quality of life, you can create a better quality of life.
I particularly, am a religious guy. One of the things that I’ve known for ages, that people say out loud, is that your future is in God’s hands. The one line that I like about the Bible so much is that it says that God helps those that help themselves.
So, in my line of thought, the way that I operate is that I always know that my future is not controlled by God or by anybody else. It’s controlled by me. When I look at that, I see all of these phenomena going on, all of this phenomena of the online world, something that didn’t exist before.
My great-granddaddy used to get home super excited about being able to celebrate that he had 27 customers walk through the door. I celebrate 7,800 customers, every single day, shopping in my online stores.
The difference is not that we’ve got this world that is ten times more powerful. It’s thousands of times more powerful, because of communication. The world is built on communication.
How do I convince your listeners to jump in? We have something. We are first generation. Our great-grandparents, our fathers, as close as 20 years ago, did not have access to this world. It’s a brand-new phenomenon to our world, I can tell you for sure.
20 years down the line, 40 years down the line, this generation in which the internet became everything – it’s not a thing, it’s everything – became front and center, the way that we communicate. Like social media, for example, Facebook advertising.
Facebook advertising is not something to do, something cute that’s going to help you make more money. Facebook advertising describes the current state of affairs of the marketing world. That’s what it is. So, if you’re not in there as a business, whether you’re a small entrepreneur, medium-sized, or an advanced, established $100 million corporation, if you’re not in there, you’re leaving a boatload of money on the table.
That is not an opinion. It is a fact, because that is where peoples’ eyeballs are it, Marc.
Marc V: The way I see it is – I don’t know decades or history good enough, but 150 years ago, you had to be in the newspaper. 100 years ago, you had to be on the radio. 50 years ago, you had to be on TV. And now, even if you say 20, 10 years ago, you had to be on the internet.
Now, you have to be specifically on Facebook, on the internet. It’s the new TV. It’s the new radio. It’s the new newspaper. It’s the place where almost everybody goes, and it’s the place where businesses are thriving, and really have an opportunity to take themselves to the next level, that you’re just not going to get out of advertising in the newspaper.
Manuel: I’m going to steal that from you, okay? I do seminars all over the world. I have never described it like that. I’ve described it in many other ways, but what you just said is gold. 150 years ago, you had to be on radio. In 1940, you had to be on television.
If you look at the ones that were not there, they left so much money on the table, and they became irrelevant. Because that’s what was going on.
When you talk about social media, people talk about “Oh, it’s just a platform to engage. It’s just people having fun. People understanding what’s going on with their family members, with their uncles, with their friends, with people that they haven’t connected with in 20 years.” But in reality, it’s all a misnomer. It’s not what it is.
Social media is the current state of communications on this planet. So, why are you not in it? A lot of people that are on it right now, Marc, the things that these people don’t really understand how to use it, because it’s so maybe techie. And until you understand it, you don’t really know how to get your feet wet on it, and just get started doing something on it.
It’s such a new phenomenon. Back in the 1940s, if you wanted to do a TV commercial, you had to pay a lot of money to get the production going, of the content. You had to hire a PR agent, that maybe teaches you what to say and not to say. You had to get it through a channel of approval.
You submitted a video, or you submitted some kind of message, and it went through a week of different lines and terminals, trying to tell you what you could say and not say. It was so complicated! Today, you have cell phone devices, you have cameras, you have all of these things that we ourselves, we’re producing all of this content ourselves.
The cookie-cutter ads are gone. Like the one quarter of a page newspaper message, it’s completely irrelevant now. Right now, we have social media, which opens up the creativity of any advertiser, to be able to put any message that they want, in front of these people.
Then, there’s the quote/unquote “complication” of understanding how this platform works, and how to use it. People just glance through their feed, they go and scroll through it, and they say “Well, that’s cool. I wonder how they targeted me.”
They don’t understand how it works. So, I always tell people – there’s a lot of people that have done Facebook ads. They press the Boost button, and they say “I actually did Facebook ads, and it didn’t work for me.”
Well, there is a strategy, just like there was a strategy back in the 1940s. Just like there was a strategy in 1999, with email marketing. There’s a strategy that works, and there’s a strategy that makes you lose money.
You have to understand what the strategy is, and what’s going on today, and why that’s happening. People that fail on Facebook ads, usually they fail only in a couple of areas. They either didn’t find their audience, they didn’t have patience, they didn’t understand how to use the platform, to be able to advertise.
Also, they didn’t do enough of it, consistently, because it does require a lot of activity. It’s not just generating passive income, and going and drinking pina coladas and daiquiris at the beach. You have to put in the work. That’s what people don’t understand in this business.
I’m sure that you guys know, for example, that the successful students that you have are people that put in the work. They didn’t get lucky. They actually put in the work, to become successful along the way. Right?
Marc V: Yeah. And I think it’s perfectly fine to do Facebook advertising while you’re drinking daiquiris.
Manuel: Go for it, man! Exactly! The thing is, if you’re complaining about it, like if you’re complaining that your business is not growing, but you’re drinking daiquiris and not doing Facebook ads, then you’re in trouble.
Mark S: There you go! You’re very relaxed, but you’re in trouble. You’re not going to make more money.
Manuel: If you’re drinking daiquiris, but you’re doing Facebook ads and you’re rolling, man, go for it! Right?
Mark S: I think you pointed out a couple of really important things. Most of our customers, our listeners, they may be on Facebook just for personal use. Or they’re not on Facebook at all. And when they think about advertising, they’re thinking about advertising with a big A, with a capital A.
They’re looking at it like it’s the same thing as kind of producing on TV. It’s that intimating, as producing a TV commercial, or as creating your own perfect magazine ad. And you’ve got that additional intimidation of maybe somebody is not great on the computer. They just don’t know enough, or think they know enough, to get started.
So, they end up doing just what you said. They do a post and they hit the Boost button, and they spend $10, and they don’t get any sales from it, even though they didn’t have any strategy behind it.
Manuel: They go through implementation paralysis a lot, too. They keep on wondering what to do or not to do. They never pull the trigger on creating content. That’s why throughout the last year, – because I have my own training. I teach a lot of people. I’ve got hundreds of students in my course, and I teach people how to get things done.
I have noticed that standing in front of a camera and talking to it is something that makes people uncomfortable. For me, it doesn’t. I’m used to it. At the beginning, it did.
The first time that I got on stage – I don’t want to curse in here, guys, because you’ve probably got a very serious professional audience, but I literally was wondering what the heck I was doing on that stage. It happens, right?
At the beginning, you don’t know what you’re doing. You grow toward it. My dad, he’s a 65-year-old man. He’s 67 now, but when he started doing videos, he was like 62, and he was talking to himself. For the first 50 videos, nobody was listening to him. I told him “You’ve got to keep on doing it.”
Right now, we’ve made this guy an international celebrity. We get 17 million views on his videos, every single month. 60,000 new subscribers on YouTube, every single month.
We’ve got 700,000 followers on Facebook now, all of it from being consistent, and having a persistent line. Just doing it all of the time.
People ask me “Manuel, how much content should I use? How much should I post?” My answer to them is “It depends.” How bad do you want it? How bad do you want to get there? Are you okay getting there in 20 years? Or are you obsessed, like me, and you want to get there and take over the world, before the opportunity gets too old?
Because guys, this is the reality. It’s happened. If you just look at history, you understand that what is happening today has happened before. This is not a new phenomenon. It’s just a new platform.
The 1900s, the radio was a huge deal. It was super cheap to advertise on it. People made a lot of money. 1940, television came into existence, and it brought down radio. People made a lot of money on it. 1999, email marketing. 2006, Google AdWords. 2008, YouTube.
This thing has been going on for ages, and eventually, those platforms get expensive. I’m trying to get people to wake up right now. I call myself, if you looked at my podcast, you saw that I call myself the Facebook Ninja. Why? Because this is where the opportunity is at!
I’m a marketer. What is the definition of a marketer? Somebody that knows how to capture attention. I’m not a Facebooker. I just know how to capture attention. That is my thing, and that’s my obsession. If tomorrow, Facebook goes bankrupt, which it will not – it’s actually valued at $700 billion today – but if it goes bankrupt, let’s jump into the next one!
Where is the next opportunity? Am I going to become the SnapChat Ninja? I don’t know. Not today! But right now, that is where the opportunity is at for small entrepreneurs and for big entrepreneurs. Even for the smaller guys, the guys that are just building their brands, that are grabbling a very simple brand, and just turning it into an awesome, cool phenomenon.
For example, t-shirts and mugs and whatever. You guys do all of that stuff. It’s very simple for small businesses today to really differentiate themselves in this unique world, because most companies, the big guys, are not pouring their money into the advertising platform yet, because they have too many big systems; intricate, like with Boards.
They have TV commercials, and budgets that need to be spent elsewhere. So right now, we have this opportunity in 2018, in which still Facebook ads are really affordable. Five years ago, it was cheap as heck. Today, it’s still cheap as heck, and nothing comes close to it.
So, people need to just realize that. My job is – I can’t make anybody a professional, after one day of delivering a seminar or a couple of courses. But in reality, if they wake up, they get obsessed, like I did several years ago, about the opportunity. Because the more that I looked around – I kept on looking around, and I got obsessed with observing.
I went to a restaurant. People were using it, either that or Instagram. I went to a Doctor’s office. Those newspapers and magazines were full of dust. But you know what they did have in their hands? They had their cell phone devices. Not only that, they were using Facebook. They were using Instagram.
I walked around, and I saw people walking around, not even looking at the street! Using Facebook. When I saw that, I was like “Wait a second. Why am I not all in on this platform that is so damn powerful, being used by so many people?” It just didn’t make sense.
So, I decided to become obsessed about the platform. Ever since I have done that, I became a Facebook Certified Professional. I’ve been helping businesses, some big clients, myself, to just do some special things on this platform that is just beginning.
Marc V: I have a question on that, now. I think at this point in time, if somebody is listening to this, you should feel motivated to want to do something. Because you’ve made a great case on why Facebook is a great place to be.
We’ve had numerous podcasts already, where we’ve said you have to be there. Even if you’re not advertising yet, you have to be there for other reasons.
To get into a little bit of a technical or hands-on type of question, what is the best way, if somebody has no clue what they’re doing, and they want to get started? What are maybe one or two or three different ways they can take the first steps, to actually making it happen?
Manuel: Right. No clue what you’re doing is quite common. I still do seminars today, and I get blown away. For example, I was in a seminar locally, in Vegas actually, two weeks ago. I’m delivering a seminar to 200 people that are entrepreneurs, that are actually in the Amazon world.
When I surveyed them, and I asked them “Who here is using the Facebook Business Manager, to run their ads?”, almost nobody was using it.
Let me explain what that is. About four years ago, Facebook realized that people using Facebook to advertise, with their personal profiles, it was a problem for them. It would actually stunt their growth, along the way. They needed to create a platform that would allow for companies to be able to just manage every single activity of that business, inside one central place.
They created something called the Facebook Business Manager. What I would like to advise anybody that’s motivated right now to start learning about this, is that they first of all, do not press that Boost button anymore.
It’s true, doing the Boost button is better than doing nothing. But when you only do the Boost button, you are leaving on the table about 99% of the actions and real power of advertising on Facebook.
Just start observing what is going on right now. If you go to Facebook on your newsfeed, which most of you guys are on Facebook, right now. Not my opinion, the actual numbers, the United States has 83% of the adult population actively using the platform.
If you go to Facebook, you’re going to see about four to five posts from your friends and family, people that you follow, and then you’re going to see an ad. One thing that I want you guys to start doing is understand how these companies target you, and advertise.
Every single message that is promoted in front of you, on your newsfeed, this is the equivalent of your newspaper. Every single message is going to have, at the top right, three little dots that you can click on. When you click on those dots, there is a question that says “Why am I seeing this ad?”
When you click on that, you’re going to start understanding what targeting those companies are using, to put themselves in front of you. That’s something that you have to get started – obsessively understanding. Reverse engineering how that message got there, in front of you.
One of the things that I realized the other day, which is something that after being years as a marketer, already; first of all, just so you guys know, I’m not a marketer graduated from an Ivy League university. I made myself a marketer, along the way. I didn’t even graduate college. I barely graduated high school.
I studied obsessively, and I became a professional in this modern digital era, in which I knew that every single thing that I wanted to learn was within my fingertips. I just became obsessed with that. So, if you guys are wondering “Oh, yeah. Sure. But this guy already went to University. He got certified.” No!
I certified myself with hard work, blood, sweat and tears, and learning along the way, and studying like crazy. I didn’t even pay for Facebook ads for years, for learning. No courses. I just learned myself, along the way.
But just to go back to the previous subject, what you want to do is start reverse engineering, and start understanding how these brands are putting themselves in front of you, so you can understand how you need to do the same thing yourself. That’s one thing.
The other thing is that recently, because of this whole data breach scandal that Facebook went through – you guys heard about that, of course, right? – Facebook rolled out a transparency feature, in their efforts to be completely open to the world, as to what’s going on in the Facebook advertising platform.
For example, if you guys have no idea how to start. “Manuel, I don’t even know what content to do, images, videos. I don’t know how to write text. I don’t know anything!” If you don’t know, what you should do, as a first step, is you actually should make a list of maybe 20 to 25 pages on Facebook, that are doing this right.
Look for competitors; some Amazon brands that have some big brands. Look for people that are doing it right. For example, there are people that are making a killing at this. Logan Paul, he has one of the biggest YouTube channels in the world. He’s a gazillionaire, from his custom apparel.
There’s a lot of people like this, that are doing it right. You can go to their Facebook page and check this out. You might need to pause this and rewind it, once this episode is live. But you go to the Facebook page, and on the banner, on the bottom right corner, there is an “info” button that you can press, on any single page out there, no matter what.
Zero transparency. You can see every single ad that that company, that brand is actively running on Facebook. How is that, for reverse engineering your competitors? [inaudible 23:35].
Marc V: That’s great! So, we’ve got two good things, here.
Mark S: Yeah. I like that!
Marc V: The first one, I actually did. The first one that Manuel mentioned here was find an ad, which only means scroll down about five or six things on your post. Then, click the three dots, and click on “Why am I seeing this ad?”
I did that, when you said that. It was an ad for LoanBuilder. “Why am I seeing this ad?” “One reason you’re seeing this ad is that LoanBuilder, a PayPal service, wants to reach people who may be similar to their customers. There may be other reasons you are seeing this ad from LoanBuilder, because they want to reach people who are 21 and older, that live in the United States.”
So, this LoanBuilder, they chose me, because they’re trying to find similar customers that are 21 and older. That’s an audience. So, if you find an ad for a t-shirt company, somebody who sells shirts, somebody who offers – I see ads on my Facebook for companies who do outsourcing service, like screen printing. I just saw one this morning, an outsource screen printing service.
Look at the ad, and see how they chose to find you, and take note of that. Because if you see somebody who is potential competition to you, or at least similar interests, like you mentioned a big brand t-shirt company, see how they’re doing it. Make those notes, so when you create ads, you can choose those similar types of audiences.
Mark S: I like both of those.
Manuel: As you mention that, let me just throw something in there. It does open up a little bit of a can worms. I’m not going to go deep into that, but just so you guys know. The Facebook advertising platform and everything that you can do on it, today we are going to officially cover .005 percent of it.
It’s such a big monster, and there’s so many things you can do. I still, myself, get blown away with what you can do with it. It’s incredible. You just mentioned something about this brand is targeting you, because you may be similar to their customers. What? Are you kidding me? People don’t even understand that.
That means that that company – what are they called, again?
Marc V: LoanBuilder.
Manuel: LoanBuilder, they upload it, the list of their customers. Now, this is something that you can only do if you have a Business Manager account. Very important!
If you want to know how you set that up, they are free. They don’t cost you anything. It’s a billion-dollar software that Facebook built for you, for you to be able to advertise, and give them dollars. They want you to actually make money, because if you make money, guess what? They make money, too.
Mark S: Just like us!
Manuel: They want you to be successful. What these guys did, LoanBuilder, they actually gave a list of customers to Facebook. They said “Look, Facebook. These guys right here, they are our customers. They trust in us. They give us money. Can you please help me find people that are similar to that?”
Well, what Facebook does is they grab that list, and they say “Sure, LoanBuilder. Let me go ahead and do that for you right now, because I want you to succeed. Since I want you to succeed, I’m going to do a good job of this.”
They go and find people that have six common characteristics; demographics, age range, socio-economic level, interests, page likes, all of those things. Then, they give you an audience which they call a lookalike audience, meaning that Facebook is actually going to put you in front of people that are more likely, based on their history on Facebook, and their data, to engage with you.
Which opens up this next point. The reason that marketing is so powerful today, the reason that it is so special – and I want you guys to just look at this and think about this for a second – is because of the data that these platforms have about us.
Historically, companies have been busting their chops, trying to get data from potential customers. If you found out, in a 1975 agency, that a customer loved golfing, guess what you’d do? You’d send them a golfing t-shirt, and you’d invite them out to a five-star resort, to go golfing.
What the customer does is they fall in love with you, because you’re giving them something they like. I don’t know if you know, but I am a big Dallas Cowboys fan. If you want to get to me, and if you want to get me in a meeting, or to do seminars, the easiest way is to connect with me what you know.
For example, “I’ve got this t-shirt for Dak Prescott, the quarterback of the Dallas Companies. Here’s a gift for you. You’re awesome! Can you come speak at my event? I’m not going to pay you anything, because I can’t pay you. I’m just getting started on this, but I would love to have you here.”
Just doing that, having that data about me, and connecting with me that way, is going to now make sure that I get closer to you. This applies 100% to you guys, Custom Apparel Startups guys. For example, if you guys built a brand of coffee lovers, did you know that you can actually talk to coffee lovers?
Did you guys know that you have that data, already? You don’t have to hire the Nielson rating agency. You don’t have to hire a private investigator, to find out who loves coffee out there. Facebook, throughout their relationship with every single individual, has accumulated data about what they like and what they don’t like.
Mark S: Manual, that tailors right into what we typically are telling our customers about choosing niche markets for your t-shirt business. If you can identify that – if the cheer market is yours, if the dog apparel market is yours, if you have an affinity for mission trips for churches.
If you’ve got a vertical market and some interesting creativity there, you can use Facebook to ferret out people that have an interest in those products.
Marc V: And I would say that a great starting point you can do, here is a real-world thing that you can actually do. Manuel, one of the things that I’m always a big fan of, and Mark is too, is giving them something real to do, right away. Okay?
So, what I would suggest is follow the two things you said. Follow some brands, like 20 of them. Click on the three dots in the ads, and read what they have to say. Develop an idea of what they’re doing, just so you can understand kind of what’s happening. Even if you don’t understand it, you kind of understand, at least from a top level.
Then, we talk to folks about attending events, getting people to sign up on email lists, having a CRM for your customers, whatever it might be. You have website visitors. All of these things are little audiences that you have.
So, if you attend an event, a live event somewhere; a cheer conference. If you have Little League that you work with, if you work with a lot of small businesses, like small corporate-type of businesses, title companies, mortgage companies. Get a list of your customers and build that up.
You’ve got to have a three-digit number. You can’t have five people. Try to get hundreds. Build up a list. Preferable, go to that cheer event, get as many people as you can to give you their email address, first name, last name.
If you have local customers, get as many as you can. If you go to Little League, find those Little League moms and dads. Get them to sign up for your email list.
Mark S: [inaudible 31:18]
Marc V: Then, you take that list, and then you can import that into Facebook, and Facebook will help you find more people like them, is what we’re saying. So, start off by gathering data, which we’ve talked about in the past, in other podcasts.
What you can do right now, before you even start doing ads, is you can inspect and investigate other ads, just to see what they’re doing. And start building an audience list, by getting email signups, customer signups. Get their information, and have that available to you.
Now, what you’ve done is you’re doing your “mise en place,” if you know about cooking. You’re getting your chopped onions, you’re getting your salt and pepper. You’re understanding what ads, kind of how they work. You’re understanding how ads that you want to copy or be similar to, how they act.
Then, you’re also being prepared, that you’re getting the ingredients you need, to be able to build an audience. You could do that right now, before you even learn the ad platform.
Mark S: Right! I love that.
Manuel: Absolutely. Actually, there’s quite a bit of that, guys. Just a caveat on the gathering names and emails. Facebook will not help you find a lookalike audience, unless you give them 1,000 names. This is for privacy reasons. You need to have about 1,000 names, and then you can get a lookalike audience from that.
So, don’t go to Facebook and upload 25 names, and then come back and tell me that that didn’t work. Okay? Just so you know, it’s an important point.
Another thing that you have to do – there’s many different options that you can do. For example, if you make a video, or if you – you can hire somebody to make you a video about your custom apparel, no matter what it is. It’s so simple to make a video, today.
Let’s say that you have seven images. You can turn those seven images into a video, and target the right people. Then, you can do a re-targeting funnel. The cool thing about that is that once you do a video, Facebook establishes a digital footprint, and they tell you how much of that video is being consumed.
You’re going to have what I call the five buckets. You’re going to have buckets for people that watch for ten seconds, for 25% of the video, for 50% of the video, 75% of the video, and 95% of that video. Now, you can communicate with those guys that are consuming your content, better.
Like the ones that are consuming 95% of that video is actually a very warm audience, so now you can communicate with them better. This is another way to build a custom audience. Because for example, if you send the video out, and you push it, and invest some dollars in it. You maybe spend $500 on getting it seen by a lot of people.
You can now create an audience of people that saw 95% of that video, and sell them something. Offer them something. Offer a discount, because those people are likely more warm.
One of my rules in this modern era is that I don’t sell anything to anybody that hasn’t seen me before, somehow. I don’t go for direct selling. Direct marketing today is a little bit out of – it’s not affordable any more, to do it on these platforms. People don’t like that anymore.
Social media is a platform to engage, to build relationships, to provide value, to educate. You mentioned also gathering emails. Well, why don’t you gather Messenger subscribers? There’s like a whole evolution going on right now with the Messenger platform, that people are loving, getting involved with right now.
Mark S: I agree. That’s a whole other topic I’d love to talk about.
Marc V: We have about five minutes before we wrap up.
Mark S: One important question.
Marc V: And one important question. You got it?
Mark S: Yeah. I’ll do it.
Marc V: Alright. Go for it!
Mark S: One of the most common questions we get, Manuel, is “How much money should I spend on a Facebook ad, to start?”
Marc V: And further, to say that, is let’s just break it down really tight. You’re a small business owner. Maybe you’re just trying to advertise locally. You’re not trying to build an audience of 500,000 people. You’re trying to get $10,000 a month in sales. That’s our initial goal.
So, what’s a budget they need to have, maybe to start with? And then, a longer term budget? To say, like “If you’re not going to invest at least this much over this period of time, wait.” What are some numbers you’re thinking of?
Manuel: The most important thing, before we talk about budget, is understanding that if you don’t have a strategy, you’re going to waste every single penny. The first thing that they need to do, all of your listeners, anybody that wants to be successful with Facebook ads, is they need to sit down and thoroughly think about what is their strategy.
How are they going to capture attention? There are four ways of capturing attention. That’s it. Only four. There’s video content, picture content, which is graphics. We’ve got audio content, like this one. We’re talking over here with you guys, across a distance. That’s what you guys do on the podcast. Then, there’s written content. One of those four needs to be addressed.
If you, as a startup business, do not provide one of those four ways consistently, one of those four methods, it’s going to make it that much more difficult for you to get there.
Now, just to be more specific on this, I know that this opens up a lot of questions, and people don’t know where to start. I actually created a mini-course, a series of mini-courses, for people to get started. So, if you want your audience to have access to that, I made a special link for them. Do you guys want me to give you that?
Mark S: Yeah. We’ll put it in the show notes for the podcast.
Manuel: It’s very simple. It’s ManuelSuaraz.com/CAS, for Custom Apparel Startups. If they go to that link, it’s going to be delivered on Messenger directly, on Facebook Messenger, so you must have Facebook Messenger.
But it’s a series of short videos that talk about the strategy on Facebook, why it works, what works today, what doesn’t work, and then some basics on setting up the Business Manager, and all of the other things along the way, that is going to help anybody get started.
Because it’s just too short. This podcast is not enough for me to help you guys get anybody out of this podcast, and start implementing stuff. So, I had to build these mini-courses, that are going to get anybody on the way.
Mark S: That’s great!
Manuel: The other part of that question is basically, it depends on, again, how bad do you want it? What I don’t want is people to start investing $1,000 a day, because Manuel says put everything there. I don’t want that to happen, because you’re going to waste a lot of money on it.
A lot of people actually give up, because they spend money, and they don’t get the return. The most important thing is not your budget. The most important thing is your strategy.
Does it have a [inaudible 38:16]? Just like you can launch a product that does not really have a good effect, it doesn’t have a demand. You can actually launch a strategy that doesn’t work, so you have to be willing to adjust.
One of the main qualities of a successful entrepreneur is persistence. No matter what, if you fail, you go at it again. If you fail, you go at it again. Sometimes, to run a successful Facebook ads campaign, you have to run ten or 20 campaigns, until you hit it home with one good one! It’s actually quite normal to go for that.
So, persistence along the way is key. Now, the opportunity is so big that what I will tell you is build the strategy right away. Like how are you going to actually put a lot of content out there? Are you going to hire somebody? Are you going to do it yourself?
There are so many tools for you to provide content, right now. For example, if you go to a website called AnswerThePublic.com, on that website, you can see what people are searching for, around your niche market. Then, you can just answer the public.
These are actual Google queries that are being done by people every single day. So, there are ways today to generate content, because what you know in your area, is something that most people don’t even begin to understand.
Just like I didn’t know a lot about marketing, and you guys don’t necessarily know about my areas that much, what you guys know is really good and really powerful, and most people want to hear about it. They want to learn about it. So, it’s your job to communicate with them.
So, write a strategy that is something you can feel like “This is an actual path that I can take. I’m going to do this content. I’m going to post six times a day. I’m going to learn about Business Manager on Facebook. I’m going to study my competition.”
“I’m going to create an audience over here. I’m going to build an ad from an image. I’m going to put a list of my customers.” Whatever it is, build a strategy. Then, start running some ads. On Facebook, you can run $2 a day, on some campaigns, or $5 a day. It doesn’t require any long-term commitment, but you need to stop doing the Boost button, and start learning about Business Manager.
How? Business.Facebook.com. Get the account set up. Get your feet wet, and start doing something about it. Little by little, improve the skill, and get obsessed about learning the platform every single day. Because we’ve got a good – I would say – five years before this thing gets too expensive, and then most of us will not be able to afford it anymore.
Marc V: I like that. So, the answer actually is the budget can be almost nothing, if you have a really good strategy. So, if you have a really good strategy, and you consider it, you can start off with spending $5 a day, and just building an audience of people that watch your video or read your article.
Manuel: You’re going to do a snowball thing, right?
Marc V: Yeah. You could start with almost nothing. So, it’s affordable to the point where if you’re a really small business, and you’re a startup, and your budget for this is $100 a month for now. If your strategy is “I’m going to print a bunch of t-shirts with cool art on it, and I can take pictures of it myself. I’m going to take those pictures. I’m going to build a little slideshow video type of thing,” which you can pretty much do in the Facebook ad platform, by itself.
Manuel: You can.
Marc V: If not, there’s tons of places online where you can make a short little video. You put a few bucks a day into people watching it. You find the people who watch almost all of it. Those people are interested in the type of t-shirts you sell, because they watched a minute-long video on your t-shirt designs.
Then, you’ve got some money. You’re building some customers. Then, you turn around and you push again, to them, another video. Or now, you push “Hey, go to my website and buy this t-shirt for $25, with free shipping.”
Manuel: Right. And be willing to run the long game, to play the long game. Not just “Oh, I ran it for a month. It didn’t work, and I lost my shirt.” No! That’s not the way it works. You have to get better at it. You have to keep on improving, and keep on going after it.
I mean, if you’re trying to build a real business, it does take time. That’s the reality of what we have going on today. Basically, there are two types of [inaudible 42:31] companies. There’s product sellers and brand builders.
I’m super into building brands. Building a brand takes time. It’s something that you’re going to do over time. If you’re a product seller only, like somebody that only sells on Amazon, if you get shut down on Amazon tomorrow, you’re done. It’s over!
If you’ve built a brand on your Shopify channel, on your own website, and you actually built it, and there’s attention on social media; on Facebook and Instagram, you can eventually hand that business down to your family and children.
That’s basically the difference between a brand builder and a product seller. The ones that are going to stand out in the end, the ones that are going to remain alive, are the ones that worked hard on building their brands on social media.
Marc V: Nice! Alright, good then! I think we had a good motivational conversation today, which is really good. So, folks should get excited to at least begin the journey.
If you want to see some more about Manuel, ManuelSuarez.com – that’s the typical spelling of that, M-A-N-U-E-L S-U-A-R-E-Z.com. That’s one way to go. You can find him on Facebook. Message him on Facebook. He’s got a cool automation that runs, where you can download some stuff.
So, if you want to do that, if you want to learn some of his lessons, and are interested in some of the things that he has to say, he’s got a podcast, as well. Give it a listen, if you really want to get into this Facebook thing.
Some of the things that I learned, I would say from this, are don’t try to chase the money and the sale. You’ve got to have a plan. You’ve got to have a long-term strategy.
Mark S: I like that, and I like the first few things of – I really had never even thought about telling people to go start researching, like looking at Business Manager now, and looking to what the competitive ads are, and why you’re being targeted yourself.
Marc V: Yeah. And you build a strategy, an idea of what would you want to do, even if now, your strategy is – because the strategy starts now. So, my strategy is I’m going to start to look at other ads, and pay attention to them.
Then, my strategy is I’m going to get into that Business Manager, and I’m going to look at what the tools are. I’m going to see what they do. I know some of them, I’m not going to understand yet, but I’m going to understand some of the things, because it’s simple enough.
Then, you look at competitors. You find another t-shirt company that does a great job of selling t-shirts, even if they’re a giant brand, and you look at some of their ads. That’s your strategy, in the beginning.
Then, maybe from there, you might take it to another level, to say “I’m just going to build some ads like this company does. They make a bunch of videos of their shirts being worn by different people, and millions of people watch it, so I’m going to do that!”
Then, you just keep moving forward, keep going the long tale. It’s not like you have to start doing this now, because if you don’t have your ads running by September 15th, you missed the opportunity. Manuel’s prediction is we’ve got like half a decade of time. We’ve got five years.
Mark S: But don’t wait that long!
Marc V: Take some months to learn and build and grow your strategy. If you start it today, then by 2019, you’ll know what you’re talking about, because you’ve got three months to learn it. And 2019, you’ve got a strategy of actually running a really good campaign, and making money.
I know it’s your time to go, Manuel. Parting words?
Manuel: You guys are awesome! I love talking to entrepreneurs. I appreciate you having me here, and I wish you guys a lot of success.
Now, in reality, there is going to be a very tangible result for those of them that work their butts off on learning these platforms, because they have to be learned. They are the future. They’re so new that most people don’t know it.
If you guys start dipping your toes in this work right now, consider yourself part of the top 1% of this planet, in the marketing landscape in existence today. It’s still so new. It looks like it’s crowded. It looks like it’s already late in the game. It’s not! Trust me. I am deep in the trenches.
It’s so new. It’s a brand new phenomenon of this world. It’s only been around for a few years, and it’s going to take over the world.
So, go to the mini-course. For real, I worked on that really hard, to provide a lot of value. ManuelSuarez.com/CAS, and then you’re going to get access to it instantly, and get it done on your Messenger channel.
That’s my parting words. I hope that you guys have a lot of success along the way.
Mark S: Cool! Thanks, Manuel!
Marc V: Yeah, thank you!
Mark S: This has been Mark Stephenson, from ColDesi.
Marc V: And Marc Vila, from Colman and Company.
Mark S: You guys have a great business!
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