July 2, 2025 • 38 mins
Join Sarah Sal as she discusses the vital role storytelling plays in effective advertising. With a decade of experience and millions in ad spend, she teaches listeners how to infuse their ads with compelling narratives that resonate with audiences. Learn how to transform your social media campaigns into powerful storytelling tools that not only grab attention but also significantly boost your bottom line.
Listen on Podbean:
https://brainworkframework.podbean.com/
Connect with Sarah Sal:
Company website: https://www.sarah-sal.com/
Company Website: https://get.sarah-sal.com/podcast/
Facebook: https://www.sarah-sal.com/blog/2021/6/4/strategyzer-facebook-ad-high-roi
Connect with Chris Troka:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-troka-3a093058/
Website: https://focused-biz.com/
Website: https://christroka.com/ #brainwork #framework #business #storytelling #advertising #socialmedia
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
It's interruption marketing atthe end of the day, because when
(00:02):
people think it's about an ad now,they think it's about an algorithm.
They try to complicate everything andthey forget they're talking to humans.
You are listening to Brainwork Framework,a Business and Marketing podcast,
brought to you by Focused-biz.com.
Welcome back to another episode.
With us today is a very special guest,Sarah Sal, who is the Facebook and
LinkedIn ad specialist at Hootsuite.
(00:23):
We're gonna be talking all aboutFacebook ads, copy conversions, ROI
and all the fun stuff that go intobuilding your business and your ad.
Sarah, so excited to have you here.
How are you doing today?
I'm good and it's a pleasure to be here.
Absolutely.
So we always like to ask our guests,how did you even get into this line
of work, what you're doing beforeand how did that prepare you for
what you're doing at Hootsuite now?
(00:43):
By a big coincidence because my backgroundis applied mathematic and computer
science and today I appear on some ofthe biggest conferences in marketing
copywriting, I have my name in some ofthe biggest copywriting blood like copy
hacker, copywriting Club, et cetera.
I used to be very bad at writing.
(01:04):
It used to be way easier for me to writefive pages of mathematical formula but
you asked me to write five sentence.
My mother tongue is French,so I studied in French, right?
And I would mix things so badlythat the reason I studied computer
science and mathematics is like.
Gosh, I would not need towrite a single sentence, I just
(01:27):
speak to the machine numbers.
Make more sense.
Right?
Right.
Different language.
Exactly.
If you ask me, I would say grammarsspelling is a social construct.
It is.
Yeah, it is somehow.
So let's say I was good at mathematics.
The French teacher hatedme and I hated her.
Okay, hate is a strong word,but we didn't like each other.
(01:48):
That's a better word.
And then after university, I dida master in applied mathematics.
I wanted to do a PhD and Irealized I love mathematics.
It's meditative, it's calming butI didn't like the job opportunity.
I like the topic but I didn'tlike the doors that open.
Then I started working computer scienceand I used to work with different
(02:11):
APIs, so I would work with an API of ahotel reservation and look at a train
reservation and look at something elseand mix them together to build apps.
And then Facebook, APIopened up and I'm like.
This is a really big opportunity.
So I started learning it and I evenwent to some hackathons, some in London,
(02:33):
some in Berlin, where I built an appthat would personalize the shopping
feed from an ET store based on yourFacebook based on who you followed
on Facebook, like company pages
and it won some hours and so onand then one thing led to another.
I started learning about marketingand then I started learning about
market some of the best and backthen it was Perry Marshall who had a
(02:54):
bestselling book about Facebook ads.
And one thing led basically to another.
I started learning about copywriting.
Let's say for example, the best would beJoanna Webe email marketing research and
before I knew it I just shared what I did.
So I would be in privatecommunity and this is what I did.
This is the result I get not evenhoping it would get me anything.
(03:15):
And before I know it, peoplewere contacting me and said, Hey,
I'm sick and tired of trying tomake Facebook ads work for me.
Can I hire you?
And it happened that I was very activein John Lmer community, he's one of
the best experts in Facebook ads.
Somebody who work at a espressocontacted me and said, I want an expert.
Many people say I am an expert but no.
(03:37):
I've been reading what you writefor years when people ask a question
and you just share your opinion.
I know you know your stuff and so we said,
do you wanna work with us?
Sure.
They were like the biggest tool formanaging ads after Facebook themselves
and they got acquired by Hootsuiteand I've been doing coaching for
their enterprise client which meanover the year I audited almost 1000.
(04:01):
Facebook and LinkedIn ad account whichbasically I see what nobody else see
because I could see everything acrossgeographical, across different industry.
Somebody might do something inthe fitness industry and I see
something in a B2B industry.
Maybe this company need to learnsomething from that other company.
(04:21):
so it's basically a long ramblingto say, you just go through life.
You don't know where you'll end next.
Absolutely.
And it's a testament to startingin one area and to expand on your
skillset and your expertise over time.
It's an incredible journey.
Sometimes we all fall into it, wedon't expect it but suddenly we're
learning about new things that wedidn't expect before but adds to
(04:44):
our whole line of experience andwhat we do and how we help people.
So now you have this unique experienceand insight into ads and this is
something that a lot of people aremysterious about either they've
tried 'em and either had a littlebit of success or is a total failure.
What are you seeing inthe trends in the data?
What should people be focusingon when creating their ad?
It's interruption marketing at theend of the day because when people
(05:06):
think it's about an ad now theythink it's about an algorithm.
They try to complicate everything andthey forget they're talking to humans.
I say, forget it's an ad. Imagine you gointo a coffee shop and you're interrupting
a perfect stranger the way you interruptthe perfect stranger, would that person be
interested in what you're having to say?
Or would that person go, leave me alone?
(05:29):
Right?
People think it's all about thetargeting and I could tell you social
media targeting is not that good withthe exception of LinkedIn because
you're not going to put fake jobtitle on LinkedIn because all your
colleagues and so on are seeing it.
And people are marketed.
They tend to go to a coffee shop,cap somebody on the shoulder
(05:49):
and say, will you marry me?
And when the person say Go to hell,they go to the next coffee shop and then
lemme try a coffee shop in another city.
I just need people who aredesperate to get married.
Imagine you help people pay less taxesand you're just having a conversation
with a friend said, I almost overpaidmy taxes by 20%, which would have
(06:09):
been a hundred thousand dollars butthen I knew I could delay, I could
ask people to invoice me earlier.
And I could ask them topay me two months later.
I know that because I did this for a taxconsultant and then somebody across the
table, their head turned, tell me more.
That's marketing.
It's persuasion.
It's like, how do you talk to a stranger?
(06:30):
I like to give the example of magnesium.
If I said buy magnesium tablet, whyshould I even care if I told you that
80% of American are magnesium deficient.
So what now?
If I told you it cause insomnia,fatigue, depression and you
had a bad night's sleep.
No, you're paying attention, right?
So it's like, how do I talk ina way with some fact, with copy
(06:52):
and using storytelling thatI'm grabbing your attention?
Basically you're keeptelling me the story.
Please don't stop talking and thenafterwards you have 10 questions for
me because how interesting it is.
Yes, absolutely.
And I wouldn't say it's a newapproach but I don't think a lot of
businesses are focusing on this typeof marketing, creating an ad that
really doesn't look or feel like an ad.
(07:13):
That was a perfect description on howwe present the pain point solution
and how we even drum up this topic.
So we know targeting isn't as effectivebut still could maybe work LinkedIn's a
little more focused on that but I thinkthey both serve different audiences
and maybe different price points too.
I feel LinkedIn is known for being B2Band B2C would happen more on Facebook
(07:34):
or it's just a different audience.
How would you determine usingone or the other or both for a
specific campaign or business?
You could do both.
I like to say that marketing is dippingyour toe into the water and I could
have done a hundred campaign andthe 101 campaign would surprise me.
So if companies can afford it I would say.
(07:56):
Try Facebook, try LinkedIn, have themfight each other and the ones that get the
best result or the best RY win, of courseone should be able to target so I used
to do a lot of B2B marketing on Facebook.
And then over the year I see Facebookremoving the interest targeting.
I used to do a lot of marketing forveterinary doctor, ortho, dentist
and overnight my audience go from20,000 people to 200 million and
(08:20):
I'm staring at my ads screen.
Why is this not working?
I used to get good lead andthen I look at the number 200
million and then you basicallyforcing me to target 200 million.
Then I was no longer ableto target that audience.
You could still do B2B on Facebookbut it comes down to targeting.
If you could do it on Facebook,you could do it on LinkedIn
the other way not really.
(08:41):
Absolutely.
It seems difficult when theseplatforms are constantly changing the
targeting or the creative options orwe recommend this type of placement.
What do you say about some of theFacebook or LinkedIn recommendations
where they say you should use a creativeaudience or your cost per result could
be 30% lower if you try this method.
(09:01):
Have you used those?
Do you recommend them or are theyagainst their own best interest?
Do you have a favorite kebabrestaurants where you are located?
Not personally.
Let's go to steak restaurant.
Imagine you order the steak, youdidn't have the time to eat it.
It's on the table next to you andyou're panicked like, oh my God.
They need to go on the call Sarah.
And as you're panicking a catjump on the table and the cat's
(09:23):
like you wanna go on the call.
Trust me, I'm the trusted partner.
Leave the steak with me.
After you finish the 30 minute callwith Sarah, the stake will be there.
That's like LinkedIn recommendationand Facebook is not better.
It's worse.
It's like one of the recommendationis enable audience network to get
five more clicks at this price.
(09:46):
Why don't you tell me howmany more sales I would get?
How?
Why don't you tell me howmany conversion I would get?
Why don't you tell me howmany leads I would get?
It's all about impression, right?
I cannot take it to the bankand I like to give the example.
If you have a birthday cake,slathered with my net and you'll
increase the volume by 300% butit would be absolutely disgusting.
(10:08):
You wouldn't be able to eat it like there.
I mean, there is a reason Mark Zcover is worth 250 billion today.
Five years ago, he wasworth only 25 billion.
It's not worth 10 time more becausethere is 10 time more user on
Facebook not because he's employing10 time more people, not because
Facebook is 10 time more activity.
Actually, my friends are spendingless time on Facebook right now.
(10:32):
It's basically all those recommendationthat make it so easy for the advertiser
to bleed money without knowing it.
The way I see it is like trustingthe cat with the ham sandwich.
I'm not trusting, I might give thecat a slice of sausage or steak but
I'm not going to hire the cat asa bodyguard of a steak sandwich.
That's the best example Icould think of about trusting
(10:52):
the network recommendations.
It's a great metaphor and I appreciateyou being so honest and open about
it 'cause I've suspected this butI've never felt confident in really
saying yes for sure that they'reworking against their own interests.
Yes.
I would not trust the cat either witha birthday cake slathered a mayonnaise
or with a steak sitting next to me.
I feel like it's against their own bestinterest but that's something we need
(11:12):
to navigate and hear from the expertslike you, so we know not to press those
buttons when we see a little popup andsay, Hey, your results could be lower.
So it's really important to look at.
Next up I wanna ask about the specificad campaign strategy because it
sounds very similar to what I or otherbusinesses might be going through.
Where the ad copy can beso impactful to a campaign.
(11:34):
This was taking a campaign that wouldyield 40 cents for every dollar spent
into $18 and 66 cents for every $1 spent.
Wow.
What a big difference here.
What was the secret behind thatcampaign and can you tell us
more about how that worked?
Yeah.
So hand Strategizer is a clientand this is a university teacher in
(11:55):
Lausanne Switzer who wrote a book thatgot translated into maybe 18 language
sold, 5 million sculpture and so on.
And they were bleeding money.
It's a type of conference whereexecutive from BMW, air France,
Renat, American Express and they werespending $4,000 to get $2,000 in sales.
Something like that.
(12:15):
40 cent and then I consume their content.
I'm like, there need to be a better way.
I watch their webinar,I join their email list.
I look at your YouTube channel.
I buy their book.
Even at some point, I went totheir conference and I run an ad
and when they see it, they getan angry email for God's sake.
Sarah, what's that?
(12:35):
Because in their mind, I was justpromoting random content, right?
Like somebody boosting a pauseand I'm like, please look at the
number, look at my cost per clickand yours, look at the CTR and yours.
I think they spent like $11,000, madealmost a quarter of a million and
then they stopped complaining becauseit was about giving people sample.
(12:56):
I think there is a supermarket,I think it's Tesco, I'm not
sure, maybe something like that.
Some American supermarket that's knownfor giving sample and they found if
they go down the aisle and say, buy thischocolate cake, it's so moist and juicy.
People will be like that.
Leave me alone.
Right.
(13:16):
But if they give you a tinyslice, you went there not wanting
to buy a chocolate brownie.
Once it enter your mouth like,wow, that's so light and rich and
delicious, you would buy it, right?
So basically, the power ofsampling increased sale by 2000%.
It was an article in the Atlanticmagazine and I applied the same thing
(13:37):
to the marketing where ba that actuallyyou remember when I said I hated copy?
I don't know how to write.
90% of good copy is 90%listening, reading, digest
information, only 10% writing.
You're not writing copy.
You are assembling it.
And by consuming the contentof that client and each time
I'm like, wow, that's good.
That's an amazing story.
(13:58):
That's an amazing result.
I turn it to and turn out.
It increased sales hugely and I wasat the conference after I got them the
quarter of millionaire sales, I said,can you invite me to the conference?
And basically I was taking note eachtime they have an aha moment, I would
write it but I was talking to peopleand somebody who created a big company.
The renewable energy said I wanted to goto the conference, then I forgot about it.
(14:21):
Then I was not sure for $2,000 Icould go to a really nice holiday
but then I kept reading all thosestories about the amazing result
the conference will help me get.
I'm like, sure, take my money.
So that can demonstrate how thispersuasion and real storytelling impacts
us psychologically when trying to makea decision whether we buy something
or not and what kind of holds us back.
(14:43):
Exactly.
It's not about screaming at theperson because if I said, are
you suffering with, it sound likean ad now you become defensive.
Now if I said.
Let me tell you about James, who wasmagnesium deficient and was depressive
and even without knowing, he wasscreaming at his 3-year-old daughter
and the moment we gave him pure highquality magnesium, he sleep like a baby.
(15:07):
He no longer suffer insomnia.
He's no longer in a bad mood.
People said, what happened to you?
You're always smilingright now in your brain.
You're like, oh, that's me.
Did somebody steal a page from?
Did somebody break into my houseand read the page of my diary?
Because I tell it from the point ofview of somebody we already helped.
Actually I had a client from the SharkTank Show and it's a protocol better back.
(15:32):
It's for back pain andshe come and she said.
I think my problem is the targeting,and I'm like, okay, she sold
million of her product and shepitched on Shark Tank and invest.
How many people have back pain?
And she's like, oh, if you'reover 40, that's like 30%.
So if you go to a randomroom and people are over 40.
(15:52):
You are going to havepeople with back pain.
What if you're already reaching theright audience but the message you
tell them is not good and the moment westopped telling people this is a product
for back pain and started telling thestories of people who suffered from back
pain and how it made a day on light.
So the story was single mother who usedto work like 16 or 15 hour per day on a
(16:12):
call center and when her back was killingher, she could no longer go to work.
She only takes 60% 'causeshe's on disability on a
single mother minimum salary.
She couldn't even pay rent and thenshe's like, oh my God, the grandmothers
have seen this Shark Tank episode.
Both the product had made day andnight difference and now people were
visualizing themselves in that productand basically she got the most sales
(16:36):
in a single day from Facebook ads.
When we use that approach.
Wow, that is absolutely fascinating.
So I'm definitely gonna try all ofthese methods this week and immediately
switch over to a more story-drivenmethod and excited to try this out
'cause it sounds incredible.
Is this good for any business, for anyprice point, for any industry or would
you take a different approach or is thiskind of just the tried and true method?
(16:57):
It worked for a lot of industry.
Now there are industry thatare more visual, right?
If you're a restaurant andpeople just need to see that
green Thai curry look amazing.
That chocolate cake look amazing, right?
You wouldn't tell.
A story from 500 years ago howthey discovered chocolate, there
are moments where, hey, somebodyis out from a nightclub and drunk
and hangover and they need a pizza.
(17:18):
You're only going to say, let it metell you a story of the Italian family
squeezing little tomato with hand, right?
They're like, I'm hungover.
Just give me that pizza right now.
There are industry where you needpersuasion, where you need to build
the desire where people are notactively looking for that product.
Where you need to makesomebody go from, yeah.
Sure.
Tell me more.
(17:39):
I mean, you sell handbags.
You look at the design of the handbag,you either like it or you don't like it.
Right.
Holiday, you look athotel room and the beach.
I like how the beach look likeor it doesn't look like, right?
Not much you could do otherthan having an amazing photo.
Now you have a conference.
You're selling software.
You're selling coaching.
You're selling health product,which I did a lot of them.
(18:01):
You are convincing people.
You can help them loseweight, get in shape.
Fix hormonal imbalance, geta better career, et cetera.
That where you need persuasion.
Interesting.
Now, when you're setting up a campaign,let's say in Facebook do you go as far
as installing a pixel and you're basingit on the effectiveness of the link
clicks or you just kind of go generalawareness and you're hoping that the
(18:22):
landing page is gonna do the trick?
And do you even have one?
Do you focus on the landing page as well?
Do you continue that story-driven model?
A hundred percent.
I will not run ad if it doesn't have apixel because no tracking is perfect but
one you wanna know which ad is workingand which one is not working right.
Awareness.
Don't do it because Facebook havelike 800 million fake profiles,
(18:43):
so you're running awareness.
Facebook is like, give me the money.
Five years ago you had a warm audience.
I might do retargeting and do traffic.
Impression, engagement.
Now I only do conversion becauseFacebook is you want to traffic.
I don't care about thequality of the traffic.
I don't care if 99% of that trafficbounce, if it's accidental click, if
(19:04):
it's on a video where you're interruptingpeople watching a funny video and
they're like, take that ad out of myface so I only run conversion campaign
and of course the landing page need towork because the ads sell the clicks.
But once you sell the click, the landingpage need to sell the conversion,
whether it's a sale or it's an emailopt-in, whether it's watching a
webinar because the ads started thejourney doesn't mean everything else,
(19:28):
including the landing page, the email.
What is even said on your websitedoesn't need to continue selling them.
To an eyes cold audience.
I could say that way.
Yes, absolutely.
Some great advice there on how to setup the campaigns and what we should
focus on but while we're creating thatcampaign here you mentioned the sampling
as an option, give kind of a free taste,a little trial of what's available.
(19:50):
Do you recommend going forthe hard sale within like that
landing pages or conversion?
But you mentioned some other option likeopt-in or maybe like a lower ticket offer.
Are those reasonable options ordo you like to go directly for
the sale of the main ticket?
If you are a perfect stranger, you neverheard about what a business offer, I'm
not going to go from a perfect strangerto say, let me sell you a $2,000 product.
(20:15):
It worked for Strategizer.
They have a book.
Everyone know within a specificindustry, 5 million sold.
I would wanna get an email because I getmore than one chance of selling to you.
It's like there is a business,I run algorithm them for year.
It's a language course and they wouldbreak even on email, opt-in and then
what happened is that most peoplewould buy around five month and a half
(20:39):
and then it's Black Friday and theywill make like $2 million in sales.
So basically they were breaking evenwhile adding 10,000 new people to
the email list at break even knowingthat those people will buy within a
few month, that when they come with anew product, maybe somebody bought a
course to an Italian, maybe next yearthe person want to learn Japanese.
(21:03):
Right.
And now you're making extramoney from that person.
It's very hard to go from perfectstranger to give me the money.
It could work with some offerbut what happen if the person
did not buy you lost them?
Well, if you get an email and as longas the email marketing is good, right?
If you send three, four, e five emailand then you forget them for six
months and for two years you createnew blog posts, new podcasts, no
(21:25):
webinar, no YouTube video, nothingand people totally forgot you exist,
then email become less effective.
Yes, absolutely.
Now for a few years, AI has been changingthe game for a lot of businesses,
solopreneurs freelancers out there.
Are you using AI in any wayfor your work in business?
And do you see it having any sortof positive or negative effect
(21:47):
on the industry as a whole?
I use it for editing.
I don't use it for writing becauseAI make a lot of things up.
I give you an example.
I say, here is a pizza, hereis some pineapple, here is some
ketchup, here is some cappuccino.
Do something.
And if I told an Italian chef this.
(22:09):
Probably that Italian chef willtake his belt and try to hit me with
it and say, how dare you do that.
AI?
It's not an expert.
It doesn't recognize that I ask it todo something badly and it created a
chocolate, pineapple cappuccino pizza.
If hell exists, that's whatpeople eat in hell, right?
(22:30):
It's good for editing, right?
Forgetting id for brainstorming.
No.
Here is where the risk of AI.
Let's say you are in a specific industry.
Let's say you're in theconstruction industry.
Now you have 100 of your competitorall using AI, all sounding the
same but what I know there arestories of how you help client.
(22:51):
That nobody else knows than yourclient and I'm having businesses where
I'm like, Hey, do you have students?
Do you have clients I could interview?
And when I interview them,sometimes the business owner
doesn't even know the story.
And sometimes there are story thatare extremely strong and emotional
and nobody know because it's stuckon somebody head and nobody ask.
(23:16):
I give you an example.
I wrote some ad for a course by copyhackers called Freelancing School
and I'm interviewing student and onestudent say it's lockdown, right?
The job I had of internship disappeared.
I go and I called email 50 60 companies.
Nobody replied to me.
(23:37):
I go and I register to Fiverr because
I need a job.
Somebody pay me, I don't rememberthe exact number, maybe $15 for a
blog post for something spiritualI didn't understand and it took
me like 10 hours to write it.
And I'm like, that's like $1 per hour.
She was so depressed that she said, I feltlike if I went in front of Starbucks with
(24:01):
a cup and bag, my career would be better.
That's how bad it was.
But then I joined a community where peoplewere so supportive, where people had an
overflow of work and some people took meunder the ring and said, okay, I need help
with this because I have too many leads.
And now I have a case study whereI could say, this is how I help
a client get a $200,000 lunch.
(24:24):
Now, I'm no longer making $1 per hour.
I'm paid generously becausecompany want case study.
If they're going to give you goodmoney, they like, what did you do?
Okay, you helped somebody make 200,000.
Okay.
It's no longer an expense.
It's an investment.
And that story, if I didn't spend likeone hour with the person asking her
story in detail, normally you wouldhave known and you could go to she GPT,
(24:47):
you could go to Deep Seek, you could goto cloud, you could go to whatever AI
is there, AI doesn't know that story.
This story is unique to one singlebusiness, not ten one, right?
And you sure that the 10 otheror a hundred other competitor
cannot tell the same story?
So basically, AI make me wanna go deeper,it's like now I need to work harder to
(25:10):
distinguish myself because before towrite an ad, somebody said, my English
is not good, my grammar is not good.
I need to hire somebody.
That person need to get back to me now,with one press of button, you could
generate a hundred in five seconds, right?
And all the added platform are using AI.
So how do you stand outfrom all the bad noise?
Absolutely.
But I think it's a perfect example ofhow we can actually ethically use AI to
(25:33):
not burden us with this extra workloadand use it in the ways that actually
benefits us and doesn't take away thathuman element but also the importance of
soliciting feedback from your clients.
This is information that is so valuableto a company and just the story and
the reasoning behind why they hadthis issue and why they chose you.
That could be a powerful story tousing your marketing messaging.
(25:54):
It's just huge.
Have an example, so a language course?
They assume people wanted tospeak fluent Spanish, right?
Most people say I'm in Mexico, ifI could order a taxi, I could order
food, I could order my coffee.
I'm happy.
I don't wanna understandpolitical debate on tv.
Right?
So going from that to what people said,I think it was a difference between
(26:18):
making 20,000 and maybe 60,000 in salesbut the biggest problem people said,
I've been learning language for years.
Native speakers speak too fast.
I know every single word.
I know the grammar but I cannot everyfive minute ask him to speak slower.
So now having a course, sohow do you train your ear to
(26:38):
understand people who speak fast?
I don't remember the exactnumber but he made over 200,000
when he launched the product.
It wasn't about marketing,it wasn't about ad setting.
It wasn't about a secret button.
It wasn't about running a trafficinstead of a congression campaign.
It wasn't about their targeting.
It was simply about asking the audienceinstead of assuming what exact problem
(26:59):
they had and that was like day andnight difference In terms of ROI.
I see that issue happeningwith a lot of business owners.
They spend and invest so much time andmoney into an idea that they think is
going to fit into a market without evenasking them or building the product and
then deciding, okay, now I want feedback.
Ideally you want that feedbackright away before you even make a
(27:20):
logo, a brand name or a website.
Go ask your potential audience,what do you think about this?
If I put this together, wouldthis be valuable for you?
Getting that that early buy-in fromyour potential audience is gonna be
critical for how you build this outand even if you bother to build it out,
you might realize there's a differentsolution to this problem that you are
gonna spend months trying to solve that.
(27:41):
Unfortunately, therewasn't gonna be demand for.
Correct.
Absolutely.
A lot of great advice and tips here.
Sarah.
I do want to ask you, wherecan people find you online
and get connected with you?
'cause it seems like you havea lot of resources available.
Blogs, podcasts as well.
My website, so just Google myname, Sarah, with an H at the end.
SAL or sarah sal.comand that's my website.
(28:04):
And if you're on that website, you'llfind me on LinkedIn, you'll find the
different blog posts I have and so on.
Very nice.
And we'll have all those linksavailable down in the show notes and the
description for everyone to get connected.
Now, Sarah, where do you think adsare gonna be going in 2025 and beyond?
Are you kind of foreseeing adifferent trend taking place?
Things that we should kind of be awareof as we're going into 2025 here?
(28:27):
Not really.
Actually, another podcast asked me,what is something that worked today
that didn't work six months ago?
How about I tell you what workeda hundred years ago before
social media even existed?
I think things like persuasion, talkingto a human interruption, marketing
storytelling market research would alwaysexist and the example I gave them, I think
(28:50):
it was the American Heart Association.
If I remember they said.
Popcorn that you get at the cinemahave 37 gram of saturated fat.
How do you know?
Is it too much?
Is it too little?
Is it exactly?
Nobody know.
So they said it's the same as anEnglish breakfast, sausages, french
fries and God know what combine.
(29:12):
It made it to the first pageof every major newspaper.
People are like, what?
Just the popcorn is like fried steak andan English breakfast, and a sausage and
an egg and all the trimming and analogies.
It's like something you cannot understand.
Use an analogy and I get it nowand that will not disappear.
Whether it's 20 25, 20 26 or if maybeit's 2035 or 2,135 and none of us exist.
(29:40):
Maybe somebody still here thisinterview, oh, I could use analog so
people can understand my marketing.
Build your marketing onthings that are long term.
Don't build your marketing on somethingthat is only short-lived because then you
burn out then you're doing something andthen two months later it doesn't work.
And then you need to find the nextthing that work and it doesn't work
and nonstop, you need to do new thing.
(30:01):
If you build your marketing orsolid foundation 10 years from now.
It is still gonna work.
Interesting.
It will be fascinating to kind of seehow things change and won't change from
our traditional storytelling and thepersuasion methods that we currently have.
I do have a couple more questionsif you have a few minutes here.
Sure.
I do.
Take your time.
I wanted to ask more specific to a lotof the advertising and just niching down,
(30:23):
I see a lot of people that recommend youon a specific audience, on an industry,
speak to that person individually.
But sometimes there's other businessesthat are full service and they feel like
they help a little bit of everybody.
How important is it to reallydefine an audience or niche down
into this segment or can more of ageneralistic ad still be effective?
(30:44):
I've seen it work a lot.
The nicheing down and I've beendoing it for almost 10 years now.
The beauty of advertisementis you don't need to guess.
You put $50 here, $50 here, a hundreddollars here, a hundred dollars
there and the one getting you thebest result is the one you keep.
Now, if you said I helpyou with your marketing.
(31:05):
It's not as specific as saying,as a dentist, I help you with your
marketing and before I wrote thead, I understood the linguistic,
what are the exact word dentists usethat non dentists will never use?
Now my ad. It's way more powerful now.
It's a question of testing now justbecause something worked for me.
There are many campaigns that didnot work that when I niche down
(31:27):
to work but just because thisis my case, I cannot generalize.
Basically, I like to say you have toadd and you tell them to fight each
other till death and then only one ofthem live the one with the highest ROI.
Yes.
It's good to put them against eachother and we have to test these
things 'cause we just don't know.
We can use all our past experiencewhat has or hasn't worked in pulling
all these numbers and figures together.
(31:49):
But actually testing something specificand unique to that business or product
or service is really gonna open newideas and opportunities for you.
And then once you decide to scale acampaign, do you ever go back into
more of a multi-channel approach?
Do you ever rely on just one?
One source for a while 'cause I know itcan either dry up or you just never know.
If it's not in your control, howlong those results might last for.
(32:13):
Have you ever heard of Dubai Chocolate?
The what?
Chocolate.
Dubai Chocolate?
No.
Okay.
It's something that wentviral on social media.
It's basically a chocolate witha fellow dough with pistachio
inside and on social media.
It's exploding wherepeople are copying it.
So I keep seeing on socialmedia, Dubai chocolate.
(32:33):
And I used to think it's not a big dealand then I found a vegan chocolate shop
in a small medieval town in Belgium calledGaN, and I see Dubai Shark and I'm like.
Okay, put me out of my measuring.
I need to buy it and know what is thebig deal and you know, it's really
good but what made me buy it is allthe other channel I kept seeing, right?
(32:56):
And sometime growing ononly one single channel.
It's difficult becauseyou're saturating the market.
It's like sometime I take clientand they get good result and
in back of my mind I'm like.
You are going to get good successfor six months and then you'll hit
a wall and then I see client who dopodcasts, good email list amazing
(33:18):
content, nonstop, new product, nonstop.
And I'm like, that's the clientthat for five, six year would be
able to run ad the success becausewe live outside of Facebook.
We live outside of LinkedIn.
It's like, once you have multipletouches, you make it more powerful.
So let's say, I had people, likesomebody, a client recommend me.
Then they said, wow, I Googled you.
(33:39):
You are everywhere.
They found a podcast.
They found a YouTube video.
I spoke at a conference, theyfound a blog post I wrote, right?
Actually Facebook bannedme for a stupid joke.
I used to have 5,000 followersand there used to be a fight
between Apple and Facebook witha lot of drama around tracking
and then I wrote in a blog post, I said,Facebook and Apple are like two drag queen
(34:01):
fighting for the last lipstick on earth.
It was on a Saturday.
I published that blog post on Sunday.
I could no longer usemy page, my fan page.
I couldn't care less becauseblog posts I wrote in 2019.
Amazing case study where I have puta hundred hour writing time are still
in the industry referring to them.
I said, when people meet me atconferences, I read your blog book three
(34:23):
years ago and I couldn't forget it.
So it's always a multichannel becauseI've seen client that treat like Spanish,
learning a language where Facebooksaid, this is political propaganda.
Or treating hormonal imbalance andsometimes talking to Facebook support
or talking to a wall is the same thing.
(34:43):
So if you're depending on only onechannel, it could kill your business.
You would literally have businesswith 20 employee and if that's
the only way they're generatingmoney is only one channel.
This suicidal.
And I have client come tome said, how do we scale?
Okay, we got all thatmoney from venture capital.
I said, do share change optimization?
(35:05):
Build an email list.
Find the blog that is the most difficultto write for in your NDSU, where after
you get rejected, you would wanna cry.
But if you get accepted, youknow that you made a masterpiece.
That's how you scale, not on one channel.
Yes.
And I think that highlights theimportance of having that evergreen
content blog posts from three years agoare still showing up in search results.
(35:26):
People can't forget them.
They're still finding them.
This is that type of all-encompassingapproach I think a lot of businesses
should be focusing on one, it justdifferent channels of revenue and
they help compliment each other.
The Facebook ad can get the click and getthem to the page to find out about you but
the YouTube videos and the podcasts andthe blog posts are gonna help tell more
about your story and how you help them.
And that's everything that helps themjust be more invested into your brand.
(35:50):
Once they start consuming that content,you don't want them to leave 'cause
that's when they're going to a competitor
and you have them for another story.
Yes, please.
So there is a dentist thatcome to me asking for help.
Her husband is a dentist that doesdental implants and during the day she
does the marketing of the competitor.
She's like, Sarah, I copied the targeting.
(36:11):
I copied the ad copy.
I copied the landing page.
I copied everything.
I don't understand why my boss isgetting amazing result and I'm not.
I'm like, can you go to Google?
Type your husband nameand type your boss name?
Her boss name was to be found everywhere.
Her husband not.
I might see an ad right.
If you think I'm going to pay five, 10,15,000 dollars for a medical procedure
(36:35):
and it's not only about the money,it's like what are the complication?
Is it a good.
What are the risk of that procedure?
You think that for 10, for$5,000, I'm not going to grab
that person name and Google it.
So it's a case of doing marketing andeverything that we're exist outside of
the Facebook or Limpian ecosystem, makethat the ad is more likely to convert.
(36:57):
Interesting.
So copying something word for word,copy for copy, even the landing page
as well, just couldn't be found online.
And therefore those are missedopportunities where someone
is searching for problems orsolutions to their problems online.
No.
Just the name of the dentist.
Wow.
Imagine there is a hoteland you go on honeymoon, the
hotel costs $5,000 per night.
You think you're not going to Googlethat hotel name to look at the review.
(37:20):
I would.
And if you have a lot of people onYouTube saying, I love that hotel and
it's the same thing for a dentist,like the boss was found everywhere.
He was found on YouTube, on podcasts.
He had amazing black post contentthat made people say, okay, I'll
open my mouth and while I openmy mouth, I'll give you $5,000.
And I let you sedate me andknowing that for the next three
(37:42):
hour, I don't know where I am.
Yeah, for a medical procedurecosting 5,000 people will Google your
name and that was the difference.
What can people find whenthey Google your name?
Absolutely.
And it's funny that you mentionedthe dentist 'cause I'm also
working with the dentist right now.
Very similar situation where just gettingher out there more opportunities with
the content so that way people cansee and experience a little bit about
(38:02):
her and her brand as opposed to hercompetitors but great results already.
Eight new patients last inJanuary just a couple months ago.
So we see that the SEO is takingeffect and having results but we
did do a little bit of ads as well.
But unfortunately with ads, once youstop spending the money, the leads
stop coming in, which I think theSEO can help su supplement and just
doing the other content as well.
(38:22):
And people are researching.
People are more informed than ever before.
So consumers are looking for you online,
Correct.
Sarah, we appreciate all of your wisdomand tips and tricks with us and expertise
into the Facebook ads and LinkedIn world.
Very exciting stuff.
We appreciate everything that youshared with us today and really looking
forward to everything that you're doing.
And excited to stay in touchwith any of the cool updates
(38:43):
from your blog and everything.
Sure.
Same here.
Thank you so much.
Okay.
It's my pleasure.
Take care.
It's interruption marketing atthe end of the day, because when
(00:02):
people think it's about an ad now,they think it's about an algorithm.
They try to complicate everything andthey forget they're talking to humans.
You are listening to Brainwork Framework,a Business and Marketing podcast,
brought to you by Focused-biz.com.
Welcome back to another episode.
With us today is a very special guest,Sarah Sal, who is the Facebook and
LinkedIn ad specialist at Hootsuite.
(00:23):
We're gonna be talking all aboutFacebook ads, copy conversions, ROI
and all the fun stuff that go intobuilding your business and your ad.
Sarah, so excited to have you here.
How are you doing today?
I'm good and it's a pleasure to be here.
Absolutely.
So we always like to ask our guests,how did you even get into this line
of work, what you're doing beforeand how did that prepare you for
what you're doing at Hootsuite now?
(00:43):
By a big coincidence because my backgroundis applied mathematic and computer
science and today I appear on some ofthe biggest conferences in marketing
copywriting, I have my name in some ofthe biggest copywriting blood like copy
hacker, copywriting Club, et cetera.
I used to be very bad at writing.
(01:04):
It used to be way easier for me to writefive pages of mathematical formula but
you asked me to write five sentence.
My mother tongue is French,so I studied in French, right?
And I would mix things so badlythat the reason I studied computer
science and mathematics is like.
Gosh, I would not need towrite a single sentence, I just
(01:27):
speak to the machine numbers.
Make more sense.
Right?
Right.
Different language.
Exactly.
If you ask me, I would say grammarsspelling is a social construct.
It is.
Yeah, it is somehow.
So let's say I was good at mathematics.
The French teacher hatedme and I hated her.
Okay, hate is a strong word,but we didn't like each other.
(01:48):
That's a better word.
And then after university, I dida master in applied mathematics.
I wanted to do a PhD and Irealized I love mathematics.
It's meditative, it's calming butI didn't like the job opportunity.
I like the topic but I didn'tlike the doors that open.
Then I started working computer scienceand I used to work with different
(02:11):
APIs, so I would work with an API of ahotel reservation and look at a train
reservation and look at something elseand mix them together to build apps.
And then Facebook, APIopened up and I'm like.
This is a really big opportunity.
So I started learning it and I evenwent to some hackathons, some in London,
(02:33):
some in Berlin, where I built an appthat would personalize the shopping
feed from an ET store based on yourFacebook based on who you followed
on Facebook, like company pages
and it won some hours and so onand then one thing led to another.
I started learning about marketingand then I started learning about
market some of the best and backthen it was Perry Marshall who had a
(02:54):
bestselling book about Facebook ads.
And one thing led basically to another.
I started learning about copywriting.
Let's say for example, the best would beJoanna Webe email marketing research and
before I knew it I just shared what I did.
So I would be in privatecommunity and this is what I did.
This is the result I get not evenhoping it would get me anything.
(03:15):
And before I know it, peoplewere contacting me and said, Hey,
I'm sick and tired of trying tomake Facebook ads work for me.
Can I hire you?
And it happened that I was very activein John Lmer community, he's one of
the best experts in Facebook ads.
Somebody who work at a espressocontacted me and said, I want an expert.
Many people say I am an expert but no.
(03:37):
I've been reading what you writefor years when people ask a question
and you just share your opinion.
I know you know your stuff and so we said,
do you wanna work with us?
Sure.
They were like the biggest tool formanaging ads after Facebook themselves
and they got acquired by Hootsuiteand I've been doing coaching for
their enterprise client which meanover the year I audited almost 1000.
(04:01):
Facebook and LinkedIn ad account whichbasically I see what nobody else see
because I could see everything acrossgeographical, across different industry.
Somebody might do something inthe fitness industry and I see
something in a B2B industry.
Maybe this company need to learnsomething from that other company.
(04:21):
so it's basically a long ramblingto say, you just go through life.
You don't know where you'll end next.
Absolutely.
And it's a testament to startingin one area and to expand on your
skillset and your expertise over time.
It's an incredible journey.
Sometimes we all fall into it, wedon't expect it but suddenly we're
learning about new things that wedidn't expect before but adds to
(04:44):
our whole line of experience andwhat we do and how we help people.
So now you have this unique experienceand insight into ads and this is
something that a lot of people aremysterious about either they've
tried 'em and either had a littlebit of success or is a total failure.
What are you seeing inthe trends in the data?
What should people be focusingon when creating their ad?
It's interruption marketing at theend of the day because when people
(05:06):
think it's about an ad now theythink it's about an algorithm.
They try to complicate everything andthey forget they're talking to humans.
I say, forget it's an ad. Imagine you gointo a coffee shop and you're interrupting
a perfect stranger the way you interruptthe perfect stranger, would that person be
interested in what you're having to say?
Or would that person go, leave me alone?
(05:29):
Right?
People think it's all about thetargeting and I could tell you social
media targeting is not that good withthe exception of LinkedIn because
you're not going to put fake jobtitle on LinkedIn because all your
colleagues and so on are seeing it.
And people are marketed.
They tend to go to a coffee shop,cap somebody on the shoulder
(05:49):
and say, will you marry me?
And when the person say Go to hell,they go to the next coffee shop and then
lemme try a coffee shop in another city.
I just need people who aredesperate to get married.
Imagine you help people pay less taxesand you're just having a conversation
with a friend said, I almost overpaidmy taxes by 20%, which would have
(06:09):
been a hundred thousand dollars butthen I knew I could delay, I could
ask people to invoice me earlier.
And I could ask them topay me two months later.
I know that because I did this for a taxconsultant and then somebody across the
table, their head turned, tell me more.
That's marketing.
It's persuasion.
It's like, how do you talk to a stranger?
(06:30):
I like to give the example of magnesium.
If I said buy magnesium tablet, whyshould I even care if I told you that
80% of American are magnesium deficient.
So what now?
If I told you it cause insomnia,fatigue, depression and you
had a bad night's sleep.
No, you're paying attention, right?
So it's like, how do I talk ina way with some fact, with copy
(06:52):
and using storytelling thatI'm grabbing your attention?
Basically you're keeptelling me the story.
Please don't stop talking and thenafterwards you have 10 questions for
me because how interesting it is.
Yes, absolutely.
And I wouldn't say it's a newapproach but I don't think a lot of
businesses are focusing on this typeof marketing, creating an ad that
really doesn't look or feel like an ad.
(07:13):
That was a perfect description on howwe present the pain point solution
and how we even drum up this topic.
So we know targeting isn't as effectivebut still could maybe work LinkedIn's a
little more focused on that but I thinkthey both serve different audiences
and maybe different price points too.
I feel LinkedIn is known for being B2Band B2C would happen more on Facebook
(07:34):
or it's just a different audience.
How would you determine usingone or the other or both for a
specific campaign or business?
You could do both.
I like to say that marketing is dippingyour toe into the water and I could
have done a hundred campaign andthe 101 campaign would surprise me.
So if companies can afford it I would say.
(07:56):
Try Facebook, try LinkedIn, have themfight each other and the ones that get the
best result or the best RY win, of courseone should be able to target so I used
to do a lot of B2B marketing on Facebook.
And then over the year I see Facebookremoving the interest targeting.
I used to do a lot of marketing forveterinary doctor, ortho, dentist
and overnight my audience go from20,000 people to 200 million and
(08:20):
I'm staring at my ads screen.
Why is this not working?
I used to get good lead andthen I look at the number 200
million and then you basicallyforcing me to target 200 million.
Then I was no longer ableto target that audience.
You could still do B2B on Facebookbut it comes down to targeting.
If you could do it on Facebook,you could do it on LinkedIn
the other way not really.
(08:41):
Absolutely.
It seems difficult when theseplatforms are constantly changing the
targeting or the creative options orwe recommend this type of placement.
What do you say about some of theFacebook or LinkedIn recommendations
where they say you should use a creativeaudience or your cost per result could
be 30% lower if you try this method.
(09:01):
Have you used those?
Do you recommend them or are theyagainst their own best interest?
Do you have a favorite kebabrestaurants where you are located?
Not personally.
Let's go to steak restaurant.
Imagine you order the steak, youdidn't have the time to eat it.
It's on the table next to you andyou're panicked like, oh my God.
They need to go on the call Sarah.
And as you're panicking a catjump on the table and the cat's
(09:23):
like you wanna go on the call.
Trust me, I'm the trusted partner.
Leave the steak with me.
After you finish the 30 minute callwith Sarah, the stake will be there.
That's like LinkedIn recommendationand Facebook is not better.
It's worse.
It's like one of the recommendationis enable audience network to get
five more clicks at this price.
(09:46):
Why don't you tell me howmany more sales I would get?
How?
Why don't you tell me howmany conversion I would get?
Why don't you tell me howmany leads I would get?
It's all about impression, right?
I cannot take it to the bankand I like to give the example.
If you have a birthday cake,slathered with my net and you'll
increase the volume by 300% butit would be absolutely disgusting.
(10:08):
You wouldn't be able to eat it like there.
I mean, there is a reason Mark Zcover is worth 250 billion today.
Five years ago, he wasworth only 25 billion.
It's not worth 10 time more becausethere is 10 time more user on
Facebook not because he's employing10 time more people, not because
Facebook is 10 time more activity.
Actually, my friends are spendingless time on Facebook right now.
(10:32):
It's basically all those recommendationthat make it so easy for the advertiser
to bleed money without knowing it.
The way I see it is like trustingthe cat with the ham sandwich.
I'm not trusting, I might give thecat a slice of sausage or steak but
I'm not going to hire the cat asa bodyguard of a steak sandwich.
That's the best example Icould think of about trusting
(10:52):
the network recommendations.
It's a great metaphor and I appreciateyou being so honest and open about
it 'cause I've suspected this butI've never felt confident in really
saying yes for sure that they'reworking against their own interests.
Yes.
I would not trust the cat either witha birthday cake slathered a mayonnaise
or with a steak sitting next to me.
I feel like it's against their own bestinterest but that's something we need
(11:12):
to navigate and hear from the expertslike you, so we know not to press those
buttons when we see a little popup andsay, Hey, your results could be lower.
So it's really important to look at.
Next up I wanna ask about the specificad campaign strategy because it
sounds very similar to what I or otherbusinesses might be going through.
Where the ad copy can beso impactful to a campaign.
(11:34):
This was taking a campaign that wouldyield 40 cents for every dollar spent
into $18 and 66 cents for every $1 spent.
Wow.
What a big difference here.
What was the secret behind thatcampaign and can you tell us
more about how that worked?
Yeah.
So hand Strategizer is a clientand this is a university teacher in
(11:55):
Lausanne Switzer who wrote a book thatgot translated into maybe 18 language
sold, 5 million sculpture and so on.
And they were bleeding money.
It's a type of conference whereexecutive from BMW, air France,
Renat, American Express and they werespending $4,000 to get $2,000 in sales.
Something like that.
(12:15):
40 cent and then I consume their content.
I'm like, there need to be a better way.
I watch their webinar,I join their email list.
I look at your YouTube channel.
I buy their book.
Even at some point, I went totheir conference and I run an ad
and when they see it, they getan angry email for God's sake.
Sarah, what's that?
(12:35):
Because in their mind, I was justpromoting random content, right?
Like somebody boosting a pauseand I'm like, please look at the
number, look at my cost per clickand yours, look at the CTR and yours.
I think they spent like $11,000, madealmost a quarter of a million and
then they stopped complaining becauseit was about giving people sample.
(12:56):
I think there is a supermarket,I think it's Tesco, I'm not
sure, maybe something like that.
Some American supermarket that's knownfor giving sample and they found if
they go down the aisle and say, buy thischocolate cake, it's so moist and juicy.
People will be like that.
Leave me alone.
Right.
(13:16):
But if they give you a tinyslice, you went there not wanting
to buy a chocolate brownie.
Once it enter your mouth like,wow, that's so light and rich and
delicious, you would buy it, right?
So basically, the power ofsampling increased sale by 2000%.
It was an article in the Atlanticmagazine and I applied the same thing
(13:37):
to the marketing where ba that actuallyyou remember when I said I hated copy?
I don't know how to write.
90% of good copy is 90%listening, reading, digest
information, only 10% writing.
You're not writing copy.
You are assembling it.
And by consuming the contentof that client and each time
I'm like, wow, that's good.
That's an amazing story.
(13:58):
That's an amazing result.
I turn it to and turn out.
It increased sales hugely and I wasat the conference after I got them the
quarter of millionaire sales, I said,can you invite me to the conference?
And basically I was taking note eachtime they have an aha moment, I would
write it but I was talking to peopleand somebody who created a big company.
The renewable energy said I wanted to goto the conference, then I forgot about it.
(14:21):
Then I was not sure for $2,000 Icould go to a really nice holiday
but then I kept reading all thosestories about the amazing result
the conference will help me get.
I'm like, sure, take my money.
So that can demonstrate how thispersuasion and real storytelling impacts
us psychologically when trying to makea decision whether we buy something
or not and what kind of holds us back.
(14:43):
Exactly.
It's not about screaming at theperson because if I said, are
you suffering with, it sound likean ad now you become defensive.
Now if I said.
Let me tell you about James, who wasmagnesium deficient and was depressive
and even without knowing, he wasscreaming at his 3-year-old daughter
and the moment we gave him pure highquality magnesium, he sleep like a baby.
(15:07):
He no longer suffer insomnia.
He's no longer in a bad mood.
People said, what happened to you?
You're always smilingright now in your brain.
You're like, oh, that's me.
Did somebody steal a page from?
Did somebody break into my houseand read the page of my diary?
Because I tell it from the point ofview of somebody we already helped.
Actually I had a client from the SharkTank Show and it's a protocol better back.
(15:32):
It's for back pain andshe come and she said.
I think my problem is the targeting,and I'm like, okay, she sold
million of her product and shepitched on Shark Tank and invest.
How many people have back pain?
And she's like, oh, if you'reover 40, that's like 30%.
So if you go to a randomroom and people are over 40.
(15:52):
You are going to havepeople with back pain.
What if you're already reaching theright audience but the message you
tell them is not good and the moment westopped telling people this is a product
for back pain and started telling thestories of people who suffered from back
pain and how it made a day on light.
So the story was single mother who usedto work like 16 or 15 hour per day on a
(16:12):
call center and when her back was killingher, she could no longer go to work.
She only takes 60% 'causeshe's on disability on a
single mother minimum salary.
She couldn't even pay rent and thenshe's like, oh my God, the grandmothers
have seen this Shark Tank episode.
Both the product had made day andnight difference and now people were
visualizing themselves in that productand basically she got the most sales
(16:36):
in a single day from Facebook ads.
When we use that approach.
Wow, that is absolutely fascinating.
So I'm definitely gonna try all ofthese methods this week and immediately
switch over to a more story-drivenmethod and excited to try this out
'cause it sounds incredible.
Is this good for any business, for anyprice point, for any industry or would
you take a different approach or is thiskind of just the tried and true method?
(16:57):
It worked for a lot of industry.
Now there are industry thatare more visual, right?
If you're a restaurant andpeople just need to see that
green Thai curry look amazing.
That chocolate cake look amazing, right?
You wouldn't tell.
A story from 500 years ago howthey discovered chocolate, there
are moments where, hey, somebodyis out from a nightclub and drunk
and hangover and they need a pizza.
(17:18):
You're only going to say, let it metell you a story of the Italian family
squeezing little tomato with hand, right?
They're like, I'm hungover.
Just give me that pizza right now.
There are industry where you needpersuasion, where you need to build
the desire where people are notactively looking for that product.
Where you need to makesomebody go from, yeah.
Sure.
Tell me more.
(17:39):
I mean, you sell handbags.
You look at the design of the handbag,you either like it or you don't like it.
Right.
Holiday, you look athotel room and the beach.
I like how the beach look likeor it doesn't look like, right?
Not much you could do otherthan having an amazing photo.
Now you have a conference.
You're selling software.
You're selling coaching.
You're selling health product,which I did a lot of them.
(18:01):
You are convincing people.
You can help them loseweight, get in shape.
Fix hormonal imbalance, geta better career, et cetera.
That where you need persuasion.
Interesting.
Now, when you're setting up a campaign,let's say in Facebook do you go as far
as installing a pixel and you're basingit on the effectiveness of the link
clicks or you just kind of go generalawareness and you're hoping that the
(18:22):
landing page is gonna do the trick?
And do you even have one?
Do you focus on the landing page as well?
Do you continue that story-driven model?
A hundred percent.
I will not run ad if it doesn't have apixel because no tracking is perfect but
one you wanna know which ad is workingand which one is not working right.
Awareness.
Don't do it because Facebook havelike 800 million fake profiles,
(18:43):
so you're running awareness.
Facebook is like, give me the money.
Five years ago you had a warm audience.
I might do retargeting and do traffic.
Impression, engagement.
Now I only do conversion becauseFacebook is you want to traffic.
I don't care about thequality of the traffic.
I don't care if 99% of that trafficbounce, if it's accidental click, if
(19:04):
it's on a video where you're interruptingpeople watching a funny video and
they're like, take that ad out of myface so I only run conversion campaign
and of course the landing page need towork because the ads sell the clicks.
But once you sell the click, the landingpage need to sell the conversion,
whether it's a sale or it's an emailopt-in, whether it's watching a
webinar because the ads started thejourney doesn't mean everything else,
(19:28):
including the landing page, the email.
What is even said on your websitedoesn't need to continue selling them.
To an eyes cold audience.
I could say that way.
Yes, absolutely.
Some great advice there on how to setup the campaigns and what we should
focus on but while we're creating thatcampaign here you mentioned the sampling
as an option, give kind of a free taste,a little trial of what's available.
(19:50):
Do you recommend going forthe hard sale within like that
landing pages or conversion?
But you mentioned some other option likeopt-in or maybe like a lower ticket offer.
Are those reasonable options ordo you like to go directly for
the sale of the main ticket?
If you are a perfect stranger, you neverheard about what a business offer, I'm
not going to go from a perfect strangerto say, let me sell you a $2,000 product.
(20:15):
It worked for Strategizer.
They have a book.
Everyone know within a specificindustry, 5 million sold.
I would wanna get an email because I getmore than one chance of selling to you.
It's like there is a business,I run algorithm them for year.
It's a language course and they wouldbreak even on email, opt-in and then
what happened is that most peoplewould buy around five month and a half
(20:39):
and then it's Black Friday and theywill make like $2 million in sales.
So basically they were breaking evenwhile adding 10,000 new people to
the email list at break even knowingthat those people will buy within a
few month, that when they come with anew product, maybe somebody bought a
course to an Italian, maybe next yearthe person want to learn Japanese.
(21:03):
Right.
And now you're making extramoney from that person.
It's very hard to go from perfectstranger to give me the money.
It could work with some offerbut what happen if the person
did not buy you lost them?
Well, if you get an email and as longas the email marketing is good, right?
If you send three, four, e five emailand then you forget them for six
months and for two years you createnew blog posts, new podcasts, no
(21:25):
webinar, no YouTube video, nothingand people totally forgot you exist,
then email become less effective.
Yes, absolutely.
Now for a few years, AI has been changingthe game for a lot of businesses,
solopreneurs freelancers out there.
Are you using AI in any wayfor your work in business?
And do you see it having any sortof positive or negative effect
(21:47):
on the industry as a whole?
I use it for editing.
I don't use it for writing becauseAI make a lot of things up.
I give you an example.
I say, here is a pizza, hereis some pineapple, here is some
ketchup, here is some cappuccino.
Do something.
And if I told an Italian chef this.
(22:09):
Probably that Italian chef willtake his belt and try to hit me with
it and say, how dare you do that.
AI?
It's not an expert.
It doesn't recognize that I ask it todo something badly and it created a
chocolate, pineapple cappuccino pizza.
If hell exists, that's whatpeople eat in hell, right?
(22:30):
It's good for editing, right?
Forgetting id for brainstorming.
No.
Here is where the risk of AI.
Let's say you are in a specific industry.
Let's say you're in theconstruction industry.
Now you have 100 of your competitorall using AI, all sounding the
same but what I know there arestories of how you help client.
(22:51):
That nobody else knows than yourclient and I'm having businesses where
I'm like, Hey, do you have students?
Do you have clients I could interview?
And when I interview them,sometimes the business owner
doesn't even know the story.
And sometimes there are story thatare extremely strong and emotional
and nobody know because it's stuckon somebody head and nobody ask.
(23:16):
I give you an example.
I wrote some ad for a course by copyhackers called Freelancing School
and I'm interviewing student and onestudent say it's lockdown, right?
The job I had of internship disappeared.
I go and I called email 50 60 companies.
Nobody replied to me.
(23:37):
I go and I register to Fiverr because
I need a job.
Somebody pay me, I don't rememberthe exact number, maybe $15 for a
blog post for something spiritualI didn't understand and it took
me like 10 hours to write it.
And I'm like, that's like $1 per hour.
She was so depressed that she said, I feltlike if I went in front of Starbucks with
(24:01):
a cup and bag, my career would be better.
That's how bad it was.
But then I joined a community where peoplewere so supportive, where people had an
overflow of work and some people took meunder the ring and said, okay, I need help
with this because I have too many leads.
And now I have a case study whereI could say, this is how I help
a client get a $200,000 lunch.
(24:24):
Now, I'm no longer making $1 per hour.
I'm paid generously becausecompany want case study.
If they're going to give you goodmoney, they like, what did you do?
Okay, you helped somebody make 200,000.
Okay.
It's no longer an expense.
It's an investment.
And that story, if I didn't spend likeone hour with the person asking her
story in detail, normally you wouldhave known and you could go to she GPT,
(24:47):
you could go to Deep Seek, you could goto cloud, you could go to whatever AI
is there, AI doesn't know that story.
This story is unique to one singlebusiness, not ten one, right?
And you sure that the 10 otheror a hundred other competitor
cannot tell the same story?
So basically, AI make me wanna go deeper,it's like now I need to work harder to
(25:10):
distinguish myself because before towrite an ad, somebody said, my English
is not good, my grammar is not good.
I need to hire somebody.
That person need to get back to me now,with one press of button, you could
generate a hundred in five seconds, right?
And all the added platform are using AI.
So how do you stand outfrom all the bad noise?
Absolutely.
But I think it's a perfect example ofhow we can actually ethically use AI to
(25:33):
not burden us with this extra workloadand use it in the ways that actually
benefits us and doesn't take away thathuman element but also the importance of
soliciting feedback from your clients.
This is information that is so valuableto a company and just the story and
the reasoning behind why they hadthis issue and why they chose you.
That could be a powerful story tousing your marketing messaging.
(25:54):
It's just huge.
Have an example, so a language course?
They assume people wanted tospeak fluent Spanish, right?
Most people say I'm in Mexico, ifI could order a taxi, I could order
food, I could order my coffee.
I'm happy.
I don't wanna understandpolitical debate on tv.
Right?
So going from that to what people said,I think it was a difference between
(26:18):
making 20,000 and maybe 60,000 in salesbut the biggest problem people said,
I've been learning language for years.
Native speakers speak too fast.
I know every single word.
I know the grammar but I cannot everyfive minute ask him to speak slower.
So now having a course, sohow do you train your ear to
(26:38):
understand people who speak fast?
I don't remember the exactnumber but he made over 200,000
when he launched the product.
It wasn't about marketing,it wasn't about ad setting.
It wasn't about a secret button.
It wasn't about running a trafficinstead of a congression campaign.
It wasn't about their targeting.
It was simply about asking the audienceinstead of assuming what exact problem
(26:59):
they had and that was like day andnight difference In terms of ROI.
I see that issue happeningwith a lot of business owners.
They spend and invest so much time andmoney into an idea that they think is
going to fit into a market without evenasking them or building the product and
then deciding, okay, now I want feedback.
Ideally you want that feedbackright away before you even make a
(27:20):
logo, a brand name or a website.
Go ask your potential audience,what do you think about this?
If I put this together, wouldthis be valuable for you?
Getting that that early buy-in fromyour potential audience is gonna be
critical for how you build this outand even if you bother to build it out,
you might realize there's a differentsolution to this problem that you are
gonna spend months trying to solve that.
(27:41):
Unfortunately, therewasn't gonna be demand for.
Correct.
Absolutely.
A lot of great advice and tips here.
Sarah.
I do want to ask you, wherecan people find you online
and get connected with you?
'cause it seems like you havea lot of resources available.
Blogs, podcasts as well.
My website, so just Google myname, Sarah, with an H at the end.
SAL or sarah sal.comand that's my website.
(28:04):
And if you're on that website, you'llfind me on LinkedIn, you'll find the
different blog posts I have and so on.
Very nice.
And we'll have all those linksavailable down in the show notes and the
description for everyone to get connected.
Now, Sarah, where do you think adsare gonna be going in 2025 and beyond?
Are you kind of foreseeing adifferent trend taking place?
Things that we should kind of be awareof as we're going into 2025 here?
(28:27):
Not really.
Actually, another podcast asked me,what is something that worked today
that didn't work six months ago?
How about I tell you what workeda hundred years ago before
social media even existed?
I think things like persuasion, talkingto a human interruption, marketing
storytelling market research would alwaysexist and the example I gave them, I think
(28:50):
it was the American Heart Association.
If I remember they said.
Popcorn that you get at the cinemahave 37 gram of saturated fat.
How do you know?
Is it too much?
Is it too little?
Is it exactly?
Nobody know.
So they said it's the same as anEnglish breakfast, sausages, french
fries and God know what combine.
(29:12):
It made it to the first pageof every major newspaper.
People are like, what?
Just the popcorn is like fried steak andan English breakfast, and a sausage and
an egg and all the trimming and analogies.
It's like something you cannot understand.
Use an analogy and I get it nowand that will not disappear.
Whether it's 20 25, 20 26 or if maybeit's 2035 or 2,135 and none of us exist.
(29:40):
Maybe somebody still here thisinterview, oh, I could use analog so
people can understand my marketing.
Build your marketing onthings that are long term.
Don't build your marketing on somethingthat is only short-lived because then you
burn out then you're doing something andthen two months later it doesn't work.
And then you need to find the nextthing that work and it doesn't work
and nonstop, you need to do new thing.
(30:01):
If you build your marketing orsolid foundation 10 years from now.
It is still gonna work.
Interesting.
It will be fascinating to kind of seehow things change and won't change from
our traditional storytelling and thepersuasion methods that we currently have.
I do have a couple more questionsif you have a few minutes here.
Sure.
I do.
Take your time.
I wanted to ask more specific to a lotof the advertising and just niching down,
(30:23):
I see a lot of people that recommend youon a specific audience, on an industry,
speak to that person individually.
But sometimes there's other businessesthat are full service and they feel like
they help a little bit of everybody.
How important is it to reallydefine an audience or niche down
into this segment or can more of ageneralistic ad still be effective?
(30:44):
I've seen it work a lot.
The nicheing down and I've beendoing it for almost 10 years now.
The beauty of advertisementis you don't need to guess.
You put $50 here, $50 here, a hundreddollars here, a hundred dollars
there and the one getting you thebest result is the one you keep.
Now, if you said I helpyou with your marketing.
(31:05):
It's not as specific as saying,as a dentist, I help you with your
marketing and before I wrote thead, I understood the linguistic,
what are the exact word dentists usethat non dentists will never use?
Now my ad. It's way more powerful now.
It's a question of testing now justbecause something worked for me.
There are many campaigns that didnot work that when I niche down
(31:27):
to work but just because thisis my case, I cannot generalize.
Basically, I like to say you have toadd and you tell them to fight each
other till death and then only one ofthem live the one with the highest ROI.
Yes.
It's good to put them against eachother and we have to test these
things 'cause we just don't know.
We can use all our past experiencewhat has or hasn't worked in pulling
all these numbers and figures together.
(31:49):
But actually testing something specificand unique to that business or product
or service is really gonna open newideas and opportunities for you.
And then once you decide to scale acampaign, do you ever go back into
more of a multi-channel approach?
Do you ever rely on just one?
One source for a while 'cause I know itcan either dry up or you just never know.
If it's not in your control, howlong those results might last for.
(32:13):
Have you ever heard of Dubai Chocolate?
The what?
Chocolate.
Dubai Chocolate?
No.
Okay.
It's something that wentviral on social media.
It's basically a chocolate witha fellow dough with pistachio
inside and on social media.
It's exploding wherepeople are copying it.
So I keep seeing on socialmedia, Dubai chocolate.
(32:33):
And I used to think it's not a big dealand then I found a vegan chocolate shop
in a small medieval town in Belgium calledGaN, and I see Dubai Shark and I'm like.
Okay, put me out of my measuring.
I need to buy it and know what is thebig deal and you know, it's really
good but what made me buy it is allthe other channel I kept seeing, right?
(32:56):
And sometime growing ononly one single channel.
It's difficult becauseyou're saturating the market.
It's like sometime I take clientand they get good result and
in back of my mind I'm like.
You are going to get good successfor six months and then you'll hit
a wall and then I see client who dopodcasts, good email list amazing
(33:18):
content, nonstop, new product, nonstop.
And I'm like, that's the clientthat for five, six year would be
able to run ad the success becausewe live outside of Facebook.
We live outside of LinkedIn.
It's like, once you have multipletouches, you make it more powerful.
So let's say, I had people, likesomebody, a client recommend me.
Then they said, wow, I Googled you.
(33:39):
You are everywhere.
They found a podcast.
They found a YouTube video.
I spoke at a conference, theyfound a blog post I wrote, right?
Actually Facebook bannedme for a stupid joke.
I used to have 5,000 followersand there used to be a fight
between Apple and Facebook witha lot of drama around tracking
and then I wrote in a blog post, I said,Facebook and Apple are like two drag queen
(34:01):
fighting for the last lipstick on earth.
It was on a Saturday.
I published that blog post on Sunday.
I could no longer usemy page, my fan page.
I couldn't care less becauseblog posts I wrote in 2019.
Amazing case study where I have puta hundred hour writing time are still
in the industry referring to them.
I said, when people meet me atconferences, I read your blog book three
(34:23):
years ago and I couldn't forget it.
So it's always a multichannel becauseI've seen client that treat like Spanish,
learning a language where Facebooksaid, this is political propaganda.
Or treating hormonal imbalance andsometimes talking to Facebook support
or talking to a wall is the same thing.
(34:43):
So if you're depending on only onechannel, it could kill your business.
You would literally have businesswith 20 employee and if that's
the only way they're generatingmoney is only one channel.
This suicidal.
And I have client come tome said, how do we scale?
Okay, we got all thatmoney from venture capital.
I said, do share change optimization?
(35:05):
Build an email list.
Find the blog that is the most difficultto write for in your NDSU, where after
you get rejected, you would wanna cry.
But if you get accepted, youknow that you made a masterpiece.
That's how you scale, not on one channel.
Yes.
And I think that highlights theimportance of having that evergreen
content blog posts from three years agoare still showing up in search results.
(35:26):
People can't forget them.
They're still finding them.
This is that type of all-encompassingapproach I think a lot of businesses
should be focusing on one, it justdifferent channels of revenue and
they help compliment each other.
The Facebook ad can get the click and getthem to the page to find out about you but
the YouTube videos and the podcasts andthe blog posts are gonna help tell more
about your story and how you help them.
And that's everything that helps themjust be more invested into your brand.
(35:50):
Once they start consuming that content,you don't want them to leave 'cause
that's when they're going to a competitor
and you have them for another story.
Yes, please.
So there is a dentist thatcome to me asking for help.
Her husband is a dentist that doesdental implants and during the day she
does the marketing of the competitor.
She's like, Sarah, I copied the targeting.
(36:11):
I copied the ad copy.
I copied the landing page.
I copied everything.
I don't understand why my boss isgetting amazing result and I'm not.
I'm like, can you go to Google?
Type your husband nameand type your boss name?
Her boss name was to be found everywhere.
Her husband not.
I might see an ad right.
If you think I'm going to pay five, 10,15,000 dollars for a medical procedure
(36:35):
and it's not only about the money,it's like what are the complication?
Is it a good.
What are the risk of that procedure?
You think that for 10, for$5,000, I'm not going to grab
that person name and Google it.
So it's a case of doing marketing andeverything that we're exist outside of
the Facebook or Limpian ecosystem, makethat the ad is more likely to convert.
(36:57):
Interesting.
So copying something word for word,copy for copy, even the landing page
as well, just couldn't be found online.
And therefore those are missedopportunities where someone
is searching for problems orsolutions to their problems online.
No.
Just the name of the dentist.
Wow.
Imagine there is a hoteland you go on honeymoon, the
hotel costs $5,000 per night.
You think you're not going to Googlethat hotel name to look at the review.
(37:20):
I would.
And if you have a lot of people onYouTube saying, I love that hotel and
it's the same thing for a dentist,like the boss was found everywhere.
He was found on YouTube, on podcasts.
He had amazing black post contentthat made people say, okay, I'll
open my mouth and while I openmy mouth, I'll give you $5,000.
And I let you sedate me andknowing that for the next three
(37:42):
hour, I don't know where I am.
Yeah, for a medical procedurecosting 5,000 people will Google your
name and that was the difference.
What can people find whenthey Google your name?
Absolutely.
And it's funny that you mentionedthe dentist 'cause I'm also
working with the dentist right now.
Very similar situation where just gettingher out there more opportunities with
the content so that way people cansee and experience a little bit about
(38:02):
her and her brand as opposed to hercompetitors but great results already.
Eight new patients last inJanuary just a couple months ago.
So we see that the SEO is takingeffect and having results but we
did do a little bit of ads as well.
But unfortunately with ads, once youstop spending the money, the leads
stop coming in, which I think theSEO can help su supplement and just
doing the other content as well.
(38:22):
And people are researching.
People are more informed than ever before.
So consumers are looking for you online,
Correct.
Sarah, we appreciate all of your wisdomand tips and tricks with us and expertise
into the Facebook ads and LinkedIn world.
Very exciting stuff.
We appreciate everything that youshared with us today and really looking
forward to everything that you're doing.
And excited to stay in touchwith any of the cool updates
(38:43):
from your blog and everything.
Sure.
Same here.
Thank you so much.
Okay.
It's my pleasure.
Take care.
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