Ep 169 The 5 Secrets to Facebook Ads with Carlene Kelsey

Pencils&Lipstick podcast episode

Carlene Kelsey has been working with digital ads for years and knows the secrets about how to spend your money wisely and get returns on your ads. She joins us today to tell us 5 rarely talked about secrets about posting Facebook ads (and Instagram) and what you need to do before running your ads.

Sign up for Carlene’s free Facebook Ad Blueprint freebie:  https://desertdigitaladgroup.com/ad-blueprint/

This Facebook Ad Blueprint arms you with the Important information you need to know! FB ads can be exactly what your business needs to grow, scale, get new leads and prospects. There is a lot to consider, and paid ads can be scary and complicated. This Blueprint is just what you need to get started with paid ads, or to improve your existing campaigns.

Check out more about Carlene at her website: https://desertdigitaladgroup.com/

Want to join a workshop? https://katcaldwell.com/workshops-2023/

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TRANSCRIPTION STARTS HERE:

Kat

All right, I am excited to have Carlene Kelsey with me here today. She is a Facebook and Instagram marketing guru. I’m excited to pick your brain. Hello, Carlene. How are you doing today?

Carlene

I’m doing well, Kat. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Kat

I appreciate you coming on. Before we go into all the goodies that you have for us, would you just let us know a little bit about yourself?

Carlene

Sure. I’ve been working online since 2009, and I actually started out with a virtual assistant business, helping everybody do everything. Well, I came to learn that you can’t do everything. So I ended up concentrating in the beginning on doing WordPress websites, email marketing, and some social media. And recently, I took courses and got certified in ads, paid ads, for both Google as well as Facebook and Instagram. And I worked for a company, as an employee, doing ads for all different kinds of businesses for Facebook and Instagram. And that’s where I really thrived. And that’s where I really loved helping people get their info out in front of other people with ads, and it really is possible to do. It is a little complicated, and we’re going to talk about some secrets today that will help people, but it’s fun and you can see results. And there was just some new recent statistics from Facebook. Don’t believe people that say Facebook is dead and everybody’s leaving Facebook because that is far from the truth. There’s still millions of people joining Facebook. They’ve got the highest readership of all. And I’m talking Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp because Meta owns all of those. So it is still a very good marketing plan to put money in ads and get in front of new people who might not even know you exist. Facebook is still there.

Kat

It’s still there. Actually, just the other day, a couple of authors and I were talking about Facebook, and somebody said, don’t bother. And I said, well, according to lots of research, and I have a hard time keeping up with all of the social media, but the people who have the money are on Facebook. When you’re a young professional, money is tight. You are paying off student loans. You’re learning to be an adult, all this. The 40 to 80-year-olds have the money. And even it’s specifically 40 to 60-year-olds, they’re the ones buying books for their kids. They’re the ones reading more because they’re deciding that they’re going to take time to read more. So just focusing on authors, don’t ignore that demographic, right?

Carlene

Absolutely.

Kat

And especially, I would assume those new people coming on might be worldwide, do you think?

Carlene

Well, I actually didn’t delve into those two as much as I need to, honestly. I saw it and I read Maury Smith, who is… I’ve just been following her for years. She’s Queen of Facebook, and she is saying…

Kat

Don’t give up on it, right?

Carlene

She attends all of their annual quarterly meetings and things, and she would actually work for them for a while. And she says, don’t listen to people who say Facebook is dead. Really, it’s there. Most everybody in the world is on Facebook. And if you want to see your ads, you want people to see your ads that wouldn’t necessarily know who you are, you still can accomplish that on Facebook. You absolutely can.

Kat

So the biggest reason I wanted to have you on is that you have… I found you before Christmas. This happens to me all the time. I think somebody recommended you because I have gone through the experience of being an author, not knowing what really I’m doing. But people say, throw up a Facebook ad. So you throw up a Facebook ad and nothing happens. You’re just giving money. And so I found you and you have a great email list telling about the tips and the strategies. So today we wanted to talk about certain strategies because the first thing you told me the first time I met you was, don’t just throw money at Facebook. It’s not going to work. And I said, okay, I will stop. I like that. I don’t like throwing money away. So I wanted to have you on because there’s a scale of advertising. And as an author, a lot of times you’re just trying to get your book out there. You don’t know what you’re doing. There are people who do ads, but they can cost thousands of dollars and you’re still in the dark. So we are going to talk about your five strategies for us to consider. And now that we’ve decided we’re not leaving Facebook, we are going to start to stay there. And Instagram, because they own both. So help us, Carlene. Help us authors.

Carlene

Absolutely. Stop me any way along the line here. When I start talking, if you have a question, just let me know. But I really have five strategies, five secrets to help you not lose any more money on Facebook ads.

Kat

Yes, the keyword.

Carlene

Well, and I’ve lost money on Facebook ads too in the very beginning before I got it all figured out. And I said, darn, I must be doing something wrong. I got to figure this out. And I did. So I learned, I took courses. It came to me, and I then wanted to help other people, especially your audience, the authors. They need help getting word out there. So the first secret is really to make sure that you have these five things in place before you run your ads. Now, you want to have a complete website. You want to have your website easy to navigate so people can find things on your website. You want to have all of your business processes in place. That would be your email auto-responder, your book listing on your website, all of that. You want to have the capacity to take on new clients if you’re advertising services because you don’t want to go advertise and then get such an influx of business that you can’t handle it. That would just be poor customer service. And you want to really be ready to grow. So if all those things are in place and you’re ready to grow your reach and get more prospects, then Facebook ads could be for you. The first thing is to know the Facebook funnel. It’s the same as any other funnel. Awareness is at the top. So you have awareness first. People have to become aware of you. Then they move down into the consideration stage. So now they’re considering working with you or doing business with you or buying your book. And then the third part of the stage is they actually become a buyer. They either sign up to your email list, they actually go to your link and purchase your book, they buy something that you have in your website, if you’re selling physical things and you have an e-commerce store, they become a buyer. And that’s the funnel. And the proper way to do ads is to start them at the top of the funnel, make them aware. So you run some ads of get more likes to your page. You put some posts out there and you get more likes to your page. And those types of ads do not cost thousands of dollars. They’re very economical to run. And then when you get them into the consideration stage, now you’re actually have a good call to action. You’re going to ask them to take an action and do something.

Carlene

Sign up for your list, sign up for your freebie, go visit your book link, that sort of thing. And then the third stage is you’re actually offering a course or a book or something you’re going to sell them.

Kat

Okay. So do you think a lot of people try to just skip and go straight to buy? This is what I’m thinking most authors we might be doing is like, I have a new book out, go buy it. But what you’re saying is they haven’t even considered you yet, so you’re just losing money.

Carlene

That’s exactly right. And everybody would love to go straight to the buy. It doesn’t work that way. You can try it. I’m telling you, it just doesn’t work. And you are probably wasting money. It takes time. See, the other thing with ads is, like any other effort you put in for marketing, it’s not instant. It’s not overnight. It’s not going to be overnight. Don’t have those expectations. You’ll be disappointed. It really is a process, the awareness, the consideration. Then they see you. If they become aware and you get them to leave you an email address, then you have to be very organized and very consistent following up with your emails so that you send them information. Now they’re considering, oh, she offered this. She has a book on this topic. I was talking to my friend last week about that. And then they become a buyer. And then they become another buyer. They’ll buy something else that you offer and the next thing that you offer. But yeah, don’t try to go straight to buy. It usually doesn’t work.

Kat

It doesn’t work. Okay. So that’s why you said in the beginning, we have to have our website set up, we have to have our book set up. There’s a lot of just planning, I would say, instead of just my book comes out, throw up some ads. But strategic planning. And what’s interesting is authors really are small businesses and we have to get that mindset, right?

Carlene

Yes. That’s exactly right. Okay, let me move on to my next. Now, when you decide you’re going to run your ad and you are ready, you got to choose a goal. What is your goal or your objective going to be for this ad? There are many to choose from, like we talked about awareness, traffic, getting traffic to the link to actually purchase, engagement where you want people to comment on something you’ve said, leads. You have a promotion, you’re promoting maybe a new app, or you have a sale going on. So you have to decide on what objective you’re going to use for your ad. And it can’t be all of them, really. You got to pick one.

Kat

You got to pick one.

Carlene

Yeah, it can’t be all of them at the same time because you won’t be successful. So you need to know what goal you want to run for this particular ad. So that’s your first decision you make when you’re ready to do your ads. Your second decision is your budget, and your budget goes along with your goal. And in my free gift that we’re going to absolutely have your audience reach out and get, I have a whole schedule of budgets, recommended budgets based on the goal you choose, what’s the recommended budget from Facebook in order to have a successful ad running. So for example, leads, to get leads into your email list, your budget has to be a little higher than it does for just the awareness or the engagement ads. And that’s okay. But you just have to move into that. As you start running your campaigns, you move into higher budgets so that your return on investment is definitely working for you.

Kat

But at the same time, when you’re doing that ad for leads, so we’re trying to get people onto our author newsletter, right? What you’re doing is targeting specifically people who are going to enjoy your newsletter. They have to sign up for that newsletter because a part of them wants to be there. Not to say nobody will unsubscribe, of course, but we’re looking at specific audience. So you’re not just paying people to be on your list. What you’re doing is finding the people who read, let’s say, action adventure thrillers, starring a woman, specifically, correct?

Carlene

And that’s the next thing I was going to talk about is audience. Okay, perfect. Define your audience, absolutely. You need to define who is your best audience. You want to ask your questions to yourself. Who is my ideal client? Who do they follow? What publications do they read? Know where they hang out on Facebook. If they’re in certain groups, you might be able to join those groups as well and do some promotion. You build your audience to at least 3 million to 6 million on Facebook in the ads manager. When you add in your demographics, your locations, you add in interests, you can see how many potential people you’re going to reach. And the goal is you don’t want it to be less than a million, but ideally you want it to be between 3 and six million reach for that particular ad. Because then you know you’re getting to the broader audience, the big enough audience for you to really get out there in front of them.

Kat

So for somebody who’s an online author, so we’re selling books, and if you have an ebook, you can sell worldwide, it’s really more important to see what publications are reading, what books are reading, correct, other than like pinpointing in the world where they might be, or is that still important?

Carlene

Right. Well, that’s part of it is pinpointing in the world where they might be. That’s important. When I advertise, I advertise to mostly English speaking countries. So in addition to Canada and the US, I always include Australia, I include New Zealand, I include Great Britain because we all speak English. And then you niche it down a little further to their interests. Are they interested in baking, cooking, whatever your book’s about, you just try to find a broad audience that if they see your ad, it’s going to make an impression. They might not click the first time they see it. That’s also why you have to run your ad for more than three days. That’s not going to do you much any good. You got to run your ad for a little bit of time, but you get used to going into your ad’s manager and looking at your statistics. So you’ll know how many people you’re reaching, how many people are clicking on a link if you’re running a traffic ad. You’ll know how many people are liking your page if you’re just doing an awareness ad. And then you’ll be able to judge if this ad is working or not. You can turn it off at any time and try something else. And that’s the other thing about Facebook ads. There is a lot of testing and trying. You may not make gold the very first time you run an ad. You might have to test it and try it and see, does this headline work better than this headline? There’s a way to do split testing right inside ads manager, and you run ads with one headline as opposed to another headline, and then you test them. And the actual Facebook ads manager will tell you which one is winning. They’ll turn off the one that didn’t win that wasn’t getting the best results, and they’ll continue running the one that was getting the best results for you.

Kat

Okay. And when it comes to Facebook versus Instagram, is that also something that you have to take into consideration? Are the headlines going to be different?

Carlene

Well, the actual creative is going to be a little different because Instagram is the 1080 by 1080 square, although they’re doing a lot of long ones too now with reels and video. So it’s going to be designed a little differently for Instagram. And some people do just Instagram ads because that’s where they believe their audience is, and that’s where they’re getting the most bang for their buck is just on Instagram.

Kat

So you can just choose one over the other.

Carlene

You can just choose one over the other, and you can test one of the other. If you’re not sure. If your Instagram audience is fairly large and you know you get a lot of engagement, anytime you put something out there, people comment, they share it, they like it, you comment back, you’re creating conversations, you’re making relationships. Instagram may be where you’re going to get the best bang for your buck and the best return on your investment. But you can test an ad on Instagram, test an ad on Facebook, see which one does better. And then in addition to the headlines, every time you’re doing an A/B split test, you should test only one thing so that you know what the result is. If your headline A and headline B, creative picture A or creative B, or if each of the video, this video is shorter, this video is a little longer. So you would test one thing to know which one is going to bring you better results, at least for that campaign. So then you’ll have those results.

Kat

Okay, perfect.

Carlene

All right. Now, then after audience, these are all really big pieces of your campaign, so you have to be pretty clear whenever you start running your campaign. The next one is where do you place your ads? We talked just now a little bit about that. You want to make sure it looks good on mobile because I don’t even know the exact percentage, but there’s a huge percentage of people who only use their mobile devices now, to look at ads. And so you want to, and right inside ads manager, it’s going to give you a preview. So you will see how it’s going to look on a desktop, on a laptop, on a mobile device, and on an iPad or a device, but it’s not a phone. So it will show you exactly how your ad is going to look. So you want to also make sure even your website should definitely be set up for mobile because it’s a huge number that is using mobile today in the world, and I don’t know what it is. I probably should have looked that up.

Kat

But I think just in my own personal life, I’m out with my cell phone more often than I’m in front of my desktop.

Carlene

Yeah, you are. We all are. The cell phone is on the night stand beside the bed just in case the kids call and have an emergency in the middle of the night. My kids are all grown and live near me but not with me. And so they would call me if they have something in the middle of the night. And I am one of those people who sleep with my cell phone right beside my bed. A lot of people do because it’s just today. That’s how we are. Yeah.

Kat

I mean, people sit in bed and scroll, right? So if you want to capture those people with your ad, it takes half a second to scroll past it. You have to capture them, right? If it looks clunky, we’re going to be like, huh?

Carlene

You have to capture them. You have to give them a headline that’s going to entreat them. That’s going to spark interest. Your image, if you’re just doing an image ad, and they still work, they’re fine. I’ve had many customers test images against videos and they say, idveos don’t work for me. I said, that’s fine. You know that now. You tested it. So then you make your creative so super, they can’t scroll past it. And they’ll click on the ad for you.

Kat

Yeah, it’s better to know these things and to make these decisions properly, right?

Carlene

Yes, absolutely. So anyway, where you place your ad? So is it on Instagram? Is it on Facebook? Is it on both? Is it going to be in stories? Is it going to be in Reels if it’s a video? In ads manager, it’s going to give you all those options that you decide where you want to place your ad. Then you choose your creative. So is it going to be a single image? Is it going to be multiple images, which we call a carousel? I’m going to talk a little bit about the carousels. They are doing very, very well. Is it going to be a video? Is it going to be a horizontal video for Facebook or vertical video for Instagram?

Kat

Which means you have to know how to make those two, right? You can’t just stick the horizontal into the vertical.

Carlene

You are right. You have to sometimes change your creative up so it matches where you’re going to place it. If you’re doing videos on your phone and phone videos work fine, don’t think that to run ads, you have to go set up a whole video studio. You do not. Video ads on your phone work just fine, but make sure you have them placed in places where they’re going to look vertical and they’re going to look really good when people see them.

Kat

Yeah, that makes sense.

Carlene

Yeah. You don’t have to have a green screen and all these cameras and all these lights.

Kat

Thank goodness.

Carlene

Professionals do it that way. More power to them. But as authors and your audience doesn’t need to even be concerned about that because little quick videos will work just fine, vertical from their phone. Most phones nowadays will take really good picture, really good videos, and they’re just fine. What is my next? Choose your creative. Okay, let me talk about carousels. I have to tell you, and I just tested this last week, not on Facebook, but on Instagram. I did four little quotes, maybe five, I can’t remember, some of my favorite quotes, put them on nice backgrounds, and posted them as a carousel on LinkedIn. I got over 3,500 views of that post. It wasn’t even an ad. It was just a post, carousels work, where people have to flip through. They stay on your ad longer. The algorithm knows that they’re watching your carousel or your video. This is why videos work well, too, because they stay on the video for two or three minutes as long as your video is. But you’d want to make them what we call short form video, not 10-minute videos. People will not watch them. You’ll lose them. But you want to have short little two, three-minute videos. Now, you can also do the reels. The reels are less than that. People are watching reels like crazy. But you have to keep consistent one message in one reel and not go off into many different tangents because it’ll be too confusing for people. But two and three-minute videos work just fine. And carousels because you have to stay on the ad. The algorithm knows, oh, this person staying on my ad longer. Next person comes along and sees the carousel, they click. They’re flipping through the carousel. They’re staying on your ad longer. And the algorithm gives that more importance.

Kat

Interesting. I talk to a lot of writers, especially if they’re over 50, they aren’t really into the social media, but they know that they should be there. And they’re just not used to posting every day. They don’t really want to deal yet with schedulers or things like that. But would you say that maybe posting at least one carousel, at least you’re going to get that algorithm seeing who’s interested, right? More than anything, more than posting just whatever three times a week?

Kat

I would assume, too, you’re more prone to having a clearer message with a carousel. Your brain is going to keep on a theme more than I forgot what I posted two days ago. Let me go ahead and post something else.

Carlene

You’re absolutely right. Yes. So your carousel is tip one, tip two, tip three, tip four. You don’t want 12 of them. That’s too many. But you want four or five where you have a message in each one, a tip, maybe even a product, product one, product two, product three, and stuff like that. But carousels are really important, and they do very well on Instagram. They do well on Facebook, and I’m telling you, they do great on LinkedIn, too.

Kat

That’s interesting. That’s a good tip. Depending on whether you’re a nonfiction writer or a fiction writer, I can see a lot of different ways of using those carousels and not feeling like you have to then put a ton underneath.

Carlene

It’s short, it’s quick. It’s a title on one line, really. You have to create the content for sure. But it’s a title and it’s one line, and it could be a couple of excerpts from the book, maybe a couple of quotes. Chapter 1 was about this, and here’s a quote. Chapter 2, I don’t know. Stuff like that. It would go over really well in a Facebook ad for sure.

Kat

Okay, that’s interesting.

Carlene

What else do I have here? So we talked about the creative. The other thing is ads manager has three levels when you get in there. It looks a little confusing to people. It’s not really once you learn it. And it’s the campaign level. So whatever you put in the campaign level, it actually applies to the whole campaign. Then there’s the ad set level, and that’s where you’ve got your budget and you’ve got your audience. And then the third level is the ad level. So and I want to tell you one more thing about the ads. There’s something called the learning phase. A lot of people don’t know this when they start out with ads. The first time you run an ad, any ad, it has to go through what Facebook’s algorithm calls the learning phase. The algorithm is learning who to show that ad to. Okay? So what that means is you have to get 50 actions for it to get through the learning phase. If you’re running a traffic ad and traffic ads generally click on a link, so you go to a link. So if you get 50 link clicks, you have run your ad and you’ve gotten through the learning phase. If you’re doing a page likes, you have to get 50 page likes and then you’ve got through your learning phase. If you are trying to do something a little tougher, but maybe not tougher if you’ve got your audience all warmed up, leads, you want to get addresses, you want to get leads, email addresses. Then you have to get 50 leads in order to get through the learning phase. What many beginners see is I’m stuck in this learning phase. I can’t get my 50 actions. And then you have to change something up. You have to either change up your headline, your link. You have to either stop that ad and start a whole new one or really make a big change so that the algorithm can get you through that learning phase.

Kat

And is that for each ad that you put out?

Carlene

Each ad that you put out.

Kat

Okay. So that’s really how you see if it’s working or not, right? If it’s really stagnating at 10, you change it.

Carlene

You change it.

Kat

Interesting.

Carlene

You change it. And here’s another thing that it’s just the way the algorithm works. Every time you make a major change to an ad, it goes back to the beginning of learning.

Kat

Nice.

Carlene

It’s crappy. I don’t like that about it, but that’s the way the algorithm works.

Kat

Okay, so it’s not learning you, it’s learning your ad.

Carlene

It’s learning who to show your ad too.

Kat

Interesting. Okay. So even when you’re established, you’ve been running a few, each time we have to get past that learning phase, which I would assume the more that you hone your audience and more that you hone your graphics, your creatives, your budget, you should get through that quicker each time, right? Just knowing.

Carlene

Absolutely. Okay. Traffic is the easy one. You’re going to send people to a link. You’ve written your copy for your ad, which shouldn’t be too long because you want people to be able to read it in a minute, two minutes. You don’t want to have a long copy like you’re writing a newsletter or you’re writing an article. You want to have some good information in your copy. And I’m not a copywriter. I wish I was. I just haven’t studied copywriting enough yet. But you write a good paragraph or two, a couple of sentences. You have your copy, you’ve got your link that you want people to click on. Once they click that, then you’re getting through the learning phase. So 50 actions is what they say. They usually say it takes seven days. I’ve seen it happen in two. So people can get their 50 actions in two days. If they’re going out to the broad enough audience, they’ve got 3 to 6 million people that they’re reaching, they’ll get through their learning phase pretty quickly.

Kat

Okay. Interesting. So what I’m hearing above all, is it takes some strategy and some looking into and not just throwing your book up. So understanding really what there is behind it in order to make the most of your dollars, right?

Carlene

Yes, absolutely.

Kat

Deciding what you’re doing. So do you have another tip for us, or is that the end of it?

Carlene

Those are the tips. I can certainly help any of your audience that wants to.

Kat

Yeah, let’s talk about what you do. So let’s say this is a lot for people, right?

Carlene

It is a lot.

Kat

We’re getting into it. I don’t know how many times I’ve gone into the ad campaign builder, what is it called dashboard or whatever? And you just go I don’t know. Because I guess, really, I haven’t given myself that time to sit down and really go over it. So I assume I’m not the only one. So what do you do to help people do all of these things?

Carlene

Well, I have two ways that I help people. I help people by doing it for them. So we strategize, we come up with the campaigns, we come up with the goals and the objectives, and we come up with audiences, who are their ideal audiences. So then I run the ads, we meet on a regular basis, and I can help them with strategizing, changing them up, whatever needs to be done. So they give me their input, they give me all their knowledge, and I run the ads for them. That’s one way that I do it for them. The other way is I teach people how to do it. Done with you program. I have a done with you program, too. If people want to learn, we run through one first campaign together over the period of, I think it’s six, could even be seven weeks. We meet a couple of times. We meet every week, but we actually do different things each time we meet. And so they get their ad campaign up and running. And then I’m here for questions and answers, and they learn how to do it themselves so they can run their ads themselves in the future. Those are the two ways I help people.

Kat

Okay, that sounds wonderful. So I would assume the difference is really if they learn to do it, eventually they could understand enough to do it themselves, correct? So somebody who has the goal of eventually doing it themselves. But those who don’t want to learn how to do it themselves, they can just hand it over to you. But you did before you, when we spoke as well, you did warn me not to start in December.

Carlene

Well, the fourth quarter is the busiest time of year for Facebook and Instagram. So that’s October, November, December because there are just more advertisers on the platform that time of year as well as their cost go up that time of the year. So when you would might pay $5 a day for a traffic ad in December, it’s almost double, like $10 a day for a for traffic ads. When 10 is probably too much, between 5 and 10 is perfect for a traffic ad, actually, where people are going to go click a link. It just costs more and there’s more competition in that fourth quarter because of the holidays.

Kat

So we would really want to start before, right? Whether we are learning with you or whether we’re having you do it for us, we need to start before that quarter because I’m sure a lot of authors want to sell their book in that quarter too. So maybe at that point you would understand enough and have the audience correct so that you can even be down at the bottom of the funnel and get your buyers, right? You don’t want to start with the awareness.

Carlene

Right. That’s correct.

Kat

Okay, that’s wonderful. So your group that we go to, your company that we go to is called desertdigitaladgroup.com, right?

Kat

Yes, desertdigitaladgroup.com.

Kat

So we will have that in the show notes. But was it here that I also signed up for your newsletter? Because your newsletter as well has tons of information if people want to get to know you as well.

Carlene

They can absolutely sign up for my newsletter there. I think that there’s still a pop up that’s coming up that is the budget worksheet. They can sign up for that budget worksheet. And then every Tuesday, I send a newsletter out with lots of information. It has ad information. It might even have some social media information. It might even have some freebies that I found online and people might be interested in going to get some freebies. I also participate in a lot of giveaways and bundles because I’ve got these things that help people, these ebooks, they’re not long, they’re eight pages long maybe, and they help people. So in bundles when they’re free, I always let my audience know that, hey, here’s a new bundle, you can sign up and only pick the ones you want to. You don’t have to get them all. Yes, you’ll get put on people’s email list when you do that, but you can opt out at some point if you find it’s just not interesting to you anymore. You don’t need it.

Kat

But what I love about your newsletter is it’s really making me pause and understand ads a little bit more and strategize more about when I’m ready to do it, when I need to start doing it, right? And not just waiting to the last minute or, oh, maybe I’ll throw out an ad because I’m learning to take a pause.

Carlene

It takes the planning, really. If you do a little bit of planning, it’s better. Just like your marketing plan. I mean, you’re you’re drawing up your quarters and you’re figuring out, What am I going to promote this month, this month, this month? You might not do a whole year in advance, but if you do a quarterly planning, that really is good enough. And then you have your social media woven into that plan. You know which days you’re going to post, what social post you’re going to do, whether it’s a carousel or a video, or if you’ve got a friend that you’re working with and you want to help promote their product, you can bring that into your planning stages, too. So yeah, there’s a lot to planning ads. And I just think if your audience takes a little more time, they’ll be much more successful.

Kat

Wonderful. Oh, my goodness. Thank you for coming on and talking to us about ads. They are like the thing we know we have to do, but makes all of us authors go… So thank you for helping us break it down a little bit more. I think that these tips are going to be very helpful to make people realize what goes into them and what they should expect because that’s also a good knowledge to have and not having too high expectations. But I will be putting your links in the show notes as well as the freebie that you have from my audience. So thank you so much for that as well. Thank you so much, Carlene, for coming on. It’s very helpful.

Carlene

Good. Good. I’m glad. And if anybody has any questions, they can reach out. I’ll give you my email too. And I do have a scheduler. If someone wants to schedule a free, complimentary call to talk about ads, definitely willing to do that. It will be helpful, and we can hash through some ideas before we even get into doing anything. But yeah, I would do some absolute free consults for your group.

Kat

Awesome. Thank you so much.