Ready to take over the world with some classic Facebook and Instagram ads? Jeffrey Katz, Founder of Quarter Muffin, is about to blow the gaff on how to revamp these platforms in 2023.

In the past 5 years working in the space, he’s helped nearly 100 companies.

🌟 Working on a Facebook client that's averaging 100-200x ROAS over the last few months.

🌟 When he first started freelancing back in 2013, the bulk of his clients would churn within a few months. Now the vast majority of his Facebook & Instagram clients stay with him for 2-3 years.

🌟 Increase in purchases for the online retail business to Facebook and Instagram by 1,323%.

🗣️: How to do qualitative research about the product and target audience for campaigns?

💬 Jeffrey: Good question! Social ads don't work like traditional ads. You have to shift the way you think. The way I approach this is to cast a wide net and trim. Begin by ranking your warm audiences which likely would look like previous purchasers, website visitors, post engagers, emails, etc. Those will be the low-hanging fruit that will be quick to yield sales.

"Researching" other audiences for new brands honestly doesn't do a ton of good. Traditional demographics such as 18-25 year-olds in New York are classified as cold audiences, and statistically speaking, aren't likely going to generate strong sales. With that being said, cold audiences are critical to fueling funnels so I recommend allocating a percent of any ad spend toward testing out cold audiences. For brands focused on organic, it's a different ballgame altogether.

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🗣️: Why do I get declining organic engagement?

💬 Jeffrey: Most social media platforms need to advertise to make money so they're in a tricky spot. The more they advertise, the more money they make, but simultaneously, the less organic reach you'll see. There's also only so much real estate to go around and when paid ads come into play, your organic reach sadly declines. The ratio of paid content to organic has shifted tremendously in the advertiser's favor in recent years, so now people on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn claim to only see roughly a 7% organic reach on average (hard to prove this number).

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🗣️: How can I get more followers on social media?

💬 Jeffrey: Hide them.

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🗣️: How do I determine the right platform for my ad?

💬 Jeffrey: This is a bit of a rabbit hole. The short answer is, to look for the path of least resistance where you can turn a profit.

The more buttoned-up response is, to start with the big players that offer a suite of tools for full funnel conversions (Google, Facebook, LinkedIn) and consider about what type of content you're presently making or are skilled at cranking out. If you're amazing at generating video content, I'd start with either Facebook (which includes IG) or YouTube. If your brand is something like a law firm, I'd go more in the direction of a text-based platform like Twitter (pre-Elon) or Google since it's both text-based and intent-based.

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🗣️: What are the usual goals/key objectives set in an ad?

💬 Jeffrey: This will be specific to your brand, but since 95% of my clients are eCommerce, I use "Sales." There are also instances where we just want more visibility so I'd recommend "Traffic." It all boils down to what type of brand, the types of assets you have, the rate in which you can swap out and test creative, the size of your audiences, etc.

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🗣️: How often should I post on social media?

💬 Jeffrey: As often as possible without annoying your target audience and customers. If you can post once a day, that's strong, but very established brands that have an engaged audience frequently post multiple times a day, and on some platforms, 5-10 Stories on top of the standard feed posts. The theory is that if the content's worth consuming, people will always want more of it. Many advertisers also hypothesize that social networks reward you (with increased reach) if you post frequently. I can confirm it's true in the best-case scenario, but for brands starting off, you likely won't be rewarded with additional views. If anything, you'll probably just end up stressed out.

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🗣️: How do I get started with social media marketing?

💬 Jeffrey: My first job out of grad school was at Google+, so you might say I got lucky (or very unlucky depending on your love for Google+). I think the best way is to embrace entrepreneurship and run social for your own brand. And if that's not your cup of tea, try offering friends or family assistance for free to build up some case studies, which is critical for landing clients or convincing brands that you have the skill set to make yourself worth their time. A lot of people say that they are savvy in social but very few people are good at it.

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🗣️: When it comes to Facebook Ads(boosted ones), we seem to get a lot of engagements but the accounts that engage, for some reason, appear to be like dummy accounts. Do you have any insights on this? On how we can avoid this kind of scenario?

💬 Jeffrey: I advise all of my clients to not boost. Paid social works really well when you're targeting warm audiences, which by definition are audiences that are likely to convert into sales (or whatever your campaign objective is). Boosting is great for targeting demographics such as 30-40-year-olds who like sneakers, which advertisers would classify as a cold audience.

Cold audiences are no bueno for converting prospective users into customers. Statistically speaking they're broad audiences and are critical for your funnel but not relevant in the beginning phase of an advertising campaign with low budgets (I recognize that I'm making an assumption here). To target warm audiences, you'll need to set up what paid specialists refer to as a "full-funnel," which in very simple terms consists of a top-of-the-funnel (awareness), a middle-of-the-funnel (retargeting), and a bottom-of-the-funnel (point of conversion).

Dollars in vs dollars out, a full-funnel will be a billion times more efficient, will generate sales, and will likely yield stronger post engagers that are actually interested in your offering. Also, to run a full-funnel, you'll want to do this on Facebook Business Manager, which can be a pain in the ass to configure if you haven't done it before. Happy to help or point you in the right direction if you need help standing this up.

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🗣️: How lengthy should a Facebook ad be? Is it better to keep it simple or to fill it with more info?

💬 Jeffrey: Depends on the ad. I personally think the copy is largely irrelevant if the image or video is strong enough, but a good offer (like free shipping) can also help. I work with people who go bananas for copy and it doesn't typically outperform short, hastily written ads. If you want my vote, I'd say keep it simple with an offer!

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🗣️: What's your general rule for creating an Ad either for FB or IG?

💬 Jeffrey: You want to go all in on testing out many ads as opposed to standing up several and calling it a day. When you find what works, optimize, optimize, and optimize! And then figure out which audiences work well with you ad and then optimize two more times. And then once you figure out which audiences perform well, see if you can find an image that outperforms your last winning image and optimize again. See where I'm going with this?