Hey everyone, Scott Austin here. And this week we have another guest, Chris Ertel. And I wanted him on because he's a well known expert in Meta ads in the e-commerce space specifically.

A lot of the brands that I work with start out doing, is they try to think what they think they can do. All of their demand gen through organic, right, and through their own marketing efforts and social and all that stuff. And the reality is, if you're really going to scale, you're going to have to bring in ads. So I want to bring in an ad expert to help us talk about how to integrate ads into your customer acquisition. So welcome to the podcast, Chris.

So, tell us a little bit about your Meta ads experience, especially with e-commerce. You know, how long you've been doing it and some of the, you know, the why should we listen to you, prove to us you're you're an expert?

I like the story there. But the one thing you just said that really pop for me is, you know, Meta can be a bitch. Their support sucks. And I think, you know, one of the key learnings anybody should take from this podcast episode, even though we're, you know, two minutes into it, is when you're dealing with essentially a monopoly, their support is going to suck because they don't need to have great support, right? Whether that be Google for anything they do or Meta for their ads or, Shopify, you know, which is basically, you know, in a monopoly for these small brands.

Yeah, yeah, it's well, and that's why, you know, having podcasts like this or any resource, you know, on the internet, you know, what a lot of people are gonna have to do as they get into a new platform, Meta ads being a platform, they're gonna have to learn that tool. And I would say the best way to do that is to not rely on their customer support, but to go out on the internet in general and find good content that gets you the information you need. Now that we're trying to do here kind of thing.

So, you know, let's, you know, talk about my audience here on this podcast. It's you know, it's all Shopify, right? So it's Ecom brands and they're small and growing. Right. It's, you know, not the Allbirds of the world kind of thing. It's the smaller brands. And what I like to do is try to give them a recipe on how they should get started with something. And then also, you know, once you're bigger and start scaling, how do you scale up?

So, you know, let's picture, you know, the 90% of, you know, Shopify stores that don't make a profit, right. Because, you know, there's a there's a head and a tail, definitely, in the Shopify ecosystem where a lot of people are making money, but there's a ton make it nothing because they're just getting started. What are those new brands, you know, when should they start thinking about advertising and how would they get started in that?

When we get started, you know, in e-commerce, when it's interesting, you say, yeah, they should start spending, you know, immediately. I don't disagree with you. However, in my experience in dealing with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of small e-commerce brands, you know, cash flow is is absolutely crucial for them. And there's always this hesitancy, right? You know, you don't want to spend money until you actually see it with a positive ROAS, but it takes time to get that going. So how does a small brand get started spending money on Meta, and how can they quickly determine that it's, you know, working for them and you know, ROAS positive and you know, they're not losing money on the spend.

So when you have a company that's not doing advertising, like the Sheetz, what do they think about about their business when making the decisions and what products do they pick based on those decisions that they're making? Like how should they look at the different types of ad products that they can deliver and make the decision of, here's what I'm going to try. Here's how I'm going to test that.

That's, you know, more UGC than influencer. Correct. So you just have people that you're paying like give me a 30-second or a 15-second, you know, video clip or is it images? What are you using the, the, the creators for? You give them the script for that or do you let them determine what what their messaging is?

Yeah, let's talk about content a little bit. You know, because I like the fact that you brought that up in this tactic of, you know, getting creators who are all over the place. It's so easy to find them. A bunch of different ways you can do that.

But can I do it? An ad campaign where I pick four ads and run it for a year? Or is it a lot more dynamic of a process where I'm, as you're saying, you're you're testing things out in my testing, different creative, different messaging, different people, different targeting and all that stuff. What can a small brand expect to be doing from a content creation standpoint to be successful in ads? You know, we're talking about video even though we didn't explicitly say the word video. Our most of our ads are going to be videos. Are they going to be, you know, images. You know, what does that content look like?

I love that you bring that up because, you know, every time I'm talking to my clients, you know, I want I want to tell a story for their brand. And that story is their story. It's the personal story. And I think that's true for probably 99.9% of, you know, new and small brands. And, you know, I would say more than 50% of them say they don't want to be the face of the brand. And then the other 50% that do don't do the work, but that's another story we'll get to in a second.

Yeah. But, you know, and I tell the ones who like, you know, I don't want to be the face of my brand. I'm like, great, then you will not be successful because that's the only differentiator. You really have here is, is that personal story and it's you. Yes.

So. So on that one, you're still saying, though, that a human being with a voice and a personnel and a real face is there, right. So you still need that personal thing. And, you know, in all the brands that I'm working with, they don't have enough revenue to hire, you know, a Flo from Progressive Insurance type of, you know, persona kind of thing.

Let's help the small brands for a second. Let's help the brand owner get comfortable with making a video, because what I always tell them is, you know, your expectations are probably, you know, you, the brand owners expectations are it needs to be TV, you know, commercial quality like it doesn't. Video is very, very forgiving. And you can be imperfect. You can be human. You can, you know, have a pause kind of thing. And that actually is a good thing, not a bad thing. Would you agree with that? And how what should people go around about creating their first founder ads?

I love the, jump on an empty stage. That's a great tip. And the other one, you said. And I just want to call it out because it's such a good one. And I see this true all the time. It's much easier to, as you, the founder, given the ad, if someone's filming you and asking you questions, even though the person filming you and the questions they ask are not going to be in the ad, it's easier for the person being filmed to talk to that person instead of putting a tripod up with their phone pointing at them in an empty room. It's just it makes it a lot more conversational and it makes it easier for the person to have that discussion and come across as much more natural.

So in this video ads, you know, I love the ideas you're generating here and giving people, you know, ideas on how to get started. How long are these ads, how much editing goes into these ads?

Makes sense. Makes sense. And do you have, like, a couple recipes on, you know, like for a script of a 15-, 20-second ad, like, are there openings, closings, you know, how would you recommend people think about structuring that time?

Yeah. Well, what I like to do is when we're exposing people to something new, we give them some ideas to start off with just to get that, you know, pump moving for them, priming the pump. And then as they start getting more comfortable with it, they can come up with their own ideas and start making it more authentic. Their brand.

But for example, you gave a great example a moment ago of the gummies and you said, hey, and you threw the gummies into the camera and said, these are gummies, blah, blah, blah. What would that ad finish with? Right? Do you say these are gummies? Here's why I made them. And then do you say, now, buy them now and for, you know, whatever. Or like just just do the gummy ad for me in 15 seconds. What would that look like?

Yep. Let. Yeah. Absolutely I, I love helping brands grow. Is is so much fun.

So we talked a bit about, you know, video. You just mentioned an image ad, right. And we were talking earlier about you get product catalog ads. So when you think about the the creative type here, you get there your product catalog ads, which is to take an images from your Shopify store. They're uploaded through the Meta system. We talked about video. Talk to me about image as well. What should those look like? Should they be, you know, because I'm going to assume they're more text heavy because there's not as much, audio going on kind of thing. So give me some of some pointers on what image ads should look like. And then I'd love to understand a little bit of a mix of how I should think about creating these different types of ads, like where should I be focusing my energy?

Makes sense. Now, on the the split between, you know, images and, video, how much, inventory or spend or how however you do it inside of of of Meta. How much should we be putting behind these two different types of creatives, images and videos?

Video? Yep. No, no. Make sense?

Now as we're putting out all these ads and testing things out, what sort of metrics are you looking at to determine success?

I want to start closing up here. You goodness, a lot of good information. You mentioned one tool. One of the big questions I have is, you know, in addition to the, you know, the Meta ads platform, what other tools should people think about needing to bring to their first ad efforts?

No, I don't. Know, I do not.

Well that's awesome, I, I love those tools. And, you know, you just invited people to, to contact you. How can they reach out to you if they want to want to talk to you some more?

Excellent. I'll include that in the show notes. Well, thanks for your time today, Chris. This is super interesting to learn how you guys are, are managing, you know, Meta ads and digging deep into the creative side of stuff. But thank you. We'll talk to you soon.