Facebook Ads in 2020, Features to Pay Attention to on Instagram & Organic Marketing that Works with Tony Rulli of Intentional Spark
Episode 414: Show Notes
Today on the show we have Tony Rulli, the co-founder, and CEO of Intentional Spark, an amazing paid advertising consultancy which we are proud to have the service of! He is the lead strategist for all their paid marketing campaigns which include Facebook ads, AdWords, web re-targeting, Instagram – the whole nine yards! As we said before, he is our ad guy, so Intentional Spark runs all the things behind-the-scenes for us which you, our listeners, see all the time!
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In this episode, we are diving in and talking about a bit of the mechanics behind how these platforms function regarding sales and building an audience. We’re breaking down and picking Tony’s marketing brain all about the future of Facebook and Instagram, and what the next hot features are that everybody should be paying attention to. We also dabble into a little bit of conspiracy theories and a short clip of some of our favorite shows. So this is a really good smorgasbord but it’s all things nerding out about marketing and it should be really enjoyable. Tony also shares a freebie at the very end all about how you can start getting set up with your Pixel, and a little bit on how to read an ad report, so definitely make sure you’re listening till the end so you can grab that link!
Without First Starting, You Can’t Get to Where Your Path is Leading You
Tony stands as a great testimony to the power of starting. In our lives and businesses it can get very challenging to act on new ideas or impulses that we have because of fear of leaving old things behind or fear of failure. It is so important to act on these ideas though. Tony left his corporate life and traveled for a year, which seems like the most counterintuitive thing a person who wanted a successful business could do, but it ended up leading him to start Intentional Spark. Importantly, Tony had the attitude of saying ‘yes’ to each opportunity that came his way and always practiced an openness that led him down the path to becoming an online advertising guru. This is a good reminder for all of us to take the pressure off ourselves because we can't know exactly where our paths will lead us. Abagail and Emylee have a similar story. They had seven businesses before their current one, and even the one they are busy growing has been through four iterations. You need to dabble and the lessons you learn along the way always teach you skills that you can apply in the future.
Paid Approaches to Scaling an Organic Five Figure Business
Tony speaks about how his best clients are ones who have done ads themselves in the past and those who have got some organic sales coming in too. These clients understand the cost to profit ratio, don’t get intimidated by the timelines, and have some data coming in to know what they can afford based on conversion rates. A friend of ours is currently sitting with a $50-60k business and a decent organic audience. So, we thought to ask Tony what place paid advertising would have in her process of scaling up and taking her business to six figures? Is it still possible to grow organically the way we did five years ago, through solid and continuous content, emails, opt-ins, and so on? We didn’t run any ads until we were sitting on $250-300k. Tony says that blog posts nowadays are more of a long-term SEO play, so you could end up posting vigorously for three months and not see any growth at all. Email lists and social media posting do have their place too but many platforms nowadays have throttled the organic reach that posts receive. A pro tip from Tony for doing it organically is to reach out and build authentic relationships. Share the content of people who have larger audiences than you and hopefully they will share your content too. If your post is doing better than usual, boost it to make sure that your whole audience is getting to see it.
New Features and the Future of Facebook and Instagram
If you’re utilizing Instagram or Facebook for ads, you must be wondering what the next big feature is and how you could use it. Tony believes it is IGTV, which got a lot of fanfare initially but didn’t quite take off. The platform has added some new IGTV features though such as paid advertising and its ability to pop up in a newsfeed, which could up the number of people who use it. It is a great idea to get on IGTV early while not many people are using it because then you get to be a pioneer if you figure out a strategy on it which works! Just watching somebody talk on IGTV can get boring fast though so make sure you figure out something to do that will keep people engaged while you deliver your content. Walk your dog, cook a meal, or spin a clay pot! People like Marie Forleo and Hillary Rushford got huge by using this type of strategy. There is also no harm in spreading your content more either so if you’re big on YouTube then just copy-paste your videos onto IGTV! What about the future of Facebook? Due to all the politics surrounding it at the moment, they have spent a lot on security so many good ads are getting weeded out with the bad ones. Also, Instagram is definitely the platform associated with young, aspirational influencers while Facebook is used by an older generation who post things like family-related content. Facebook owns Instagram and Instagram ads can be orchestrated through Facebook so there could be a time where it would make sense for the two platforms to just merge under the Instagram banner!
Are Our Phones Recording Everything We Say?
Many of us think we have experienced strange coincidences where we see a person IRL and a friend suggestion for them pops up later. Alternatively, we might have searched or even spoken about a topic which then gets suggested to us as an ad later. Is it all a big conspiracy theory or is there some truth to these suspicions? Are our phones recording everything we say? Abagail and Emylee talk about a game they used to play where they would deliberately converse about a product and then watch ads for it popping up a matter of hours later. Tony is far more suspicious that this kind of thing isn't happening because of how illegal it would be for companies to be recording everything we say. Mark Zuckerberg covers his mic and camera because he is so high profile that people have a vested interest in spying on him, but what about the rest of us?
Quote This
You just gotta start because you don’t know what path it’s going to take but as long as you’re open to what works, that’s the most important thing.
—Tony Rulli
Highlights
Without First Starting, You Can’t Get to Where Your Path is Leading You. [0:03:06.1]
Paid Approaches to Scaling an Organic Five Figure Business. [0:14:19.1]
New Features and the Future of Facebook and Instagram. [0:21:23.1]
Are Our Phones Recording Everything We Say? [0:42:45.1]
#TalkStrategyToMe [0:47:58.1]
Be intentional when sharing content.
Do engaging activities while speaking into the camera.
Use a tripwire funnel to recover ad spend and see which audience members are buyers.
Use Instagram stories for ads, especially opt-ins.
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Tony Rulli
Email: tony@intentionalspark.com
Tony graduated from Babson College with an undergrad in business management, and then went into corporate finance, orchestrating loans to companies with over $20 million in revenue. His wife Meg was a business management consultant and after five years the two were totally burned out. They decided to go traveling for a year and during this time they started a travel blog. They found that their blog was giving them access to many free stays at different places and the platform they had created was receiving around 20 000 visits per month. It was at this point that they started realizing the power of social media. After their travels, the pair knew they couldn’t go back to the office life and so they took a remote petsitting job at a ranch which paid them enough for gas and groceries. During this period, Tony started a spice delivery business called SpicePanda and learned about Facebook advertising to try and bring in some business. He got so good at understanding the algorithms that people began asking him for coaching, which he then ended up charging for after some time. The coaching side of things got so successful that Tony and Megan partnered and formed Intentional Spark, their ad management company.
KEY TOPICS
Starting, Opportunity, Organic, Paid approaches, Scaling, IGTV, Influencers, Facebook, Instagram, Spying controversy
