The Paid Traffic Tectonic Shift with Molly Pittman

In This Episode

• [03:58] – Molly Pittman talks about her memories of planning the Traffic and Conversion summit, including presenting on Facebook Messenger strategy in 2017.
• [07:15] – Molly describes the marketing agency she co-founded, Smart Marketer, which has an 8 million monthly paid advertising budget.
• [18:09] – Stephan and Molly discuss the importance of simplifying business systems and prioritizing 10x opportunities.
• [25:12] – Molly explains some paid social media marketing strategies for businesses, focusing on offer and target audience.
• [35:18] – Molly explains how to create authentic user-generated content (UGC) for marketing by asking open-ended questions that elicit detailed responses from customers.
• [42:46] – Molly differentiates lead magnets from courses and emphasizes the value of community and coaching in their paid social media services.
• [52:49] – Here’s how you can work with Molly Pittman.

Jump to Links and Resources

Molly, it’s so great to have you back.

Hey Stephan, thanks for having me back. I can’t believe it’s been almost ten years. That’s like 50 years in the digital world.

Yes. Each year is like a dog year of seven. So I agree. Some things we would have talked about back then have changed so drastically. I don’t even know. It’s like episode 37, and we’re into the 400s. Yeah, so much has changed.

Good on you for being consistent with the show. That’s harder than it looks.

Yes, it is. Every week, a lot of work. So, you used to be a co-host of the Perpetual Traffic podcast. Are you ever back on their digital marketer’s podcast? As a guest or maybe as a co-host?

Yeah, I think I was probably on in the last six to twelve months, so it’s always fun to hop back on there. Perpetual traffic was a big part of my career, and I got to share and see how a show like that goes down. But yeah, it didn’t make as much sense when I hopped on and started managing Smart Marketer. So we have the Smart Marketer podcast now if any of you guys want to listen to it. But yeah, Perpetual Traffic has been a huge part of my career. Really grateful for that experience.

Yeah. I also first heard of you by speaking at the Traffic & Conversion Summit. You’ve given some amazing presentations over the years at T&C.

Thank you.

Smart Marketer helps business owners or marketers figure out performance marketing and get the results that they want.

What would be your favorite topic session or keynote that you’ve done for them?

Good question. I think what’s cool about that event is that I started as a digital marketer as an intern. So, the first year I ever went to the Traffic & Conversion Summit, I worked at one of the booths. I had an orange T-shirt with the staff on the back. I was taking part in the whole event. What is this? What’s happening? It was cool to get to speak and be a part of marketing and planning that event. Just really great memories. I would say the year that I actually resigned from working there, I still was a part of that upcoming T&C because I’d already been in the mix helping to plan, and I did a presentation on Facebook messenger strategy. So, this was 2017.

This was such a huge topic in the market when it played more into the ad side of things and not just organic, and before Facebook slapped a lot of restrictions onto the channel. But that’s a memorable one because it was emotional for me, my role changing, and how I related to the event. It was really fun to share on the topic that everybody was excited about at that time. I’m a big sports person, and I love playing. Like, I love giving people actionable plays. It’s something I’ve really liked to build my whole career, and that was the first time that I actually did it. I think I gave five or seven messenger plays with the visuals, which I still do for different topics. So that taught me that lesson, too.

Cool. So, what sort of speaking gigs do you do now?

Last year, I did a lot of smaller masterminds, just where I could make a bit of a deeper connection with people. So that was fun. This year, I haven’t been speaking at events. I’ve turned it down because I have my wedding coming up, and I want to be fresh. 

We launched an agency side of our business a little less than two years ago, and it’s been really fun, but it requires Molly to be more focused on work and less networking Molly because you get it. It’s not just, “Okay, I’m going to go speak at an event.” There’s the travel, there’s a lot of energy. In the end, it takes about a week out of my schedule, which was worth it and has been in the past, but now I’ve had to rein that back in a little bit. 

We’re having a live event called Smart Marketer Live in October. It’s sort of a non-marketing conference. It’s going to be about 500 people. You guys can check it out: smartmarketer.com/live. It’s going to be really fun. 

We’re rethinking what the marketing industry is; we put out a bunch of surveys. What do you guys want out of conferences? Because the marketing community wants to gather, but I think they’re past, let’s sit in a hotel without windows and listen to people sort of speak at me. So, we’re really doing a new take on that.

Awesome. So, what exactly is Smart Marketer? Is it the opposite of a dumb marketer? What’s the value prop?

Yeah, Smart Marketer. We do a few different things, which is fun. I mean, we’re really here to help business owners or marketers figure out performance marketing and get the results that they want. So part of our business is more training. We have courses and mentorships on the main skill sets that you need in digital marketing. We do a lot of live classes, which is really fun. So, I train my traffic person, the live mentorship I teach. It’s not just a course on paid ads.

There’s a Slack group with our team in it, and I’m on calls with them every week. That feedback loop that I think a lot of people need is not just learning but also applying it. How does this work in this particular scenario and really getting guidance on that? We have the training side, podcast, and all of that. And then, we have a marketing agency where we provide services for businesses. So, paid advertising, email marketing, and creative services. So that’s really fun. It’s made us smarter in terms of the courses. We have so many more use cases now we can put forward to help people.

So, how much of your client’s money do you spend on paid advertising per month on the agency side?

Oh, so I just got this number back. We are teetering on about 8 million a month right now.

That’s pretty awesome.

Yeah. All direct responses are results-based. It’s really fun.

So, what do you mean by results-based? How does that look?

Well, for example, I was at a Facebook event at their New York office last week, and they were speaking to two different groups, people like us that are more performance, direct response. We need to see a certain ROAS to keep the company afloat. And then you have huge businesses that set marketing budgets every quarter, and their goal is to spend that money. Their success metric might be CPM or how many people they reached. So we tried some deals with companies that are more in that mode, and it wasn’t as fun for our team. They want to get the results. 

And how did you end up partnering up with Ezra Firestone?

After I left Digital, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. That was the only thing that I knew I would not work for someone else again. So, for a few years, and when I saw you in Australia, that meant consulting, I had some ad clients. I had two or three people on my team. I basically had a small agency, but I really missed being a part of a team that’s just core to who I am, even working out. It’s like, I love CrossFit, not even because of the workout, but because there’s a group of people there.

It’s just I function better that way. Ezra and I had been friends for a long time since I was an intern; I worked on the first product he produced at Digital Marketer. So I got to meet him. I think I was like 21, and he was like 24. This was a long time ago. And so Ezra had me come up to New York and just kind of feeling out what was going on. And he’s like, “Molly, I’ve got Smart Marketer, and I’m not giving it the time and energy that it needs. I’d love to bring you on 50-50 business partners, and I think we’ll do more together.”

So that’s how that started five or six years ago now.

One thing I believe is that our business partners, our spouses, even our children, and our parents—we’ve all chosen each other prior to incarnation—that this is all kind of a rigged game. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on that.

Fun is the goal, so we know that if we’re having fun, we’ll be successful and enjoy the journey.

Oh, my gosh, absolutely. I mean, first off, I’m a huge proponent of any sort of partnership because doing anything by yourself is just not as fun. And that’s one of our big mantras at Smart Marketer. We say fun is the goal, so we know if we’re having fun, we’re going to be successful and enjoy the journey. We’re not about this hustle-grind mindset; then love is the way. So, if you’re ever questioning how you should do something, it should be in a loving way. I think that’s what makes it fun to work with other people. 

I totally believe that we have contracts, and we’re working closely with the people we’re working closely with or in families. We have definitely done that in some other shape and form in the past.

Awesome. So, what do you think is your next big goal, chapter, or level in this video game called life?

Good question. I recently added a new component to my life that’s been really fulfilling. I grew up in Kentucky and moved away for 12 or 13 years. I just moved back a couple of years ago, and I started a dog rescue. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I love animals. I knew I would be working in some capacity with saving dogs. It’s always been on my mind, and it was just the right time.

We bought a farm. I now have this business skill set. I’ve got the business community that’s willing to help. So we converted our barn into dog kennels, and then I partnered with an existing rescue that was having trouble fundraising. Last year, we saved 2500 dogs from euthanasia. It’s again a team effort. Right? The ladies that I work with, with the rescue, we all have our strengths. I basically tap the business community for big donations, which they get a write-off for and feel good about.

We have a whole foster network built, and it’s given me a different energy source that I’ve never been able to obtain through business, which I think I was looking for a business to give me. And it just wasn’t its role, and it’s made everything in my life have more purpose, if that makes sense. I know that’s a word thrown around a lot, but it’s just a completely different energy source that actually makes my business and personal life better because many people might hear that, and they’re like, “Oh, I don’t have time for something like that.” But I do get so much more out of it than I put in. So, I think furthering that mission is on my mind. Obviously, growing Smart Marketers, we are not in the mindset that scale is always desirable. You hear that in our industry, it’s like scale, scale, scale, scale, scale. Your business and a lot of people.

We are always looking to grow, serve more people, and see what happens with that business.

I’ve five times my revenue and the same amount of profit as I did five years ago when I was five times smaller, but now I have five times the problems. Right. And that’s not always the case, but we are always looking to grow and serve more people and see what happens with that business.

That’s cool. Did you get at Google Ad Grants? Are you doing Google Ads on the dog rescue and other stuff like that to raise donor money?

Okay. What’s interesting is I have barely applied any digital marketing skill sets to that nonprofit at all. The reason is that Kentucky is a rough place for animals from a legal standpoint and because of how humans treat animals. We rescue them and house them here, and then they’re transported up north to be adopted. So, we partner with other rescues. Right now, until we decide if we’re going to build out a whole adoption system here in Kentucky, our main model is going to business owners that are already in the Smart Marketer ecosystem and incentivizing them to give us five-figure plus donations, which is more than helped us get to where we are now. But, yeah, we’ll be adding on. We don’t even have a website for our rescue, so those components will be added later.

Yeah, this just popped into my mind. I think it’s an interesting model or idea for you to apply to your dog rescue. One of my clients is the Yosha Law Firm. Brandon Yosha is Jay Abraham‘s cousin. I met Brandon through Jay. He was referred and has been a client for several years now. One initiative that Brandon put out there and was very successful with was Norah’s Law, named after this little girl, Norah.

I think she was three years old when she lost her life when a vehicle, I think it was a truck, did not move over, and her mom and the child were in the car, stranded on the shoulder with emergency lights on. And in some states, you have to get over a lane to make room, but not in Indiana. It was only required for emergency vehicles and wasn’t an emergency vehicle. So what Brandon did as part of taking on this case for Norah’s parents, which they did get a really large settlement from it, but one of the initiatives that Brandon took on, just on his own volition, was to get the law changed so that it wasn’t just emergency vehicles that had to get a lane over and it was successful. So, that was Norah’s law that he pushed through. I wonder if maybe there’s an equivalent for you in terms of the state of Kentucky, where it is really tough on animals; maybe you could get the law changed.

Yeah, it’s a great idea. Definitely something we could work on, for sure.

Yeah. With Norah’s law, they had a separate website. He got on TV and talked about it.

Amazing. I love it. New project.

Yeah.

A difficult part of this and running a business is I also have to always accept that I’m never doing everything I can, but that’s okay, or I wouldn’t have a life. Someone asked me yesterday, like, “Molly, I want to do what you’re doing, but how does that work, even with the number of hours you have in a day?” And I was like, “two things. Number one, you have to trust other people to help you and have help. And number two, you have to accept you’re not going to do everything right now.” And, yeah, it’s tough.

I’m reading a book called 10x Is Easier Than 2x. Have you heard of it? It was written by Dan Sullivan, the founder of Strategic Coach, and Ben Hardy. The premise is it’s easier to 10x your business than 2x because there are infinite ways to double your revenue, your profit, your client numbers, and all that, but there are very few ways that you can 10x it. So if you give up all the 2x opportunities, tasks, projects, etcetera, set those aside and then only take on 10x opportunities, it will free you up to really leapfrog and get multiple levels up in that video game.

You have to trust other people to help you and have help.

I love that.

I don’t know how that resonates with you, but as an example, if you could think for a second, what could I do to 10x Smart Marketer or 10x the dog rescue? What would that be?

Well, it’s fun. We just had this conversation earlier today as a leadership team. So this is on my mind. We’re at a pivotal point. A lot of businesses come to probably every 5 million in revenue. You hit this point where the systems you have, the way you’ve been doing things, no longer serve where you want to get, and there’s chaos. The big message today was, how do we simplify this? Essentially, what are you saying? What are the things we can quit doing? Maybe it helps a little bit, but they’re more 2x. What are the things we could do that are more 10x? What we identified are two things.

One is that our creative service and the agency are the most simple services you can provide because you’re handing over a set of ad creatives. It’s much less complex than a complete paid media service or email marketing or something that has so many pieces to it that it makes it harder to scale as a service. So let’s go all in on that versus trying to sell all of these services a la carte. Let’s then lump the other ones together as more of a performance deal where someone comes to us, and they’re not paying us for each channel, but they truly get a marketing team if you want to think of it like that. And then, instead of paying us a huge retainer every month, it’s some sort of percentage deal based on their revenue. So I feel like for Smart Marketer, that’s what’s next. That’s what we’re going to try and really try to focus less on the smaller things that work for us. But, like you’re saying, don’t have as much impact.  

For the the dog rescue, maybe something like you mentioned about trying to change things at the source is huge. I also think there’s just, I don’t know if it’s a marketing campaign or what it looks like, but changing the mindset of humans on rescue dogs and how rescue dogs act. If we could change that mindset and increase the number of people who are willing to rescue a dog versus buy from a breeder, most of these problems wouldn’t exist in the first place.

Showing real customers using and talking about how your product has changed their lives is the best creative you could have on a paid social platform. Share on X

Another one, which we’re working on, we working with the Spay Neuter Clinic right now, of course, is like, how do we prevent there from being more dogs? So if we could change the legislation, if we can spay and neuter and decrease the number of dogs, and then if we can change consumer behavior, hopefully, all of that would even out to dogs don’t have to be euthanized because a lot of the conversations I have, people say, “Oh, I bought a dog from a breeder because I have a kid or things that”, sure, logically, that kind of makes sense. But if you dug in or did a little more research, it’s like, “Wow, there is any type of dog in rescue or any scenario that you are in, there is a dog that would be perfect for you.”

Yeah. It’s just a crazy out-there idea that just popped into my head. What if you partnered with a dog whisperer? You know, somebody who’s famous? Who’s that? Cesar Millan or Tamar Geller? She wrote her beloved dog. She had her own TV show and so forth on training dogs. What if you had an online free dog training and discipline course that came with an adoption? So you get the course for free if you adopt a rescue dog, but you normally would pay for that course, so you can pay for it. I’m just riffing here. I’m just thinking out loud.

Yeah. And then they get that education.

Yeah. It’s an education not just from some random person who knows things about dogs but from one of the top people in the world in terms of dog training.

Yeah. I love that. That’s a great idea. And exposure to their audience, too.

Yeah. Tamar Geller was a guest on my other podcast, my personal development podcast called Get Yourself Optimized. If you’d like this idea, I can make an intro. I don’t know Cesar Milano, but I love Tamar Geller. She’s amazing. I actually prefer her approach to dog training over Cesar.

Yeah, that would be amazing. Thank you.

Yeah.

I think just more B2B connections. A lot of our clients now are big pet supplement brands or pet education companies because they hear me talk about dogs, and they’re like, “Okay, I trust Molly with marketing, and she knows the dog space, and that’s where most of our fundraising comes from, too.” So any connections like that are really helpful.

Yeah. And, of course, for our listeners who have connections with pet food brands and anything like that.

Yeah. I just had Marshall Morris, who started I Heart Dogs, one of the biggest media properties in the pet space, on our podcast. We’ve had some back-and-forth, and it’s like, those are the perfect relationships for dog rescue.

Awesome. All right, let’s talk about Facebook and Instagram and how to get more performance out of your ads or our listener’s ads. Maybe they’re not even running Facebook ads. Maybe they’re thinking that Google is the place to spend their advertising money. What would you tell somebody, depending on where they are in that buyer journey? Maybe at the very beginning, not even spending any money on advertising. They’re already spending money on ads but don’t know they’re getting the best performance. The ROAS might only be 2x, and who knows what’s possible. What advice would you give to these different folks?

We’ve got to start with offers that allow us to build the relationship more.

If you are spending on Google and that’s working, especially with search, that might be the best place for you to spend those initial marketing dollars, right? Because it’s people who are searching for your brand name or searching around terms that relate to your product. That is the warmest audience you could get in front of. They have that intent, but there’s only so much scalability there. So that’s when these paid social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok all come into play because it’s infinitely more scalable now; it’s a bit more difficult because you have to get in front of someone who has never heard of you as not searching these terms. Maybe we know something about them like they’re a mom or pet owner. We kind of know they’re a certain avatar, and then we’re going to try to get them to convert to buy our product. It’s a much more difficult game but also a much more scalable one.

Even our really big clients, let’s take a client spending $100,000 a day on advertising. They’re spending 90,000,  90% of that on Facebook or YouTube. That’s driving the cold traffic. Yes, it’s converting, and yes, it’s hitting our performance metrics. Then, Google’s just there to sweep up all of the low-hanging fruit. 

So, I think that’s important to understand first, especially since you do have more of a search-based audience here. These things are not the same, and I would never want you to look at them. This isn’t what you were saying. This is just what I hear commonly out in the market, “Oh, well, Google converts better than Facebook.” And it’s like, “Well, I sure hope it does.” It’s a completely different ballgame. That’s like someone opening up the phone book and going to Yellow Pages and looking for a plumber versus, “Okay, I’m driving down the road, and I see a billboard,” that’s paid social. Yellow Pages is Google. So that’s important. 

Now, if this interests you when it comes to paid social media, and this is different and more important than when you’re doing search-based stuff, is the offer everything? So what you’re asking them to do on the first engagement with them, the first time they’re seeing an ad from you, that is almost as important as the rest of the campaign, right? If that’s not dialed in, it doesn’t matter, the tactical side of what you’re doing on Facebook. So usually, for more of an information business, basically anyone who’s not selling physical products online probably needs to start with a lead magnet or a very low dollar offer that allows you to start building that relationship.

For an information business, start with a lead magnet or a low-dollar offer to build relationships on Facebook. Share on X

We can’t show up with these high-priced courses or services, or a lot of SaaS companies want to come out and be like, “Hey, sign up for my monthly subscription; you’ve never heard of me before, but nice to meet you.” That doesn’t work in that scenario. We’ve got to start with offers that allow us to build the relationship more. If you are selling physical products, sending traffic directly to your product page is okay. If they’ve never heard of you, just because of the nature of physical products, they’re easier to understand and make a rash decision. So, offer is everything; whether you’re just getting started or whether you’re looking to scale, you have to make sure that strategy is right. 

I was just on with a student. He’s selling a membership for a guitar program, which is really cool. He’s got a few hundred people in a membership learning to play guitar. He’s like, “Molly. I try to go out to cold traffic with meta ads, but no one buys my membership.” And I’m like, “Buddy, no one wants a membership, right?” I have an app on my phone that tells me which monthly memberships I pay for or what recurring billing I have. That’s a big enough pain point in humanity right now, and there are apps to help you keep track of it. We have to start with something different. We have to give them free tutorials, or you need to sell a low-dollar, low-dollar challenge or products. So again, that’s really important.

When it comes to the actual ad campaign side of things, AI has made media buying so much easier. When we were here in 2016 talking, the strategy that I outlined was probably very sophisticated in terms of what needed to be set up to make something like this happen. AI and Facebook collect billions of data points they collect every day. It simplified a lot of things. However, Facebook still needs input, which applies to Google. 

So, with Facebook, you give it a really good offer and avatar-based avatar focus when you’re starting out, right? A lot of people want to hop into a platform like Meta. All right, I’m selling guitar training, and I’m just not going to select my target.

Offer is everything; you have to make sure that your strategy is right.

I will use broad targeting or Advantage+ because I’ll let AI do it. It’s not that smart yet. We still need to be able to go in. There’sThere are still interests and Facebook we can target. There are millions of them, and we can highlight that market. A good example of this is a client who came to us. They’re called Sweetflexx, and they have these leggings with resistance bands built in. It’s really cool.

I’d never seen a product like this before. They were first a student. They had such a unique product that, with love to them, and they know this pretty poor advertising, they were able to scale up to $30 to $50,000 a month on meta every month, doing pretty well. Then they handed us the reins, and they had been focusing on, “Okay, we’re selling leggings, so why don’t we sell this to people who are into fitness? They care about this.” It was working okay, but it wasn’t focused enough, and it wasn’t actually the Avatar that would buy their product. 

Upon seeing it for the first time, we looked at it and said, this is perfect for moms. You burn 255 more calories daily by wearing these leggings just with regular movements. That’s perfect for someone who doesn’t have a lot of time and might be looking to get in better shape. Will that change us? Launching and then scaling campaigns that were specific to that mom Avatar? That was the difference between $30,000 in profitable spending a month and $500,000 in a month in just three or four months. 

So, people who are so important to this, and I could go down a really big rabbit hole here. I don’t know how deep you want me to go, but those are the two biggest things: your offer and the group of people in which you’re serving. And those are very different from search marketing. Even at the Facebook event last week, they said creative is your new target, which I don’t necessarily agree with. Still, basically, what they’re saying is the more that you speak to a certain group of people, your ad copy, your creative, and your offers, the better this is going to perform versus just throwing it out into the universe. So those are our big focuses right now.

Well, congratulations on the success with Sweetflexx. I’m curious to hear more about maybe going down that rabbit hole a little bit more.

Yeah, it’s just the paid media rabbit hole in general.

Your ad copy, creatives, and offers will perform better if you speak more to a certain group of people.

Yeah. So, for example, where did they get their biggest bang for their buck? Was it with Facebook? Was it with Instagram? What did they need? And what did you and your team need to do in order to jump that gap going from? What tests did you run that worked and didn’t work so you could correct the course and improve as you went along?

Yeah, great. It was actually pretty simple. These are the five steps that we use for everything that hasn’t changed since 2016. But I’ll structure it this way just so it’s easy for you guys to consume. So we always start with the offer, which was easy for them. They’re selling a physical product. 

We can send it right to the product page. Nothing really needs to be developed there. And if you guys go to Sweetflexx’s website, it’s horrible. They know this. We’re like, “Guys, this doesn’t even show how cool the product is. All of that can be improved, but okay, we’ve got a product page to work with.” Then we go to targeting avatars. Who would actually buy this product? Who are the pockets of people, and how do we reach them? So that’s when we decided, “Oh, moms.

We were looking at survey data from their email list. So many moms were buying the product. That’s a no-brainer. It’s a huge market. It’s easy to identify on Facebook. It’s something Facebook knows about people. It’s not like you have eczema or something personal to someone. That would be really hard to identify with on Facebook.

It’s like you’re a mom. That’s a pretty easy identifier. There are hundreds of interests and ways to reach those people on Facebook. So we’re like, great. We’ve got an offer, we have an audience, and we know how to find them. Okay, what’s next? So then next. And this is a mix of copy and creative, which are steps three and four, but still. And this has been the trend for a while.

Showing real customers using and talking about how your product has changed their lives is the best creative you could have on a paid social platform. It looks real when it is authentic. It’s believable. People don’t feel like they’re being sold to. So what we did was build an ambassador program. This is something we do, and all of our businesses and our clients have. An ambassador is not an influencer. An ambassador is someone who actually uses your product, physical or not. 

So, we sent it out to the customer list. “Hey, we’re launching this ambassador program. If you feel comfortable on camera and love Sweetflexx leggings, we would love to have you as an ambassador. We’ll incentivize you with a free product.” If they love your product, they’ll definitely love the free product. Then we send them very specific instructions. 

So we send them a camera in the mail. You don’t have to do that, but we just want it to be nicer and of higher quality, so send them very specific instructions. Now, this is not a script, right? These are open-ended questions that, when they are answered, give you the footage that you need because it’s not about whether these are the best leggings in the world. I love them. They’re the best leggings I’ve ever had. No, that’s what a lot of people think UGC or user-generated content is. And they’re like, “Molly, it doesn’t work.” And I’m like, “No offense, that’s the most generic.” It sounds like an ad, right? And how many times, as a consumer, every day do you see a business saying, this is the best, it’s the best quality? Right. It’s also just speaking to the features and not the benefits. 

So we ask questions like, “What was your life like before you consumed this product as a mom?” Well, that opens them up to give you all the juicy details that are going to call in that avatar in the first place. “Oh, it was chaotic. And I have four boys; their names are this and this, and they’re these ages. And I was trying to get a workout in, but Joe has soccer practice,” and all of those details that we think don’t matter, but they are the story that actually attracts the right audience, and that makes it feel like an authentic ad because it is. We ask them things like what life is like afterward. “Well, now I’m burning all these calories. My legs look different than they have, and I don’t even have to go to the gym. I’m just being a mom.” And then we say, ‘If you were to recommend this product to another mom friend, what would you say?” When you say that, that allows them to take that, like, “Ooh, I’m creating a marketing ad right now. Hat off.”

And gets them into just, like, organically. What would you say to a friend? So you get great footage from that, and then those are the base sources of what becomes our copy and our creative. That’s not everything we do, but it is the first, most scalable, and highest converting thing. And what we’ve moved to now in the last six months is less face-to-camera. Consumers are catching on to that ad because everybody’s doing UGC now, and it’s really hard to edit. So say there’s a piece of it, Stephan, that’s really good that you want to pull out and maybe test is the opening hook. It’s really hard to edit that when it’s face-to-camera. So what we’ve started to do now is have them actually record more of like B-roll footage.

An ambassador isn't an influencer; they are someone who genuinely uses your product. Share on X

So one of the moms had her kids jumping on her back, then she pushed the stroller, and then she recorded voiceovers of the questions she answered. And that is number one; it looks more authentic now because it’s more like how people are consuming videos based on TikTok. More watching people than listening to them talk to you face to the camera. And then we could launch 20 variations, right? And we’re able to dice it up without that issue of, “Well, that’s not the words that are coming out of that person’s mouth.” So that’s what we did with Sweetflexx. We only built probably two or three of those. One started to take off.

We were in a whole new market. That’s a huge market that will buy cool things. The product is absolutely exceptional and novel. We’re not just trying to sell leggings. We’re selling leggings in a way they have never seen before. It’s still doable if you don’t have a novel product, but a novel product really helps. Then, we’re showing footage and telling stories about the life of that particular avatar.

That’s what led us to that place. So we scaled until they ran out of stock, and now it’s just trying to keep the inventory in place and encouraging them to launch new products. So we have other things to sell, of course. And now, we’re also going out to other avatars. So yeah, those are the steps. Copy and creative are three and four. Five is campaign structures. So that’s tactical. How are you setting up the campaigns? This has changed a bit in the last few years.

Now there’s a website plus shop, now there’s an Advantage+, you still have your old school campaigns on Meta, ABO or CBO. We’re using a mix of all of them, depending on the business. However, that tactical side isn’t as relevant as it was in 2016 when we would have to set up 150 ad sets to run the right test. It’s like that’s just not needed anymore.

So, how many ad sets, tests, and things are you normally setting up for your clients?

Depends on what you’re doing. You know, with an Advantage+ campaign. There’s one ad set because, essentially, what you’re doing with that is letting Facebook’s AI select your targeting. You’re giving them the offer; you’re giving them the creative copy. It’s very similar to Google PMax and effective, especially if you already have data in your account. If you’re starting out, that’s not where I would start because it’s just too broad. Facebook doesn’t know enough about this, but that type of campaign only has one ad set. 

Now, even if that’s working in an account, we’re not just going to rely on that. We want more scale. So, we’re also setting up old-school direct response campaigns. We’re usually using ABO. We launch with five to ten ad sets and interest groups mixed together. Lookalikes are making a comeback, and then, based on the results, we will start to scale and add more ad sets with the winning ads, bump them into new ad sets that have new targeting options that are similar but different, and use that to vertically scale that campaign.

Cool. You said lookalikes are making a comeback. When did they go away, and when did they come back?

Ooh. After iOS 14.5, Facebook took a huge data hit. They just weren’t as powerful because there wasn’t as much source data for them to be based on. I’m not sure why, but we’re seeing stronger performance with them. In the last six to twelve months, they’ve made a comeback. What’s cool about lookalikes is back in the day, it used to be 1, 2, or 3% lookalikes that would convert the best. We’re finding that we can go all the way up to ten in many accounts, depending on the amount of data they have. And those bigger ones are working, too.

From courses to memberships to SaaS, starting with an a la carte purchase and then upselling to a subscription model can be highly effective. Share on X

So, yeah, we’re using a lot of lookalikes nowadays.

That’s cool. So, what do you find works better as an entry point for a funnel or buyer journey? Is it the lead magnet? Is it a masterclass or webinar? Does it just depend on the product or the service? What might it be? What are you finding these days?

Yeah, it really depends. I mean, first, it’s the type of business I talked about earlier. If your e-commerce and product is less than, say, $300 or $400, you can get a long way with Sweetflexx. That’s still the only offer style. We’re running direct to the product page now. If you’re selling anything else, then, of course, it depends on what you’re selling. 

Low-dollar entry point offers do work. Whether you’re selling a course or some sort of membership or SaaS, having that a la carte purchase and then trying to sell them onto a subscription does work.

You’ll usually need to put a lead magnet on that at some point to scale it. So you’re not just going direct to purchase the whole time. But like a Smart Marketer, we use many different front-end styles promotionally, so more to our warm audiences. When we’re in a launch, we’re still doing webinars. They still convert. You don’t have the live show-up rate that you did ten years ago. We just offer a replay and some scarcity around the replay. That works wonderfully for us.

Video series don’t work as well as they used to for us. I think it’s because consumer consumption behavior has changed significantly over the last 10 to 15 years. A lot of people want it now. They don’t want to wait for a video to be dripped out in a few days, and then you’ve just kind of lost their attention. So, in a lot of those scenarios, when we want to do it more evergreen, we just position it as free online training. Instead of breaking them up into multiple videos, we just give it all to them right in the moment. 

Low-dollar entry point offers do work.

Then, of course, we’re still running simple lead magnets. What are assets that someone would find valuable and that they’ll be willing to give you their contact information in exchange for, and you get to build a relationship with them?  So, for us at Smart Marketer, our best lead magnets right now are every year we analyze all the ads we ran from the previous year and create a swipe file and an analysis where people can get inspiration and learn. That’s our ad report. That is our cheapest cost per lead because it’s most valuable to our audience. Then, they go into a funnel where we try to sell them our ad course. We also have that for email. We have something called the e-commerce growth map that’s very specific to e-commerce businesses. That hour-long training with Ezra shows exactly how he builds an e-commerce business. Then, we upsell our e-commerce course.

So, it’s a nice mix. It really depends. It changes if you’re trying to get someone on a subscription because that’s a different mindset, as we talked about earlier. But lead magnets low dollar offer. Our main entry points to cold traffic with paid ads for us for non-EcOM businesses.

Would you say that courses have jumped the shark now that the pandemic is over and people are back to their normal lives? They don’t have all that time to consume course content, and they’re just over it. And now you have to give them some sort of group coaching program or program that feels much more than just a self-paced, on-demand course.

100%. Because even if you know you have novel information in your course, the thought is going to be because information is so saturated now. I could get this on YouTube, even if that’s not the case. That’s what they believe because information is so readily available on almost every topic now. So it has to be some sort of experience that you’re selling. Absolutely. Maybe not for cheaper things, but at least if you’re selling something more than $500.

Yeah. So, how does Smart Marketer differentiate the courses and make them more like experiences?

So, our experiences we call mentorships. So we teach them to live a few times a year. So, like, train. The traffic person that I mentioned earlier is the one that I teach. They get dripped out course information, but there’s also a community and feedback loop, which I think a lot of people need for implementation. So, we have a Slack group, and we have weekly calls. So they’re not just learning; they’re doing it every week. And then they have me and my team there to help them get unstuck. We found that the community element, the coaching element, is what people are really willing to pay for.

We found that the community and coaching elements are what people are willing to pay for.

What are the typical roles that you’re finding with your clients? And what would our listener probably be getting? Because they’re not using you or your team, they’re probably not getting as good of ROAS. What’s typical, and what is the minimum threshold that you look for for your team’s performance?

Yeah, I really like this discussion because I think this is a big misconception about paid and research-based ads; again, there’s only so much volume. So, of course, you want to see as high an amount of ROAS as possible, right? Okay, 10,000 people are searching for this every month. I want to maximize my profit on that. I understand that paid social is a completely different ballgame. 

So, first off, I’ll give you a ROAS calculator that people can use. It’s just a formula in Google Sheets that they can input information about their business, and it will spit out what we would recommend the ROAS be. But this is something that we hear with that swipe file a lot, for example, that we give out because we put the ROAS next to the ad, and a lot of people are like, “Why would I listen to you?” These ads have a 0.8 ROAS, or they have a 1 ROAS. That’s horrible. I can get a 10 ROAS.” And with paid social media, if you are getting 10 ROAS, you have a serious problem. 

You should not use paid social media to put in a dollar and make five more dollars on top of the funnel. You should use paid social media to acquire as many customers as possible at break-even or with a small profit margin based on your repeat customer rate and lifetime value so that you can truly grow your business. So that is a shift that we have.

When many clients come on, we crunch their numbers and say, “Hey, based on what you’re doing, this is the point of profitability for you. What is your risk tolerance?” This should be looked at almost like an investment portfolio. How into the negative are you willing to go? When do you need to see the profitability? Because the longer we push that out, the more customers we’re able to acquire. Then we do a promotion, and then they come back and buy, and this thing just grows exponentially. It’s how we’ve seen our clients go from zero to $80 million a year because they have this smart investment strategy mindset when it comes to this way of thinking. And it’s per funnel. So we might land, we might talk to a client, and they need to make a little bit of money on the first sale, and that’s okay.

But they accept that that is limiting their market share, that’s limiting the amount of customers they can acquire. And that’s okay. For some clients, it might be a two ROAS, for example. Okay. That’s what we need. We still need a little bit of profitability. Some of our clients are just so ready to scale that a 0.5 ROAS is really good for them because that’s the difference between 500 customers acquired today and 5000 customers acquired today. And they have the whole customer journey built out so that they know on day 45 they’re making their money back at a much greater scale than they would have with the other mindset.

If you’re not waking up and excited about what you’re doing, rethink it.

So it really depends on the business. It depends on their repeat customer rate. It depends on what they’re selling. Anyone with a subscription, for example, even with supplements, they’re running on much lower ROAS at the top of the funnel because they know their numbers. We have clients that are selling maybe a $10,000 health optimization package, and that’s the only thing that they sell well. They might need 5 ROAS or 7 ROAS because that’s the only profit that they’re going to generate from that person. So anyway, it’s just so different. And I just don’t want listeners with paid social.

A lot of people look at something and think, “Oh, that’s a bad ROAS. I don’t want that.” But it’s actually way more about the numbers in the business and the strategy for growing that business.

Yeah, that makes sense. All right, well, I know we’re at a time here. If you had one last nugget of wisdom that you wanted to share that we haven’t discussed already, what would it be?

Have fun with what you’re doing. If you’re not waking up and really excited about what you’re doing, rethink it. There are many different ways to use the skill sets we acquire. Right? We have rare, interesting, and impactful skill sets in this industry. And it doesn’t have to be applied in the way that maybe you’re doing it right now. Maybe it’s a nonprofit; maybe it’s another business. Maybe it’s working for someone else. Maybe it’s getting into a market that you’re actually interested in.

This stuff applies across the board. My fiance opened a restaurant here in our hometown about a year ago, and it’s just rocking because we spend $10 a day on Facebook ads. It’s so simple. Just remember that your career isn’t just the skillset you acquire; it’s the way in which you use that, using it in ways that are fun and interesting to you and working with people that you love, as we talked about earlier, because it makes the biggest difference.

Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, Molly, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, strategies, and thoughts on not just Meta-advertising but also business and life. So, if our listener wants to work with your agency team or learn from you by perhaps taking one of your mentorship courses, where should they go?

Yeah, smartmarketer.com. There’s a courses tab. There’s a work with us tab. Also, listen to the podcast. Yeah, everything’s at smartmarketer.com. And thanks, Stephan, for having me back again.

Awesome. Well, thank you, Molly. Thank you, listener. Make it a great week, and reveal some light in the world. We will see you in the next episode. I’m your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.

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Your Checklist of Actions to Take

Start with the right offer—whether it’s a lead magnet, low-dollar product, or main offer—and dial it in first before moving to ads.

Identify my ideal avatar/target audience deeply—who are they, what are their interests, and where do they hang out online. The more specific I can be, the better.

Use authentic customer stories and testimonials in my ads. People connect better with real stories than with generic ad copy.

Set up “ambassador” programs to get user-generated content. Provide guidelines, not scripts, to ensure authentic, relatable footage.

Experiment with video styles like voiceovers and B-roll vs. direct camera addressing for more versatility in editing and testing.

Start broad with interests or larger lookalikes, then refine targeting as I get data on what’s working.

Consider “Advantage+” AI-powered campaigns, but don’t rely solely on them – combine them with manual targeting.

Rethink my return on ad spend (ROAS) goals. Sometimes, break-even or slight profits can enable higher scalability long term.

Provide experiences, not just courses. Use communities, coaching, and live components to enhance value.

Head to smartmarketer.com and explore the “courses” tab to enroll in one of Molly Pittman’s highly interactive mentorship programs. Work directly with Molly’s agency and learn about their paid media and marketing services.

About Molly Pittman

Molly Pittman started as an intern with Digital Marketer and worked her way up to Vice President of Marketing and Traffic Manager. She’s responsible for creating, optimizing, and maintaining their traffic system, including social media traffic, all customer acquisition, and revenue acquisition. Molly has personally spent over four million dollars on paid traffic and has generated over 500,000 leads and tens of thousands of customers.