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Episode 78: Learn How Crystal Was Able To Boost Her Confidence With The Strategies She Learned

Jody: I’m so excited to be talking with one of

Jody Milward

Jody: I’m so excited to be talking with one of our Certified Elite Ad managers, Crystal, who is going to share a bit about her journey of how she became a Facebook ad manager. It’s not something generally that we go through school as a known career path and say, I wanna grow up and be an ad manager. So it’s just been through a series of events for most of us that we end up here.

So this is where I always love talking to people, finding out what their personal journey has been. What’s led them to wanting to work from home and then finding their spot here in the ad management world.

Crystal, very excited to be talking with you today. Welcome!

Crystal: Thank you, Jody. I’m excited to be talking to you as well.

Jody: Excellent. So like I said, you are one of our Certified Elite Ad Managers. You’ve gone through and done all the training and all the modules. We were just talking about that beforehand, how the copywriting module you said, oh, we’re getting real now with the test and the exams. But like I said before, we didn’t start off wanting to be an ad manager.

So what was your journey? What were you doing that then led you to this?

Crystal: I never in a million years thought I would be an ad manager. My corporate background is in technical writing and communications, but even with that, I always have had a side hustle.

For the longest time I was doing web development and also helping clients with digital marketing systems. So I took a break from that for a couple of years to focus on my career and early last year, I had decided to like really make the decision to go in on my business, but I knew I didn’t wanna do the web development or design anymore.

The opportunity of Facebook ads presented itself and it seemed like a logical next step in a way to build on my background. I also was just really curious about it, so I made the decision that I was going to learn everything I could and just stick with it for a year and see what happens next.

Jody: A lot happens in a year in the world of Facebook ads. Is there a particular niche that you like to work with or focus on? Or that you’ve found or has found you with regards to your ad management services?

Crystal: Yes, I work primarily with coaches, consultants, and course creators. A lot of my clients identify as coaches and consultants, but a lot of them are promoting courses or memberships. I think because I worked with them earlier on, I just have a comfort level with them. Even when I tried working with local businesses, I always end up pivoting back to coaches and consultants.

Jody: I can totally relate to that. I was full on with the coaching consultant info product sort of niche for a while. And then it was, let me try some service providers, like orthodontists and things like that. Like businesses established brick and mortar, but for me, you don’t pick the niche, the niche picks you. Right.

What’s one of the favorite types of clients that you’ve worked with? Has there been one like an art client or someone that really stands out that was just a pleasure to work with or running the ads was so much fun?

Crystal: Yeah, so it almost contradicts what I just said, but I did have one, not local to me, but it’s a client that has a hair salon business that I ended up working with. I worked with her to develop campaigns to get her a new hair stylist, and then also to promote her business locally to get new clients.

That one was fun because I was able to take the strategies that I had learned in the course that I had been doing with more of my digital and online clients and use those same things with her. So it was nice in the sense that it wasn’t just lead generation. There was a little diversity in what we were trying to achieve with the campaigns. It was a nice opportunity to really just try different strategies.

Jody: Awesome. So you were doing ads for her to find a stylist as well as getting customers.

Crystal: Yes, and thanks to you I felt confident doing that because before the strategy part was really what would hold me up, even with my clients who have more traditional launches. Being able to know what strategies to implement has been such a huge time saver and really just boosted my confidence.

Jody: Awesome. So glad to hear that. So what’s a typical day look like for you as an ad manager now working with clients?

Crystal: I do want to clarify, I do still have my full-time job at the moment. So this is still very much part-time for me. But I like it because of the fact that it is something I can do part-time so in the morning I get up and I check the reporting for the day.

I pull the information for the ones that I’m checking daily and go ahead and put that into the reports. Then depending on what I have, because of the fact that I work full time, I have structured my schedule with time blocking so that I have specific days where I do audience targeting research and ones where I develop campaign strategies a bit more. Primarily once I get the campaigns up and running depending on the client, whether it’s a launch or with the salon where it was not time sensitive, it really is just a lot of testing reporting and just doing research.

Jody: I’m so glad that you’ve clarified that because running Facebook ads is something that you can do as a side hustle, right? You don’t have to be going, oh, I need to quit my job to be able to go and do this. You have that flexibility and then also with having clients that may be across the world, like at the moment I’m here in Australia, it’s 9:00 AM. You’re over there in the USA Eastern times zone 7:00 PM. You can have clients across the world. So if you have Australian clients, then doing the work at night, having client meetings can work perfectly with that.

So yes, you don’t have to go, I’ve got to do this, all. It can be an end and it can be a transition. It can just be like, look, I just want to make an extra $2,000 a month. That would make a huge difference. That could be our holiday fund. And it can so easily do that by, having a full-time job and doing this as a bit extra as well.

I love that you’ve clarified that and again, just shows the opportunities that’s there as you make that transition, whether you do want to do a transition to making this a full-time job or just do it on the side, earn a bit of extra money if you love your full-time job.

Talking of clients, how have you gone about getting clients on board?

Crystal: I don’t have any local clients. I haven’t met any of my clients in person, which is amazing, but most of my clients have come from networking and referrals. So I do make some time for networking and then just referrals from past clients.

I would say connections are really, really key. So I go into Facebook groups, and I interact there. I find networking opportunities that work with my schedule, and that’s really provided a lot of opportunity.

Jody: I love that. As they say, your network is your network worth. If you’re working with clients with anything we’re always sort of selling ourselves, right? Meeting people and taking that time to meet people is so valuable running ads for clients.

What’s been something that has been the most rewarding for you?

Crystal: The most rewarding thing thats happened to me is actually one of my clients that I was helping with the launch for her membership, and she still has a very small team and she was in the middle of her launch. At one point as launches can be pretty intense and she was a little stressed out about something, she said, “you know, I keep thinking that I’m in this alone, but then I remember that I have you. I have Crystal.” And to me, I just appreciated that because one thing I love with my clients is not only helping them grow their businesses, but I see the value that I’m supporting them in a way as well, because a lot of us, small businesses and solo entrepreneurs, we feel like we’re working by ourselves.

So I just really loved being able to support my clients in that way. And I wasn’t doing anything extra, other that what I was supposed to be doing. But having that peace of mind that I was taking care of that one piece and it was one less thing for her. It just really brought her peace of mind and it made me happy.


Jody: As ad managers, there’s always typically something we learn along the way. It’s like a rite of passage where things maybe go south and we learn from it and move on. So I’m always about sharing those kind of experiences so that we can help those others on the journey to sort of be aware and maybe ideally avoid working with them.

What’s something that has been a big learning experience for you along the way?

Crystal: Oh my goodness. The importance of the client having a proven offer, especially for people in the online course space. Like everyone, everyone thinks they’re product or offer is the best thing, but it really makes such a difference and makes it so much easier when that offer is actually been validated and proven to getting success with the ads. Otherwise it can be a little bit of a painful process just because you’re trying to figure out so many things at time.

Jody: Yeah, absolutely. That’s always a bit of a red flag or something to check for. There is a point and place where it’s like, that person may be still a good client. It might be another arm of the business that they’re setting up and they have the funds and they can go, okay we’ve got this much dedicated to this. We know it’s not proven. We’re gonna run with it. But then you’ve got those people who are like this is my baby, I’m putting it out there and it’s like my whole life depends on this being successful.

That puts a lot of pressure on you as the ad manager. So great tip there to, to be aware of that and to then also help your clients with the expectations that this is not proven. So we are just testing it to start with and there’s a lot of testing that’s involved.

If you could give someone who’s running ads for clients one piece of advice, what’s one of your favorite strategies or hacks or whatever it is with running ads. What’s your sort of go to?

Crystal: The one thing that I love the most that it almost seemed so basic are the nurture campaigns and including the client attraction code. It makes so much sense. That’s one thing that I really like about the strategies that you provide is that it follows along with basic marketing.

You can get really really deep in the ways that you’re leveraging the ads to retarget and really just build that relationship. So I guess thats the biggest thing that I’ve learned and what I would pass on, because I don’t think is something that people generally think of out of the gate, because they’re usually just so focused on getting leads and getting conversions and things of that nature versus thinking about, okay, how can we really take this and really create a complete advertising strategy?

Jody: Yes. Facebook opened the doors for people to just start doing ads and seeing instant results. We forgot about that brand awareness and that nurturing along the way. Even, like you said, with your hairdresser client, there’s people who are ready to book in for a haircut now because it’s been six months and then there’s people who have just got a cut and they’ve got an idea in their mind. Like, I dunno if I’m happy with this place anymore and then they’re on that journey looking for someone new.

If you ‘re in the newsfeed we can do that. So cost effectively you know, we nurture people and we bring them along into our customers funnels.

Well, Crystal, I really appreciated your time today, hearing a bit about your journey, how you’ve made it here as an ad manager, and what you are doing now with working full time, incorporating some of your previous skills and experience, and then adding on this ad management as a natural progression to those services you were providing.

So thanks for being with us. Where can people go to learn more about you?

Crystal: They can find me on Instagram and Facebook @crystalcherrydigital and my website is www.crystalcherrydigital.com/

Jody: Awesome. Well, I hope you’ve found that useful and been inspired if you are working full time and you’re looking at what can I do to just bring in that additional revenue. Like Crystal here, who’s working full time and running ads for clients, as well as all the other things. There’s opportunities, literally right at your fingertips and ad management is a very, very valuable skill for businesses everywhere.

Crystal: Because I went all in with my Facebook ads, even with my full-time job last year was the first time that I ever made a decent amount of money in my side hustle business even when I was doing the web design nature.

Jody: Awesome. Thanks for sharing that. I just love hearing news like that as well. That is fantastic and here’s to this year, continuing on that trajectory for you as well.

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