Jody: Hello, welcome to this episode of Online Confidential, where I’m excited to be bringing to you another one of our certified Elite Ad Managers, Amanda. Amanda has a great record in this space. She’s been absolutely crushing it for her clients and her diligence that she shows when she’s working on campaigns is just amazing.

So anyone that works with Amanda is lucky to be one of her clients, that’s for sure. Like most of us in this ad management space, we didn’t leave school saying “I want to be an ad manager when I grow up.” So this is where we explore how we’ve made this journey from doing whatever we did in our previous life to now becoming an ad manager. I’m super excited to talk with Amanda today and bring her story to you because these are just everyday people doing everyday things and we’ve just made this transition to working from home. To having that freedom and flexibility to run our own business. Charge what we are worth and be able to make these revenues that once we thought maybe you needed a tertiary education or you needed to be a doctor or a surgeon.

So welcome, Amanda. I’m super excited to talk with you today.

Amanda: Well, thanks for having me, Jody. I’m excited to be here.

Jody: Awesome. So let’s talk about life before Facebook ads. What did you do before you discovered this crazy world of digital marketing?

Amanda: Sure. So I feel like I should go way back. I do actually have a degree in marketing. I went to college pre-2000. (I don’t want to give away my age) but you know, just before 2000 marketing, there was no online world. Right. And so after college, I moved into corporate, and I moved into marketing. It was actually quite boring for background screening company.

Anyway I had kids and eventually decided to quit my job to stay home with my kids. At one point about five years ago my sister-in-law was working as a virtual assistant and she said, “Hey, Amanda, you should really check this out.” And I thought, this is a great idea! You know I can tie in some of my marketing. So I started working and I literally was like, “I just want enough money to hire a housekeeper.” Then the idea of the scale of opportunity was  that low. As I started doing mostly organic social media and as that started to grow and grow, my dreams of growing a business grew bigger and bigger.

Once I started in this online marketing world, I started to realize that so much of my life experience had really nothing to do with my college experience, but so much of my life experience benefited me in my business so much more doing this more than anything else.

Jody: That’s really interesting. My next question was going to be, so you actually have a marketing background, which not a lot of ad managers do. A lot of them come from banking, corporate, various backgrounds, but not marketing in most cases, that’s for sure. I didn’t have a marketing background and I was gonna say,  how did you feel that that marketing degree actually helped you as you made this journey to becoming an ad manager, but you were saying it’s more your life experiences than that.

Amanda: I mean, it did a little. I think what I recall from my time in college is it, I was really inspired by the marketing professors that I had. They just were always so much fun. Actually. I was like, they sound really cool. I wanna do that. I’ve always been interested in ads and my dad and I would sit around and kind of critique the football super bowl ads or stuff like that. So it’s always been something that’s been interesting to me. And I mean, some of the basic principles apply that really anyone can learn like product pricing. You know, the four P’S. Understanding your customer and how to sell to a customer. Like all that kind of stuff is all really tied into just the real life part of how we operate as humans and buy things.

Jody: Yeah. So just explain what are those four P’s for us?

Amanda: Oh gosh. Product, Pricing, Placement, and Positioning.

Jody: Yeah, positioning is so valuable. I think just a knowledge of that is so essential because there can be such a low barrier to entry to, and especially with this space that we work in, that is that expert based business or this information product, you know, digital products where they can go off and do whatever course to go. Ok, I’m going to create my program about X, Y, Z. But there hasn’t been that for call of those four P’s, like you said, and it’s such an essential part like of that Facebook ad. So I think that’s where Facebook ad managers with no marketing previous experiences necessary. We do also need to have a knowledge of those things so that our clients or potential clients who come to us, we can help them to troubleshoot these things.

As we get data from our Facebook ads, we can help to identify that. So there seems to be something off here, because if people are clicking on the ad and then they’re not going to convert over. So yeah, so that’s great that you opened that door up for us here just to quickly touch on.

So you started out doing some work online. You wanted to get a housekeeper. That was the first goal. It was like, I would love to be able to pay someone to come clean the house. Huge! That’s a goal for a lot of us. Right. So certainly not alone with that. So how did you then get started learning Facebook ads and running Facebook ads for clients.

Amanda: Well like I said I did start with more it was easy to get into more of the organic social media. So I would have smaller clients and I would, if, you know, if an opportunity arose or I felt like it was appropriate, I would just say, “Hey, you know, I really wanna learn this. I’d be willing to, you know, do this for you at, you know, no extra fee, like as part of my existing service.” And so it, it kind of opened that door and then I obviously also took some cor online courses and found my way through with the really inexpensive ones and you know, kind of got my feet wet, got some experience underneath me and just kept kind of moving up.

It took a while for me to get to the point where I was like, I’m all in on ads. I mean even now though, sometimes I’m thinking I should maybe add some organic to my offer, but ads were intimidating and it was hard. So that’s that. But once I started doing them and offering that to my clients and then clients would say yes, and it made it kind of easier because they had a little grace with things taking a little longer as I learned how.

Jody: I love that transparency that you had with them as well saying this is an area I’m interested in and I’m wanting to learn about, so you are you willing to gimme a bit of a budget and I’ll help figure it out for you and so you can get those results. And I mean that’s sort of where I started as well, it was like, I wanted to get into ads. I was sort of dabbling around with things and someone said do you know someone to run some ads. And I was like, yeah, $12 an hour.

So you offered it in to your existing services as free. Which is what a lot of people who come to us in the Elite Ad Manager have been doing.

That’s awesome because some people can find it challenging then to go from like, okay, this is a free add in to like, oh my gosh, this is like next level stuff. How do I then transition to go well, okay I do need to start charging you extra for this. So how did that transition happen for you? Did it happen?

Amanda: It kind of did, I would say it, it was more like I found new clients. To me, part of it was really that one of the tipping points was really defining my offer. I mean that just kind of really made a huge difference is being really clear on my offer. And then like what exactly am I doing here for you? And then testing it out with a client and quite frankly, like a lot of times they didn’t want to pay for what, even like a low,low budget ads manager would cost.

So I would lose the client, which I mean was fine because it was kind of getting to the point where I did want that higher paying client. So that was probably the hardest part was figuring out my offer, testing it out on one or two clients, and then having to raise my rates a bit and then them, you know, bowing out for whatever reason on their business side. It wasn’t worth a thousand dollars a month for them any longer plus sometimes their offers didnt’t quite work out. So they were just not in that stage. So then that kind of leads into the hump of figuring out how to find the people that are in the stage of wanting to pay someone a 1000, 2000 or 3000 a month for my services.

Jody: Yeah, that’s great. And that is a fear that a lot of ad managers may face as well, or people who are making that transition to adding it in and going, okay, well, this is the direction, like you said, you took that time to look at what you wanted your offer to be. And, and that can be a scary thing! People go, oh man, I might lose these clients. Well, if you do, yes, I appreciate that is scary. That is a bit of a hit in the revenue. But it’s making space for those ideal clients that you do wanna come along.

So you did touch on it there of like, okay, so now I’ve gotta go and find this next level and this next quality of client. So how did you go about doing that?

Amanda: I think that I was able to start coaching inside a group of coaches and there’s tons of them out there who have masterminds or group coaching programs and teaching other course creators how to launch in a particular way. That I think was the secret. I think that’s what really pushed it over the edge because you’ve already got someone who’s paying to be in, in a group. So they’re a pretty well qualified person who’s willing to see the value in paying someone for their services. And then on top of that, as an ads manager offering some sort of coaching or like office hours or something like that and offering to help their students. It’s a, it’s a win-win.

Jody: Absolutely. And that’s a classic example of that saying “your network is your net worth”. Right. Pay to play. There are Facebook groups or groups in general and yeah, it’s going where those premium, those higher client higher value clients are.

So if they’re paying, like you said to be in a group or a membership, then they’re great quality. So that’s where I consider some of your marketing budget instead of. Spending it on Facebook ads, you actually spend it to be part of like a good quality group where your ideal clients may be. Especially in this space with the coaching and courses, there are so many of them. And if you can get into that group, you answer their questions, you are positioning yourself as that authority, you are increasing your visibility, and that’s absolutely work to treat for you there as well.

Amanda: Oh yeah and plus it’s kinda fun. It’s really neat to just chat with people about their business and how ads work and if they can even work for them. And so it’s kind of cool. I like doing it. I would love to make more connections with more coaches, because I think it’s fun to do. It gives huge return on investment down the road, you know?

Jody: Absolutely. It gives you an opportunity to shine in your area of expertise. You, the coaches, whoever you’re talking to. They’re experts in their space, right? Yeah. And and they need your knowledge and guidance and it helps you go, wow, I really do  know what I’m talking about, even though you see it every day with the results that you’re getting and all of that. It just helps you to realize yeah, your expertise and your value with all of that.

Amanda: Let me add, okay, I feel like the imposter syndrome can get out of control in yourself, but even if you’ve only run a few campaigns for a short amount of time, like you you’ve got more information than the average person absolutely.

Jody: Yeah. I agree. A hundred percent. There’s so much about Facebook ads. Just getting in running some campaigns, having that expertise, there are so many people behind you that don’t know that as well. Any of those things like, domain verification,  aggregated events, all that kind of stuff that needs to be set up these days. It’s a lot! So again, like I was saying, you’re working with the coaches and digital course creators, et cetera.

So what’s one of the challenges that you sometimes see and face running ads in this space?

Amanda: I think the biggest challenge I see is the lack of vision for the entire funnel. This is like specifically in just the space. You know, because Facebook ads are kind of just the driver to your sales page and that can sometimes be a challenge in a campaign where the conversions may not be happening further down the funnel, and then the ads can be somewhat blamed for that.

So it behooves every ads manager to know a bit about the funnel and those conversion rates. And that’s where I see a lot of people get stuck and just the daily tracking of numbers and things like in your data, they tell a story. So learning how to read that story and sharing that with your client it solves some of the challenges, but it also brings up more sometimes.

Jody: That’s such a great point because it’s not only all just about the ads. So all your clients might go, oh, the ads, the ads, the ads it’s knowing that. Well, actually the conversion rate on the registration page is only 15%. So let’s optimize that and just a couple of increases in that conversion rate can make a huge difference. So thanks for that observation!

So with this journey of going from sort of the corporate work in marketing, working from home, wanting to get that housekeeper or someone, all the rest of it and this lifestyle that you now have, working from home, and having these clients.

What do you think has been one of the things that maybe you’re most grateful for with this journey and where you are now?

Amanda: One of the things I’m most grateful for is the lifestyle I’ve been able to live. I have older kids, junior high, high school age, but I can still do pick up and drop offs. I’m here when they’re done with school and I love that I’m able to work my business around that. I also am grateful for the people that I’ve met, the networking, and the circles that I’ve been in. It’s just made the online business, owning part of things, really exciting. And I love it.

Jody: Yes. I can totally relate to that. People that I’ve got to meet in various corners of the world that just wouldn’t have opened up without getting into sort of this niche. And as ad managers we’ve got a unique little thing. We talk our own language and we understand the pressures that we do face. Then also when things do go well, and we’re going, “yay here’s ours conversion rate and this kind of ROAS,” it’s our ad manager buddies that are like, “yay that’s awesome.” They can totally relate to us.

So Amanda, where can people learn more about you?

Amanda: My website is momentumupmarketing.com. I’d love to hear from you. You can find me there and can also find me on Instagram. I’d love to hear from you. Like you said, opening up those conversations with people that you normally wouldn’t.

Jody: Yep. Love it. Well, Amanda, thank you so much for being here with us today for sharing just that part of your journey from life before ads management, too, where you are now.

Thank you. Its been an absolute pleasure talking with you.

Go check out Amanda and if you wanna know more about running ads for clients, run over to the Facebook group, Ad Manager Adventures.

If you want to learn more about the Elite Ad Manager Certification, here is the link EliteAdManager.com