Living The Red Life - Facebook in 2025: A Glimpse Into the Future w/Ralph Burns

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

In this episode, marketing expert Ralph Burns, known for his deep expertise in Facebook advertising and successful agency leadership, breaks down the sophisticated strategies required to run high-performing ad campaigns for service-oriented businesses. Alongside the host, Ralph shares his experience managing complex ad campaigns in industries like body sculpting, where return on ad spend (ROAS) can take months to materialize. Using a recent case study, Ralph details how his team used a free Botox offer to bring clients into a body-sculpting business, ultimately turning an initial loss into substantial profit through strategic upsells.Ralph and the host explore the challenges of managing ads across multiple locations with differing CRM systems, explaining how initial ad metrics can be misleading if businesses don’t account for the full customer lifecycle. They discuss the importance of taking a long-term view, emphasizing that Facebook and digital ads today are part of a larger ecosystem rather than isolated profit generators. Ralph also shares lessons from his journey, encouraging business owners to invest in skilled teams, enhance financial literacy, and make data-informed decisions. This episode provides a candid look at the intricacies of high-stakes digital advertising, especially relevant for entrepreneurs in service-based industries.CHAPTER TITLES2:00 - The Power of CRM Systems and Facebook Ads4:00 - Understanding the Customer Journey and the 30-60-90 Day Model6:30 - Leveraging Google and Facebook Ads for Long-Term Sales9:00 - Ad Strategy: Nurturing Leads Across Platforms11:00 - Conversion Tracking and the Challenge of Cross-Platform Attribution14:18 - Using Irresistible Offers to Drive Initial Engagement16:00 - Managing Delayed Upsell Conversions and Lookback Windows18:00 - Estimating Lead Value Through Data-Driven Models20:50 - Embracing Long-Term ROI: Lifetime Value and Ecosystem Impact22:00 - Lessons in Business: Success, Mistakes, and Financial WisdomConnect with Ralph Burns:https://true11.com/Linkedin - Ralph BurnsConnect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter

Multi-objective buying or MOBU is now the reality of how we do business today in marketing in 2024 and beyond. So this case study was just one example of dozens in which we try to figure out like where is the revenue coming from? And then how is it not necessarily a last click attributed? But where did it start? And do more of that where it started and get more customers at the top of your funnel and ultimately track them and scale it grow businesses. My name is Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast. I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join

me in Wonderland and change your life. What's up guys? Welcome back to another episode of living the red life. Today we're going to talk about advertising, specifically Facebook and how it looks in 2025. We're here with my friend, Ralph Burns, very famous marketer, advertiser, actually one of the original people I learned back, uh, you know, 10 plus years ago when I really got into this and started spending millions of

dollars, he's got very famous agency, Tier 11, and he just came back from the Facebook HQ where they were diving into more the omnipresence ecosystem of advertising we now live in. And in just one account, they found $2.3 million in revenue and sales that wasn't attributed to the original ad, but was still caused because of Facebook advertising. So, Ralph, welcome to the show. Glad to be here. I feel like I should have read on, but I'm wearing the wrong color, but forgive me for

that. But thanks for having me, bud. Great to, great to find me on and obviously to meet you a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. So look, let's dive in a couple of things out the gate and we'll dive into it more to the show, but advertising has changed a lot. We've talked about it offline. Like, you know, it used to be more add to landing page to offer, make a sale easy.

Now we live in this like world where so many things have to come together because the buyers are more sophisticated and there's so many more touch points. So can you dive into a little, this whole like multi-channel buying system and this 2.3 million that you found on this one account for anyone that doesn't fully understand it? Yeah, I think when we first started, when we first started listening to perpetual traffic way back when, it was much easier. Most people and most of the clients that we had in those days, even up till maybe three or four or five years ago, were just one channel.

It was just basically it was Facebook and then maybe a little bit of Instagram. Your direct traffic always came from that, but then you could track back to Facebook specifically your ad spend, and it was pretty easy to figure all this stuff out. But since then, it's gotten a lot more complex. I think a lot of the businesses that we tend to work with right now are multi-channel. And yes, they might use Meta and the Meta platforms as the basis for a lot of their top of funnel, but they tend to because we have a Google division, we have a full social division, we have a creative division, and after the click division, we integrate everything into it.

It's much more complicated to figure out which channel is actually the one that's pulling for you at any given moment in time. The example we can use here today is from Meta, but the same could be said on a lot of channels. Like we just met with TikTok marketing this morning, TikTok for Business this morning. They have the same sort of challenge with TikTok. Now they've got sort of more of a full funnel offering now,

which is great, and a lot of new stuff that's coming out. But the point is, even if you're playing, you're doing YouTube and you're doing anything that has a view and not necessarily a click, it's really hard to measure that. And in this particular case, this is one that I presented at Meta at their agency conference this past week in New York City. They're really interested in finding out more about this because I think a lot of us as marketers, we tend to just go for website conversion campaigns, which is probably what you started

on. I was heavily leveraging for years and years. And now this idea of what Metta now calls multi-objective buying or MOBU, which we termed it last week and we decided that's what they were going to call it, is now the reality of how we do business today in marketing in 2024 and beyond. This case study was just one example of dozens in which we try to figure out where is the revenue coming from and then how is it not necessarily a last click attributed, but where did it start and do more of that where it started and get more customers at the top of your funnel and ultimately track them and scaling grow businesses.

Yeah, it's fascinating. So I've always been, Facebook's been my main driver. And as I mentioned briefly, I ran ads when I was back living in the UK for my fitness brand and my personal training and dabbled with it. And then when I moved to America, I got way more serious and scaled and spent millions. And, you know, it was very fortunate to get to learn from people like yourself. And, you know, back then it was more like the straight to, you know, straight to add by product jobs are good and you know, I didn't even need organic really back then and all those things.

But in my latest business, which is more my coaching consulting side, we scaled to, we did about 25 million in the first two or three years. And I came into this business obsessed with tracking, which I wasn't in previous businesses, but I kind of learned over the years. And we actually, you know, we have a lot of high tickets sales teams, sales to from 2000 to 100,000. And every single sale that's ever come through that made up that 25 million, there's a Slack channel where it zaps in and then we actually have a VA pull the CRM data.

And we look at the original source and the core recordings in there and all the payment plans, all the things you need to know. And I'm always fascinated about the source because, you know, we'll sell a 20k or a 50k sale. And it's like they bought your Black Friday offer that was a Facebook ad, you know, we'll sell a 20k or a 50k sale. And it's like, they bought your Black Friday offer that was a Facebook ad, you know, and every funnel's labeled. We create separate funnels for every channel because no matter how great tracking is, I don't trust it. Like we have a set funnel for everything. So this is like the Black Friday in 2022 dash Facebook.

And it's just so fascinating. And I think a lot of clients or people you work with, I'm sure, and me, they don't understand this because they like say their ads aren't that profitable. And I'm like, look, even if you're breaking even with your ads, you don't understand the ecosystem and the ripple effect it's creating around it. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's really hard. I mean, marketing is hard. Otherwise everybody would be doing it's really hard. I mean, marketing is hard, otherwise everybody would be doing it and making millions. But the point is, is that like most businesses or most skill, you have to learn it and you have to do a lot of trial by error. I mean, I think I'm with you. I don't trust tracking. When I see something, I don't believe it. And, you know, we've, you know, the tracking software that we'll talk about

here today, like we were very skeptical of it to start. Like we've invested in all of them heavily. I mean, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year on Google and then as well as on Meta. I don't even know how much we spend on Google now. It's like it's an extraordinary amount. So anything that I see, I never believe it. But when the data is so clear, but it's not reflected inside the app itself, but it's outside of the app in a third party software, you really have to believe it. And then you see it in the CRM. You see the physical sales in the CRM, you see the physical sales in the CRM. There's no denying that. That came from somewhere. You have to sort of backtrack and

figure out where the hell did that come from? Because this unattributed or unknown in Google Analytics is going to drive you crazy. Because unless you're actually tracking from, you know, your Black Friday campaign in 2022 to your Black Friday campaign or your Memorial Day campaign in 2024, you might not ever know where that person first interacted with you. And that's data you should know. And it's never going to be perfect. And even in this case, it's not perfect. It's about 90%, but that's pretty good. So I think just this idea of everyone should be skeptical about any sort of tracking and any sort of third party application that says, Hey, I'm going to tell you exactly where all your clicks come from. I'm going to tell you exactly where your row ass is from. I think it's a bunch of bull crap. You've

got to figure it out for yourself. But until I saw it, then all of a sudden it's like, it's plain as day. Here's where it came from. And it makes sense from a buyer's journey standpoint. Yeah. And let's talk a little about, you know, how, why we're in this position now. Right. So, you know, advertising in 2024, 2025, how it looks next year, why is it becoming

so complicated from a tracking side? And it's because it's the way the user's interacting, right? Like people are being used to seeing an ad, buying an ad and jobs are good at them. But now, I think trust has changed a lot. People shop around, they want to follow you. There's a lot more competition. So how do you see this Morty channel buying and what can people take away today to apply into their own marketing strategy to get ahead of this? Yeah. Yeah. I think just accepting the fact that there's going to be multiple stages and we can track this. You can actually see it in any attribution software. There's multiple clicks. There's multiple things that somebody does before they actually end up buying.

If you've got an impulse buy for $7, there's probably not going to be a very long buyer's journey. However, if you're selling $150,000 steel buildings, or in this particular case of our case study, 10 to 15, $20,000 procedures, that is going to leave some clues along the way. It's up to you to sort of stitch it all together. And sometimes even if you don't have tracking, as long as you have access to the CRM, the source of truth, and you're looking at a reasonable timeframe, a lot of times you can figure it out. We just have a way in which to do it that you can actually track it all through into perpetuity and figure out what was the first

interaction outside of the seven day or the 28 day window for the platform where they actually did buy these 15 to $20,000 procedures later on and then attribute that back to the original click. That's the part that stitches it all together. That's where you do need a third party integration. And in my opinion, I think it's absolutely a necessity now. And our favorite is Wicked Reports, but we also love Northbeam. We're investors in both companies. Northbeam is extremely good for enterprise, but for the small to mid-sized player in the market, Wicked Reports is just the best from our perspective. And we see a whole lot less when it comes to unattributed or unknown so that we can sort of connect all the breadcrumbs back to

the original interaction and do more of that on the original interaction to ultimately scale and grow from a new customer standpoint. Yeah. I mean, whenever we're clients in our programs and stuff, we tell them as soon as their ad spend is getting relatively serious and they're spending more than $10 a day sort of thing, you know, move into a software like Wicked and really tracking that is so important. And we have some clients, you know, spending a grand a day and it's like, look, you're spending 30 grand a month, pay $500 for the damn software because

you're going to make way more back knowing, making better decisions. And I, you know, I've, I've known Scott and used Wicked for a long time, probably because of, you know, your advice and, and, and tried high rows and all these different ones. And it really is crazy, especially in the last few years, the difference in the ad manager of like what it's showing it's reporting and then like what you're seeing from, you know, a software like wicked. Um, and then what's even crazier is like over time, when you look at LTV and it's starting to attribute these people, um, it's just, it, it turns what people look as, as Roas and the ads on their head a lot of times and stuff you killed,

you shouldn't have killed stuff that, um, you know, you thought was doing what it wasn't doing as well. And I think knowing that data is so important, um, when most people don't, which is why they don't scale. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in this particular case, I mean, it was a conversion lift study that we did through Metta. They sponsored it and we did it. It showed an 85% lift in conversion lift over a month's period. We're like, wait a second here. We know this stuff is actually working, but now let's actually stretch it out. Until we looked back through

our WCID data, now we have a combination of three things. We do WCID reports as our interface, but our pipes are from Blot Out, which anybody can get. Their edge tag is absolutely amazing. It sort of obviates or eliminates a lot of the issues that you have with iOS 14. And then we store that data in our own first party warehouse, our data warehouse. So those three things actually sort of work together. People can set it up. We're the only agency that can set it up specifically with all those vendors. The point is, is even if you're using any third-party attribution software, you can start to stitch this all together. And for us, it was just a simple matter of this is

in the body sculpting phase space. These guys are spending a million dollars a month. Point was is that we started doing a sort of a free Botox injection special. And we were getting a lot. It's a great offer. First off, you have to have a great offer. But that's an awesome offer to get somebody in the door, get the foot in the door. And then obviously once they get in, they're tracked through their CRM. Their CRM, unfortunately,M unfortunately was 25 different locations, which didn't all talk to each other. Rudy, so like you're shaking your head like, oh my God, like how did we stitch all this together? We eventually did like a manual upload, you know, 30 days, 60 days and 90 days. And then we found that through those initial free injections, once again, it's a great

offer. Okay? Free Botox. Once they're in there, then the therapist then upsold them to another procedure. And those procedures are 10, 15, 20 grand, but they don't happen on that day. So there's a 30, 60, 90 day lag in some cases, and most of the cases were done 30 to 60 days out upwards of upwards of 90 days. So unless you have an infinite look back window, you're never going to be able to figure this out.

So if we looked at Facebook for that month that we spent all that money on those free trials, it looks like the campaign was a total disaster. They had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. We're like, wait, let's give this some time. We're also a little bit in the dark as to what was the upsell process going to be like once they actually got in the door. You've got 25 different locations, all with different CRMs that don't really talk to each other because they kind of cobbled this all together through acquisition.

So there was a lot of risk on our part. And so we just waited. And then day 60, they're like, all right, we're starting to see some sales coming in. And then all of a sudden when it was day 90, when we uploaded the data through Wicked, we saw this 2.3 million on a spend that was a couple hundred thousand. Now they had to figure out exactly, all right, well, based upon that, that 2.3 million from a couple hundred thousand was like 220,000, I believe, and I had spend in that promotion.

What was their margin? Their margin was actually really good. So business-wise, it worked out. But originally, like holding on through those first 30 to 60, 90s, that was the hardest part. And I know there's people that are listening and agencies and consultants that are dealing with this same thing. They're like, cut that thing off.

Cut off your YouTube ads. You're spending all this money and the the ROAS in app is 0.6 Yeah, that's a loser. Well Those ads even though there isn't a click those ads might actually depending on what your life cycle is for your for your customer journey Those ads might really pay off 30 60 90 days down the road depending on what the life cycle is for the client And for this one, it really worked out Well, so it was that conversion lift study that gave us the confidence to be able to do it. And then that then allowed us to hang on and then we were able to sort of attribute it back through all these third party data platforms. But that-

Yeah, I mean, sorry, I was just going to say, I mean, I think that's like why it comes back to the knowing your number side. Like whenever we're advising now members in our masterminds and stuff, one of the biggest things is knowing, Hey, we always work back from LTV, right? And what's your breakeven point at 30, 60, 90 days and 99% of businesses have no clue on that. And then like, you know, unless you're a business that does a one-time transaction, which is very rare and probably not a strong business these days. Like you have to know that, especially like I've ran ironically, very similar offers,

you know, great minds think alike. We did red light therapy free sessions to get people in the door. We've done like a sculpting stuff too. And it crushes it. And the reason I was laughing when you told me is local practices and that CRM was just like the worst. So I got, you know, try to figure that out. It's a nightmare, but they were upselling to a two or three K offer.

And, and, you know, we did it more pen and paper way saying, okay, we know one in 10 will upgrade statistically based on your last 30 days. That means every lead is statistically for every, you know, 10 that cut the show up is worth 200 to $300. So if we're paying $20 a lead and wanting to show up, that's $40 for a showed lead and it should pan out to be two, $300 and I think mapping that out is so important upfront, whether you're an agency or the business owner, you need to know that sort of how that should map out and pan out because most great campaigns are going to go in the red to start, um, at scale.

And if you don't have that, like, you know, life cycle and understand the path forward, then you will make bad decisions. And, uh, you know, the ad manager, I think half of it is an emotional battle, right? Not just a battle in the actual campaign. It's making the right decisions with your money and your budgets and all those things. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. Getting business owners to sort of wrap their head around the longer view is hard. I mean, we're both business owners. We get it.

You know, we're looking business owners. We get it. You know, we're looking at our P and L every single month, but you know, if you invest today and the payoff is tomorrow, like the signs showed pretty well in this particular case study and we've got dozens that do the same sort of thing. This was the longest period of time we had to wait. In most cases, it's, you it's less than 30 days, which is great, but oftentimes it really is a bit of a leap of faith, especially after you sort of top out of those website conversion campaigns just going straight to an appointment center or high value keywords for like Brazilian butt lift on Google. There's only so much

search traffic for that. So this was a higher level strategy to get to a level of scale. And thankfully the client went along with that, even though the CRM was sort of cobbled together. Good, good. And I love that breakdown. So guys, hopefully that starts to make sense now about, you know, understanding all those data points,

the life cycle, and really understanding going into 2025. Facebook is not about anymore the life cycle, um, and really understanding going into 2025 Facebook is not about anymore the sale on day one. How much did I make? It's about, it feeds the ecosystem, right? It's the true top of funnel. And I have to say, unless you're a massive influencer, you know, or you're on TV or some famous celebrity, you've got to buy traffic, you need traffic, right? You need people to know about your brand

and it's not always going to pan out one for one on day one. It's more about the ecosystem and the lifetime value now. So I love this breakdown. Raoul, couple of quick questions as we come towards the end of the show. Oyu, so let me dive into this first one. This is, you know, in general about business now, because you are obviously a marketing Facebook master,

but also built a very successful agency in big businesses too. So first one, what is the most controversial belief you have around money or business or marketing that upsets people? I would say you can't do it yourself. I think that the moment I realized that it can't just be me and a thousand helpers, it has to be me finding people who are actually complimentary, not meaning like kiss my ass, but I still am the boss so that's bound to happen. But complimentary to my skills, like for me, I'm not a great systems guy.

I tried to create systems and as soon as I realized, okay, I need to find people to do this and I've had two or three people that have now done this and the COO that I have right now has been instrumental in us implementing Agile scrums throughout the entire agency, which is now so common in Fortune 500 companies. It's not something I would ever do, but that belief I think that a lot of entrepreneurs have when they first start out is that they have to do it themselves is a misnomer. It's like find the areas where you're really not that strong and then hire somebody as

good as you if not hopefully better and it's just gonna help you scale and grow. Love that. Next one, biggest success or achievement on most money made and how did that happen? You know when I started this thing all I wanted to do is pay for the health insurance, quite honestly, because my wife was carrying the team at that point. But I remember when I got to 100 grand a month, I had my first $106,000 month. I was like, I can't believe I've created this out of nothing. Ever since then, it's been multiples of that, which is great.

Don't get me wrong. But like that first time, I remember I was like a buddy of mine was coming into town and I'm a big baseball fan and I bought like front row tickets to the Sox versus the Chicago Cubs. I thought I was like such a baller dude, because I was making a hundred G's a month. And you know, my best year in the corporate world was like 250 or 200 or whatever it was. Like I would say that was my biggest, I was very, I'll be very proud of that. And then, you know, it's, uh, yeah, after that it's kind of, it's kind of a let down a bit.

Why didn't you get it though? Cause I'm the, you know, I mean, those early ones are even better than the like million dollar months. Like I remember vividly sitting on my couch when I had my first $5,000 day, because that was a goal, you know? And yeah, those ones are great. I do like that one. So biggest mistake, the opposite of this, what's the biggest mistake or error that's caught you and you've learned from?

I think it's one that I always refer back to when I was first starting out, I was actually in the corporate world and I started my own information business, not as successful nearly as yours has been, but mine miserably failed, but I wouldn't let go of it. And it was for it was a training program for sales managers, because I was at that point, like a director of sales for a fortune 500 company. But I was like, all right, well, if they find out about this thing, then I won't get fired. Well, they eventually did find out about it and figured out a way to get me fired. But nobody wanted to buy it.

And I realized I just kept trying and trying and trying. It's like managers don't care about getting better. And plus the training that they get, they usually get from the company, but it took me like two, three years to cut bait on that one, cause I was so emotionally tied to it cause it was my first online business I should have, I stayed on way too long. So there's perseverance and then there's stupidity. And I think that was just perseverance, stupidity on my part. So.

Yeah. And last question to wrap up the show and we'll end there. If you could go back in a time machine and teach yourself one or two things, uh, to help you become more successful today, what would it be? I wish I paid more attention to finance in college because now that I'm in business, it's, it's the first thing I look at every single day. It's the last thing I look at before I got a night at bed at night. I mean, it's, it's the most important thing. And I think entrepreneurs just in general are sort of big idea dreamers,

but you also have to have a real dose of reality when it comes to the finances and your P and L matters. Like, you know, no, right. Yeah. Especially like we've got, it matters more than when you had 10. Yeah. I mean, it's easier then. It's much easier and it gets more complex. So yeah, I wish I had studied that a little bit more. I've told my kids that now. So hopefully they'll learn from my mistakes.

Great. All right, guys. Well, that's a wrap. I hope you enjoyed today and as always keep living the red light. Take care.