EP #302] [ENG] - Importance of Meta ads to scale your Amazon Brand - Joshua Okungbaiye

EP #302] [ENG] - Importance of Meta ads to scale your Amazon Brand - Joshua Okungbaiye Unknown Speaker: Welcome to The Ecommerce Lab By Ecomcy. This is the place for everything related to Amazon private label and e-commerce. Learn exactly what you need to start or scale your business. Get insights from the top industry experts who will discuss the latest trends and best practices in the world of Amazon. From choosing products and sourcing from a supplier to setting up your Amazon account and marketing your business, you will hear it here. Let's get started. Here is your host, Vincenzo Toscano. Speaker 2: Hello, guys. Welcome to another episode of The Ecommerce Lab By Ecomcy, the place for everything related to Amazon FBA, Parallel and Ecommerce. My name is Vincenzo Toscano, founder and CEO of Ecomcy, and today we're bringing a special guest. His name is Joshua and he is founder and CEO of GoldStar Social Media, where they specialize on everything that has to do with meta ads. And the reason why I wanted to bring Joshua out today is because, especially for those that listen to this show that are purely Amazon sellers just now transitioning into DTC, or those that already have a DTC presence, a lot of the struggle sometimes figuring out how to proactively maximize their meta. Ads in terms of creatives, in terms of audiences, in terms of the full setup. So I wanted to bring Joshua today to share some of that wisdom and hopefully we can make your whole journey with ads a meta to be as efficient as possible. So Joshua, welcome to the show. How are you doing? I'm fine. Speaker 1: I'm fine. Speaker 2: I'm fine. Speaker 1: Thank you very much for having me. Really appreciate it. I'm doing great. How are you doing? You all right? Speaker 2: Doing great. Doing great. Thank you so much for being on the show. It's been a pleasure. No problem at all. No problem. Awesome. So I guess let's start with a quick intro by yourself. Tell me more about you, what you have. You know, done so far, the company, because I'm sure some people have been intrigued about that. And then we can jump into, you know, technicalities. Yeah. Speaker 1: Yes, for sure. For sure. For sure. Thank you so much. So like, so my name is Josh and and my background is, is basically Facebook ads, Instagram ads. And just to give you like a quick, a quick rundown of, you know, where I've come from. Speaker 2: So. Speaker 1: I actually studied marketing. I actually have a master's in marketing and management from the University of Loughborough and I actually just have so much passion in terms of using the internet space in order to generate traffic and just kind of just engage with more people. So I got a master's in that and soon after that I got the opportunity to work at a top advertising agency in London And that's when I actually got to work on my first client, which was Nike. And I can honestly tell you that was like from student to now thrown into the deep end. Nike is a huge brand. They have so many verticals, so many products. And that's why I really love the fundamentals of advertising and marketing in the real world. And I was there for some time and then ended up working at some more advertising agencies. And then I started to find that, oh, okay, like I started to get promoted and all that. And I was like, you know what, let me strike out by myself and start to work with businesses to basically help them get more results. And I've been very fortunate to work with so many businesses such as Financial Times, Remedy, monday.com in basically in its full capacity when it comes to marketing. And yeah, and here we are. And there's been so much I've learned along the way. And I'm very excited to share with you guys for sure. Speaker 2: Thank you, Joshua. It's definitely a pleasure to have you here on the show. And I guess, you know, to start with, you know, taking some of the expertise I'm sure you, you know, developed throughout your career, I guess, let's start with the foundation in the sense that, you know, a lot of people struggle to really understand what is the right approach when it comes to methods in terms of, you know, starting with things such as the audience, like how you identify the right audiences for your business, where you potentially get the best return on investment. So let's start with that, like how, let's say somebody that has never done methods before, Can effectively now jump on a meta and figure out these are the audiences I should go for to to maximize my app. Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Yeah, like that's that's that's a great question. So for those of you who are for people who are just well running We want to transition to meta ads as an extra channel to bring traffic to their brand because now we're living in a time where it isn't just one channel. We have to be agnostic in the way that we are using channels to get more people to our brand because people live on different places online. And when using meta ads, it's always important to look at the current analytics that are currently working for us. For example, if we're selling something and we notice that more women are buying or we notice that it's women of a certain age group that are buying, or we notice that it's a certain time or day of the week that people tend to buy from us, those are the things that we could use as a framework to put into Facebook, into Meta. Now, so say we start to, and say we start to actually put that in and it starts to actually work for us, then now the next stage is about looking at our customer avatar and seeing that, say for example, We sell gym clothing, for example, gym, let's say gym clothing. A lot of people will start off by basically targeting certain interests like, I don't know, fitness, gym, et cetera, et cetera. But we have to remember that Facebook is a bidding platform. So other brands are going to be targeting those same interests. With maybe bigger budgets, you know, the pacing of the budget, etc, etc. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: But the thing is, what you want to do is that you want to think outside of the box when it comes to interest targeting. You want to think of your customer as a human being. So, for example, if I was to choose the interest targeting for gym clothing, I would avoid fitness and all those obvious ones. I would go for New Year's resolutions. I would go for weddings. I would go for birthday. Why? Because, for example, New Year's resolutions, that's when people are thinking of losing weight or getting in shape. So they'll be interested in buying gym clothing. Wedding, that'll be the time where, oh, I need to look my best for my wedding. And then that's when you want to start to kind of, you know. Speaker 2: You're going to reverse engineer the potential behavior behind why they would be motivated to make a purchase in the first place. Speaker 1: Exactly. So it's going one layer below in terms of understanding the motivation, understanding the intrinsic reason why they would want to buy our products or service in the first place and then use that as a framework of targeting on meta ads. Speaker 2: Cool. Now, when it comes to this. How does seasonality plays a role into this decision making? Because of course, a lot of audiences might shift in terms of the way they behave, depending on Christmas, Halloween, Valentine's Day and things like that. So is that something you also take in consideration when making your audiences? Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Definitely. Seasonality is a big thing. I love that you mentioned that. It's a very big thing because that's why you find that, say, and for those of you who are already doing Facebook ads, doing meta ads, That's why you'll find that in a certain season, you'll be using certain interest groups that work well in the first quarter of the year. But then in the second quarter of the year, going into spring and summer, those same interest groups stop working or don't work as well. So, seasonality plays a big role and that's how we can look at, okay, in winter, autumn, okay, these interests tend to work. If summer, in spring, summertime, these interests tend to work and then we can pretty much just swap and change out on those. Speaker 2: And now when it comes to budget, like you mentioned, of course, sometimes you're competing with big companies here and they might have big pockets when it comes to, you know, running advertising. So how do you make sure you can get the best return on your investment, especially when potentially your budget is not very big and you need to make sure you get some cash flow to get the business going? Is there some way for you to have an, I don't know, they of course, it's an educated guess, but be as Trying to be as accurate as possible in terms of where you can have the biggest potential on return on your investment. Speaker 1: Good question. So in terms of budget, how I, my rule of thumb usually is when you're running ads, meta ads, you want to start off at least between $10 to $50 a day. I won't go any more than more than that. The reason why is because we're just trying to find Which type of audiences work and then once we find which ones work and you're going to find you're going to know that within two weeks usually of running it and then you find that. Okay, cool. These are the ones that we need to focus on in order to ensure that we get more return on our investment. So it's pretty much. We build off of the building blocks of the type of interest that is going to be aligned with our customer avatar, as well as taking into consideration seasonality, run those, and you're going to find which ones work. And then you want to focus on the ones that actually work the best. And that's how you ensure a better return on investment on your company. Speaker 2: And I guess something important as well that maybe you can touch briefly on that is that The good thing with Meta is that especially if you're using things such as a pixel, your eyes are going to get smarter over time because you get more insights, you get a identification of patterns and things that will definitely lead you to maximize your exposure to the people that will convert the best. So tell us how that plays a key role into, you know, getting the best ROAS, essentially. Speaker 1: Ah, yes. In terms of how that plays a really great role is the fact that, obviously, like you mentioned, the longer your ads go, the better they actually perform over time. But we also need to remember that as long as we're getting external traffic coming in that's feeding into the data, that's also going to push the performance even more. Now, that's why it's always good to have like other channels that are bringing in that traffic to feed into our pixel, which in turn enables for our Facebook ads to work even better. So what you want to do is You want to essentially just, your sole aim is, especially if it's your first time, or you're just kind of dipping your toe, your sole aim is just to know, okay, which audiences purchase. That's all I need to know. And once we know, then we can now put those ones at a lot longer of a time, and then really give those a chance. Because you find that interest targeting is good for getting results quicker, Broad targeting takes a lot longer. Why? Because broad is a way, way bigger audience. Whereas of interest, there's guardrails. These are pockets of audiences. So you're more likely to find your answer a lot quicker. But then when you want to run them a lot longer, which will be over time, that's when you want to go a little bit broader. Speaker 2: Cool. Now, when it comes to What we're expanding to this audience is an understanding of customers. Of course, something that's going to be key here is to make sure that the message throughout the copy and the content is personalized and is as impactful as possible to trigger an interaction with that through emotions, through urgencies, you know, all that kind of things. So how do you make sure that is tailored as close as possible? Because at the end of the day, creatives is all down to perception. Some people might like to create over others, but at the same time, you can end up with some creatives that could capture a big I'm a big part of the potential audience that you are trying to target. So how do you reverse engineer that? Speaker 1: Ah, good question. Good question. So in terms of how reverse engineer it, right, is creatives is essentially content, but the creatives just have money behind it. That's literally it, basically. Every day as people, we consume content all the time, but we consume them on different platforms, on TikTok, on Facebook, Instagram, et cetera, et cetera. And sometimes the content that doesn't have money behind it, it's just to get us to click, engage, leave a comment, whereas the creative is to get people to go to a website or buy. Now, how I usually reverse engineer it, I basically look at, so say if I was working with a brand, I look at, okay, what are the things that they're posting organically first? That's already in traction already. Then I'll break it. So if it's a video, I'll break it down and be like, okay, this video has got 100,000 views and it's the best performing one. And I'll break it down to be like, okay, first three seconds, This was said. In the middle, this is what they said. In the end, this is what they said. Cool. And then I'll use that exact framework to create other videos or other creatives that are more aligned to getting the customer to buy, to actually buy. Based off of content that was originally just trying to get the audience to click, engage, or leave a comment. So can you see I'm essentially using the same building blocks but trying to get them to do something completely different. So that's pretty much how I reverse engineer it. And then you have another part of the creative where It's you have certain creatives that are more. So how I think when it comes to creatives, I always think of, OK, what are different angles of those creatives? So say, for example, let's let's let's use the gym clothing example again. People use, people will want to buy gym clothes for different reasons. So for the first reason, oh yeah, they're preparing to go to the gym to get their body, to get their body in shape. First reason. The second reason is they're buying gym clothing because they just want to spruce up their gym, their gym wardrobe, right? Then you've got a third reason, which is maybe they're just looking for something that's got a good deal. So each of those creatives will speak to those different reasons and then I'll basically put those into the audiences and see which one then performs the best. Speaker 2: Cool. And I guess what I'm curious to know about this process is like how you potentially something such as AI comes into the mix because Then you can be very clever and use all the insights that you get out of your campaigns and your understanding of the category and start essentially using AI to give you insights about how you can tailor certain content and copy to convey that conversion with the highest success rate possible. So is that something you also recommend? Yes. Yes. Speaker 1: Fully, fully, fully, fully. I will fully recommend the use of AI to essentially help you in terms of breaking down the type of The type of content and the type of creative that gets people to take the action that you want. Even in the meta platform, because I'm in it all the time, all the time, one thing I've noticed is that like Inside, Facebook now creates AI copy. So it gives you different suggestions based off of your creative. So you basically put a creative in and then Facebook basically says, oh yeah, gives you different variations of primary text that you could use. So it's already using that inbuilt in the platform. There's also another one that they do. You can even use AI to even create whole new images. So you can put a picture of a plant in Facebook and it will create like a really nice image of a jungle basically, which is really cool. And that's already in built in Facebook. So yeah, AI all the way, all the way, all the way to get more enhancement and more performance out of your campaigns. Speaker 2: Cool. And I guess now what I want to start jumping into a bit is, you know, the timelines associated with all this implementation. I think especially when you come from places such as Amazon. Yeah. Your mind is, you know, used to having instant gratification because the conversion is higher, sales are happening faster because of the nature of the platform. But that doesn't really, you know, put you in a good place when then you jump such as your D2C side where things are going to take longer time to take momentum. And that's where people sometimes give up. Right. So what is your Advice on that, like, you know, what, how, how long you usually give yourself for these things to play out? And what is your recommendation to stay on top of? Speaker 1: Good question. So with, with Amazon, Amazon is great because it's like straight instant gratification, trusted brand. So people can go on and look up reviews and stuff like that. So, and, and the platform is optimized for conversion completely. Whereas with Facebook, the platform is optimized for getting people to stay on the platform, not particularly to actually leave and buy. So we have to work a little bit harder to get people to click, to leave, to buy the product. Now, with Facebook, it's really just I usually give it like three months usually because because The way Facebook is now, it's really just a customer acquisition tool and a brand built-in tool now. So whereas before, before iOS 14, 15, it was customer acquisition. Like you can, you know, people were selling fidget spinners, you know, the ROAS was high, you know, but now not so much because the CPMs are a lot higher, a lot more advertisers on the platform, a lot more competition. So it's now a customer acquisition and a branding tool. The customer acquisition is just to get the customer into your world. And once they're in your world, you can divert them on your page and then you can now they're on your actual website. If they feel, oh yeah, I'm not too sure. Oh, they're on Amazon. They go into Amazon. Speaker 2: Oh, okay. Speaker 1: I trust this company now. Cool. I'll buy it. And that's just the acquisition. Now with the brand building, that's now when, one thing I've noticed just from running ads is that people will look at an ad, they won't even click it because obviously now people know that they're being tracked. They'll see an ad, they won't click it, but we'll go into Google and type that brand And then the brand will show up on Google and most likely it's going to be Amazon that's going to show up or website. Speaker 2: Yeah, I know. I know. I know. Cool. I think, yeah, it's very important to understand these dynamics because if not, that's where usually you can end up doing some, you know, custom mistakes. That's the thing we want to avoid at all costs. Now, something I also want to take from you in terms of advice, I know on Facebook, Meta, There's ways for you to pretty much spy on your competition and you can know what they're doing with ads and you can reverse engineering that. Tell us more about that because a lot of people are not even aware that that is even possible. Yeah. Oh yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Like, like that's what I love about, about Facebook ads. You can literally reverse engineer it. You don't even need to figure it out really. You can just see like, okay, this is what they're doing. All right. Yeah. So basically there is a, a tool called Facebook ads library. You just basically type it into Google type in Facebook ads library and you can literally check the, check the ads. Uh, you can even click on the actual like shop now button and so you can understand their funnel. Um, and you could also see the ads that they've been running for, From the beginning of the year. And here's a quick tip that I would do. To know if an ad is really making a company a lot of money, go to the ad that has been on the longest, that's been running the longest. That's how we know that that particular ad is making this company so much money. So what I tend to do is that I'll scroll all the way down. I've seen ads where they've been running, it's been going since 2021. You can basically go in there, check it, see, okay, this is the copy. This is what they did. Speaker 2: All right. All right. Speaker 1: And then you can basically do the same, the similar thing for your campaigns. But Facebook ad library is an amazing tool. And you can also, if you want to do influencer marketing or branded content, there's also, there's also ways where you can go into other brands and see what type of influencers that they've been working with as well. Instagram influencers that you're working with as well. For those of you or brands who are not just doing mere ads, but also want to work with Instagram influencers to get traffic to the brand. Speaker 2: Awesome, Joshua. So, I mean, I think you've been, you know, dropping some cold nuggets, as we call them. So, to conclude, is there any last advice you'd like to share with us for people, especially in 2025? You know, any trends that people should be aware of or any tip? Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah, so one of the things that I've noticed that has been working so well is that when it comes to the ads that you're trying to use, you want to ensure that your ads don't look like ads. The people now are very much aware of how companies move. Speaker 2: And it's very savvy. Speaker 1: Very savvy, very savvy. So you have to almost be like You have to come at an angle of, oh, that looks natural, natural. This could have been their friend that posted it. It could have been a rap. It has to look natural. And the reason why the customers are very inclined to that is it's actually reflected in the way Instagram ads and Facebook ads work now. When you're on Facebook, Instagram, you hardly get shown content of people that you're even following. It's just, they're just showing you stuff from people that you're not even following at all, but yet we still consume it. That's how we want to do the ads, where it's so natural, where they're like, oh, this is an ad. Oh, maybe it's another one of those brands or another one of those content creators. But you know what? This looks really cool. And they click and then they know. That's the way to do it. Yeah. Speaker 2: So thank you so much. I mean, it's been a great conversation. And, you know, I'm sure other people might want to receive more support or have a deeper conversation with you. So how people can find you? Yes. Speaker 1: So you can find me. So I'm on TikTok. Um, if you type in Yoshi Bear Jay, um, I'm on TikTok. Um, you could also find me on my website at www.goldstarsocialmedia.com. And, and you could also find me on YouTube as well as Yoshi Bear on YouTube. But, but yeah, you can find me on any one of these channels and I'm available to help. Speaker 2: Thank you, Joshua. I'm going to make sure to put all the information down in the description. Ardan, that has been a pleasure and see you in the next one. Unknown Speaker: Thank you very much. Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. Take care. Speaker 2: See you later. Bye. Unknown Speaker: Thanks for listening to The Ecommerce Lab By Ecomcy. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. While you are at it, we would appreciate it if you could leave an honest rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. That will make it easier for others to find out about the show and benefit from it. Want more? Visit our website at www.ecomc.com where you can get your first consultation for free. Or find us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn at ecomc.