Storytelling in digital marketing is about creating emotional connections with your audience. Facebook Ad Specialist Sarah Sal shares her approach to creating ads that resonate with your audience and drive conversions in her upcoming brightonSEO talk.
Tell us about your topic; “Forget about sugar daddies; turn customer interviews into high ROI content,” and why you chose it?
Imagine you’re in a coffee shop. You’re talking with a friend, and they talk about a product or service they bought and how much of a difference it’s made in their life. And you couldn’t help but say, “Please can you send me the website? Or can you send me the contact detail of that business?”. Marketers don’t talk that way. The problem with the market is a lot of them have a message, they try to repeat it, and it’s often forceful.
Instead of creating content blindly, they need to talk to their clients. There is value in going deep and talking to a client for an hour and getting to know their story as if they are making a movie or writing a book about the difference a product or service made in their life. They’ll get awesome content that helps the ROI. It’s about making more authentic content. The message is powerful wherever you make it when you use your clients’ stories.
I often tell people, forget you’re selling. Forget you’re writing an email. Forget you’re doing an advertisement and just imagine somebody already gave you money and you need to provide them value. You will then deliver the best content that drives sales because people get value now. They consider you an expert. Give people that taste of your awesomeness with your content.
Have you used this strategy for your clients, and what results have you achieved?
At the talk, I’m going to present a few case studies. One of them is ad copy I wrote for the Copywriter Club. They have a course called Accelerator, which costs $2,000. I spoke with six or seven of their clients, sometimes spending about one hour on Zoom. The interesting thing was that a colleague who worked with me on the project was listening to these interviews. She ended up borrowing $2,000 from her father to buy the product. So, she wasn’t meant to become a client. She didn’t even listen to the interview with the idea of becoming a client, but just listening to the one-on-one story worked for her.
What questions do you ask during the interviews?
You want specificity. So if I interview somebody and I say, “How did you like that product?” and they say, “They loved it,” it gives me nothing till they specify why they love it. Let me give you an example. For the Copywriter Club, one person said, “Thanks to that program, I’m making $17,000 monthly.” I said, “What is the difference?” He said, “Oh, they help me have a more persuasive website.” I could have stopped here, right? But one should not. I then asked him, “Can you show me your old website? Can you show me the new website? Can you show me exactly what you changed? What is the difference in messaging?” It’s almost like I’m doing a movie. So I go after the specifics.
What KPIs do you keep an eye out for in your multi-channel mix?
The most important one is how much you spend and how much revenue you make in return. Know that the data will never be 100 % accurate, especially if it’s multi-channel. I often tell my clients, for different traffic sources use different URLs and landing pages, don’t send traffic from FB ads to the same landing page as Google Organic because then the data gets mixed up. If you mix everything, understanding data becomes very hard, and you will not know what channels are working for you. Prioritize data related to sales revenue and the quality of leads over other metrics. Your quality of lead matters much more than your CTR. You cannot take engagement to the bank. All I care about is how well it converts.
What tips would you give to beginners starting out in digital marketing?
Beginners can start by learning how to communicate. I recommend two books: The Jelly Effect by Andy Bounds and Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. These books focus on effective communication and understanding it from a psychological point of view, which is important in marketing. Andy Bounds teaches simple communication – basically, both of his parents are blind, and while he is not blind, his eyesight is horrible. It meant that as a child, he needed to be able to explain to his parents in very simple terms things that they couldn’t see. Made to Stick by Chip and Dan focuses on the psychology of remembering and understanding a message. They emphasize the importance of communicating a message in a way that people can easily remember and understand.
What are the top five apps or tools you use daily and why?
- Facebook and Linkedin Ad manager.
- Evernote for writing ideas I have.
- Google and Grammarly doc for writing.
- And sometimes MySql, a database management tool that allows me to run Queries like: On average, how long does it take a new subscriber to become a new client? Or How many products do clients buy, and what are the top sellers?
Sarah’s a Facebook Ads Specialist at Hootsuite & AdEspresso. With seven figures in Facebook ads spent under her belt in 10+ years, she’s run ads for companies like ClickFunnels and Strategyzer. When she started running ads for the latter, they struggled to make $0.40 for each $1 spent on ads, and she moved them to $18 for each $1 spent. In her daily menu, there’s always room for a warm cup of matcha, sarcasm, and spicy vegan food.
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