Meta Ads: What to Do at Every Stage of eCommerce Growth with Kathie Feng, Signal Growth

Speaker A: Having your strongest hook to start as part of your creative is very important to make people stop scrolling. Like within two seconds you need to let people know what are you, what are you selling and why are they stopping to watch your ads, right? So within two seconds the most important message has to show up and it has to be a strong hook to make consumers stop scrolling. Otherwise they will keep on scrolling and they just pass your ads easily.

Speaker B: You're listening to the Keep Optimizing podcast to increase your traffic, improve your conversion rates and grow your profits.

Speaker C: Hello and welcome. I'm Chloe Thomas, the host of this e commerce marketing focused podcast. If you're not familiar with our format, we release five episode miniseries that dive deep into one e commerce marketing topic. It could be channels like email or SEO or Facebook ads or a big topic like acquisition retention or analytics. In each episode, new ones released. On Wednesdays I get to interview a different expert to explore the latest advice on making it work for you. And then after each five episode miniseries, we take a week off to give you time to take action on what you've learned. At the moment, we are picking up the meta ads thread again. Yes, we're going all Facebook and Instagram ads. In this episode, we're looking at how your approach to Facebook ads changes as your business grows. Our guests will be taking us through

Speaker D: what to do from the 0 to $200,000 a month stage, then the $200,000 a month to a million dollars a month stage and then above that. It's really fascinating way of breaking it

Speaker C: down, which I think I don't.

Speaker D: Um, I mean obviously it does reflect in those growth stages, but I think it's a good way of thinking about

Speaker C: how you approach meta ads as well.

Speaker D: So lots to take away from today's guest.

Speaker C: She'll also be sharing what she finds

Speaker D: to be the most common blind spots

Speaker C: with businesses running meta ads. The key things you really don't want to get wrong basically and takes us through some case studies and some examples on that. Um, and obviously her insider tips are worth sticking around for too.

Speaker D: Have you downloaded our ebook yet? To celebrate reaching episode 300, we created an epic e commerce success focused ebook packed with 118 top tips for E Commerce growth. Featuring the advice of many, many past guests alongside industry experts and many from you, our listeners as well. It's definitely one to dip in and out of and take inspiration from as and when you need it. This ebook needs to be sat on your desktop or even printed and sat on your desk. Download your free copy right now at keepopt uh.com forward/growth ebook

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Speaker D: In this episode I'm chatting with Meta ads expert Cathy Feng. Kathy is the founder and growth architect at Signal Growth and has recently started as director of Omnichannel Digital at Footlocker. She has over 13 years experience at the cutting edge of customer acquisition across all sizes of e commerce store. Hello Kathy.

Speaker A: Hi, how are you? Thank you for having me.

Speaker D: It's awesome to have you on the show. Um, how did you get into the world of Meta ads?

Speaker A: That's a great question. Um, so I'm a Taiwanese born and raised and then I um, remember when I was, when I was in high school I decided to explore what the other side of the world feels like. So I applied for school, got into Northwestern and then bring two luggages and bought one with ticket and flew to Chicago and that's how I started my marketer journey. So I majored in marketing at Northwestern and after school I got lucky and got my first job at ah, Discover Financial Services, now Capital One, um, as a digital marketer. And that's when I started my chapter in digital world. And then fast forward 13 years later I have not changed anything. All I did was digital marketing, um, growth marketing and I've been loving it every day and then the role and experience has to keep on evolving and then it has been a wonderful journey.

Speaker C: Very cool. And um, at what point did you discover Meta Ads and get obsessed with that?

Speaker A: Uh, literally my first job. So after school when I started my role as a digital marketing associate um, at Discover Financial Services Services, that's when I started managing Meta and Google as hands on. So um, all my life I would say Meta is essentially like my superpower, like where I know ins and out of the platform and been going through corporate worlds working with Meta super closely on ins and outs of best practices as well as measurement and how do we really measure the success of specific platform and on top of that how do we look at the activation across Omnichannels uh, for anything digital related to supercharged the business.

Speaker D: Very cool. And um, omnichannel can be defined differently

Speaker C: by so many people and I suspect we may end up talking about it again. So what's your omnichannel?

Speaker D: Is it cross marketplaces, is it cross physical stores, catalogs, et cetera? What's your definition?

Speaker A: Yeah, great question. So my omnichannel experience spanned across tv, like linear tv, ctv, addressable, digital out of home radio, podcast, programmatics and social email, website, catalog, DTC related, you name it. So anything that's activation within the digital space is under my omnichannel realm.

Speaker C: Very cool. But we're here to talk meta ads and how our approach should shift with meta ads depending on the size of the business. Everyone listening. We're going to go from uh, the very beginning of your business when you're still testing out that IT idea right the way through to your seven figure point and um, beyond. Um, so Cathy, that first step, the launch and test phase, how can meta ads be useful to us when we've got kind of our first delivery of product? I suppose, yes, great question.

Speaker A: My advice to the founders at the first stage is before even launch meta ads, I think people should be clear about your product market and the offer triangle. So I call it winning triangle, where you have to define is your product good enough for your audience to buy? Who are your core audiences as well as is your pricing strategy Correct. So we can have a full episode about it, but fast forward, if you do have a clarity in your winning triangle, that's where the meta ads can help you supercharge your business. So after figuring out the winning triangle initially, I would recommend founders always spend a little bit of the budget, not too much just to test the water. So on uh, average probably 30 to $50 per day minimum to really understand the platform performance. That's when you start um, testing the meta ads and of course the platform best practices will be like it needs to be aware of the platform best practices in terms of how the creative is performing. How do we really tell the story based on the audiences that you have defined before you even launch meta ads and continuously driving, test and learn, using small budget to be really able to understand what are the winning creative against your audiences and then slowly optimize from there.

Speaker C: So at this point, are we testing how well meta will work or are we testing. Have we, we, you know, with our magic triangle, are we testing that our, our assumptions, where we've got to with our customer base is right? Does that make sense?

Speaker A: Yes. We're testing all of that. So before we scale to maybe 200k per month or even 1, we need to know that our foundation is solid. So using small test budget to really understand testing, one thing at the time to really understand is this audience right for you? Is this creative right for you? If this message is right for you, before even scaling is the first critical part of the success. So essentially Meta is the algorithm itself. We optimize against the top performing creatives against audiences. So from my experience, within two, three days you should be able to already see some sort of success, initial success based on your KPIs, whether it's purchases, conversions, click through rates. So you will be able to see some sort of early indicator in terms of the success towards two specific KPIs that you're testing. So at the initial stage, as a founder, I will highly recommend to make sure you have a good testing strategy laid out and then testing different variable at each phase. So for example, you can use their first maybe 2k to 5k budget to test if this creative is working for you and then after that testing if this audience is working with the creative. And the third is if your pricing strategy is ready for scale. So there's a different test and learn strategies should be structured and defined carefully at this stage before you really scale your business. Um, so that's stage one and then stage two. Once you define your winning triangle, you had the small success of your testing and strategies in Meta, understand what are the winning combinations from creator, from headline, from audience perspective and you have an offer that's ready to ship. That's where you can start scaling your budget. So um, that's where you can start scaling from $50 per day to $100 a day or even 150 based on you know, your creative, your message and continuously test and learn. I would say don't stop test and learn here. You will want to know your consumer feedback and then in real time market responses by continuing your test and learn in every every stage of the game. So even when I'm scaling budget, I was still putting new creatives, new message, rolling out new offers and continuously baking your test and learn strategies under your overall scaling roadmap. So that's when you continue rolling out new campaigns, new offers and continue scaling up to 100k to 200k, um, monthly revenue and I will call it the second phase of the growth. And then once you past that stage of the growth, obviously your consumer could be capped at certain time and that's when you start developing a new consumer strategy, for example segmentations or customer expansions or potential audience or platform expansions. Maybe meta is not the only channel you should be working on for your business because the scale is there. So that's when you expanding or looking into more omnichannel activation either through Google or TikTok or based on your audiences. And then within Meta itself I will also recommend to start looking at diversified audience strategies. For example the current audiences, uh, there's always a cap in terms of the audience sizing meta. Right. So how do we continuously expand to reach more audiences and improve conversions and also you know, continue structured test and learns. That's where the secret sauce once you pass like 150 to 200 monthly revenue and goes towards the all the way to seven digits. So yeah, that's just a kind of like a highlight um, structure of how we look at the meta ads from test and learn understanding your audiences and optimization perspectives.

Speaker C: Kathy it feels like from 0 to 100 200k per month we're kind of holding ourselves back, you know, just really doubling down on those, in those initial spaces where we found that uh, initial audience that are responding to our ads, on the initial creative strategies we've got going on and just really I guess squeezing every last bit of goodness out of that uh, to give us that fast growth before we then at 200k a month start widening out. Would that be a fair way to look at it?

Speaker A: Yeah, I would say that's a fair way of looking at it. I wouldn't call it like 200k initially. I think that's a indicator in terms of the size of the business. But of course if you're based on different product, different pricing offer, like if you're selling like 10, 15k like per month, uh, per offer or like a per product, it's probably easier for you to pass a $200,000 mark versus if you sell 799 for product. Right. So it's some sort of indicator in terms of the scale. But the core idea is to really understand your offer is solid enough to the level that you can hold it onto one segment of audience. Love your product, not just like your product. Being able to love your product and continuously exceed spending from there will be a very important part of the initial growth. And then we heard so many stories from founders that they want to scale as fast as possible but once if the system is not solid in the beginning and then they do not have a lot of tests and learn, do not understand the consumers when they Scale, that's where the loss happens.

Speaker D: That makes so much sense.

Speaker C: And you've mentioned multiple times that when we're doing our test and then we're testing one thing at a time. So when we reach that tipping point, that 200 to 300k ish per month and we start diversifying our activity on meta, I'm sure it could be very tempting to just suddenly try everything and throw all the ideas at the wall.

Speaker D: What lever is your favorite one to

Speaker C: pull at that point?

Speaker D: Is it trying to diversify into another customer base? Is it you know, radically changing the creative? Is it trying a different geography or probably something completely different.

Speaker C: What are your kind of top picks

Speaker D: of what to start testing when you've reached that stable, stable growth level?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. And I can answer it in 500 different ways. Right, because everybody's product, um, consumers, they're all different. Even within consumer business or even dtc, you're targeting billions of people. If you target just the United States, the audience insights different from targeting global. So you see a lot of companies that they are blooming China but they have a problem entering to United States and vice versa. So it's just there's so many nuances into this but uh, being able to work with someone that understand that has a local market insights and has done this and has scaled it can definitely help you get there because there are so many blind spots that people may not know or you know, the mistakes that may not you may be making without you know, some experienced marketer, uh, working alongside you. So I would say if we're talking about United States meta platform specifically within the early stage of the entrepreneurship, I think within two, when you drive towards to 200,000 ish, that's when you can start testing out different channels. From my experiences driving consumer within the US market, Meta and Google are essentially my two favorite childs. Right? Like so children, they cover the broadest coverage within the US audiences or even globally but then also covers broad generations, um, including like millennials, Gen Z boomers, they all use Meta platform and also Google. So I would say Meta and Google will probably be your best friend at the initial growth stage. But then once you pass that um dollar mark definitely omnichannel activation will be much more helpful to continue striving different consumer touc. You want to make sure you continuous reaching them, they continuous hearing and see your product. Even when you're driving listen to podcasts, watching TV or even like scrolling on social media, you want to continuous expose them within your product. Offer to build consumer perception, consumer love, and also action. So there's a different stage of the game once you pass seven digits or even the growth stage from an enterprise perspective, Omnichannel is the way to go.

Speaker C: Awesome. Love the way you break down those segments. Now you said, uh, before we hit the record button that you also love letting people know what the blind spots are likely to be while doing all this. And I have to say you got really animated talking about these, so we have to share those with the audience. What are maybe two or three of the key blind spots you see founders and uh, marketers making when they're playing with their Meta ads?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great question, uh, because I basically grew up with corporate, so I have a lot of corporate experience, but I also had my own business and also working with a lot of entrepreneurs or SMB owners. Where I see the biggest blind spot is working with entrepreneurs. And also, uh, SMB owner is they think Meta ads to them is just click a couple buttons and launch the ads and everything's going to be good to go. Like things going to be selling, flying off the shelf. And that could be the m biggest mistake that you make, right? After two months and then nothing selling and you just keep on spending, you know, on meta. Ah. And you think the platform's eating up your money. So that's the biggest blind spot that people will make at the initial stage when you don't understand what the platform actually works the best for you, not against you. The reality is every platform is different. The best practices will work on Meta, but not Google nor TikTok. So every platform has highly nuanced best practices that the marketer like myself would love to share with you. So you know how to, you know, use Meta. It's such a powerful platform you want to use with like for you, not against you. So for example, uh, there are creative best practices. Um, you know, campaign set up best practices. I can give some examples in terms of, uh, for example, like people's attention span are really sure nowadays. So how do we really continue to capture consumer attention? To really watch your ads or even being able to take action from your message is very critical. So essentially the structure needs to start with a very strong hook. People will tell you like within three or four seconds. But my best practice is based on all the different consumer brands that have driven like within two seconds you need to let people know what are you, what are you selling and why are they stopping to watch your ads. Right. So within two seconds the most important message has to show up. And it has to be a strong hook to make consumers stop scrolling. Otherwise they will keep on scrolling and they just pass your, you know, ads easily. And then so having your strongest hook to start as part of your creative is very important to make people stop scrolling. And then what are the other like the structure of the ads. Like how do you express the brand story and the beautiful story in telling way within the longest 30 second preferable 15 second is also um, very important to continuously make people being engaged throughout that 15 second and then later last but not least taking action on that. So having a strong hook and a great storytelling within 15 seconds and last have a strong CTA. You need to tell consumer exactly what you want them to do. Not just like learn more or click on the button below but you need to trigger curiosity want them to click on that button and what's the reason why they need to take that action. It needs to be really clear. So those are just couple um, best practices I would like to share. Um, for entrepreneurs, if you're thinking about starting your meta campaign, being able to produce a creative that's engaging and then make consumers stop scrolling will be your first thing, the first winning card that you need to play. Um, and then secondly is working with a senior marketer or even consultant to understand who are your core target audiences. For example, if you're selling a supplement, ah, brand you don't want to sell people that never take supplements, right? Or not health like conscious. So being able to target the consumer that's fitting your product. That's what I talked about. The product market fit part is also very critical. So understand your consumer insights, understand who are your consumers, understanding what are their needs and wants and what do you need to do to trigger their actions. So being able to kind of psychoanalyzing your consumers and you know, create a creative story that speaks to your consumer, make you relatable and make them like you and then finally make them click on your ads and buy your product. So that's the second winning card that I recommend to look into. And last but not least, optimizing um Meta is a very dynamic platform. It changes every day because the uh, algorithm and plus AI is crazy. Now if you have a great creative, basically creative is a king. Um, the creative will drive your product in front people that would like you. So being able to monitor your platform almost on daily basis like how you monitor your stocks is very important to continuously understand how the platforms are evolving based on your message, your creative and your audience set up and then changing the bidding strategy when needed and also understand like when to turn up the things that don't work for you. Right. So continuous double down on the winning creatives and turn up the things don't work for you as fast as possible. I would say give it the two, three days, you probably already know the trend. And the last but not least, having a KPI that you know that's working for you. Right. So like in the initial stage, what you want to optimize is probably based on um, you know, the hook rate, the click through rate or even your cpm. So monitoring some sort of fast metrics can help you understand where is this platform trending for the current setup your campaign. But later on you want to have a different KPI like your roas, your conversion rate, that's more lower funnel metrics to help you understand if this campaign is really working for you. So being able to set up different KPIs associated with the different stage of the campaign and continuously monitor through all of throughout the conversion funnel is something I would absolutely recommend to take a very close look into even at the very beginning of the game. So when you start spending $50 per day, you want to set up, test and learn strategy that's already have this framework and have this structure so you can make sure that you understand that you actually optimize it against top performing, creative, top audiences. Your campaign's good to go before you start putting $200 a day, $300 a day or even thousand bucks a day. So. So I'm a big fan of, you know, making sure your winning chart goes solid and being able to establish a very refined test and learn strategy before you starting to scale. And once you scale, don't ever stop testing because the platform changes every day. And then your audience also changes daily. Right. They can flip their mind like a flip the book. So you want to closely monitor what do they still like me? Do they still like my product or should I get like a different message? Different product offering all the different things. Being able to understand your consumer is the first, the most important thing to really understand what message and creative or even offer should be put in front of them. So I'm a big fan of being consumer centric and consumer um, first like especially for DTC products I selling to consumers.

Speaker C: Love that. Thank you Kathy. It's been great picking your brains about all this. Listeners, remember to stay tuned right to the end so you don't miss out on Kathy's insider tips and my suggestions for other ways we can help you improve things even further in your businesses.

Speaker D: Have you downloaded our uh, ebook yet? To celebrate reaching episode 300, we created an epic e commerce success focused ebook packed with 118 top tips for E commerce growth featuring the advice of many, many past guests alongside industry experts and many from you, our listeners as well. It's definitely one to dip in and out of and take inspiration from as and when you need it. This ebook needs to be sat on your desktop or even printed and sat on your desk. Download your free copy right now@keepopt.com growthebook

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Speaker C: Okay Kathy, so far we've gone deep into what to do at different growth stages with Meta. Now you get to wow us with your insider knowledge about the whole of meta ads. So for the following questions, your answer can be anything to do with meta ads, which of course includes everything we've already been talking about. Kathy, are you ready for the Quick Fire insider tips?

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely.

Speaker C: Cool. Then let's start with newbie advice. If we've inspired someone to take their first step, what do they need to know to give themselves the best chance of success?

Speaker A: So I would say the best chance of success is figure out your winning triangles. Do you have the product market and your pricing set for the consumer? Being able to find a consumer that loves your product, not just like your product. They want to buy your product because they solve some sort of pain, not just vitamins. So with that you will have a lot of leverage to increase your pricing offer and continue scale from there. So initially for your first audiences to test, definitely somebody that's your your core audiences and then being passionate about your product. Definitely not your family but uh, one segment of the audience.

Speaker C: Love that. Once you've started, of course you've got to keep optimizing. So what's your favorite way to improve performance?

Speaker A: My favorite way of improving performance is a test and learn. Um, I'm a very data driven person. I love numbers and I believe number is the best way to tell you how your consumer feels. Not your intuition, not, you know, anything else. But using numbers and using the Actual consumer insights, listen to people that actually purchase your product is the best way to understand your audience.

Speaker C: Totally agree with your answer there. Now if someone listening wants to learn more, is there one cheap or free resource you can recommend?

Speaker A: Yes, I will recommend. Connect with me on LinkedIn. My name is Kathy Ben. Shoot me a message and ask me any questions about marketing. I'm happy to offer tips, uh, or any helps.

Speaker C: Wow, top recommendation there. Um, finally crystal ball time. What's coming up in the next six to 12 months that we should be getting ready for?

Speaker A: I love this question. I would say the next six to 12 months is a buzzword, but I think AI is going to be the most exciting thing but also most anxious, uh, you know, movement that everybody's going through. So in the next six to 12 months being able to understand how AI is evolving. Um, AI is a big buzzword but you can literally dissect to all the different type of AIs right? Physical AI, you know, your chat, GPT or claw on everyday co pilot. But there's also different AI systems, AI automated, um, you know, platforms that how we going to leverage to supercharge our productivity and also efficiency. So be ready for the evolution of the AI and being able to capture at least one or two tools that's going to be supercharged your growth on daily basis.

Speaker C: Nice. Any tools you're particularly loving in the AI space at the moment that you're willing to share.

Speaker A: That's um, my personal preference. But I love vibe coding so it's interesting because I'm a marketer so I don't have an engineer background, I don't do codes. But vive coding has been a game changer for me. So when I was an entrepreneur and I have my own business, I feel I'm lacking motivation so I need a coach to be in there for me and being my accountability buddy. So I vibe coding the AI performance dashboard for myself and it does daily checking on my mood, on my goals and then automatically syndicating my goals into a performance dashboard. So I know on the percentage wise how am I achieving, how am I tracking my goals And I also have an AI coach that I can brainstorm me to. The AI coach help me understand my blind spot. Because sometimes when you're entrepreneur you work by yourself, you think things one way, right. But then it having someone to brainstorm like with a knowledge base that can definitely support you. Not just like personal opinions but a uh, more objective ways of brainstorming with you really helped me think through a lot of different blind Spots. So vibe coding has been a game changer for me. And then, um, I'm obsessed. I want to call like continuous, different dashboard, different platforms, um, just to, you know, help me, you know, going through like a different. Essentially I want to build my own AI agents and become my m own employees.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: So those are the things I think a game changing part and then that's something I'm obsessed about.

Speaker C: Very cool. Love that. Now, Kathy, we are very nearly at the end of the show, so could you please let the listeners know where they can get in contact with you and your business?

Speaker A: Yes. Uh, send me a, uh, follow on LinkedIn, Kathy Fan, or check out my website, SignalGrowth AI. Shoot me a message or, you know, anything that I can help with. I'm here.

Speaker C: Very cool. Kathy, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure chatting to you about meta ads. So thanks so much for being here.

Speaker A: Likewise. Thank you for having me.

Speaker C: So, lots of key advice there on how to grow and scale your meta M ads activity. And I think sometimes somehow I think, you know, that initial growth stage he was talking about, you know, you've got your product idea, you've worked out your magic triangle, and you are now starting to play around with meta ads. I suspect there's several of us who could do with going back to that stage and getting refocused. Whether it's on one product line or whether it's on everything just to go. Actually all the changes have been going on. Maybe now's the time, especially this time of year if you're, you know, a peak focus business, big opportunity to kind of cut it back or start a new, a new tree, I don't know, maybe. Um, and ah, loved her examples during the blind spots section as well. So lots for you to um, unpick there. Ah, you can get the links to everything we've got. We discuss the full transcript of this episode, our notes and more@keepoptimizing.com you can also use the special direct episode short link. That's keepopt.com the number of this episode. When you get to the website, please do add yourself to the Chloe Thomas email newsletter. Thank you for tuning in to this

Speaker D: episode of the Keepoptimizing podcast. If you enjoyed this one, then why not check out episode 299, part of

Speaker C: our recent growth series where I was

Speaker D: chatting with Amy from launch, all about the new growth approach to meta ads and your whole marketing stack.

Speaker C: We're talking creative, we're talking branding, we're talking attribution Loads of great stuff. Amy really knows her stuff because I think it will really help you build on what we've been chatting about today with Kathy. You can also find all our meta ads content by scrolling up your feed or use the short link keepopt.com meta to find it all on the website. Please do tell your fellow marketers about the show because we want to help as many of you as possible to improve the performance of your e commerce marketing. Have a great week and make sure you listen to the next episode so I can help you to keep optimizing your marketing

Speaker B: access. Everything Keep optimizing@keepoptimizing.com that's with an S not a Z.

Speaker D: Have you downloaded our uh, ebook yet? To celebrate reaching episode 300, we created an epic e commerce success focused ebook packed with 118 top tips for e commerce growth featuring the advice of many, many past guests alongside industry experts and many from you, our listeners as well. It's definitely one to dip in and out of and take inspiration from as and when you need it. This ebook needs to be sat on your desktop or even printed and sat on your desk. Download your free copy right now and@keepopt uh.com Growth ebook.

Speaker A: Receiving a cotision.