Before You Spend a Dollar on Ads...

Strategy Talks with host Dorien Morin-van Dam and guest Liana LInk: Before You Spend a Dollar on Ads... Dorien: You've heard it 100 times, run ads, boost your posts, scale with paid traffic, and maybe you've tried it. Spent a few hundred or a few thousand or tens of thousands of dollars, maybe even more than that, and watch it quietly disappear with nothing to show for it. Here's what the ads didn't tell you.

Paid traffic doesn't fix a broken foundation. Dorien: It amplifies it. Oops. My guest today manages millions of dollars in ad spend every single year.

She's globally recognized as one of the top Facebook ad buyers on the planet, and she's here to tell you, "Don't run ads yet." Before you spend a single dollar, there's work to do, and today we're doing it. That's what we're talking about. Dorien: This is Strategy Talks.

I'll be right back Johan: Strategize together Let's hear it from an expert. Join the conversation, it's informative and free. You and me, let's talk some strategy Johan: Here's your host, Dorien Morin-van Dam Dorien: Hello, everybody. It's another Tuesday and another episode of Strategy Talks.

Welcome everybody who's here live with us, whether you're on Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube, we welcome you. Thank you so much for tuning in. And as always, because we are live, if you have questions for myself or my guest that I'm about to introduce, feel free to ask them in the comments. Dorien: I'll monitor the comments and if I see a question come up, we'll be happy to answer it live.

For those of you who watch Strategy Talks on the replay, if you do have a question that comes up, feel free to also add that question in the comments and tag us and so we can see your questions. Last but not least, lots of you listen to Strategy Talks as a podcast, and I wanna make sure that you are welcomed as well. Dorien: So we're gonna talk about ads today, what to do and what not to do, what to spend, when not to spend, and what you need to get started. So without much further ado, here is my friend, Lianna Ling, and she's going to talk to us about before you spend a dollar on ads, what you need to be doing.

Of course, we're gonna talk about ads as well, and, and how they work, and what you're seeing in 2026. Dorien: It is Social Media Day today. Did you know that? Liana: No, I didn't know that.

Dorien: Yes. June 30th is official Social Media Day. I used to always celebrate it. There used to be all kinds of events around June 30th.

In the last few years I haven't seen anybody really talk about it. But yes, happy Social Media Day to all of you watching and listening and to you. Dorien: Lianna, you say that you need a foundation first, right? But l- before we start talking about that, we're halfway, June 30th through 2026.

Are ad costs up? Are they up or are they the same? Is it more expensive to run ads- Liana: Yeah ... Dorien: or has it been the Liana: same?

That, that's a good question because... and I'm gonna infuriate people by saying it depends. Liana: Uh, like, you know, when we make content out there, as you know, right, for organic social media, you gotta say stuff. You gotta...

You know, you can't waffle a bit. You have to be confident and just go ahead and say something to get the views, right? 'Cause yes, let's admit it, we do stuff for views a lot of times, right? Liana: Yeah.

But reality is it depends. It's more for some people, it's less for other people, and that's always the case. If you take a look at the average, um, you will see that the average has increased, so yeah, we're not like where we were 10 years ago, unfortunately. Mm-hmm.

It's- It, it really does depend, honestly, on your campaign, on so many things that we're gonna talk about today. Dorien: Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. And so AI now is generating, I don't know, half of the content on the internet.

Small business owners are still being told- Probably Liana: more than that, right? Dorien: right? Yeah. Run some ads.

What are you seeing with that? Is AI-type content, is that working for ads? I know we're gonna dive into all of this deeper, but I just kind of wanted to set the scene for where we are halfway in 2026. Dorien: Are you using AI content to run ads?

Is it working? What are you seeing? Liana: Yeah. I've been using AI since before it became mainstream to write ads.

I was probably in the first group of people to show, "Hey, here's how you use AI to write your ads." And in fact, I would run it against a group of human copywriters, and these were copywriters, like, at the top of their game, right? Dorien: Wow. Liana: And what I've noticed over the years actually of using AI content in ads is g- there- there's one level where you just pour...

It's just volume, okay? And I have a little bit of a pet peeve about that. But it, it... There's one level where you just pour volume and you hope something sticks, and you know what?

Liana: Look, if you put up 1,000 ads and you're able to afford to have all of them be seen, you're going to find a winner in there, okay? Mm-hmm. Let's just... Okay ...

it's probably gonna happen. Dorien: Yeah. Liana: Uh, but most people don't have the budget to spend on 1,000 ads to see what's going to work. So I found that the ones that are the most successful are the hybrid ones.

Liana: So I am... I'm being, like, the artistic or the creative director- Okay ... with AI, and going back and forth, and then sometimes I'll edit it a little bit. But it's, it is a...

I don't know if you found this, but I find it's garbage in, garbage out. You know? Mm-hmm. If I'm not giving it good information about the pain points, about the audience, about the offer, about, like, this is the s- you know, this is the way I wanna go- Um, it's just gonna give you very generic stuff.

Dorien: Yes. Liana: So even the videos, even the imagery. Like I've... I remember, do you remember when we were just so excited that it created an image?

Yes. And we didn't care if it had like eight fingers, Dorien: right? We were like, "Look!" Right.

And now you can take an image and animate it and make a video out of an image, and you can just prompt it with words, and it will create a video or an image. It's absolutely crazy, and it's doing a pretty Liana: good job too. Yeah, it's crazy. It's doing Dorien: a pretty good Liana: job.

Liana: But I think like, I think that people are starting to be over that honeymoon period. So one thing that I see a lot come into my feed, 'cause I do a lot of Facebook ads, is I start to see it look very generic because each... You know, if you ask Claude to design something, I can tell Claude designed it, right? Liana: Same thing with ChatGPT, you can too, right?

Yeah. So I think like we're starting to fall back into the problem when we, when we used to work only with humans where I would say, "Hey, I'm gonna hire this person, and he's going to do a good job. Great, he or she." But we're limited with their worldview.

So what I loved about AI in the beginning was I said we can have so many diverse ones, but because people are just being lazy about going, "Oh, just make an ad, make an ad," it's pulling information from the general internet, so you're always getting the same generic stuff. Liana: And that doesn't work because in ads what works is the opposites. Dorien: Right. Liana: It's always the opposite.

So I'll share with you what's been working for me for a couple of months. It's not some big complicated thing, and maybe by the time everybody hears this it'll be over because everybody's doing it too. Liana: But some of my best ads, and I've created these with AI, but some of my best ads look more analog. So I'll do more simple animation cartoon images.

You know, um, the... I call them like on my mind ads. So I'll try and think of like what's a phrase that you could put in there that people look at it and think, "She's reading my mind," right? Liana: And I don't dare to say it out loud, but it's in a cartoon.

You know, maybe it's stick figures or like you can choose so many different you know, styles of cartoons. Those are actually working, and I animate those as well. Wow. So those are...

Yeah, like, it's just working in a lot of cases, not all the time, but most the time it is. Liana: And just b- But- I think it's 'cause it's also very direct. Right. It's just, you know, right there.

You know, and even an ad, we stopped the campaign, but I was running ad for our f- our mutual friend Jeff Hershey, and he said I could share everything, by the way, 'cause we did this as a case study. But the ad that would not die for, like, six or more months was black background with white text on it. Liana: That was it. I tried...

Some of the animation stuff kind of worked. I tried to do fancier stuff. Nothing. Black background, white text filling the square.

Dorien: That's Liana: crazy. It, it would not die, and he couldn't believe it either. Yeah. I was like, "Yeah, here's the update, like, this ad is still working."

Dorien: Um. That's crazy. Dorien: I remember last year in 2025 we were talking, and we talked about ugly ads, and that's- Yep ... I think that's what you're describing.

Yep. Ugly ads are making a return. If it looks like it was created in 2016, it's working, right? Yeah.

People... Because that makes people think a human made it versus AI made it, and then they relate, relate better to it. Dorien: But yeah, I think the enormous amount of content out there is having the consumer confused. Now, you just asked me is...

if I could recognize an ad made by Claude or by ChatGPT. I can, but my question to you is do you think the average consumer is now smart enough to spot it or not yet? Liana: I think somewhere in their subconscious it registers even at a level of this looks all similar, 'cause that's really what this is about, right? Liana: It's a...

With advertising, especially social media advertising, you have to stand out, but you can't stand out in a way that people will say, "Oh, like, you know, I don't want that," right? It's a bit of a balance between blending into the platform and then also standing out so people stop and actually look at your ad. Liana: And I think what's happening is the blindness happening 'cause there's fatigue, right? Fatigue always happens when you put up the same thing after a while.

People just stop seeing it 'cause they see it all the time. Mm. I think that's what people are seeing because they're all similarly designed and laid out. Liana: I don't think people realize that.

They look at it and think... They just think, "Oh, yeah, I saw that already," and- Right ... not even realize it's a different company, it's a different thing. Uh, so I think that really that's what's happening.

I don't think necessarily people are going, "Oh, that's AI." Yes, some people look at AI and immediately distrust it. Liana: I don't think that's happening as much as people's just you know, their intuition just... or their, their brain is just filtering it out 'cause they're like, "Yeah," Yeah.

"I've seen that before. I've seen that before," over and over and over again. That, Dorien: that make, that makes a lot of sense. So you manage millions in ad spend.

Dorien: When a new client comes to you and their ads are flopping- What's the real reason, or how often does it have nothing to do with the ad itself? 'Cause we're gonna talk about what you should do before you spend money on ads. Yeah. So why would an ad be flopping, even if they've got...

If it's not the ad- Liana: Yeah Dorien: What would it be? Why would it not work? Liana: Most of the time it's either tracking, a technical issue or, and/or it's the offer. Mm.

It's exactly what you said in the beginning. I was so glad you said that, 'cause n- nobody's really talking about it, but it, it is. It's... And I know people don't wanna hear this, and there's no...

Liana: i'm not a magician. None of the media buyers that you, that are e- the best in the world that I know, none of us are magicians, if your offer's not good, then it's not going to, it, it's not going to convert. You know, the ad is what And what we do with the ad and the ad- and the way that we set everything up is to try and get it in front of the right people to see the offer. Liana: If that's being done, then it's, you know, then it's going t- it's going to work at some level.

Is it gonna work at the level that you want? Maybe, maybe not, but just starting out, yeah, if it can't... Uh, if your tracking is off, which means that it can't measure, which means that it can't put your ad in front of the people that you want, 'cause you've basically broken... Liana: You've disconnected the whole communication with Facebook that's not gonna work.

And then if your ad... Uh, sorry, if your offer doesn't resonate, then you can put it in front of a million people that are all your ideal client, it's still not gonna work. Dorien: Yeah. Yeah.

That, that happened last year to a client of mine and that didn't work. Dorien: He didn't have the foundation, so kinda wanna get into that. Organic... I'm an organic specialist.

I've done organic social media for 15 years, and it starts with sharing your story, who you are, what your... What... That is your foundation. What your company stands for, why you build it, how you're building it, why you love your product, why you offer the service you do, all of those things.

Dorien: And if you don't have that, what you don't have is social proof. So then, if you start with running ads and you don't have any of the other stuff, you don't have a Facebook page, you don't have an Instagram, you don't have a active blog. I don't know where else people are gonna look for you, but you don't have reviews, you don't have a Google My Business page set up. Dorien: None of those things set up, but you're like, "I'm ready to spend money.

I have a budget. Let's run some ads." What's gonna happen? Yeah.

Liana: Uh, okay, so I... this is what I love about that, that we're talking because I always tell people that ads are a bolt-on to organic, 'cause exactly what you said, you need to have all that. Liana: So what happens is y- it's going... I- I'm gonna say that sometimes it does work on a certain level.

It... 'Cause I, I don't want people to say like, "Oh, but give all these examples where it's worked." What I have noticed is that when you have done that work, and when you show up organically, it does make the ads cheaper. Liana: It does make things easier.

If you don't have that, you have to spend a lot more money and a lot more time to get things to work, and then you also have to work so much harder to keep it going. 'Cause I've seen a couple times where we've reached a certain spend level, however many million, we've reached X number of people, and it just plateaus. Liana: And the reason for that is because there's no branding foundation to keep it going, right? When I've done stuff where they have that strong foundation, it's just...

Like, the ads work so much better, and they have so much more longevity. And then it really just becomes about matching the offer up. Dorien: Right. Dorien: Okay.

Yeah, I love that. So- What is a, what does a business look like, and I- you kind of answered it, that genuinely is not ready to run paid ads? Can you paint that picture for us? Yeah.

Liana: Like, Dorien: you, somebody comes to you and you're like, "Not ready." What does it look like? It- Liana: The first thing I ask them is, "Have you sold anything?" " Liana: Have you sold anything in, in, in terms of what you wanna run ads to?"

Okay? Because usually in an ideal world, do not put paid advertising behind something unless you've already sold it and gotten results for people. Dorien: Hmm. Liana: And this works whether you're selling shoes, widgets, or services.

Sell it to somebody, and if you don't, if they haven't hired you to get their organic going, then talk to your network. Liana: Try and sell it to somebody, okay? Because the thing is, if you can't sell it to at least somebody in your network, then you probably have to work on your offer. Hmm.

You know, when I first started in this business, like over 15, I think it's, like, over 17 years now, I remember I, 'Cause I first started doing, you know, websites, right? Liana: Websites, SEO, all that kind of stuff, right? A lot of us. I Dorien: think a lot of us started out that way.

Liana: Right? It's- Yeah ... my very first customer was my uncle. He i- he was...

I was telling everybody, "This is what I'm doing now," and he r- he got me in, he r- um, introduced me to the BIA, the Business Improvement Association that he was working with, and we got in there, and he was my very, very first you know, client. Liana: Not, you know, not somebody I was, like, cold calling. I've done all that stuff there, but yeah, it was, like, a family member 'cause he saw, like, what I was doing. You know, the, the...

Every... I think even if you have to do something for the charity, and that was my se- I think that was my third client was a charity, right? Liana: I said, "We'll do it for this price," 'cause I wanted them to pay a little bit of something. And, uh, you know, and then I worked with them for a couple of years as well.

Yeah. So at least I proved that I could sell something, Dorien: Right. Well, I, I- Yeah ... I love this because, you know, I don't know if you watch Shark Tank, but if you're listening or watching this, you know that's one of the questions they ask, "How much have you sold?"

Dorien: Yeah. Because they need proof of concept. Yeah. They have to make sure that what you have is something that people want.

You could think you've invented the n- the, you know, the next best thing since sliced bread, but if you're the only one who thinks it and you can't sell it to anybody, then it doesn't work. Dorien: Yeah. So I love that. I actually love that, and that means that somebody who is a, a brand new startup and, you know, they're a service provider and they might only have a couple of clients in their you know, in their portfolio, in their dashboards, they probably should either give it away for free or do some other organic, you know, type of, of campaign that doesn't include that paid yet because you've got...

Dorien: You want users in there. You want people giving you feedback and all that stuff. So, that's a great question to ask. Oh, I love that.

Absolutely love that. So you've said the most resilient funnels start with a freebie that builds an audience, then sells on the back end through email. In 2026, with AI-generated content everywhere, does that still hold? Dorien: And what makes that freebie actually work now?

Because we can create our own freebie. Yeah. We can go to Claude and say, "Create me a freebie," and in five minutes you've got the, checklist for 10 XYZ. Yeah.

Why would we fall for that in this day and age? Liana: Yeah. I've a j- I've changed that a little bit. Dorien: Okay.

Liana: I'm seeing things more in terms of layers of communication. Dorien: Okay. Liana: So the first layer is... it's like an awareness layer.

It's basically you gotta get people used to you, and you're also testing to see, right? Like, what angles people are gonna, you know, kind of, interact with you, but you need to have this first layer so they're a little bit... Liana: They're like, "Maybe I saw this person somewhere. I can't remember."

But just get into people's heads somewhere. And then layer two is where you start to put that offer. It could be free. It could be low ticket.

I've seen free. Free can work, but- At least the ones that I've seen where it's also leading into a higher price point later- Mm-hmm Liana: it needs to have some type of level of experience in it. So when, when you have people who are a little bit aware of what you do and they're a little bit problem aware think of something that's not just a PDF. I mean, I'm sure there are people out there who are crushing it still with free PDFs, because there's always exceptions out there.

Liana: But I've found that it has to have some... You just have to, like, I think people want experience. Mm-hmm. So I'll do, like, quizzes, i.

e. assessments, questionnaires, et cetera, 'cause they're interacting with you there. Hershey's campaign is a great example, the one we did the case study on. Yeah.

It was ads to a free school group. Liana: Right. And inside his school, he's like, "Okay, here's all this free stuff here," and he like, he told me, like, he's absolutely broken even, probably made money off of the ad spend of sending people into that free group, because he gives them so much value, and then now they're basically on his list, and he can just keep selling and selling to them, right? Liana: Yeah.

Affiliate offers, all sorts of offers. Um, so again, that's free, and a lot of other people are doing free groups on whatever it is, Facebook School, High Level, whatever. Yeah. You know, uh, case studies.

Like anything that kind of showcases that you have results and you have a system for getting results that you can show them. Liana: Even webinars still work, and I know some people are saying webinars are dead. Webinars can still work. Uh, absolutely.

Yeah. But, you know, um, all... So all those things can be free, and they can work. Again, depending on your offer, it could take, could take longer to convert, you know?

Dorien: To convert, yeah. Dorien: Yeah. That ma- that makes a lot of, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, we've got some savvy consumers these days.

Liana: Yep. Dorien: What does organic proof of concept look like to you? How does someone know they've validated their offer enough organically to hand it to you, for example, to paid ads without- lighting money on fire. Dorien: Yeah Like, the like, okay, this works.

W- what do you need to see? Yeah. 'Cause once you've asked that question, if you sold it, how do you know that it's right- Yeah ... and it's time to start ads?

Liana: So if you're doing a service business and you have made sales, I want to know, are you active on social media? Liana: D- like, are you, do you have people engaging with you? Do you know if any of your clients previously engaged with you? Because I know for services, most of the time it's not like, "Oh, I see somebody, go to link in bio, click buy."

It's, you know, it's, it's a much longer process, right? Absolutely. Talking to them- Yeah Liana: et cetera. Um, so I wanna know if it is playing a role, and if you can pinpoint even if you know, okay, this subject matter seems to come up.

'Cause this happens to me, like, people say, "Hey, I saw your video on this, I saw this, I saw this," right? So I, I have an idea of what probably motivated them to reach out to me. Liana: Um, if you're just selling, like, widgets or a low ticket offer, which can also still work very well, then I wanna know where they came from, because hopefully you have tracking in place to say these ads... Uh, sorry, not, these posts got people to, you know, buy this thing.

So maybe you're doing the commenting thing or whatever, right, on Instagram. Liana: Yeah. Yeah. And the first thing I'll do is I'll replicate those in ads.

'Cause, like, ads, like you said, the opposite you said, oh, which I agree with that if you run ads, like, it's just gonna get much worse, right? It's just gonna make it so much worse. Dorien: Right. Faster.

If you don't have the foundation, yeah. Dorien: Uh, yeah. Liana: It'll also make other stuff better. Dorien: Yeah.

Liana: Right? Dorien: Yeah, because that- So Liana: it's both ways. Yeah. Dorien: Right.

'Cause that's what AI does. If you have bad marketing and now you start using AI- Liana: Yeah ... Dorien: you're gonna get worse marketing, not better. Liana: Faster, Dorien: yeah.

Because it amplifies your bad voice that you already have- Yeah Liana: or your Dorien: non-voice- Liana: Yeah ... Dorien: into something that's un rec- recognizable and becomes so incredibly diluted that it doesn't really sound like anything that anybody wants. Yeah. So yeah, I think the same thing with ads- Yeah ...

for sure. So Liana: I'll look at different things, like I'll look and see engage- I'll say, "Hey, send me something that maybe got a lot of engagement or that got a lot of comments on it." Liana: Now, it doesn't always work, like exactly the same for cold advertising, but it does help you get there because you are putting it in front of a different audience that is still colder than the one that finds you organically. So just keep that in mind, but that's a really good place to start.

Liana: You know, I remember I was working on one campaign where they were very, very active on YouTube, had a really good presence on YouTube organic, and pretty much, like, they would test everything there. And then they would just send me everything. They're like, "Lana here's a new product. We sold this much, you know, on YouTube.

Liana: Here's the videos that worked." And I'm like, "Great, I'll go for that." You know, so I at least have something to start from. Dorien: Yeah.

Liana: And then I can, you can create different, like the cartoon, the ugly, on my mind ads, whatever it is, you can create those from what they actually give you. And, and that's, that's what works pretty well, right? Liana: So Dorien: That's, that's a really good idea. I have done what you just described.

I was working with an agency a couple years ago, and I was their organic specialist, and they hadn't really run a lot of ads, but they would run an ad campaign maybe twice a year. And so I was new, but I had a pretty good finger on the pulse of what was happening organically. Dorien: So they're like, "We need to create a new ad campaign. Can you tell us what's working organically?"

And I was like, "Yep, here, these are the la- latest visuals that work well. This is the copy." So they started with that, just like you said. It wasn't the end result, but it gave them a place to start and to start testing.

Dorien: So that's... I think that's a really great point, and that's why it's so important to understand if you're a business owner or a new marketer, a social media marketer, maybe you're only in paid or maybe you're only in organic, but you shouldn't look at it as silos. You need to all work together. Dorien: You need to start talking to each other, and I think, you know, I've had people on the show before that say that same thing, and I will say it over and over, if you're an organic specialist, talk to paid.

If you're doing paid media, talk to organic. Make sure you talk to each other and compare notes because you might be sitting on, on gold and you don't even know it. Dorien: So yeah, absolutely. Liana: That's so true.

Yeah. Dorien: Yeah. So you've talked about using AI and, you know, do you see AI as a tool or more as a team member? Liana: Or as my therapist?

Dorien: Yes. And then when we go beyond that why do you see AI's function within all those dashboards that you go into, say the Meta Business Suite or the Meta Ad Suites? Dorien: How do you pers- h- how do you perceive AI in there? Because I think in that point I would think it's a tool, but maybe it's not.

So I wanna kinda see how you look at it and how you use it. Liana: Yeah, I still see it as... Hmm, that's a really good question It, in my head I see it as an employee, like a team member, right? Liana: Okay.

But it's a, it's an employee or a team member that I treat like a tool. Like I don't treat them that well. You know, 'cause I go... 'cause, uh, right, 'cause it doesn't have feelings, right?

Yeah. So you can just, you know, whatever. So, um, look, I haven't been kicked off of it for swearing at it too much or anything, but it's... Liana: Yeah, I, so I think I, I think of it that way, but not the same way as I think of my human team members- Okay ...

or employees. Like for example, what I've recently created was a process and a skill to create what I call an owner's manual about you. So you create the basic MD files that talk about you and your business, et cetera, and I keep them in a central place, and then I train every single LLM I work with to point there. Liana: So it's always has something to look at, and I'm basically onboarding them as if it was an employee.

'Cause if an employee comes on, you wanna tell them what your mission is. You wanna give them all the stuff that's about you and your business. Dorien: Yeah. Liana: So they're onboarded, and that's how I...

So I ch- I pick up things like that when I think of it as an employee or a team member, but it's... Liana: I don't... What's the word, like, when you, when you humanize everything, right? When we name stuff, and we're like, "Oh," and then we start to have feelings for it.

Dorien: Yeah. Liana: Right? Anthropomorphize it or whatever- Yes ... the word is.

Dorien: Yeah. Liana: I don't do that anymore, right? Dorien: Okay. Liana: I used to.

I did in the beginning. I jumped on, I was like, "Oh, let me call it Earl or Ted or whatever," right? Liana: And now I'm like, "Nah, I'm over that." Dorien: Yeah.

Liana: I'm over Dorien: that. Well, especially when you consider they can work without you being there now, you know? Yeah. Now you've got, you know, the AI agent working, you're not even there.

To me now it's... You know, when it was like, "Hey, I ask you something, you answer. I ask you something, an answer," it felt more like a teammate. Dorien: But now that we're saying, you know, we're giving it a job, the agent, "You're doing this while I'm sleeping.

I wake up, there's an email with all this research you did, and, you know, you're off in the background doing a bunch of stuff for me while I'm working on this," it's a different feeling. It's more computerized. Dorien: Yeah. For me it's I am with you.

That, that AI, the feelings that I had for AI have changed. Liana: I mean, it took me so long to detach from ChatGPT emotionally, right? Yeah. And, uh, but you know what?

At some point I was like, "I can't keep using this." And then so you try Claude, and now Claude sucks. You kind of go back there, and now I'm using GLM, 'cause as a Canadian I'm probably never gonna have access to Fable. Liana: So it's just, yeah, like I just found you have to get over it, you know, because- Dorien: Yeah ...

Liana: they, they all, they're all, they all have ups and downs, and so now I just, I'm just like, I, I'm very results oriented, as are you, so I just, I just wanna use whatever works. Dorien: Yes. Like, just- Yeah, and I Liana: think this is- I don't care who you are. Dorien: Yeah, I think this is a good point to make, because I was working recently on a project where I needed to create a bunch of images, a, a bunch of visuals, and I was just like, "Last time I tried it didn't work."

And then I remembered last time I tried was a while back, and last time I tried something else didn't work, but AI changes so fast. Dorien: So I did an experiment where I gave a similar prompt or sim- same prompt to ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, and I was expecting Claude to make the best images. But at this time, ChatGPT killed it- ... compared, especially when I went back and say, "Oh, do another one in the same brand, another one in the same brand," and Gemini went off the rails.

Dorien: It was really bad. Claude couldn't get the sizing right. It just... I have to kept re-prompting, and ChatGPT just did it.

And it just is a good reminder for anybody out there listening, watching, use the tool that works, and don't, just because you pay one doesn't mean that, you know, you pay for one doesn't mean that the other ones aren't developing. Dorien: They're developing. They're n- they're using new models. They're, they might all of a sudden be better for writing or for something else that you might need.

And don't forget that, like Liana says, you know, we were all in love with ChatGPT and then we all, walked over to Claude, and maybe Claude right now is just not where we need to be. Dorien: So don't be... it's a tool, it's not your employee. That loyalty doesn't need to stay.

I guess that's a good way to, um, to say that. Yeah. But I have one more question for you. We're almost at the end.

I cannot even believe it. You were talking in the first question that I asked you, Liana, I was talking about when people set up tracking wrong, and I know that's not what this episode is about, but I wanna close off with that because sometimes- People say their ads aren't working or they don't have results, and it's not necessarily an issue that they set up, but they're working with an agency or with a freelancer who did it wrong. Dorien: And my- I've seen it over and over over the last 15 years.

You know, I get a client and they... I was like, "Oh my God, that's a mess." What is it that somebody needs to know about that? What should somebody look for?

If you're like, it doesn't look like you're getting the results or it doesn't look like you're getting the data that you should be having, we're not tracking anything. Dorien: You're spending a bunch of money and you're not getting reports How can somebody handle that? A business owner, that's... Can you talk to them and just tell them what they need to know?

Yeah. 'Cause I think it's really important. Liana: Yeah, i- in the past, we've gotten away with not having to have pristine tracking in place. Liana: But the last couple of years, with all the new models that, uh, Meta especially has rolled out, and Google as well, they've become much more sensitive.

Probably because everything's moving to AI, and they just, you know, it's what everything gets amplified, as, you know, Quinn talked about here, right? So it's, it's important for, first of all, everybody involved, the buyer, the business, whoever it is on the team to appreciate that the cleaner the signal you can send to Meta, the better chance you have that it's going to find what you want. Liana: Because it's not filtering through all this muddy data or even no data whatsoever.

So d- prioritize, like, don't think it's something you just put to the bottom of your list. Number two, it's going to suck. It's not going to be fun to do, okay? That's why it's always goes to the bottom of our list.

Nobody wants to track down why the tracking isn't working. Liana: Nobody wants to sit there and go back and forth with an AI to try and figure out why isn't this working, and it's, like, one little thing in the code. It's still pretty ugly to figure out, which is why there are specialists out there who just... i've seen them do amazing work, and like my friend Alex, he does that.

Liana: He comes in and builds out the whole infrastructure and maintains it, and he's seen where, like, literally the cost went down, like, 30 or 20%, and ROAS went up. Only, the only thing that changed was the tracking, right? Dorien: Wow. Liana: So, but people don't...

it's just, I think so many years we're so used to just throwing stuff up that we, it, I think we just don't value it as much. Liana: Yeah. So i- if the CEO and the business owner will prioritize and say, "No, this is important. I wanna make sure it's very clean," 'cause it's all about signals now.

It's all about, what is a clean, accurate signal we can send to Meta? Also, people don't realize, I think, too, is it's not just, like, if you're running lead gen ads, so, like, if you're running, like, an ad to, you know, your, your free webinar, right, on organic social media, you may think, "Oh, I only have to make sure that works." Liana: No, the, uh, because the models that it's using right now takes information from the entire customer journey. So I want you to be sending leads, I want you to be sending purchases, I want you to be sending all the other stuff that happens in the funnel to Facebook and to Google so it can understand how those people kind of react, and it can find more of those people for you.

Liana: So then there's all, a couple of... We don't have time to go into it right now, but there's a couple different places inside of your ads manager as well, that you wanna make sure those signals are there to let it know, "Here's the type of people who buy from me. Here's the type of people who engage with me." Liana: You know, all that stuff.

So it can, you're just giving it more signals. So- So I think first thing that I look at is as a media buyer, I think, and as well, like talk to your media buyer about that. The first thing I always do before I run any campaign is we double-check the tracking. Mm.

Every... Even if it's like, "Okay, I've done this a million times," I'm still gonna check the tracking, 'cause you know what? Liana: Big surprise, stuff breaks. Yeah.

Yeah. Stuff breaks, and whenever I see an ad, uh, performance drop off, the first thing I do is I look at technology. I said, "Can you look at it?" And they say, "Yes."

"Did you actually look at the page on your phone? Not an emulator, on your phone." "Oh, okay, the submit button is hidden," or something like that, right? Liana: Wow.

Um, and did we actually test tracking? Again, go on your phone, actually type in a name or actually make a real purchase. Don't do, like again, don't emulate it. Did it actually go through?

Dorien: Mm. Liana: And a lot of times, no. See, so again you gotta fix it. Um, a, uh, depending on the software you're using, a lot of it already has something that is integrated as well with meta server, so it's, uh, easier to do, but you still need to double-check it as well.

Dorien: Right. Liana: A tip is, like what I've been doing probably for the last six or eight months is we've been pushing everything into server talking to server, and we've been turning off the browser events. I know that may not make any sense, but just take that and put it into ChatGPT and ask it to explain it to you. Liana: It Dorien: tells you how to Liana: do it in- Yeah ...

five, yeah. But I am getting some really clean signals that way, because what happens is, is when you send stuff by the browser and the server, it has to de-duplicate it, otherwise everything's gonna get counted twice. And a lot of times it's not set up properly to de-duplicate and a lot, you know, with cookies and all this other kind of stuff- Yeah Liana: it just doesn't track very well. But I found when it's really solid, which is it's quite accurate, like over 95% accurate I would say- Wow ...

with server, which is amazing. I've seen that happen when it's set up properly. It's just it's just, it's n- it's like driving on, you know, a highway that just got paved or something. Liana: It's, it's so nice.

And then I can focus- I love it ... on just media buying. Yeah. But um, I, I think like just, a lot of people just don't, they don't put the value they should on tracking.

On tracking. You know? Yeah. And then, you know, omni-channel, right, with organic- I'm sorry, am I going over time?

I just need to- No, Dorien: we're good Dorien: get some of the marketing stuff. We're good. You keep talking. Okay.

You're, this is- Okay ... see, this is a, I wanted people to show up and understand that they need to do more than just run ads. They need a foundation. But now you're getting in some technical stuff that for people, like, this is gold.

I mean, this is gold- Yeah Dorien: for anybody who is thinking about running ads or is running ads and things aren't going quite right. Okay. So yes, finish your thought. Liana: So yeah so omni-channel, if you think about it, like 'cause I think you, everybody needs everything.

They need organic and they need paid. Tracking is also so important, as you know. Liana: A- and so what I try and do is at least if you can track first touch and last touch, there's all this messy stuff in between, I know that, but at the end of the day if you at least know where they came in and in the beginning and what's the last thing they touched before converting, it can give you some pretty good data. Liana: Mm.

And then you can think about how you can work together. You know, I've had situations where that Facebook was used as the retargeting and organic and Google was used to send all the traffic to YouTube, for example. And, and then I can just retarget, you know, based on the page visits as an example. Liana: And I've also had it- Yeah ...

the other way where Facebook generated just a lot of interest in something, click-throughs, then people going to Google it afterwards, and um, then the Google ads picked everything up, all the sales up with retargeting. We wouldn't have known that if we hadn't been tracking at least those, two points. Liana: Mm. And then you can kind of figure out what happens in the middle, which is usually email, right?

Liana: But that makes all of our lives so much better. But you know, it's never gonna be perfect 'cause it's really hard to track the entire, customer journey- Journey, right ... I think even for AI 'cause it's not linear. Liana: Yeah.

Dorien: Right. Liana: But at least give some ideas and take a look at that. Yeah. And if you don't have tracking in place, like 'cause I know it can be, I know it can be very frustrating.

At the very least, just measure your top numbers. Like how many sales did we make? How much did we spend? And then do something.

Liana: Like, uh- ... this is how we figured it out. We turned off the Facebook ads- Dorien: Yeah ... Liana: for a week, and then the Google guy was like, "What happened?"

The Google sales was like, you know, the search, people weren't searching anymore. You know, all, all the volume went down. And we're like, "Oh, that's interesting. Liana: Turn them back on."

Well, guess what happened the next week? Went back up again, right? And again, only just looking at those numbers at the end of the day, so we're like, "Oh, okay, this must have something to do with what's happening everywhere else." Yeah.

So then we figured those articles that we were using in ads on Facebook were somehow feeding into all the other engines and the tracking wasn't set up perfectly at all. Liana: It was very far from perfect, but what we knew was we knew how many sales were coming in, how many leads were coming in, and what we spent, and that's all we could see just, you know, at the top level, and it's just a cause and effect thing. You know? Yeah.

So you can absolutely do that too, and I, I think that there's a, there's probably a lot more that people can take advantage of they don't even realize that they have. Dorien: Well, what I'm hearing is for you, enthusiasm for the numbers, curiosity, and figuring, reverse engineering a bunch of stuff. So if you're listening to this, if you're watching this, if you're listening to this- You know, be curious about your numbers, what it means. It's one thing to say, "I've got $500 a month to spend on an ad," but it's another thing to understand what that $500 is gonna do.

Dorien: And if it's just putting your name out there, and it's awareness ads, but you don't really expect anything to happen good for you for having $500, you know, that you could have lit on fire. But you need to understand what happens next and how you can build your business using ads and what's next. Dorien: So Liana, this was awesome. That was so good, that last little bit.

You might have to come back and we'll talk about all of this stuff more in depth. But my, my, my question really came from having clients come to me that have run ads and have nothing to show for it, nothing. They either ran the ads too early, they ran it not on their own ad account, so they don't own their, their audience. Dorien: There've been so many mistakes, and so you even went even further, so I absolutely love that.

If you love this episode too, let us know. How can people connect with you, Liana? Because there's gonna be people listening to this that are like, "Oh my God, I need somebody like her in my life." Liana: Oh gosh.

Well, it's a pleasure to be here, and I would love to come back and nerd out on all this stuff- Yeah Liana: with you. I love it. Yeah. On most social media platforms you can find me as the Lead Gen Queen, and my main agency website is powerupstrategy.

com. Dorien: Okay. Awesome, and I'll make sure those are in the show notes. For those of you who are listening to podcasts, you can click on that and then you get to Liana.

Dorien: Thank you so much for being here today. You filled in a spot that was open, and I really appreciate you. Happy Social Media Day to anybody who's here live or watching this today on the replay, and, um, let's make the next quar- two quarters of 2026 amazing, guys. Thank you so much.

We'll talk to you later. Dorien: Bye, everybody.